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Annex 3 of Correlating a Requisite Diversity of Metaphorical Patterns: entuning the dynamic of cognitive eases and diseases (2015)
The concern here is to recognize in more appropriate language the nature of eases and diseases -- of which the latter are framed conventionally by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This of course uses the conventions of a purportedly healthy, detached observer -- a "normal" person unchallenged by any such uneases. In that sense it is especially unhelpful to those who have to live in a world challenged by the pattern of dis-eases andeases -- as usefully caricatured by the game of snakes and ladders.
However, as noted (in the main paper Interpretations of patterns of empowering and disempowering conditions), that language remains inadequate to the existential experience of someone somewhere "in the game". The concern here is whether other vocabulary can be used to approximate more closely to that experience. It is in this sense that the work of Jon Jenkins and Maureen Jenkins (The Other World, in the Midst of Our World, 2001) is especially relevant in describing 64 states of being experienced in ordinary life. This is effectively the result of a collaborative effort of hundreds of people associated with the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) in the 1970s. It took an earlier form as The Other World: a spirit journal (1987).
Use of the phrase "other world" helpfully distinguishes the internal existential focus on personal "cognitive weather" from the detachment of the external perspective -- echoing the distinction made above between "climate regimes" as categorized globally and "weather" as experienced locally and personally. Stressing that the sense of an "other world" is not particularly religious, it is considered a poetic image pointibg to the finally incomprehensible dimension of reality.
Four of 13 categories defining each of the 64 states of being (excerpted from The Other World: a spirit journal, 1987) |
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Areas / Treks |
Reflective (concept) |
Affective (a sense of...) |
Affective (like being...) |
Analogy (it's like...) |
|
1/1 | 1 | radical contingency | terrifying numbness | mortally stunned | hearing the worms cough |
2 | absurd existence | benign madness | critically disoriented | riding a tilt-a-whirl | |
3 | ultimate reality | intense shock | irrevocably outcast | wandering in a thick fog | |
4 | primordial wonder | total paralysis | helplessly suspended | hanging over molten lead | |
1/2 | 5 | incarnate living | double identity | fatally split | experiencing bi-location |
6 | ubiquitous otherness | constant pursuit | under surveillance | having nowhere else to run | |
7 | final limits | chronic weakness | perpetually conquered | racing in a field of tar | |
8 | total exposure | deep guilt | perpetually embarrassed | standing nude in Times Square | |
1/3 | 9 | vibrant powers | eerie strength | intensely enlivened | opening the floodgates |
10 | transformed existence | joyful anxiety | radically relocated | waking up on another planet | |
11 | second birth | trustful expectation | unconditionally recast | recovering from amnesia | |
12 | dynamic selfhood | forever surprised | ceaselessly evolving | watching a pinwheel explode | |
1/4 | 13 | essential dubiety | irrational self-doubt | shatteringly ridiculed | feeling you've really been had |
14 | cryptic disclosure | secret resentment | totally injured | being finally excommunicated | |
15 | transcendent immanence | insatiable yearning | chronically homesick | knowing you'll never go home | |
16 | singular adoration | burning desire | hopelessly enamored | being reluctantly love-sick | |
2/5 | 17 | ultimate awareness | frozen lucidity | incessantly shocked | being hit by lightning |
18 | the relation to no-thing | eternal relation | incredible precariousness | irredemably empty | |
19 | self transcendance | horrifying boundlessness | ceaselessly bewildered | meeting yourself coming back | |
20 | perpetual becoming | everlasting emptiness | unquenchable thirsting | discovering you can't stop the leak | |
2/6 | 21 | universal fate | unbelievable aloneness | suddenly adrift | being the stakes in a dice game |
22 | relational situation | exclusive wakefilness | absolutely vulnerable | having no one to tell your troubles to | |
23 | contextal world-view | dreadful suffication | unbearably entrusted | being asked to lift ten tons | |
24 | archetypal humanness | recjless impertinence | terrifyingly nonchalant | being elected president of the world | |
2/7 | 25 | beyond morality | sudden reeling | scandalously intrigued | having broken thu a police barricade |
26 | intentional conscience | exquisite ambiguity | ludicrously unconstrained | being lost in a wilderness | |
27 | cosmic sanctions | indefinable significance | exceptionally precious | finding your glass marble is a diamond | |
28 | primal vocation | absurd election | destinally designated | being a Martian undercover agent | |
2/8 | 29 | original integrity | inexplicable rootedness | securely anchored | feeling you have been here before |
30 | worldly detachment | painful relief | surprisedly victorious | losing all your friends at once | |
31 | passionate disinterest | anxious deliverance | fearfully courageous | feeling your kite string break | |
32 | destinal accountability | unconditioned submission | devastatingly obliged | having the accelerator stick at 90 mph | |
3/9 | 33 | individual fatefulness | breathless amazement | uniquely preferred | winning the super Nobel Prize |
34 | definitive predestination | hidden rancor | eternally immured | feeling a gun at your head | |
35 | temporal solidarity | unbounded rapport | awfully yoked | having a rock for an uncle | |
36 | sacramental universe | wondrous harmony | wholly engulfed | being perpetually astonished | |
3/10 | 37 | primal sympathy | unabashed caring | freely bound | mistaking yourself for another |
38 | universal compassion | wide horizons | relentlessly driven | migrating to the moon | |
39 | sacrificial passion | continual sadness | emotionally drained | taking a one way trip | |
40 | soteriological existence | inevitable expenditure | poured out | swining off the high dive | |
3/11 | 41 | global guardianship | deep paralysis | forever encumbered | taking charge of history |
42 | ancestral obligation | irrational inertia | burdened down | existing before dawn | |
43 | futuric responsibility | heavy weakness | over rated | being ahead of all time | |
44 | invented history | hilarious absurdity | devastatingly ridiculed | having the only set of keys | |
3/12 | 45 | diaphanous intuition | intellectual aching | beyond yourself | looking thru a stone wall |
46 | interior discipline | incurable loneliness | eternally primed | imitating the Rock of Gibraltar | |
47 | impactful profundity | cautious confidence | unequalled adequacy | being forever onstage | |
48 | definitive effectivity | aweful danger | deadly accurate | commanding mountains to move | |
4/13 | 49 | seminal illumination | irrational convergence | unreservedly liberated | looking directly into the sun |
50 | inclusive comprehension | shocking cognizance | absurdly assured | knowing the mind of God | |
51 | contentless word | image explosion | sacredly empowered | discovering the mother lode | |
52 | personal epiphany | intriguing terror | preposterously nominated | being the last soul on a flying 747 | |
4/14 | 53 | creative futility | interior silence | perpetually released | running an endless marathon |
54 | problemless living | detached trust | altertly relaxed | resting easy on a bed of nails | |
55 | transcended hostility | patient regard | cleanly restored | emerging from a stuffy sewer | |
56 | exclusive contradiction | sweet struggle | endlessly embattled | narrowing the war to one front | |
4/15 | 57 | vital spirits | throbbing exhilration | tautly coiled | taking a cold shower |
58 | spontaneous gratitude | teeming life | unavoidably plunged | receiving a bundle of gifts | |
59 | blissful seizure | fitful dancing | electrifyingly alive | glowing after a mountain trek | |
60 | final blessedness | enraptured stillness | harmoniously surrounded | playing in a great symphony | |
4/16 | 61 | living death | physical detachment | gloriously condemned | waking up totally dead |
62 | resurrectional existence | objective power | irresistibly impelled | waltzing on water | |
63 | everlasting community | supporting fraternity | agelessly wise | marching with all of history | |
64 | contingent eternality | existing present | eternally present | reversing the time machine |
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