Chôra - a place for vitality in times of fear and uncertainty.

Welcome to Chôra!

Chôra was originally a territory of the Ancient Greek outside the city proper. The term has been used in philosophy by Plato to designate a receptacle, a space, or an interval. In Plato's account, khôra is described as a formless interval; it "gives space" and has maternal overtones (a womb, matrix).

Martin Heidegger referred to it as a "clearing" in which being happens or takes place. Julia Kristeva deployed the term as part of her analysis of the difference between the semiotic and symbolic realms. Jacques Derrida used khôra to name a radical otherness that "gives place" for being. Nader El-Bizri built on this by more narrowly taking khôra to name the radical happening of an ontological difference between being and beings. John Caputo described khôra as:

neither present nor absent, active or passive, the good nor evil, living nor nonliving - but rather atheological and nonhuman - khôra is not even a receptacle. Khôra has no meaning or essence, no identity to fall back upon. She/it receives all without becoming anything, which is why she/it can become the subject of neither a philosopheme nor mytheme. In short, the khôra is tout autre [fully other], very.

A place for vitality in times of fear and uncertainty

These are unusual times and unusual times call for beauty. In the Idiot ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky is quoted saying “Beauty will save the world.” In his convictions he never separated truth from good and beauty; in his artistic creativity he never placed beauty apart from the good and the true. The good, taken separately from truth and beauty, is only an indistinct feeling, a powerless upwelling; truth taken abstractly is an empty word; and beauty without truth and the good is an idol. For Dostoevsky, these were three inseparable forms of one absolute Idea.

Can leadership development and organizational change be beautiful?

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to collaborate with my clients in inquiring into a wide variety of challenges related to their businesses. In this article, I share experiences that, in pursuit of the truth in those challenges and meaning to do goodness I found myself asking a different question - can leadership development and organizational change be beautiful? Artists as well as scientists throughout human history have pondered this “beautiful question," says Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek who embarked on a voyage of related discoveries, from Plato and Pythagoras up to the present in his book A Beautiful Question. Wilczek’s work in quantum physics was inspired by his intuition to look for a deeper order of beauty in nature.

The art of leadership and organizations

As a practitioner, with a psychoanalytical orientation, I am prompted to follow the thread of words by Julia Kristeva - "it is important for us to use knowledge gleaned from personal and clinical experience in deciphering precursory marks or signs of what is unconscious, just as mothers use the knowledge triggered by signs in their babies' gestures in transforming them into meaning." The artist does something similar. 'It is by lending his body to the world,' observed Merleau-Ponty, 'that the artist changes the world into paintings.' Kristeva calls such images 'semiotic', 'distinctive', 'precursory' marks, traces, imprints, indices or signs. They are impelled by bodily drives, she says. They orchestrate 'a chora'. We interpret them in terms of the prevailing, socially given systems of symbolism and meaning into which we are born and in which we live. And when ideas become too divorced from the perceptual qualities of words in talk with others, ideas may then need to be reinforced with new perceptual qualities to become conscious. In art, color is relatively free from socially given rules and conventions governing its creation. Color therefore lends itself readily to revitalizing meaning repressed into the unconsciousness. Henry Matisse observed:

When the means of expression have become so refined, so attenuated that their power of expression wears thin, it is necessary to return to the essential principles which made human language. They are, after all, the principles which 'go back to the source,' which relive, which give us life. Pictures which have become refinements, subtle graduations, dissolutions which energy, call for beautiful blues, reds, yellow - matters to stir the sensual depths in men.

As the visible birth of the virus begins to take place, I was impelled to put together a series of paintings as a expression to those I am connected with online. Each painting is associated with a stage in the natural cycle of human experience as investigated by Joan Kellogg. These Archetypal Stages consists of twelve steps in the spiraling path of psychological development and reflect the dynamic relationship between the conscious and the unconscious.

Stage One - Void

Metaphorically speaking, this is the point at which consciousness enters matter. With faith in the ultimate order we take comfort here. It is the place of the Great Mother, the sacred feminine that generously creates life and lovingly receives the dead back into her womb. The advice in this stage is "Be still" and face the illusion of control and engage fearlessly with who we are "in the dark." Or to say that another way, become aware of the "shadow" side of ourself - ways of acting and being that are in "darkness."

When viewed from a psychoanalytical perspective this stage brings forth, what Jacques Lacan identified as concept in psychoanalytic theory, the mirror stage - it is based on the belief that infants recognize themselves in a mirror (literal) or other symbolic contraption which induces apperception (the turning of oneself into an object that can be viewed by the child from outside themselves) from the age of about six months. The Netflix Documentary - Babies, brought attention to the Still Face experiment - Mary Gregory at PsychHelp writes that "Humans are born ready for connection. The way we are parented has long term and ongoing effects on our functioning. The effects of our early life can trigger a cascade of changes genetically, cognitively, socially, and physically which can have either positive or negative lifelong consequences. The ‘still face’ experiment showed our need for connection from very early in life. We gained the insight into how a parent’s reactions can affect the emotional development of a baby.

Early in our lives we were learning about other people’s reactions and how our behaviour can affect others. This experiment gives us insight into what it is like when connection does not occur." And this directly relates to the work by Melanie Klein on the roots of adult behavior and her development of object relations theory. Klein suggested that pre-verbal existential anxiety in infancy catalyzed the formation of the unconscious, resulting in the unconscious splitting of the world into good and bad idealizations. In her theory, how the child resolves that splitting depends on the constitution of the child and the character of nurturing the child experiences; the quality of resolution can inform the presence, absence, and/or type of distresses a person experiences later in life. And it is this that is brought to surface in the first stage.

Stage Two - Bliss: 

Another play of the letters of COVID would make it C(see) VOID - an invitation to fearlessly enter the void created by the current crisis.

In the prior stage, Void, one came to face one's gripping pattern of being. Its here we were offered to choose cure - "solve" our pattern with our "muscled" abilities as if it's a problem, or care - attend and observe like a "nurse." In this stage, an experience of freedom from the gripping life we have been living opens us to feelings of diffusion and dreaminess; the typical boundaries of our ego get dropped and infinite possibilities begin to be unravelled. We experienced a rise in our energy, though the direction is unclear. It is a time for play, for exploration of a whole range of experiences and colors - blues and yellows, greens and oranges, reds and blacks. Dark shades typically reflect early life negative experiences. It is in this stage that we become more open to the vast expanse.

Aspects of ourselves that may have gone into shadow begin to come to awareness - causing distress as well as joy. And the experience of joy of discovering new aspects of the self become present and along with them old memories that had been hidden away. The darkness will also overwhelm us and yet, it's the darkness that makes the light shine brighter. In the past, clients have asked me - do we really need to go to those dark places? And the only response I can think of is that one doesn't need to go, because one is already living there…the work is really to bring it into our awareness and integrate it. What we don't manage, will manage us. Yes, it isn't easy and frankly, quite stressful. And life with parts of us in the darkness is even more stressful. Besides, the purpose of life is for all our colors to be brought forth - that is what nature loves.

Note: The shadow here refers to an unconscious aspect of our personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself, or (2) the entirety of the unconscious, i.e., everything of which a person is not fully conscious. In short, the shadow is the unknown side. Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one's personality, the shadow is largely negative. There are, however, positive aspects that may also remain hidden in one's shadow (especially in people with low self-esteem, anxieties, and false beliefs).

According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to psychological projection, in which a perceived personal inferiority is recognized as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else.

Stage Three - Labyrinth

With "lockdown", we entered the labyrinth and began turning toward the journey. The rise in energy from the previous stage has pushed us into something new. We don't know what this new is, but we know it is coming. We cannot make detailed plans and are called to follow our intuition to the next right thing. 

The Greeks tell a story of Minotaur, a bull-headed flesh-eating man who lived in the center of the labyrinth - akin to that part of us who is eating us away from the inside. Minotaur was a threatening beast, and yet his name, paradoxically, was Asterion - Star. Metaphorically speaking, we each must meet the Minotaur lurking in the shadowy labyrinth some day. Often, this occurs during the psychotherapy process. The Minotaur has multiple meanings. And for each of us, the Minotaur signifies something slightly different. What is the Minotaur? First, the Minotaur represents our primal fear of the unconscious. This is one of the factors that make the process of becoming self aware so threatening: a profound fear of encountering our own unconscious, of entering the dark, lonely labyrinth and meeting the Minotaur. Yet, it is this beast that we are called to be ready to face and sit with - this thing that stirs in the core of our being, and is also the star of our innermost nature, our genius. And this ought to be done with deep reverence by entering the labyrinth of our living experience. What we ought to guard against is our fear and anger at the beast inside of us, so that we don't lose the star.

Stage Four - Beginning

The "lockdown" began to appear that was it here to stay. We had entered the labyrinth and there is no returning. It is in this stage - Beginning, that old patterns rise and we have a chance to experience the "good mother" within and become observant of archetypal parts that breathe through us or are dead waiting for resurrection. It is time to tend to the one that needs our nurture. The survival mode brings out caregiver, innocent, warrior or orphan. Which is the one that stands out for us as an individual? 

In this stage, we are being asked to provide safety and nurturing by trying new behaviors in the way we care-for self and others. 

In painting this stage I attempted a balance of the very many conflicted parts (I see these parts akin to archetypes). The shades of blacks and browns are years of growing up in the India of 70s and 80s and wearing "sober" shades - a way of being "earthed," I presume now. The blacks are the stains on my fingers from reading the newspaper every day, which my father insisted - "Life is tough. One ought to know what is going on in the world. Who knows how on earth will you survive or manage given the way your habits are." What does a young boy know about life on this planet called earth?! 

Nevertheless, just like for all children, the stone was cast and the wall built - "turn away from the self and march on young boy! This is a matter of survival. We are at war!" said the voice in my head. But the red and raw beasts within raged, and many battles were waged - success mean becoming a "proper" person - cool, rational, balanced and ever willing to learn, cuz that meant survival, became the norm. The artist within went in the basement and kept creating, sustaining and then destroying ...Oranges, yellows and greens in the golden ratio lay spilt in my body and mind. And the "inner child" barely survived - it has taken almost 2 decades to resurrect him from the dead.

Stage Five - Claiming Selfhood

As we worked on settling, slowly and painstakingly, into accepting the way the world has changed for good, we are trying out new behaviors at home and outside. Our experience of life has changed dramatically and we are beginning to encounter a range of new conflicting difficulties about our sense of self, the way we relate with others, the work we do and our spiritual life. Nothing is the way it used to be! Nothing! 

The survival archetypes we may have been experiencing in the last 4 stages (Caregiver, Warrior, Innocent and Orphan), at the center of the painting, have been pushing and pulling us, potentially, leading to fight, flight or freeze response. This conflict hurts, is thorny and hardly enjoyable. However, like a boiling pot with a tight lid, it is generating energy and new leaves are starting to break out showing the fueling of personal growth. In this push and pull, both within and with others, we are coming to know ourselves more clearly and redefine our boundaries, exercise of authority, playing of our roles and the carrying out of the necessary tasks.

One of the principles that is key to deepening our work in this stage and building on that of the previous one is Enantiodromia - a principle introduced in the West by psychiatrist Carl Jung. In Psychological Types, Jung defines enantiodromia as "the emergence of the unconscious opposite in the course of time. This characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally powerful counterposition is built up which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control." It is similar to the principle of equilibrium in the natural world, in that any extreme is opposed by the system in order to restore balance. When things get to their extreme, they turn into their opposite. However, in Jungian terms, a thing psychically transmogrifies into its shadow opposite, in the repression of psychic forces that are thereby cathected into something powerful and threatening. This principle was explicitly understood and discussed in the principles of traditional Chinese religion – as in Taoism and yin-yang.

Stage Six - Igniting the Inner Fire

The differentiation that began in Stage 5 and led to reactive responses, further accelerated in this Stage and contributed to igniting our inner fire and sense as an individual. This stage is synchronous with the symbolic significance of Easter Sunday and Vaisakhi - new beginnings. 

We tried and tested new behaviors and experiences in order to clarify personal boundaries, negotiate understandings in relationships, and create our place in this new world. We have experienced sadness, loss, and nostalgia, as well as the allure of high adventure, and excitement of new possibilities as we prepare for life ahead of us. This has been a time of knowing ourselves and accepting ourselves as the one we are meant to be. 

Enduring the conflicts here has increased self awareness and developed a more complex, integrated and resilient ego structure. This has provided a surge of self confidence, energy and optimism and enabled us to speak and be more truthful. 

In a manner is the idea of unity of opposites - a central category of dialectics, said to be related to the notion of non-duality in a deep sense. It defines a situation in which the existence or identity of a thing (or situation) depends on the co-existence of at least two conditions which are opposite to each other, yet dependent on each other and presupposing each other, within a field of tension. Coincidentia oppositorum is a Latin phrase meaning coincidence of opposites. Psychiatrist Carl Jung, the philosopher and Islamic Studies professor Henry Corbin as well as Jewish philosophers Gershom Scholem and Abraham Joshua Heschel also used the term. In alchemy, coincidentia oppositorum is a synonym for coniunctio. For example, Michael Maier stresses that the union of opposites is the aim of the alchemical work. Or, according to Paracelsus' pupil, Gerhard Dorn, the highest grade of the alchemical coniunctio consisted in the union of the total man with the unus mundus ("one world"). 

The term is also used in describing a revelation of the oneness of things previously believed to be different. Such insight into the unity of things is a kind of transcendence, and is found in various mystical traditions.

Stage Seven - Squaring the Circle

We are halfway in our archetypal journey. The energy we experienced in the last stage is now burning brighter. We feel it like the sun right above our head and an intense felt sense in our body.

Here, we are actively (re)clarifying personal identity. We don't just 'know' it in our heads, but we feel it in our bodies and we stand four square on what we know within ourselves to be right. We begin embodying our own values and find ourselves propelled towards worthy causes. Thinking, planning, rationality is emphasized in this stage.

Behind the development of our individuality is the Self, the dynamic force that compels us to become who we are meant to be. Our ego is in close alignment with the Self in this stage, raising the positive energy. We experience a sense of personal power and autonomy.

The 20-triangular sided Icosahedron in the center is the 5th and the final Platonic solid. It symbolises water and encourages us to trust in the wisdom of the universe with a willingness to allow others to assist in the situation versus pursuing an active role. Like water, it is time to go with the flow.

Stage Eight - Functioning Ego

Following an experience of alignment with the Self from Stage Seven - Squaring the Circle, we have entered the most outwardly active time in the Great Round. We experience feeling energized and successful in creating and communicating. We are now 'functioning' in the world. This stage is most celebrated in our culture.

We enjoy being with others, and are content spending time alone with ourselves. When with others, we are actively implementing strategies, solving problems, or creating products/services that benefit ourselves and others. We are diplomatic, respectful and empathetic while working with our mission and igniting others with our passion.

The painting combines the 12 pentagonal-sided dodecahedron with the symbol of star. The former is associated with aether (prana), which in Homeric Greek means "pure, fresh air", a material that fills the universe and represents the air we breathe. The latter with a developed self. It is here that we "breathe" life into the 12 archetypal shades of our personality. All this, while our self remains seated in the silent, observant lap of the unmanifest and untouched Self.

Stage Nine - Crystallization

In this stage, we are experiencing the crystallization of the creative work we have been doing since the start of the chaos in March. Projects initiated, dreamed of or actively pursued have begun to come to fruition. The creative activity that characterized the past few stages is now slowing down and we experiencing relaxation as we reflect and celebrate our accomplishments. 

This slowing down is starting to provide us with an understanding of the world and our place in it. This includes the greater spiritual understanding and integration - the coming together of the masculine and the feminine ways of being, and the intellectual and emotional parts of ourselves, in harmonious and balanced ways. 

This is an experience we have whenever we complete a project we have worked hard on. In the larger scheme of human life, this stage also coincides with the early middle age - a real coming together of the values we embody and the work we do. 

Stage Ten - Letting Go

We are now entering the gateway into the last stages of the Great Round- the bright solar energy. As creatures of nature, we are required to let go when a cycle nears completion. Like nature we begin to soften around the edges. Here we learn to let go as we enter the cycle of completion. We welcome the ending of all that justified our pride in the earlier stages because they no longer interest us. 

Our work in this stage is to welcome ending - perhaps we are done with a demanding relationship, or have accomplished all that we can in a particular role or position. The ending may come surprisingly from outside - something beyond our control will disrupt our life - a natural disaster, a job loss, a diagnosis, etc. Our work in this stage is acknowledge the end of the ego as the center of consciousness. We become aware of something beyond ourselves exerting influence on our psychic life. We let go.

Stage Eleven - Falling Apart

In this stage we become disoriented by changed circumstances. And we allow this disorientation. Our work here is to accept that the ego is not true center of the psyche. Our Self will nudge us towards fulfilling our potential. Within the mystery that is us, a deeper center or order will assert its primacy. Pride and pretense will need to be erased and humility and open-heartedness allowed. Having faith in a deeper order often blossoms in the midst of this time tradition. A broken heart can open to love, compassion and wisdom.

Stage Twelve - Opening to the Mystery

This final stage invites us to lean further into the ground of being, trusting in its source of continuing support during the ups and downs of our journey. Touching into a sense of order beyond that created by the ego allows an opening to grace. Paradoxes and inner contradictions will transform into a new, more complex identity. In this stage our ego will become an expression of the dynamism of the Self, our inner wisdom. 

A review of the past is often part of the process. Looking anew at past events can relating their patterns of meaning and a great a ha! Can emerge where there was only pain, confusion and anger before. Here we experience joy, relief, love and forgiveness. 

#leadership #reflect #unconscious #humanexperience #consciousness#sacred #alignment

Sources:

1. Wikipedia
2. Freud's Art: Psychoanalysis Retold: Janet Sayers
3. The Mandala Workbook - Susanne F Fincher
4. What story are you living - Carol Pearson