InnerRESOURCES 8 Ideas
A Map, Exercises, and A Promise
To Point You In The Right Direction
Merger With Another
Phenomenal Eco-Systems
by Jeffrey S. Landau

"Out of Body Experiences", "Romantic Love",
the love of a mother and father for his or her infant,
"Frankenstein Unbound", "Getting High", the World of Dreams,
Sex, Beautiful Music, "Regression to 'Pre-ego States", Creating Art..
From the most acceptable and highly regarded cultural forms,
to widely acknowledged spiritual experiences,
from fundamental ways of "knowing" reality to psychic aberrations,
the attempt to lose ourselves, to break the boundaries,
to get out of our own way,
to break out of our narrow and repetitive, constraining state of mind,
to see things in a new way,
to know it, to be like it, to devour it, to eat it,
to be free, to have feelings,
to stop watching, comparing, competing, to get off it, to rest,
is a constant and relentless force and desire within us.
From form and structure and walls
to "no-form", no name, no-thing.
Back and forth. And back again.
All ways to know reality. Who you are. Who I am.
A relentless demand that we be "in reality",
that we "get out of our own head"
and relate to others as they really are.
I was reminded of this dialectic between "merger" and "identity" most recently when I had the opportunity of experiencing "Alex", the newborn baby boy of Holly and Stephen. In the days and months after his birth, and even now as his first year approaches, I felt the boundaries of my mood, my state of mind, - actually I found myself almost "blubbering" and "gooing", and had to catch myself. I thought I should not go back to work. Maybe take the day off. Play with Alex. And that was only after a few minutes. Imagine how "caught up" I might get if we spent more time together.

The effects are quite powerful, especially to the unwary and coming from one so tiny and innocent. (I remember watching an Asian gangster film, "Hardboiled" which seems to borrow on all that had preceded it, from the Bond films, through the self righteous Bronson and Eastwood series, right up through Stallone and Snipes, with their own two gun shooting "Hitman". There was a scene where in the midst of almost humorous amounts of violence, babies had to be evacuated from a hospital ward. Well, the top cop practically begins to "coo" ever so gently as he puts cotton in one baby's ears so he wont be upset by the noise, as the hero continues to blow away the opposition.
And, then there's the Damien and Firestarter series. Let's just say I was reminded of the power of the newborn. Of birth. So no need to document this further with references to the spiritual or to carefully conducted psychological studies.

Well that's just what Holly tells me has happened to her. So when she conducted her research on the 8 InnerRESOURCES idea sapplied to new mothers and their babies, she chose "Merger and Separation".

Holly tells me that in her own life, the struggle to say no continues to Alex's enticing invitations to join him in blissful "pre-ego" states. Recently, Alex had managed to get in to his parents bed in the middle of the night, for late night feedings. A delicious delight, and parents too tired, Alex remained. It was real progress to move him back into his own crib. But Holly got past it and Alex is fortunately not the "Oedipal winner" he might have become. Anyway, Alex himself is quite a bit more formed. I noticed recently as he walks upright (and correspondingly checks out his location in space relative to his mother as opposed to when he crawls) he started pushing me out of the way when he had his eye on an object he wanted to get to.
Copyright 2002 Jeffrey S Landau, InnerRESOURCES Publications
The above art work was created by Jeff Landau
and is a new variation on a series of "compupaintings" , the Aura series, previously published in Let's Talk: The Relationship NewsLetter".
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