Anaphylaxis

Allergies

I was going to write about neurotism … but its so closely tied in to … the experience of anaphylaxis … that I thought I might place them both in this narrative. The dictionary defines neurotism as … suffering from emotional disorder … and anaphylaxis as … a hypersensitivity normally associated with food. In a way they are both indications of obsessive fondness … and they have quite a physical impact on the body. Perhaps the hardest thing in engaging the issues associated with these conditions … is the fact that … they originate in the imagination.

A teaching colleague of mine at college once commented that … ' a delusional person dreams of sandcastles in the air but a neurotic lives in it!' But it is curious isn't it? How far would we go into living a dream or imagination? I attended an award presentation ceremony ...a few years ago … where the students were awarded prizes for the best score in a subject. The announcer read off the list of winners … while the large screens placed in the hall … rolled out the names like … the nomination of movies at the Oscar ceremonies. Well … that's the youth of today … living our lives of yesterday … as their dreams.

It creates a strange sensation of adoration for an adult … when they find teens … living in imitation and adoration … of the features of their lives. A case of the winter/spring sonata … with the moon taking its light from the sun. At the same time … it makes us wonder if we didn't do the same as regards our previous generation. It creates a perspective on our experiences … and the fondness of memories … and to realize how potent they might be to our passions and personality. It surprises us to think … how powerful these influences may have been … and the way it mixes with the imagination to produce … a semblance of life … in our experiences.

In a resemblance of the experience … our legends and stories of the Gods … that are so special and critical … in holding up our faiths … encounters the legends and stories of the times … and for a while … the resemblance universalizes our experience of faith in the world … but thereafter … forms such a sweetheart sensation … that it throws off the sanctity of faith … and the unique experience of the Gods in us. It produces the effect that our faiths … are also the product of imagination.

But what's wrong with that? Are we seeing the force of imagination as a component of the life force? Or have we grown jaded on its familiarity and grown contemptuous of it? Have we stopped believing in the power of its contact with us … moving us to deeds … acts of courage … love … and achievement? Or was it the naivety of disdain and gullible nature we brought to it … that greens the gills in us? We can get pass all that … with some understanding of the place of man in creation … our excitability … and the adrenalin rush that we have come to be accustomed to. Nobody … makes a subscription to life … for chasing flies away from fish … at a roadside stall.

The power of the mind to dream … is a natural act created by nature. Thereafter … in a later generation … we link up with that dream … and bring it to imagination … in an activation of the fondness we have for that dream. We manifest it in life … build schools … form governments … and make products … for us … born from the power of imagination in our lives. Its not too far away from what we sometimes boldly declare as the design of the universe … in our intelligence. But have we learnt to tell them apart?

How do we return to a pristine state of the imagination? Obviously by removing the sense of play we brought to it … in our frivolous treatment of it. The Indics call it … ' Jagatmaya ' or truthful illusion … in total adoration of its power. And in the practice of rediscovering their faith in it … they called it … ' Prakriti ' … or the primordial power of the female. They did so … by removing their attachment to the physical nature of life … and thereafter looking into the unconditioned state of the mind … that lay like a rock in their presence. To this … they brought a new interest in life … that re-birthed the experience of imagination … as a force of life.

Its my view that the Western experience of non-attachment … brought them to the life of trees … activating their male/female state … in a common self experience … like the pollen and ovary on flowers. The legends of Scandinavia … may shed some light on this. Beyond that … I'm seeing the momentum moving to the constellations … particularly the bear and wolf … which the Brits surreptitiously named as … the legend of Beowulf. It tells the story of a mother and child at odds with each other.

Life's forces are not in themselves … maligned or favor the human condition especially … but the bias we bring to them … is telling of our understanding in the way we deal with it. And our bias towards imagination is certainly at the top of the list. It is the start of the garrulous … double-ax … we encounter in old age … when we suspect that … our lives are lived in imagination … like the musky odor up in the attic. We start to hate the attic as much as the odor.

In our golden years … we start to remember the things we were fond of … sometimes re-enacting the scent … touch and feel of the experience. Then it leads us to something we were very fond of … and we can almost feel the sensation of a light … drawing to us like a ravishing beauty we stored in our memories. It leaves us feeling … like a hangover … sometimes with reddish itchy eyes … and welts on the body. Its the experience of anaphylaxis … that medical science classifies as an allergy. Allergy to an imagination we have avoided like a fixation? What next I wonder!