3/ What is missed is the essential fact that one does not experience the depths of oneself by examining one's reflection. Narcissus's drowning in the lake symbolizes the danger of superficiality; the surface of the lake appears calm and secure, but beneath it there is only death.
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14/ Coming back to Narcissus, it was not his narcissism that killed him finally, but his naiveté. It is this very same naiveté, born out of a refusal to drop the mirror for a while, to see, to listen, that is the very danger our deep-seated anxiety warns us about.
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15/ If we refuse hopelessness, if we refuse anxiety, confusion, frustration, and every other message our wise bodies transmit to our consciousness, we are walking, mirror in hand, towards the edge of Narcissus's lake, and one day we are sure to drown.
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16/ The mirror offers no growth, no evolution, no transcendence; this, too, the ancients knew in some wordless, instinctive manner, and they would not tolerate a minute of the so-called elevated word-games of psychobabble we throw around today to make us feel smarter.
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17/ My beloved Henry Miller wrote “Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.” It is through chaos that one arrives at this certainty, and through giving up the ghost of that elusive mirror.
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PS
@IntegralStory is of course, correct, in pointing out that I have omitted many aspects of the story of Narcissus in my using it in this impromptu thread. The actual myth itself is a subtler and more meaningful affair than what I portrayed, and is recommended to all.Show this thread
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