October 1, 1997
Gloria,
Some well-placed words can delimit the pain, Gloria, and ease its passage.
Here in Brazil, the tendency is for people not to
accept or, in fact, feel their real feelings.
Brazilians generally hate one another and feel
continuously abused while they abuse from their
side of things too instead of confronting the
problems that surround them every day. This is
what serves and is expressed by: the corruption,
impunity and criminality in the government and in
society in general; the indifference in daily
relations where "take advantage in everything"
reigns without scruples; carnival, that
celebration of irresponsibility and cheap sex; the
mutual abuse that we see in the traffic and in
life that is almost always passed along instead of
confronted; the lack of tradition of confronting
abuse in commerce, which is now changing a bit
since the consumer protection laws went into
effect, etc.; the indiscriminate use of drugs and
alcohol that constitute systematic escapism and
the worship of hedonism that are practiced here.
In this brothel, this kasbah of a country, where
responsibility, truth and even reality are denied
in the name of illicit profit and selfish
pleasure, if the experience that is coming to be
received is not "upbeat", the smart set
here do not accept it and go out looking for false
feelings that are more "convenient". It is
cowardice, Gloria, cowardice, arrogance and bad
faith, just like what you did to me.1
In my tradition, we open to
that which is here for us, whether it is a
pleasure or not, and we suffer our feelings down
to the ground until they are openly defined and
totally without movement in the sense of
distortion or confusion. Our path is not pleasant
but while here in Brazil everyone is alone with
their self-promotion, we can remain together with
those that are really here. Relative to you, the
evolution of my feelings and the gradual cleaning
of my experience from your influence and the
confusion that you brought to me continues.
Basically, time passes and my love has changed to
hate and now is being expressed with more strength
and clarity in my being and my sense as well, in
as much as the pain that you gave me was never
sorted out appropriately.
It is funny, the Javanese
language is particularly rich in words and
expressions that contemplate nobility, divinity,
and wrath or anger of one kind or another, and, in
fact, it has expressions of association like "My
God" and "the devil!" but has no swear words with
the sense of "fuck you" or "son of a bitch" (at
least not in Central Java). On the other hand, the
Portuguese language is incredibly rich in words
that contemplate abuse, betrayal and manipulation
and also in curses and swear words. But it is
interesting that, with all this confusion and the
agony that I went through trying to serve the love
I felt for you, the expression that I have found
in Portuguese that captures my feeling is normally
used by the children here: "Estou de mal; nunca
mais eu fico de bem" ["I'm at odds with you;
I'll never forgive you"], Gloria. Looking at it,
this really is a profoundly powerful curse because
the betrayed person promises to work against their
abuser forever. In English it would evidently
translate as: "I don't get mad; I get even". You
will find out about my wrath soon in your
circumstances; since my "ground" is clearly rising
in an open fashion, I know that you have to be
falling. I have reorganized my life and from the
situation I have now, I am able to keep track of
the "feelings" you left me with easily: Gloria, my
false friend, my treacherous and cruel lover:
"David, I am not going to assume responsibility
for our relationship. I do not accept
responsibility in the relationship to which you
are committed. What you are feeling does not
matter to me. You're on your own!" (about December
3, 1991).2
I met Josefina Bastos (by
any chance, do you remember her?) a few times last
year and she told me how you stepped on her too.
She said that you are "complicated" and I
protested, "She is not complicated, Josi; Gloria
is simply evil." She pointed out your "difficult
family" and I said that you are birds of a
feather: you consider existence a fight for power
and comfort where really "anything goes".3
There are many names in history and the world's
literature referring to you, but, generically you
are the Harkis.4
Evidently, you are openly manipulative,
unscrupulous and see other people as victims to be
sacrificed when convenient. The foundation of your
being is scorn and down underneath a protest
against the unnegotiable nature of existence and
justice. You scorn the rest of existence as an
established policy; the strategy defining your
techniques for collating and extracting energy
from others is using your scorn to step on us.
Within my experience, you are a constant source of
lies and calumny and you drain off my energy
disputing reality in this way. As a group, you act
in a coordinated and calculated fashion but
evidently maintain a certain distance from the
definition of your acts to pretend to innocence
when necessary. You evidently do not assume
contracts except for cosmetic purposes: "You're on
your own, moron!" Look, Gloria, existence and,
particularly, life is already a nightmare with all
the structural and volitional problems that we
have one with one another -- cruelty, social
injustice and injustice coming from that horror
karma, suffering, old age, death -- but for me,
you have been a grotesque parody marked by
complete indifference relative to your
responsibilities as a friend, as a lover, as a
person, as a being. Instead of accepting what you
do to others, you deny -- you scorn -- even the
possibility that they will be able to understand
your malevolent influence, to recognize the pain
you cause. Look at the abuse, Gloria, look well,
in that your are going to pay. Trust me on this
one.
The orientation of your
relational method is "take advantage in
everything" (i.e., I'm the best; fuck the rest)
and as was observed relative to the situation in
Brazil during the past century, "There is no sin
below the equator".5 This
is your context here in Brazil, Gloria, which
allows a debased miscreant like you act in this
way without social censure. Brazil is a
continuation of the iniquitous tradition of the
Roman Empire (i.e., tyranny): "panem, circenses
et Saturnalia"(bread, circuses and carnival).6
But, honestly, none of this matters to me; you
left me with so much pain that I just want revenge
and I know how to get it without purchasing a
revolver: I want your blood, you depraved, putrid
and vile trollop; I want to give you an agony
commensurate with mine and free myself from your
evil and incredibly incompetent influence. With
the exception of my own family, you are the
damnedest group I have ever seen, and you have the
distinction of being much more obvious and
arrogant and worlds falser. Evidently, you are the
current version of the inevitable group of parvenu
that is always around, since I have always
bankrolled a group of slime like you to contain
and fight against the ancien régime of
subtler and more properly defined tyrants among
whom I finally managed to incarnate after so many
epochs of waiting.
Having been through Jungian
therapy, Josi is highly "you are only abused if
you wish it" and "peace and love". I tried to
correct her naiveté a bit, revealing how you acted
in bad faith with us: your dispensable friends. In
fact, being your friend, being your lover -- being
close to you in any manner -- is a disaster
waiting to happen because you are really only
interested in yourself and are only using the rest
of us the way that Caligula used the Christians
and Hitler used the Jews: to extract pain and thus
accumulated energy, power and a sado-masochistic
form of pleasure!
Gloria, you are a "floater",
which means that you suspend yourself in the pain
and hate that you provoke in others. You did
everything you could to destroy my life and take
away my peace and energy with the techniques that
we call "sense deprivation" and "criminal ab
disposition". When I arrived in Brazil, I did a
study of these practices under the auspices of
kebatinan (Javanese mysticism).7
But many traditions besides us have studied you
energy parasites that have these practices,
Gloria. You would be called a "vampire" within
Kardecism, a "soul thief"8
within shamanism or a "sundel bolong" within the
Javanese dukun tradition. Gloria, you hunt
your victim and establish bonds of affection that
really mean nothing to you besides a way to get
close enough to take advantage. When it is
convenient and you are in need of a "fix", you
steal his/her power and afterwards, evidently,
throw the shell of the dumbfounded wretch out:
"David, I'm just using you". Really.
I would be curious to know
how many men you have had carnal knowledge with
you since I arrived in your life, because most of
the pain that I have is of this kind of
"sexual self-definition" on your part. Everybody
knows how we all become vulnerable to betrayal in
intimate relations with either real or pretended
affection: crime of passion and all that. I have
studied pain my entire life: with the practice of
kung fu; with various fasts including a
ngeblung when my daughter was born in March
1981 of not eating, sleeping or talking for a
week; with our exercises of, for example, placing
ones finger in boiling water to accept, absorb and
contain the pain and avoid injury that way with
consciousness; with a knee that I used to train
the reception of pain when the kneecap would go
out of joint once or twice a week for eight years
giving an impressive agony; with the killing of
yellow jackets with a wet cloth for a period of
six months when they would sting me as much as I
killed them. In fact, Gloria, the Javanese would
never make a person a leader of one of their
mystic groups, like Sumarah did with me, if he/she
could not stand pain. Pain is really a part of our
practice and one of the ways that we mature. But I
had never seen anything to equal the torture that
you put me through for four years, Gloria. My
middle chakra was totally destroyed and up to now
there is nothing there but a sense of some craters
after the explosion of innumerable bombs. It is a
physical and undeniable pain, Gloria, and is
evidently still with me. We know how to do this
kind of thing in Javanese mysticism, Gloria, but
we had never seen anything to equal the
devastation you wrought in me. Sadistic, Gloria,
aren't you?
By any chance, do you
remember when I went to you to show you what was
happening on November 17, 1992. I complained that
I had already suffered a broken heart in another
relationship twenty years before but that the pain
now was going too far. Afterwards, on November 27,
1992, you cut me off completely when I went to see
you again.9 One week
later, I wonder if you remember lying aggressively
and calling me "arrogant" during your conversation
with Leila in December 1992 when you fingered me
to Maria? You evidently we trying to hurt me and
complicate my life even more, effectively adding
insult to injury after castigating me with an
affront without parallel in my entire experience
-- 15 minutes of insults and nonsense whhiile I just
looked on in astonishment -- and then ordered me
to leave and never cross your door again. No one
has ever treated me like that before, Gloria, no
one. Hate and wrath, Gloria: this is all you have
left me with. One further outgrowth of your little
tirade was that, as your pamong performing therapy
with you, I remained without access to my patient
in this incredibly overstated exchange of
experience which I found I could not easily
unravel and, in fact, the situation got even more
complicated and painful.10
More than anything else,
Gloria, the most important aspect of your
character is lies, in that you distort reality
without scruples to seek your advantage in the
confusion and pain and exasperation of those that
trust you. I remember the many times I watched you
lying with so much abandon referring to your
family (for example, on May 30, 199211)
and your friends in general. For example, on
November 10, 1991, two weeks after the start of
our physical relationship, I witnessed when you
decided to invent, without any need, a man
visiting from Rio to explain a Saturday you had
spent with me to Maria. You got so carried away
with the story that I ended up commenting to
myself:
|
Shortly after this I began to write a diary to
keep track of what happened and protect myself
from your indifference relative to your
responsibility within the relationship with me and
evidently with Maria. Obviously, for you we were
just playthings to be used when convenient and,
afterwards, totally disposable. What a great
friend, right, Gloria? It's like you said, "I'm
not going to assume responsibility. I don't want
to suffer any more like I did with Marvin." What
about me, Gloria, and Maria and Dewi, Gloria? Are
we just toilet paper to wipe your sodomite ass?
You really gave a bitter
lesson everyone who tried to love you. Evidently,
you split off from anyone who shows you for the
harpy you really are and move on looking for your
next victim. You are the most disgusting woman I
have ever known, a full expression of "the age of
the wolf (a kind of middle-aged promiscuity for
personal expression)" and "the smart set":
nobody matters to you but you yourself and your
precious vanity.12 With
all the pain that you left me, I feel you to be a
combination of the devil incarnate and a totally
reprobate two-bit slut.13
Go to hell, you cursed
Jezebel! I have sent you a letter or two every
year, Gloria, to communicate my gradually
darkening vision of you and fulfill my duties in
terms of your therapy.14
It hasn't made any difference: I even doubt that
you have taken the time to read them. This time I
am going to send this letter to your parents as
well. Maybe they are interested in knowing about
the "career" of their daughter and how she treats
her friends and lovers and, without a doubt, her
family as well. Beats me. Maybe it's worth the
trouble and, in fact, according to the practice in
my community, it is my duty to warn others about
your character so that they can prepare to be
betrayed as well when their time comes. And also,
you shouldn't forget your own credo, Gloria, that
you announced to the world with a bumper sticker
on your car for years:
I don't get mad
I get
even
Truly yours,
David Gordon
Howe, Ph.D.
NOTES
1 . Your character reminds me of Leto the Worm, one of the most vilainous malcreants the world's literature has ever depicted: You like to lie, hurt, manipulate and deny responsibility for your influence just like him. Thinking about it, Gloria, you really are a macho, don't you think, especially in the way you use people. Being your pamong, your unofficial therapist beginning in August 1991, and afterwards you lover beginning in October 1991, I remember you frequently telling me about your former husband and how he liked to destroy people. For example, I remember how you swelled with pride when you saw that you had openly spoken back to him and his domination, how you told me that he had the habit remaining at home in a constant state of subdued rage when your father was their at about the time of the start of your marriage in confronting your old man, how he was dominating and depotic and how he had the capacity to leave you physically sick, as he did when you were in Pittsburgh. Marvin was my student as well for more than a year. He told me a lot about his situation with his lover and with you and we, in as much as is possible with a person as ambitious as he is, were friends. For example, I took him to play tennis at my club, I gave a lecture at the Department of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology at that time about Javanese mysticism (funny how nobody expressed any interest but this has to do with the fact that our practice involves an experiential opening that includes the acceptance of pain and suffering and they are confirmed hedonists at the medical school) and you and he had dinner with us in our home before going to the States. I evidently knew him and his power and ambition very well and had no difficulty whatsoever understanding what you were talking about. Do you remember, by any chance, the letter I wrote to you for you to confront his dominating aspect and gave you on April 4, 1992?
Gloria-
Was the
concert good? I hope so.
Marvelous! Yesterday I was worrying about you and
I got a pimple.
Now, let me suggest something. Give a letter to
Miguel with the points in this letter. This way
you will be following the new philosophy written
on your car and maybe Miguel will move back a bit.
I don't get mad
I get even
Go to it! We
are with you!
2 . Sometimes I sit and wonder who you are feeding
on now, Gloria, who you are "using" nowadays. Oh,
the pride you must feel to have induced such pain
and hate in me, Gloria. Obviously that is one of
the ways to use people, Gloria, to make them hate
you greatly and know the glow of their paralyzed
regard as they suffer an agony that they cannot
properly feel or express. The passion you inspired
in me was distinctly Iliadic, swinging from tears
to rage for more than a year, and was nearly
unworkable here in Brazil in this emotionally
impoverished, uncaring and basically ungrounded
environment. People don't accept or relate to
their true feelings or their true influence on one
another in Brazil, Gloria, and float along in a
heedless haze, accepting the mutual abuse,
corruption and confusion as if it were God given
rather than the result of their own purposive
irresponsibility and systematic stupidity.
Everyone feels that they are in on the scam. Pain
is fostered and passed along day in, day out
without anyone's ever truly confronting the
problems involved or the habits of emotional and
relational irresponsibility they represent.
Feelings are purposefully not understood in
Brazil.
As a consequence of this profoundly confused
emotional and relational ambiance where rasa or
interdefined feeling is tied up in often
unrecognized mutual hate and continuing abuse, the
festering ire that I suffer relative to you has
occasionally made me explode like Achilles:
Hector, argue me
no arguments,
I
cannot forgive you.
I wish
only that my spirit and fury
would
drive me to hack your meat away
and eat
it raw for the things
you have done to me.
To deal with the power and profundity of the passions and the pain involved in knowing you so deeply, I was obliged to develop a therapy strategy and just cry and scream it out. I had to allow the feelings to express themselves properly and go through a lengthy process of "selectivity," as we term understanding or proper identification of rasa in Sumarah, since deep feelings just don't stand open in this social environment where offenses are forgotten overnight and the confrontation of abuse is severely frowned upon. The Book of Being, Part IV - The Diary: A Record of my Experience in Struggling with the Feelings Associated with my "Love" for Gloria Isma'ili, p. 309.
3. Her father is an overweight tyrant; an unprincipled follower of his own sense of power. He appears to be a hypomanic personality type though I wouldn't count on his suffering compensating depressions (I checked this with Gloria and it is so -- a classic Harkis system coordinator -- generally these act as the power defining activities but are freed from any obvious linkage with their influence. Like corrupt politicians, those who define the dirty work try to structurally keep their hands clean). I was not clear on where the group definition was centered. Maybe her mother or a distaff collective of some kind manages the manic spirit of her father (this also appears to be true). February 22, 1992, The Book of Being, Part IV - The Diary: A Record of my Experience in Struggling with the Feelings Associated with my "Love" for Gloria Isma'ili, p. 41.
4. The Harkis being (call it whatever you like) reflects the organizational structure of those who define themselves in protest to natural law and in order to promote themselves above their real position in the natural hierarchy of being. They claim not to like nor to care to serve being but rather to be purely interested in their own comfort. They generally develop an energy system centered around a manic or hypomanic personality and appropriate energy through the use of impositional techniques like inlays and overlays. The basic strategy is generally to get a being to misapprehend their own sense and/or challenge their competence to manage it and then take over the energy load, applying it to their own purposes in as much as possible. They constantly prey on those who openly serve life and being because the service beings are necessarily open to their abusive tactics and have the natural love and energy that they covet. They tend to be tyrannical and perverted because the energies they impound are not their own and render them little or no satisfaction. Stolen being does not satisfy. February 1992, The Book of Being, Part IV - The Diary: A Record of my Experience in Struggling with the Feelings Associated with my "Love" for Gloria Isma'ili, p. 47.
5. Brazil
floats on a cloud of petty distinction (with
everyone glowing happily with mutual hate and
practicing pass-it-along abuse) and the virtual
imposition of emotional being. The tendency is to
defy Reality rather than seeking to resolve
problems or disputes by opening up to God or
Sedjatining Keadilan: incredibly irresponsible,
but there you are.
One new meditation technique that I have had to
adopt is expressing the pain in foam-at-the-mouth
rages from time to time. Tiresome but there you
are. It just needs to come forth. This abiding
agony results from the fact that Brazil openly
practices purely golek penak mysticism,
which are called candomblé, macumba and umbanda,
the local versions of voodoo, incredibly
incompetent forms of ilmu sihir involving the
overt use of guna2.
To give an example of the related ambiance, the
former president used to conduct animal sacrifices
in his basement. Rather than resting on a a dictum
like mamayu hayuning pawana; mamayu hayuning
jagad, Brazil openly presents existence in a
context of levar vantagem em tudo (Take
advantage in everything) and "I'm the best; fuck
the rest". I hate this place so much I am in a
constant state of bendu. So it goes. On
October 1, I will have been here for 16 years. I
will openly state that things have gotten notably
better this year due to a shift in my essential
environment, i.e., I have married a woman who is
seriously interested in working with me rather
than working against me. What a relief.
Letter to Robert Kyle, an Australian
anthropologist doing research in Yogyakarta
(Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat), Central Java,
Indonesia. July 17, 1997.
6. I have suffered my feelings for you down to my ground, which is far below the local common sense of being, a being that is evidently not very deep as is so common in any effective tyranny where the powers that be don't want the people to feel things accurately. If you can keep people from knowing their true feelings and their real interests, they are much easier to control and corrupt and lead astray as a result. This is the psychic equivalent of what the dictatorship did in destroying Brazil's public education system to make the population more manageable and tractable by making sure that most of them couldn't relate to reality in anything like an informed manner. This abysmal morass of interpersonal indifference simply expresses the callous application of the principles brought by the essentially criminal Bandeirantes (Portugal's Conquistadores) to this continent as seen in: the incredible lack of good sense in Brazil's savage destruction of the forests and the environment in general over the centuries that continues in the burning of the Amazon to this day, wherein this release of energy through pain induction is denied satisfaction and lifts the entire society as the natural process of investigating, determining, grounding and properly settling the pain comes into play (As they say, "The mills of God grind slow, but exceedingly fine." The whole idea of this social system was to use this delay to effectively separate the perpetrators of the offenses from their guilt. Clever them Brazilians. They have managed to virtually destroy half a continent in just five hundred years. Look at the Northeast: it used to be forest, now it is desert. Look at the Southeast: it used to be forest, now it is a developed wasteland. As I said, the process of enacting Justice in a Natural sense normally takes too long, so I have personally sped it up by many years in confronting the whole mess myself and giving the natural beings involved a direct statement of the profundity of the evil they have been abused by); the horrifying tradition of social injustice practiced over the centuries as well and witnessed in the population's pathetically unjust income distribution; the Collor administration's theft of a billion dollars and the continued impunity of the perpetrators of the crime; the descent of Rio de Janeiro and now Säo Paulo into practical expressions approaching hell; the appalling lack of consideration in driving behavior and relationships in general as mutual abuse marks the character of social reality; and the institutionalized corruption and injustice that define a legal environment where "only chicken thieves go to jail." The Book of Being, Part IV - The Diary: A Record of my Experience in Struggling with the Feelings Associated with my "Love" for Gloria Isma'ili, p. 309.
7. I studied
the situation here and produced a document about
Brazil and the way of being here. The most
obviously relevant passages are: "The weapons of
scorn (sometimes also involving the weapons of
hate) -- frowning on others -- promotional
("promo") beings pretending to superiority over
others and misusing their sense and energy --
fixed inflexible positions maintained through
structural and oft touched (expressed or checked)
positions -- use and abuse -- effect on others --
energy drain and experiential manipulation --
maintaining proper distance
Presence
- A promoted sense involving energy colllaation
systems coming out of interactive experience
through sense deprivation as expressed in a common
tone and pretense of being. This can result in
group isolates that define themselves irrespective
of reality on purpose, i.e., closed unions.
The
structuring of presence and presence maintenance
with lack of head's consciousness and system
structuring through affective links. Various
manifestations: first, the quiet passive head;
second, the angry disturbed head and third, the
active natural head, helping the situation to sort
itself out in reality by pulling its sense into
open being whether it wants to go or not.
Mechanical aspect dominant in relationships of
control. Supervisory aspect dependent on the
tightness of inner circle of "counselors" --
control of head's experience through manipulation.
Conscious
presence maintenance - basic structuring more
unified and relationships no longer express
independent presence control through affective
override and undercut in justificational
expenditure of energies.
Undercut/Override modes of control within a group
-- affective links and the nature of afffeective
union (especially a hedonistic affective union
like Brazil) -- information embedded in affect and
the manipulation of experience through the
marshaling of energies -- emotional information =
functional intelligence in low times
Centered experience, i.e., tentrem ing manah,
sejatining rasa, the response of draining
the inflated affective union by remaining in the
gap between its upper and lower expression -
tranquillity versus positive affect - natural
accord versus disturbance in split experience
management -- high road/low road "Intelligence"
based on interaction and tightness of linkages as
well as the number of open participants contained
in the union making it a Natural concern to defend
it. Purposes and values reflect the breadth of the
being united in love." December 1981 revised 1993,
The Book of Being, Part III - Open Being
versus Closed Being: The Struggle to Be, pp.
19-24.
8 . A
person involved in an abusive intimate
relationship may be aware of being locked into
destructive patterns but feel too weak and
powerless to move away. Or in leaving the
relationship, he of she might feel as though
something was left behind with the partner. After
a workshop, a student of mine said that since
breaking up with her boyfriend she felt as though
"a part of me is still with him." Sandra Ingerman,
Soul Retrieval:
Mending the Fragmented Self,
HarperSanFrancisco 1991, pp. 12-13
Soul loss
is regarded as the gravest diagnosis in the
shamanic nomenclature, being seen as a cause of
illness and death. Yet it is not referred to at
all in modern Western medical books. Nevertheless,
it is becoming increasingly clear that what the
shaman refers to as soul loss--that is, injury to
the inviolate core that is the essence of the
person's being--does manifest in despair,
immunological damage, cancer, and a host of other
very serious disorders. It seems to follow the
demise of relationship with loved ones, career, or
other significant attachments. Jeanne Achterberg,
"The Wounded Healer," from The Shaman's Path,
by Gary Doore, Boston 1988, p. 121.
Soul loss can be observed today as a psychological
phenomenon in the everyday lives of the human
beings around us. Loss of soul appears in the form
of a sudden onset of apathy and listlessness; the
joy has gone out of life, initiative is crippled,
one feels empty, everything seems pointless.
M.L.Von Franz, Projection and Recollection in
Jungian Psychology, Illinois, 1980.
9.
November 28, 1992
Yesterday
Gloria put a full stop to seeing her. I went to
her office and she said she never wants me to go
by there again because: we are no longer
adolescents; she cannot help me; it hurts her too
much; and it's dirty to Maria. She said she had
not read the above letter (I suspect from some of
the things she said that she did). Her main thrust
was that she cannot bear to see me anymore and
that if I don't love Maria I should move out. To
this I responded that I had known from the
beginning that I don't really love Maria deeply
but I had given up hope about finding anybody I
did love after Pierrina so I accepted her company.
I said that this is a very complicated option and
she admitted it is. She gave me no assurance about
any future for us if I were to move out. Gloria
says she likes living on her own and that it is
easy to get used to for her. She ended the
conversation abruptly to talk to Paulo, her
current beau, and dismissed me scornfully with a
kick in the ass. She shows no interest in
associating with the influence she has had on my
experience and unravelling the therapeutic aspects
of our relationship in that I have been involved
in helping her and am still engaged in her therapy
as a pamong in Sumarah is obviously going to be a
real problem. The Book of Being, Part IV
- The Diary: A Record of my Experience iinn
Struggling with the Feelings Associated with my
"Love" for Gloria Isma'ili, p. 128.
10.
January 25, 1993
The
process involved now is bringing my feeling and
sense of Gloria here in my experience to account
and confronting that which defines it. [June 5,
1993 This has meant sensing fully, dissecting,
distinguishing, identifying and individually
relating to the elements involved in the enormous
love I feel for Gloria and seeing where it is
really coming from and what the participating
beings are defining it.] During the past year and
two or three months, bearing her in the proper
Sumarah sense has involved a good deal of
attitudinal and positional and experiential
transfer. During this time I have learned a great
deal about her overt and rasa positions about just
about everthing and see her more or less as she
sees herself in my right -- I have become another
expression of the Gloria pretense in a fashion,
loving her the way I do, and express her with her
own interest, covering the sense and suffering
whatever is hidden in association with it. Now
comes the hard part for her being here: she has to
both take back her own position and let me assume
mine again. The problem is that underneath the
pretended sense there lies what really defined her
behavior and the rasa related to that needs
examination and selectivity.
My middle
chakra has been gradually steadying and quieting
as a result of the effort to confront this aspect
of the situation, though the degree of Gloria's
participation outside of this context through
wanton interference and denial of the sense and
rasa we share is less than clear and will become
of interest in that we will be getting a backlog
of suffering here if the experience is not matched
in her sense. As is proper in unraveling a bearing
relationship where the sensitivity is already
established and all that remains is sorting out
selectivity, I am purely working from the
experiential frame, so this is not a major concern
to me: I want justice in open being, whatever that
may mean in terms of sense or confusion in the
understanding associated with it. I don't care
about the details of how it is enacted and the
proper rasa and sense guarantee the proper
outcome.
It stuns
me how stupid and irresponsible Gloria's approach
to all this has been: she seems to think that
denying the existence of reality and the existence
of an unwavering perspective on events is a
possibility and that she can rewrite what happened
as she pleases. I remained open and clean
throughout serving the love but I'm sure glad I've
kept an exacting rasa record of the experience,
nonetheless. As it stands I can go back through
the window of this diary and re-live the full
sense with proper checking and so on. The problem
of getting reality recognized and accepted could
be quite a struggle: the local environment, which
interacts in all pamonging activities, is
unbelievably resistant to accepting a real
perspective. It even seems that around here,
people are unaware that a lot of the behavior
involved in an intensely passionate relationship
arises out of not knowing if the shared sense is
true love or the promoted semblance of seduction
or whatever, that needs to be dealt with in its
own right. Until the relationship reaches this
stage and has been suffered into open being again,
it's impossible to tell the difference because the
sense involved must be honored whether it is
properly speaking founded in the individual
involved or otherwise. The love remains and has
been served and cherished; now we see what happens
to Gloria and what her participation in it truly
was. One aspect of this particular relationship
that stands out is that it was so high voltage
that the proper recognition of the love is apt to
be a dear if rather confusing experience.
Unfortunately, I have become rather pessimistic
about how Gloria will come out in all this: I
rather think the woman exhibited the sensibilities
of a whore throughout our love, serving only her
most selfish purposes and making little effort to
bring forth the love, while I was trying to
establish the love itself and suffering no end of
pain as a result.
I'll be
truly thrilled to see what the love I've been
serving turns out to reflect: I've been true and
have honored and suffered the sense into silence
and acceptance on this end -- now we will see
what's in it and what new wonders will arise like
a phoenix out of the ashes of our love.
In fact,
in part this is going to be an application of what
Gloria was trying, albeit ineptly, to do with
Marvin after they separated by attempting to open
and drain the sense into personal satisfaction for
her. That was one of her mistakes: she never
really allowed the situation to clarify on its own
since she was working on focused revenge and was
overdefining it. Rather than really work the
sense, she spent her time complaining and going to
the movies, thus deflecting her aim and purpose.
Incompetent. To work rasa, you cannot leave gaps
in it that can be used against your sense or you
end up responding to yourself rather than opening
the other. Let's see if I can do better.
I
suffered enough so that I'm sure it was important.
I am sure that Gloria was directly involved in
that suffering. Though the interpsychic mechanisms
of her participation in that pain are not overly
clear in this social environment, in Java we have
long studied and worked them and brought them to
justice. I want proper revenge. I want to bring
the whole sense out in open being and get it
established in pure satisfaction. The Book
of Being, Part IV - The Diary: A Record of my
Experience in Struggling with the Feelings
Associated with my "Love" for Gloria Isma'ili, pp.
128-129.
11.
May 26, 1992
I went to
see Gloria this afternoon. I told her I had been
hurt pretty badly the previous visit with her
scolding about the roller skating idea. We talked
about her need to separate from Maria and Dewi if
we want to be together. I said I understood but
that I couldn't accept it. Then I said I love her
so. I gave her the Thoth and Ma'at story and when
I was leaving she went and closed the door. We
held one another and kissed a lot. I held her
breasts and pressed her against me. She certainly
didn't seem to mind. We were at it for ten or
fifteen minutes, with me trembling away as usual
and in a heavenly daze.
May 28, 1992
Yesterday
I bought a blue topaz ring, The Laird's Ring of
Tealt Leman, which now rests lightly on my finger.
Last night at some point I awoke with a sensation
of severe almost medicinal discomfort and was
advised to take it off. Apparently that is the
blocking sense that it will impose on intrusion.
Very effective. I hope to see Gloria later and
show it to her.
Today I
went to see Gloria. She said she had not
understood the Thoth and Ma'at story but I felt
she did as well as she needed to. She asked if it
was a metaphor and who Thoth and Ma'at are. I
explained in a hesitant fashion. I asked her if
Bia was going to be able to stay for the weekend
since she would be away for some time and she said
that no, but that her parents were coming down on
Saturday. I asked about Bia and she said that
Marvin had arranged a trip some time ago to Campos
do Jordäo and Bia wanted to go. We kissed again
and I felt her down below through her dress. I
wanted to lie on the floor but she was not
willing. Then I asked what time her parents were
coming on Saturday. She said for lunch. I asked if
I could come over in the morning and she said
sure. I asked what time and she said as early as I
want. I must be dreaming.
June 1, 1992
I went by
on Saturday (May 30) and the dream completed
itself in the most beautiful form I have ever
contemplated. I feel like I'm dying of love and
that nothing in the world is even a little bit in
discord with our being. Regarding details of the
incident, she was so incredibly kind and attentive
that I felt like a god being fully recognized and
honored in every sense in all of being. She met me
at the door in a long, deep blue silk nightgown
wearing all of the Tealt Leman pieces I have given
her. Radiantly beautiful. I haven't seen anything
to equal it since Pierrina defied all expectations
and came to me in NYC. I waited in the living room
while she got me some coffee and then the maid
left and we were alone. The love making was a
little mechanical and inhibited but the
inhibitions were proper and well attended as well.
In addition the general tone was now open so we
were not denying the presence of anyone. I asked
if a picture she has in her room is a portrait
because the beautiful woman in it really looks
just like her. There is also a panther in the
picture, traditionally my favorite big cat. She
said that her mother had told her sister that I
kept looking at her (Gloria) at Beryl's party. We
joked about her parents coming and everything else
except Maria and that relationship, which still
causes us both pain. I hope she is not pregnant
because there was a minor slip during our first
union -- hopefully not enough to cause a real
problem but certainly more than just a little
seepage. I carefully worked her fecal material
[July 11, 1993 This was a previously recognized
project for the day and I went into the event
feeling that this was what was needed to cover the
sense involved in our confused love completely]
and made a complete reading to calm down some of
the involuntary intrusions she's been getting:
they won't be coming back with any good intentions
now anyway. I also told her about receiving Tealt
Leman, the name of our blue topaz jewels. She
translated "tealt" as "temeroso", which is better
than any other word I had found. After sampling
her fecal material, I had a bit of trouble coming
the second time. I was getting a highly lifted by
what I found there and was beginning to feel more
like a woman than a man, so it was very hard to
get excited about a minimalist issue like coming.
I explained this to her, perhaps at too great
length but the love I felt made any effort on her
part almost unbearable. In the kitchen when we
went for a snack before I left, I felt absolutely
the most devoted and abject love I have ever felt
for anyone. She asked if I wished coffee and gave
me a little old cold stuff which I happily
accepted. She offered to heat up the milk, but
would have had to open the box with a knife and I
couldn't bear being so much trouble, so I put it
back in the fridge again. I was in no hurry to be
away, but I was so in love that I couldn't stand
to make her work or to see her at all
discomfitted. May God Be Praised for the whole
incident. I have added to my experience. When I
was leaving I told her to have a good trip and not
to do anything stupid and such like. I also said I
will go by to see Bia whenever I start to miss her
unbearably. Seemed to make sense to her. When I
left she said the usual, "Até qualquer hora."
or whatever it is. Indeed my love: "Até
qualquer hora." It's a fairwell that always
hurts a bit. I can't really say why.
The Book of Being, Part IV - The Diary:
A Record of my Experience in Struggling with the
Feelings Associated with my "Love" for Gloria
Isma'ili, pp. 84-85.
12. As
evidence of your condition of total intransigence,
at that time you said to me:
June 27, 1992
She
announced yesterday that she and her therapist had
talked about it and that she feels like she has
just been using me (What are friends for?). And
said that she felt she should stop it not only
with me but in other circumstances as well. She
also said she now wants most to be alone. The
Book of Being, Part IV - The Diary: A Record of my
Experience in Struggling with the Feelings
Associated with my "Love" for Gloria Isma'ili,
p. 105.
But
when Maria went to confront you in your office
playing the role of the betrayed friend and the
angry wife, you lied through your teeth to her
about the start of our relationship and instead of
admitting to having seduced me and accepting
responsibility, you alleged that I had seduced you
and that you had not known what to do with this
"man" that was like all the rest around here, one
more shameless Brazilian womenizer. Lies,
Gloria, lies: your specialty, right? Somehow you
managed to frighten Maria so much that she never
questioned your position after that and abandoned
any attempt to understand what actually happened.
She left me isolated and alone with the problem of
assert the truth and saving what was beautiful and
honorable in our love and totally without support
in confronting your lies and indifference to my
pain.In addition, we still have the letter you
sent to Maria that I examined with care at that
time trying to understand your position that was
so unfair to me:
July 26, 1992
This
morning from about 4:30 to 6 we took a careful
look at Magali's letter. An examination of
Gloria's multipartite personality structure was
made through an analysis of her signature in which
the khu, "i", sekhem, "y", and ab, "iy" that
combine in an ambivalent union, were identified
and the importance of this existential confusion
was considered. Her behavior is multi-referenced
and she only goes to the ab level in critical
situations giving her a bit of latitude in general
definition. There was also an analysis of her khu,
sekhem, ab structuring and the maintenance of a
semblance response allowing the positioning of a "confundir
sentimentos" sense.
Various double-edged sentences and less than
obvious paragraphs were pointed out. One had to do
with the various levels expressed in her apology,
which was not accepting of misbehavior on her part
and stated that she felt that Maria should see
that she had not really mistreated or disrespected
her in doing what she did, considering the
"circunstâncias". There was also a dig in the
paragraph about "pessoas íntegras" where she
curiously determined herself as absolutely above
both Maria and me and thus did not feel herself
obliged to render any satisfaction for what she
had done to Maria or, evidently, to me. The
Book of Being, Part IV - The Diary: A Record
of my Experience in Struggling with the Feelings
Associated with my "Love" for Gloria Isma'ili, pp.
112-113.
13.
July 7, 1993
Yesterday
evening there was a rather full exposition about
the character of the situation with Gloria.
I came to Brazil in full surrender, rather hunting to find something or someone to justify the pain of being here. I long assumed I would be inspired to introduce Sumarah here but that did not develop. I still struggle with my work on that and try to open it to the local sense but nothing much has come of it so far. However, with Gloria I found myself fully realized and all of my years of preparation suddenly became relevant. However, the two of us had radically different perspectives on the sense and rasa we experienced.
From Gloria's perspective, I was such a fool that there was no way to keep her from dividing up the spoils while I was still on the hoof. When I said, "Eu näo penso mais" she just saw this as an opportunity to make a real kill in that my apparently unmanaged being was immense. A lot of our love affair constituted her laying claim to and trying to sell off parts of my being and trusting my goody-goody attitudes never to respond to the offences she promoted both in the relationship and in her pursuit of the sense. As a result of the heavy hand she laid on my experience, there are some activities and capacities that I still don't have back yet.
From my perspective, she was highlighting and helping me to eliminate improper participants like my father and brother that I had in fact dipped down into dark silence in order to avoid direct contact with since they are both "floaters" like Gloria, suspended in the pain they have caused to others in seeking to get their own way. I came prepared for whatever happened but apparently was thinking in terms of a "sea bass and hooked a marlin", which has meant a "long afternoon of work to pull her in". The catch is now up close to the boat so we're working her in to pull her on board.
The feeling underlying my love for Gloria is my profound hate for what she is and has done to those I share sense and rasa with. The joy that came to me in association with the love, and shocked me in into silent subservience, is the infinite pleasure of being exposed to a real evil multiple sense being, harboring bonded opens and maintaining a complicated closed system of sense management that is reflected in her multiple personality approach to existence: she can run through three personalities in a period of ten minutes sometimes. The interface that I experienced in our relationship came out of the bonded beings that she has in her being and though I bore it, I never shared common sense with her calculated base sense. She is as I often noted a cruel, almost sado-masochistic person, seeking to cause and experience pain and her real satisfaction would have required going in that direction. She is a floater and is far too high for me to rest with in that her perspective involves a level of perceptual selection and a power rush that I cannot touch. Under her confusion she is a hard, cruel sense trying to control and use and define the world to her hedonistic purposes. I guess I should know; I've seen her in action with the pain she has defined and nurtured in me and watched the way she played the relationship to produce as much pain as possible by calling me in and denying me entry at the same time.
As I have often said, there are two kinds of "love": the first is based on true exchange and rests in the celebration of the common sense the loving beings share; the second is based on hating the other greatly and the joy of finally getting a clear shot at exposing and destroying the being involved.
Last night I had a dream with Carol in which I laid out the whole situation. I told her something like: "Things are simpler now. We're not worried about simplistic criteria of good and bad. We are concerned with open and closed beings and Natural Law. Open beings will be gathering and going on together; closed beings will be going on into the specific hells they have defined for the rest of us. Gloria is a closed being, so she'll be going that direction." The description in the dream was really rather better than this but that was the gist of it. The Book of Being, Part IV - The Diary: A Record of my Experience in Struggling with the Feelings Associated with my "Love" for Gloria Isma'ili, pp. 137-138.
14. For
example, on November 27, 1995 I sent a letter that
included the following:
Dear
Gloria,
Today marks three years since the last time I saw
you and you scolded me up and down for loving you
the way I do and missing you so much. I'm not
reasonable I'm sure, but I think we had a
communications problem. Sorry. I still don't know
what I wrote or did to excite such a violent
explosion. All I really wanted was to be somewhere
in your life and to see you from time to time.
Love is cruel, Gloria; I found that out for sure!
Anyway, good luck understanding this letter
because I am not willing to struggle with
Portuguese in relating to what I have to say
today. Portuguese is good enough for the crying
and mournful lover but English and Javanese serve
much better when the tears stop and I rise to go
on with the love and hate of a passion like mine
for you quiet and grounded. I will now reveal to
you what I have been doing and how I have seen you
for the last four years. I hope it will be of
interest to you though I suspect some of it will
surprise you. But even so, please read this little
thesis. I'm sorry it's so long but there is a lot
to say because it is time for the evaluation I
predicted when we argued hotly and broke up on
February 21, 1992 before Bia's birthday party:
First, at year-end I generally do my personal
accounting and check to see where my friends and
loves have wandered during the year in relative (nglengganani)
and absolute (eling ing djiwa) and pure (sedjatining
eling) awareness (you can look these terms up
in Serve the Harmony if you so desire but they
refer to levels of contextual sensitivity and
grounding): that means I check to see how I feel
about you all at various levels of receptivity.
Clearly I have to accept limitations with you that
do not suit me (I admit to remaining profoundly
jealous about you for obvious reasons) but believe
me I keep track of you in my heart and my soul and
in open being. You will always find me watching
over you like a hawk, in that in my heart I am
still obliged to consider you a wife (perkawinan
ing djiwa) in many ways due to the level of
emotional and experiential communion I experienced
with you. When I asked you to marry me, that's
what that was about. Believe me, I meant it! Can
you imagine how much I hate "marriage" as a result
of all the jealousy and pain I have suffered? Now
that should be challenging for you!
In your own little way, Gloria, you have betrayed
me from the very
beginning and never really gave our love much of a
chance: it was all just a game for you, while I
have found myself indelibly committed to bringing
forth the love I feel for reasons evidently lost
on you. This is Reality. I still love and serve
the Beauty I have found in you but I violently
hate your lack of honesty and purity and your
defiance of responsibility. After the sweet and
loving and respectful period when you seduced me
and got me committed to your being (and set me up
for a long fall), when it was patently too late
for me to emotionally disentangle, you loudly
proclaimed, "Eu näo vou assumir!", leaving
me with the whole burden to emotionally and
experientially ground while you went off playing
stupid. I have never played with you. But as you
openly told me many times from the morning of
April 4, 1992 (after you had deigned to sleep with
me following a four-month hiatus) until I revealed
the whole mess to Maria, "David, I'm just using
you! I do it with everyone. My therapist told me
to stop." I was your friend, Gloria, something
I take very seriously, Gloria, and I was trying to
help (Do you remember the letter for confronting
Marvin I brought you that day?). It occurred to me
that I was in real trouble at that point but
evidently it was too late for me to do much but
bite the bullet, in that I had already assumed
responsibility for loving you (because I wish in
my heart to ever be a true friend and a true love
-- some ambition, eh?) and, as you will ssee below,
you are a very big challenge to love.
What a roller-coaster ride it has been for the
last four years! Finally now I am getting the full
open being of my love for you properly grounded
and I'll soon be able to move on to other
problems, while my heart remains more or less
quietly with you and the pain of being so plays
itself out in the expression of Open Law.
At one point, you scornfully termed me a "crente"
(believer) when I explained the power and purpose
of your jewelry at the same time that you were
decrying my slowness to solve your problems. Do
you remember? Confronting profound problems like
yours takes time. There are no miracle cures: only
open confrontation and grounding. As your pamong
(Do you remember what a "guide" is?) I state that
the fundamental process is now complete. The being
I share with you through the traditional practice
of "bearing" (nggendong) is now properly
grounded. Evidently that does not mean that all
your problems are over but rather that on a deep
level you will never really be alone again. I'll
always be here with you, Gloria, watching over you
more or less like a firm but loving mother. I
wonder if you can feel it yet? It will come to
you, I trust. We bear those that are having
trouble relating and being related to: those that
are too hostile or hurt to accept Reality like you
due to your experience with Marvin at that time. I
doubt that you understand what this means but
that's what I've been doing for the past four
years: I have been trying to help and finding it
rather more difficult and you rather more
resistant than I had expected.
As far as I know this was the longest and toughest
bearing and grounding ever. The ones I saw in Java
were simple overexchanges of feeling and sense
that clarified rather easily. Women in Java
frequently bear their children in trying to fathom
their problems by sharing them and suffering them
together with them. Maybe you do this with Bia; I
know I do it with Dewi and Maria although I don't
have as much time for it nowadays as I might like.
Bearing is sort of a hyper-extended and structured
expression of empathy. It is something we do with
people that feel isolated and trapped and confused
in their own experience and have trouble relating
to the rest of us. It helps if you love the person
because it can be quite painful in that you are
basically dealing with established despair that
only goes away grudgingly like any other trauma.
It can be as destabilizing as the profundity of
the problems involved and I suspect I did go a bit
crazy with it towards the end of our love affair.
Sorry about that, but it was just too much pain.
So it goes. . .
I never told you I was bearing you because I fell
in love with you and felt trapped myself and
unwilling to assume the official
pamong position in that I was confused about being
in love with you and married to Maria at the same
time. Love is like that. I also doubted that the
idea of bearing would make much sense to you. I
gradually started to bear you while you were so
depressed and not eating (about August or
September 1991) and before we began our love
affair in that you were obviously in need of more
than just a shoulder to cry on; I have continued
bearing you until now. Bearing involves rasa or
experiential transfer and the gradual examination
and confrontation of the being of the person who
is born, as well as that of the bearer to some
extent. More or less unawares but in an
active sense, you serve a purpose or two involving
the definition of love that I serve myself but you
are shy about it: even an openly evil being like
yourself must accept confrontation, Gloria, and
allow herself to be seen openly. "I am using you!"
is a clear mark of an evil being that does not
consider the pain it causes significant or itself
accountable, while "I don't get mad, I get even!"
was a clear announcement to the world of your
Iblis (demonic) orientation. Why do you think
I deeply love you but hate you at times with such
a passion? I am in this same Iblis Being and know
love to necessarily couple with hate and evil when
there is a need in defining purity and/or
satisfaction. But the real issue is pain for us
Iblis and I honestly don't think you can
imagine the pain I have absorbed in loving you and
bearing you and grounding you. You just try!
Anyway, dukun are those that practice
Java's illustrious shaman tradition, that
primarily studies problems of influence and
emotional contagion and mutual definition, i.e.,
it is an interpsychic approach to problems in
general in society as opposed to the intrapsychic
emphasis on personal experience management in
Western society and psychology. Most dukun
would probably term you a "sundel bolong"
as well as an Iblis. Sundel bolong
are women who's hate of men exceeds all limits due
to a practical backlog of misappreciation and
abuse and denied satisfaction, i.e., pain, as per
your betrayal by Marvin and divorce, etc. (e.g.,
as you often told me, "David, I've never had a man
for a friend." "David, I hate my father!" "David,
I hate Marvin!" "David, I had a physical alergic
reaction to Marvin in Pittsburgh!"). They use any
and all means to expose the frauds that most men
are, to destroy men and to promote themselves and
their beauty and their obvious superiority.
Delilah in The Bible with her seduction and
betrayal and humiliation of Samson is the
prototypical sundel bolong. This being is the
basis of the Western notion of a femme fatale
like yourself and the fear and fascination that
men have of such women has to do with their smooth
and sweet evil challenge and the ability to charm
and lie that arises out of their pain seeking
satisfaction (Do you remember all of your
silver-tongued lies to Maria and others, Gloria?).
You are an awfully powerful being and remind me of
the black widow spider that normally kills and
eats her husband after he has impregnated her.
What an innovation!
But the problem with sundel bolong is
obviously not their hate of men. Men are almost
always "I'm-the-best-fuck-the-rest" scum and
honestly I, for example, hate them much more than
you do and am thus something of a sundel bolong
myself. I have been brutalized by men in more ways
than you can imagine. Just try! For example, how
do you think I feel about my father? We don't talk
much about love-hate relations nowadays outside of
the disappearing art of psychotherapy, in that we
collectively would appear to have decided to give
up our deeper feelings and replace them with the
various forms of escapist emotions and activities
and substances that we now pursue with such
abandon, but this is a highly competitive bond
with a lot of the latter as well as the former. Do
you like hate? This is a big one! Perhaps even a
bit more than is normal in father-son
relationships, Heaven knows. But, be that as it
may, the societal problem of sundel bolong is that
they can run amuk, i.e., become irresponsible and
serve nothing with the pain they cause but the
hedonistic promotion of their own being. They
become lost in their own cut-off version of
existence and the weaponry (coming out of Ilmu
Gaib, i.e., "unconscious" capacities
reflecting what they have learned from their
unhappy experience) they have at their disposal to
defend their being as a result of the pain (that
is the source of the hate) can make them kurang
adjar, i.e., unable to accept their own role
and confrontation and responsibilities and unable
to ground due to their almost conscious fear of
the evil that they "unknowingly" use to defend
themselves. The beauty that they serve becomes
suspended being and they float alone in the hate
and love and confusion around them, a mighty
Titanic defying the waves and the ocean and the
night, sailing on arrogant and unscathed for now
and boasting a kind of absolute impunity. Lonely
triumph, but such beings get brought back into
Reality and grounded eventually, though it is
sometimes quite a struggle. So it goes. . .
I suspect it should be interesting for you to
finally find out how I see you because I have
always seen you this way, my little Shelob. I
walked into your spider web head on, Gloria,
because I love you so (believe it or not). I must
admit I didn't expect so much pain. I was
expecting about a quarter of the pain that came
out of it and relatively quick acceptance because
I am not a fraud: I am the suffering and loving
mystic adept I claimed to be. We mystics are like
that because we actively study and serve Reality
and get to know the strange beings that make it
up. A little crazy, maybe, but that's the way the
world is, Gloria, frequently more than a little
crazy. That's why it's a little hard to get a
handle on from time to time. . .
Honestly, the pain of loving you is becoming like
the pain of loving Java and Bali for me now in
that the confusion is finally getting ironed out
and I can open sense the being fully now. I just
have to confront the pain continuously and openly
and live with it every day, carrying on with the
love and shedding an occasional tear. Gloria, my
love for you reminds me of when I got run over by
a truck: it was a hell of an experience but far
from an unalloyed pleasure. At least the pain is
bearable now.
But in the continuing interest of clarifying what
I have gone through, Gloria, let me tell you a bit
about the writing I have done, much of it in
connection with the love I have for you. I have
completed a treatise of some two hundred and fifty
pages called The Book of Being
because it treats issues of existence and
experience and love and purpose. The first part of
The Book of Being was written in
1981 and revised in 1992 and is called Open and
Closed Psychology: How Different Can We Be? (I
gave you a copy of this paper) and considers the
issues dividing Open (Balinese and Javanese) and
Closed (Western) psychology, i.e., interpsychic
and intrapsychic being. It describes the basic
distinctions and conflicts between the paths of
interpsychic being, as expressed in the dukun and
pamong position above that is based on seeing
others as directly influencing your own experience
and actively tries to serve general harmony as a
result, and intrapsychic being, as expressed in
Western psychology that focuses on personal
experience management without considering larger
issues and acts to serve the individual's ego. The
second part was written in 1981 and revised in
1993 and is called Open Being Versus Closed
Being: The Struggle to Be. This paper
considers the social and cultural implications of
the Open and Closed perspectives on existence and
the mechanisms a society or social group develops
to defend its being depending on the vision of
existence it serves, i.e., the level of reality
acceptance and recognition (grounding) expressed
in the society and the level of emotional escapism
tolerated or promoted in it reflect these
practices. The third part of The Book of Being
is The Diary: A Record of my Experience in
Struggling with the Feelings Associated with my
"Love" for Gloria Isma'ili. As you can see
from the excerpt above, this is a careful record
and analysis of what has happened to me in trying
to love and serve you coming out of the Kebatinan
tradition (Javanese mystic knowledge and
discipline). Strange experience but there you are.
I am enclosing the title page of The Book of
Being for you to have a look at in that it
clearly explicates my purpose and the various key
beings I associate with as a person and a
principle myself. I shouldn't imagine any of it
too difficult for you to understand so I'll just
let it stand on its own, except to say that Sutâpâ
are practitioners of the venerated Javanese
tradition of Nature Worship.
Gloria, my fondest wishes to you and Bia for the
holiday season and the coming year. Do you have
any vacation plans this year? It always hurts a
bit not to know what you are doing. Anyway, we are
going to see my parents as usual in December: they
send the tickets and we gratefully go. However,
Maria and I are taking Dewi to Orlando for a week
on our way to New Jersey. Neither Maria nor I have
ever been to Disneyworld. Dewi went there with my
parents some years ago but she claims not to
remember anything. We'll see what all the
excitement is about.
Love,
David
THE BOOK OF BEING
OPEN
AND CLOSED PSYCHOLOGY:
How
Different Can We Be?
REFLECTIONS ON NATURAL LAW:
Traditional Holism Revisited
OPEN
BEING VERSUS CLOSED BEING:
The
Struggle to Be
and
THE
DIARY:
A Record of my Experience in Struggling with
the Feelings Associated with my "Love" for Gloria
Isma'ili
In preface, let me say that the vision contained in this record comes largely out of Sumarah and the Kebatinan tradition in general. It is also much akin to that of the Buddhists in terms of the nature and structure of reality in realms and heavens and dimensions and beings of associated spirits. The most important distinction between this and the Buddhist perspective has to do with a conflict in long-term outlook: through their Boddhisattva notion of universal enlightenment, the Buddhists are rather concerned with avoiding the true expression of Justice and the return of pain to definer -- in practical terms they just wish to continue the same confusion since their purpose is unacceptable to all Open Beings for obvious mechanical reasons and unworkable. We are interested in Justice and seeing Closed Beings pay in full for the pain they have caused all of us since this pain ties up the energy needed to properly express many Open Beings and turns existence here into a zero sum game that nobody is ever going to win. We seek the end of karmic arrearage and all beings' return to openness such that we Open Beings can truly be together.
"How is it
that we think? It's by confronting a problem and
letting it work itself into a resolution. That's
how it is done."
Mamaju
hajuning pawana, mamaju hajuning djagad.
("Serve
the harmony of the world; serve the harmony of the
universe.")
"Nja
Gusti, Nja Kawula!" ("Where there is a Lord,
there is a Servant!")
DAVID GORDON HOWE
M.A,
Ph.D, Pamong, Dukun,
For those that do not know, a Dukun performs more
or less the same function as a good teacher: you
find people that are interfering with others and
remind them of their responsibilities!"
The Book of Being, Part IV - The Diary: A Record of my Experience in Struggling with the Feelings Associated with my "Love" for Gloria Isma'ili, pp. 238-244.