ZARATHUSTRA: The Original Post-Metaphysical Saint

[Layman Pascal]

This is my free rendering of the crucial passage ("The Vision & the Riddle") from Book III of Nietzszche’s famous revelatory prose-poem about Sri Zarathustra -- the post-metaphysical saint & trans-religious guru. We can speculate endlessly about whether this or that historical sage was aligned with "postmetaphysical spirituality" but it is obvious, overt and intended in the case of Zarathustra. Consequently he should hold a special place of honor in our hearts... and even perhaps a privileged status in the ethos of this online forum.

Fans of this luminous text (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) will know how this passage fits into the basic plot. After attaining illumination, the idiosyncratic and irreligious sage is moved by his natural compassionate abundance. He wishes to share his energy and depth in the human marketplace. But he soon discovers that the world is too full of disparate viewpoints. A superficial cacophony, a motley and bovine assemblage of diverse value systems swarms in the contemporary culture -- refuting all coherence and making mockery of authentic enactments of depth. So Zarathustra turns instead to the cultivation of a small band of friends (the free spirits) who are intellectually and spiritually attracted to his message. Over time, however, he begins to worry that their positive response to him may actually be impeding their own development. Even though they understand and agree with his teachings, they are not yet enough of themselves to really get where he is coming from. Thus he retires from being a “guru” and becomes a wanderer among the Happy Islands. He seeks to discover non-obvious truths which have not been revealed in his enlightenment. He is desperate to discover why higher transformative intelligence is not getting through to human civilization in a more dynamic manner. And he wants to overcome two lingering problems that he has diagnosed in his own psyche -- the egotism of his enlightenment & his sense of depression about modern humanity.

He sets out to sea. This is the setting of The Vision & The Riddle. The subsequent passage in the text is called Of Involuntary Bliss. That is very suggestive. The passage we will examine presents a secret that may generate unforced contentment. This prophetic writing by Nietzsche should be of particular interest to those who have studied Adi Da's description of the insights which led to his own laughing, dancing and peculiar awakening. 

THE VISION & THE RIDDLE

PART ONE

When it became rumored aboard the ship that the controversial sage Zarathustra was among them, a great curiosity and expectancy arose. Yet Zarathustra was brooding on his rare troubles and behaved as if cold and deaf to those around him. He did not respond to glances or queries. However, on the evening of the second day at sea, he relaxed and opened his ears again. He discovered that many strange things were buzzing on board that ship -- which had already come far and still had very far to go. Despite himself, he had always been a friend to those who take long journeys and do not want to live without danger. So behold! By listening to his fellow travelers he found his tongue loosened and his icy solitude broken. Thus he spoke with them, saying:

To you, bold venturers & adventurers, I speak! I speak to whomever has ever embarked with cunning sails upon dreadful seas, to you who are intoxicated by puzzling riddles, who take pleasure in the twilight of dusk, whose soul is lured by flutes into every treacherous abyss. You do not desire to grope for a rope with cowardly hands, and where you can guess you hate to calculate. To you alone do I tell this riddle of what I saw -- the vision of the Most Solitary Man.

Lately, I was walking gloomily through a deathly gray twilight. Gloomily & sternly. With compressed lips. Not only one sun had gone down for me! My path was mounting a mountain defiantly through stark boulders and rubble. It was a wicked, solitary path no longer cheered by any bush or plant -- a mountainous path crunching under my defiant foot.

Striding mutely over the mocking clatter of pebbles, trampling stones and making them slip, my feet forced themselves upward with great effort. Upward -- despite the spirit that drew them downward... down toward the abyss. It was the Spirit of Gravity! My old devil and arch-enemy. Upward I climbed although he sat heavily upon me, half dwarf & half mole, crippled & crippling. He poured lead drops into my ear and leaden thoughts into my brain.

“O Zarathustra!” he said mockingly, sounding it out syllable by syllable, “you stone of wisdom! You have thrown yourself so high… but every stone that is thrown must FALL! O Zarathustra, you stone of wisdom, you great projectile, you star-destroyer! You have thrown yourself so high but every stone that is thrown MUST fall! Condemned by your self, condemned to your own stone throwing… O Zarathustra, you has thrown you stone so far but it will fall back upon you!”

The dwarf then fell silent for a long time. His silence oppressed me. To be silent like that in company is truly more lonely than to be alone… So I climbed. I climbed, I dreamed & thought, but everything oppressed me. I was like a man with an awful illness who awakens from a nightmare to find himself in an even worse dream.

But there something in me that I am willing to call “courage”. It has always returned to destroy whatever is discouraging in me. This courage at last made me stop and say:

“Dwarf! You -- or I!”

Courage is the best destroyer -- a courage that attacks. In every attack there is a small triumphant shout.  

The human being is the most courageous animal. Armed with his courage, he has overcome every beast. With his triumphant shout he has conquered so many natural pains. But inside him is a special human pain that is deeper than all others.

Courage also destroy the giddiness we feel in the face of an abyss. And where does a man not stand facing an abyss? To be able to see oneself -- doesn’t that meaning finding an abyss everywhere?

Courage is the best destroyer. Courage also destroys pity. Pity is the deepest abyss, for as deeply as a person looks into Life they will see into suffering.

Courage is the best destroyer, I say, a courage that attacks. For it destroys even Death when it declares, “Was that life? Very well then -- once more!” There is a great triumphant shout in such a saying. Whomever has hears, let him hear.

PART TWO

“Stop, dwarf!” I said. “It is I - or you! And I am the stronger one -- for you do not know my abysmal thought. You could not endure to know what I am now thinking…”

Then I felt suddenly lighter. The dwarf jumped down from my shoulder to examine something. That inquisitive dwarf! He squatted upon a stone and we beheld a strange portal which stood where we had halted.

“Behold this gateway, dwarf!” I announced. “It has two sides. Two paths come together here and no one has ever gone to the end of either. This long pathway behind us goes on for an eternity. And that long lane ahead -- that is another eternity. They are opposed to each other but they touch each other. They diverge in conflict but in this gateway they come together. The name written above this threshold is: The Moment. If one were to follow them further and ever further do you suppose, dwarf, that they would remain in opposition?”

“Everything straight lies,” muttered the dwarf disdainfully. “All truth is crooked and time itself is a circle…”

“Spirit of Gravity,” I cursed angrily. “Do not treat this so lightly! Or perhaps I will leave you here, squatting where you are on your lame feet. I have carried you so very high!”

That silenced him. I continued:

“Behold this moment! From this portal a long eternal lane runs back -- and an eternity lies ahead. Must not all things that can pass not already have passed along this lane? Must not all things that can happen have already happened, been done, gone passed? For they have had forever to do it! And if all things have been here before then what do you think of this moment, dwarf? Must not this gateway have been here before? Are not all things entangled so tightly that this moment pulls with it all future things and also itself?

“For all things that can pass must run once again forward along this long lane. And that slow spider creeping in this moonlight, and this moonlight, and I & you whispering at the gateway together, whispering of eternal things -- must we not have already been here? And must we not return and pass forward eternally along that long terrible lane that reaches ahead...”

Thus I spoke, more and more softly, trailing off… for I was suddenly afraid of my own thoughts and many concerns about this matter. But my worry was interrupted by the sound of a dog howling nearby.

Had I ever heard a dog howl thusly? My memory ran backwards -- yes! Once when I was a child… in my most distant childhood… I heard a dog howling in this way. And I saw it too! Bristling. Its head raised. Trembling in the stillness of midnight when even dogs believe in ghosts. It moved me to pitiful empathy.

The full moon had just gone over the roof of the house, silent as death, and stopped. A still round glow upon the flat roof as if upon a forbidden place. An intrusion. That was what terrified the dog -- for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And so when I heard that howling again on the mountain I was again moved to pity.

Where had the dwarf gone? And the gateway? And the spider? Had I only been dreaming? Had I now awoken? All at once I found myself standing alone between wild barren cliffs -- desolate in the most desolate moonlight.

And I spotted a man lying on the ground. Beside him the dog was leaping, bristling, whining, imploring. It saw me coming and howling again. It cried out!  Had I ever heard a dog cry out for help like that?

Truly, I had never seen such a spectacle as I did then:

The man was a young shepherd, the master of a flock, and he was writhing, choking, convulsing with his face distorted. And why? Because a heavy black snake was hanging from his mouth, caught in his throat.

I had never seen so much disgust and pallid horror on a face. Had he been asleep, perhaps? Had the serpent crawled into his sleeping maw and bitten into his throat, locking itself in place?

I rushed to his side and tugged and yanked on the snake but in vain. Those yanks could not tug the snake from the shepherd’s throat. And then I heard my own voice call out:

“Bite! Bite its head off! Bite!" All my horror, hate, disgust and pity, all my good and evil cried out of me with a single cry.

You bold men around me on this ship, you venturers & adventurers, those of you who have embarked with cunning sails upon undiscovered seas! You who take pleasure in puzzles -- solve for me the riddle that I saw that night. Interpret for me the vision of the most solitary man!

For it was a vision and a premonition.

What did I see in this allegory? Who is it that must one day come? Who is this shepherd into whose mouth the snake thus crawled? Who is the man into whose throat all that is heaviest and blackest will thus crawl?

The shepherd bit as my cry had advised him. He bit with a good bite -- spitting away the snake’s head and springing to his feet. No longer a shepherd, no longer a man! He was a transformed being surrounded by light. Laughing.

Never yet on Earth has any man laughed as he laughed.

O my brothers, I heard then a laughter that was no longer human and it awoken in me a terrible thirst. My thirst for that laughter consumes me. This longing is never stilled. My longing for this laughter consumes me.

How do I even endure to live without it?

And how could I possibly endure to die now?

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

[Layman Pascal]

#15. NIETZSCHE AS PROPHET.

Several "predictions" exist within his writings. Here are a few:

-Not long after his death he will become an object of academic study, discussed officially at universities. However there will little or no real understanding of his work until about two hundred years have passed.

-The German people, already suffering from psychological imbalance and poor cultural habits, will respond to stress & romanticism (Wagnerism) with a furious outpouring of irrationality. This will exaggerate their already negative influence on Europe and damage many good things. Central to this pathological outbreak will be the attempt by political states to operate as though they were the "folk".

-Our world will progressively become dominated by the "last man" -- a relativist, a seeker for small pleasures, a man whose expressions of curiosity about profound things are uncannily superficial. The ultimate flatlander. A world of such people forms the "cloud" that the Overman must assimilate and overcome.

-A new breed of philosophers is coming who will question everything and prepare the way for the attempt to cultivate planetary civilization. They may be called "attempters, tempters & experimentalists". It is their task to traverse nihilism and innovate new pathways.

- In the coming centuries the great "Wars of Philosophy" will begin. The dominance of nations will give way to a planetary struggle in which all different kinds of human values will have their own philosophers.

This last point should be of special interest to those versed in Spiral Dynamics or Integral Philosophy.

[Layman Pascal]

#16. TRUTH.

Nietzsche's relation to truth is very sophisticated. Firstly he illuminates the Will-to-Truth as a sub-set of the Will-to-Power. Truth, therefore, is more or less able to provide us with healthy empowerment in any given context. Secondly he expounds an anti-metaphysical "tantric" doctrine which roots things in their opposites. For him it is always deception & ignorance which produce truth... as an evolutionary emergence.

In one fascinating passage, truth is likened to a coin whose images and marks have been worn off -- so now it is useful simply as metal. Truth is not primordial. It emerges from lies. Its simplicity has "become".

Our animal ancestors have no idealistic motive to constrain their utterances to "facts". All communication begins as manipulation. However, in time, the people who can tolerate contradictions find that lies confound each other, bind each other, and trans-deceptive awareness emerges.

It is, he says, one of the primary misconceptions of the metaphysical mindset that qualities must be derived from similar qualities in the past. Dialectically, like Heraclitus, we ought to seek the origin of qualities in their opposites. And this gives us a pattern very much like the one outlined today as Integral Theory.

[Layman Pascal]

#17. WOMEN.

"Suppose," he says, "that Truth IS a woman. Is it not obvious that all philosophers have failed to discover truth because they fail relate well with women?"

This famous question (from the Preface to Beyond Good & Evil) sets the tone for many of Nietzsche's explorations into the spiritual and cultural philosophy of gender. He will say repeatedly that truth cannot be forced BECAUSE it is usually unhealthy, unintelligent & unproductive to use linear bluntness and force upon the Feminine aspects of reality.

The first thing to bear in mind is Nietzsche's style! Remember that he is deliberating using terminology that will separate his readers from "general readers". He does this by proposing phrasing which which disturbs or misleads people by virtue of their supposed social connotation -- leaving, he hopes, the way clear for people who can pre-revaluate & pre-rebalance charged wording to have a rare conversation among themselves. Yet this only takes us partway into the maze.

Clearly we are hearing from a lonely Germanic male academic who was conservatively raised in the 19th century. He bears not only the traces of his epoch (both in the type of remarks he makes AND in the type of women about whom he knows enough to comment upon) but also the jagged and eruptive feelings of a man who never found satisfying intimate emotional and physical relationships with women. That cannot be discounted.

Yet we cannot forget that many of his closest friends and sponsors were among the first wave of Feminists. They regarded him as an ally. And what was his advice to them? Very challenging things. He frequently asked them to inquire as to whether or not "equality with men" represented an actual improvement in circumstances or a real increase of female power in society. Be sure -- he would say -- that you have not internalized the masculine fantasy of power and are now try to live up to something conventional which is not only inappropriate and unhealthy but which actually gives away the instinctive ways in which women exert creative control over human society.

His other most common challenge to his Feminist friends was they did not sufficiently incorporate "vertical" differences. They imagined a flatland feminism in which roughly equal status and capacity was distributed to all -- instead of working for the creation of spiritually higher and more culturally profound women. He was a strong critic of that unexamined impulse which automatically moves a political and intellectual woman to want all other women to shared the same concerns, abilities and rights. Why not enjoy the rareness of one's own condition? This should at least be investigated...

As should the degree to which the unhappy social conditions of women are creatively (if unconsciously) encouraged by the instinctive animosity, cruelty and comparative jealously which women often feel toward each other.

In one fascinating passage he notes that Men and Women are the same in nature and function but differ primarily in "tempo".

We are in complex waters.

Another issue in understanding he remarks on gender is that, like many sages, he is often discussing "The Feminine" when he says "Woman". We must understand this as relative and within all human beings. And this discussion is frequently extended into pondering of vanity (remember -- not assumed as a negative! Think: surface radiance, ornamentation, sociability).

Into this already tempestuous mix goes the realization that many of the most quoted "sexist" passages from Nietzsche are from characters in his novel and not presented as indicators of his personal feelings. A great example is the advice to remember "a whip" when dealing with women. Leaving aside the possible subtle interpretations of this idea, it is a statement made by an old woman in a novel!

So, all this must be born in mind when delving into his readings on gender. The best place to begin such reading is with an passage 231 from "Beyond Good & Evil". To paraphrase --

'It is an unpleasant fact about philosophers that their "objective reasoning" rests on a bedrock of inherited prejudices from which they seldom deviate. All their learning leaves certain programming and instincts untouched. And since I am a philosopher this is a pretty insulting fact about myself. Having ruined my own reputation in this manner perhaps I will be permitted to say some potentially insulting things about The Feminine and about women as they exist in contemporary society? Remembering, of course, that these are only MY truths...'

[Layman Pascal]

#18. ZARATHUSTRA'S DREAM.

If "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is a postmetaphysical post-enlightenment narrative, then what is the struggle of the book? It is the struggle with humanity. Zarathustra tries many different methods of communicating higher intelligence and transmission but all have significant drawbacks. He learns that he still suffers from a deeply ingrained disgust, weariness or general displeasure at humanity in general. And the climactic realization of the book is the insight which heals the Master from his depression about human beings. It comes in the form of a dream...

In the dream he witnesses a shepherd fall asleep on a hillside. As he dreams, a snake crawls into his mouth and bites deeply into his throat -- waking him in terror. Choking and poisoned, the shepherd does a remarkable thing. He bites down. This aggressive cutting gesture separates the head and body of the serpent. He spits out the body and laughs... a great, free, uproarious laugh.

The snake's head remains.

It is this dream which Zarathustra claims contains the secret to overcoming pessimism in the face of humanity.

[Layman Pascal]

#19. WHO ARE NIETZSCHEAN THINKERS?

Let us leave aside the (more interesting) question of Nietzsche's spiritual heirs. Who is resonant with his style, insights, tasks? Who comes close to articulating his ideal -- or even demonstrating it?

Instead, for now, let us settle for the far more more meager issue of getting a sense of who was consciously influenced him. Who is on record as studying him, imbibing his ideas (without fascist mania, dismissive anti-fascist mania or overly-associating him with his adolescent and romantic fans)? Who picked up some of his thoughts and tried to run them forward?

Here is just a sampling to get an overall impression:

- Teilhard de Chardin
- Michel Foucault
- Gilles Deleuze
- P.D. Ouspensky
- Martin Heidegger
- Camille Paglia
- Martin Buber
- George Bataille
- The Correas (Aetherometry)
- Wilhelm Reich
- Sri Aurobindo
- Baghwan Rajneesh
- Jacques Derrida
- Sigmund Freud
- Salvador Dali
- Theodore Herzl
- Thomas Mann
- Carl Jung
- Alfred Adler
- Aleister Crowley
- Peter Sloterdijk

They can be broken into some obvious & prominent categories:

1. Bio-Physics
2. Pioneering Psychotherapy
3. Post-Structuralists, Deconstructionists & Epistemic Post-Postmodernists
4. Anarchists, Socialists & New Political Movements
5. Experimental painters, poets & authors.
6. Advocates of evolutionary spirituality.
7. Advocates of perspectival spirituality.

We may have a leg to stand on if we think of these as the "free spirits" who recognize something vital and appropriate in his writings...

[Layman Pascal]

#20. THE NIETZSCHEAN HIERARCHY.

What kind of beings, in what relation, comprise his vision of yesterday, today & tomorrow?

A. At the top is DIONYSUS. That is the "Philosopher Dionysus" and not merely the aesthetic alternative to Apollo. This is the SPIRAL or EVOLUTION, TRANSCENDENCE & TRANSFORMATIVE ALLOWING (AMOR FATI) in the form of a Becoming-Being manifest as the spiritual ethos of primal energy & healthy civilization.

B. Then come the OVERMAN. These are the men and women who have become like Dionysus. They have incorporate the inhuman into their humanity, successfully revalued all their values, have a taste only for what empowers them, serve and create a great, ennobling, spiritual, humorous, non-sentimental and non-reactive planetary or cosmic civilization of ever increasing peaks and plateaus. They have made their own creation and the successful thriving of the embodied terrestrial-spiritual beings in the voluntary object of the greatest historical intentionality.

C. ZARATHUSTRA. The natural postmetaphysical saints and enlightened gurus who mediate between History and the civilization of the Overman.

D. The HIGHER MEN + COMEDY. The artistic & political & scientific geniuses, great spiritual saints, and the noblest people produced during the moral, post-barbaric Age of Humanity (those who are still considered to be "great mean" and "humanist heroes") can be brought into greater proximity to the Overmen when they are humorous, mocking, ironic, playful. This is the Festival of the Asses.

E. The FREE SPIRITS are the openers of the way. They accept and attempt to traverse both the covert nihilism of "believers" and the experimental nihilism of relativists. They are spiritual risk takers and adventurers. Psychonauts. They risk the critical revaluation of their most important values.

F. The FOLK. These are the "salt of the earth". Nietzsche loves and admires the simplicity of ethnocentric decency and challenges other presumptive philosopher to relate as well as he does to the "little old ladies of the village". They cannot and are not expected to necessarily grow past themselves but must be provided with a world in which their instincts can jive with the facts in profound coherence.

F. The "SO-CALLED" FREE SPIRITS are romantics who wish to rebel against the perceived oppression of traditional society in a rather predictable, small and pathetic manner. They are adherents of what is called "heretical naturalness" in Zen.

G. The LAST MEN are those who permit domestication into the core of their souls. Their chakras have become permanently tepid. Their profundity is superficial. Their curiosity is omnipresent but minimal. They consume everything and digest nothing. Collectively they attain to a powerful comfort and control of material resources but their feeling of life and peak experiences are almost flat.

H. THE SPIDERS & AFTERWORLDSMEN . These are the agents of the emotional plague who actively empower themselves at the expense of their emotional capacity to appreciate peaks -- and at the expense of other people's peaks. They are dark "priests" who teach moral values that seem empowering but spread self-destruction and needless disempowerment.

[Ambo Suno]

Do you feel seriously ambivalent about, "I WILLED IT THUS"? I do.

Layman Pascal said:

#12. Any reader of the autobiography ECCE HOMO will notice that it interprets the author's life uniquely as a series of "peak experiences". Each of his major accomplishments and books are explained as the result of a moment of tremendous affirmation. Whatever was historically valid is surrendered to the idea that one must "turn every IT WAS into an I WILLED IT THUS" in order to be on the same page as Reality. The theory proposed here is that biography must be predicated upon peaks. This is the case in Adi Da and Osho's biographies. As well as many others. One "becomes what one is" (the subtitle of N's autobiography) by becoming responsible for attaining and emphasizing the moments of superlative consciousness which are available through a particular life-track.

[Ambo Suno]

Beautiful clue. Worth trying if one can at least quasi-innocently.

Layman Pascal said:

#18. ZARATHUSTRA'S DREAM.

If "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is a postmetaphysical post-enlightenment narrative, then what is the struggle of the book? It is the struggle with humanity. Zarathustra tries many different methods of communicating higher intelligence and transmission but all have significant drawbacks. He learns that he still suffers from a deeply ingrained disgust, weariness or general displeasure at humanity in general. And the climactic realization of the book is the insight which heals the Master from his depression about human beings. It comes in the form of a dream...

In the dream he witnesses a shepherd fall asleep on a hillside. As he dreams, a snake crawls into his mouth and bites deeply into his throat -- waking him in terror. Choking and poisoned, the shepherd does a remarkable thing. He bites down. This aggressive cutting gesture separates the head and body of the serpent. He spits out the body and laughs... a great, free, uproarious laugh.

The snake's head remains.

It is this dream which Zarathustra claims contains the secret to overcoming pessimism in the face of humanity.

[Edward theurj Berge]

"...can be brought into greater proximity to the Overmen when they are humorous, mocking, ironic, playful. This is the Festival of the Asses."

Mark me down for the Festival of the Assholons.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Along the lines of my last post--and this post and one following,  and this post and one following--let's look at snips from Crowley's Fool card in The Book of Thoth:

"The really important feature of this card is that its number should be 0. It represents therefore the Negative above the Tree of Life, the source of all things. It is the Qabalistic Zero. It is the equation of the Universe, the initial and final balance of the opposites; Air, in this card, therefore quintessentially means a vacuum."

Like Zizek's Void?

"Note that ‘Fool’ is derived from ‘follis’, a wind-bag. Even etymology gives the attribution to Air. Also, to puff out the cheeks is a gesture implying readiness to create, in the sign-language of Naples. Worse, some English Guardians of Democracy impute folly to others by the 'Razzberry.'"

"In the medieval pack, the title of the card is Le Mat, adapted from the Italian Matto, madman or fool; the propriety of this title will be considered later. [...]  'Silly' means empty-the Vacuum of Air-Zero-'the silly buckets on the deck'. And the word is from the German selig, holy, blessed."

[Edward theurj Berge]

This wiki on the Jester is also instructive, relating it to the Tarot Fool. E.g.:

"The Royal Shakespeare Company provides historical context for the role of the fool:

In ancient times, courts employed fools and by the Middle Ages the jester was a familiar figure. In Renaissance times, aristocratic households in Britain employed licensed fools or jesters, who sometimes dressed as other servants were dressed, but generally wore a motley (i.e. parti-coloured) coat, hood with ass's (i.e. donkey) ears or a red-flannel coxcomb and bells. Regarded as pets or mascots, they served not simply to amuse but to criticise their master or mistress and their guests. Queen Elizabeth (reigned 1558–1603) is said to have rebuked one of her fools for being insufficiently severe with her. Excessive behaviour, however, could lead to a fool being whipped, as Lear threatens to whip his fool."

[Layman Pascal]

Ambo Suno said:

Do you feel seriously ambivalent about, "I WILLED IT THUS"? I do.

The notion of will can be misleading (even when we are Friends of Ambivalence).  It seems to imply a forceful and decisive do-er... but actually it is observed to mean a kind of co-incidence between intention and action.  Babies learn to move their limbs before they learn to move them "on purpose".  Purpose can come after the fact.  For Nietzsche this means almost the same thing as "integration" -- in the sense of assimilating, digesting, working an event or quality into the weave of your life until it has a natural charm to it.  Making it mutual with your other experience.  And only sometimes does this involve a spiritual practice of "allowing, welcoming, affirming". 

To quote Lester Levenson -- What we resist, persists.  Which means that over-identification and failure to process the energies of the events of our life leave us unable to responsibly incorporate them (naturalize them) into our general self-definition.  And that naturalization is essential for restoring the flow of our good-timing and sense of empowerment.