Main values of a person, as well as his evaluation of them, change significantly with the shift of time modalities. At the same time, he often does not notice this himself and becomes unexpectedly inconsistent in behavior from the perspective of others. He himself would hardly be able to explain such a radical change in his values unless he pays attention to the shift in corresponding modalities. When modalities change, negative values also change—that is, what a person strives to avoid at all costs, what he considers negative, unacceptable, and so on.
The phase of creation is characterized by values such as novelty, freshness, abundance that does not need to be maintained but simply falls into a person’s lap or comes easily into his hands. While in this phase, a person enjoys feeling himself or his endeavor at the center of the surrounding world’s attention, and the absence of such attention is undoubtedly perceived as a negative value. It is important to him that his needs be satisfied quickly and without much effort on his part. In himself, he values generosity, kindness, selflessness, and the ability to share—although usually with things that are not particularly needed by him or are in surplus. The virtues of this phase are selfless and boundless love, broad-mindedness, generosity, and abundance that allows everyone to live as they please. Negative values here include boredom, poverty, monotony, pessimism, lack of alternative possibilities, and the impossibility of changing the existing state of affairs.
Values of the phase of manifestation include stability, steadfastness, clarity of a person’s position in the world, having an adequate amount of resources, quality of work, enduring presence in the world, predictability of events, the ability to control them within certain limits that ensure stability, the ability to fulfill commitments one has taken on, absence of chaos, and the subordination of ongoing events to a coherent order. It is also important to express oneself in such a way that the surrounding world receives the message adequately, and to take responsibility for what one is doing in the present moment—that is, over a short span of time. Negative values in this phase include: having to clean up a mess created by someone else, uncertainty of the situation, inability to control or manage it, the necessity of abruptly changing course and initiating radical changes or shutting down a program, disruption of habitual rituals, vagueness and irresponsibility of the external world, and a sense of alienation that has solid grounds (so to speak, a flippant pessimism).
The main values of the dissolution phase are usually of a higher order, more subtle than the values of the same situation analyzed during the phase of manifestation. One of the values of dissolution is the careful and correct factual destruction of what must be destroyed—whose karma has already reached its end. On a higher level, a person does this precisely, accurately, and ecologically; on a lower level, he rejoices merely at the act of destruction itself and does not consider the harm it brings to the world. Here, the relevant values are subtle perception, deep understanding, and symbolic interpretation. This is largely the value system of art, which transcends life and completes its narratives on a symbolic level. Negative values here include the rose-tinted glasses of the creation phase, the stubbornness and limited vision of the manifestation phase, dead ritualism that sustains something already obsolete and long due for dismantling, and crudeness in work—though understood differently than in the manifestation phase. Here, it is important to be able to pour out the dirty bathwater without harming the child in it. Values during the dissolution phase often relate to the lives of others and other situations, for the sake of which a person selflessly works, dissolving himself—that is, sacrificing himself for something else, something higher than his own life as he perceives it. If in the creation phase one of the main values is the person’s immediate being, and in the manifestation phase it is his work, then in the dissolution phase the main value is self-sacrifice—life for the sake of something else, life that does not sustain itself but, in dissolving, serves something higher than itself.
Question to the reader: What do you value more in people—creativity or predictability? Reliability or adaptability? Are you capable of being friends with someone who remains unchanged for many years? Do you believe that if a certain trait of your character begins to contradict your entire life, you should make special efforts to eradicate or transform it, or do you let the process unfold on its own? Is a constant sense of novelty critical for your relationships with others? How long can you tolerate someone who has become utterly boring to you? What do you value more in people—resourcefulness or consistency?
Responsibility
How do you understand responsibility? How do you perceive the responsibility of your acquaintances? In which cases can you rely on them, and in which cases not? Much depends on which modalities you and they use in defining this concept.
The creation phase is characterized by conditional, reduced, and postponed responsibility—that is, a person assumes he might be accountable for what he says or does now, but not immediately, rather at some distant point in the future. Such things are usually not stated outright but are implied and demonstrated indirectly—for example, through a light tone of voice, playful mannerisms, digressions, or abrupt shifts in topic. If you meet him the next day and reproach him, saying, “Well, you said…,” he will look at you with a tired gaze—as if you are exhausting him by forcing him to explain the obvious—and will respond something like: “Well, yes, of course I said it, but I didn’t mean it seriously; I just said it generally, perhaps as a hypothesis.” What lies behind these words? A clear implication that he was in the modality of creation and therefore bears no responsibility whatsoever for his behavior or words, and you should have understood this yourself. No, you didn’t? Then you misunderstood him. You were in the manifestation phase.
In the manifestation phase, reality is real, and responsibility is something concrete, narrowly defined, limited, but unconditional. For example: “If I promised yesterday to call you today, then I call you today at the agreed time. If I fail to do so, I am genuinely at fault and will seriously accept your reproach, attempting to atone for my failure.” While in the creation phase, responsibility does not presuppose any consequences if it is violated, in the manifestation phase responsibility usually implies a clearly defined penalty for its breach, as, for example, stipulated in criminal or administrative codes. At the same time, if you ask a person: “Generally speaking, are you responsible for what you do overall?”—he may simply not understand you. He is responsible only for his specific actions; his responsibility is limited and unquestionable. Broader, vague, abstract responsibility is simply incomprehensible to him—yet it is understood, and well understood, in the dissolution phase.
In the dissolution phase, a person is fully and completely responsible—not only for what happened yesterday, but also for what happened the day before, three days ago, or even in a past incarnation. He will clean up a long and difficult mess thoroughly, wipe the pot clean with the cloth of humility—even the burnt bottom—and eat everything, possibly suffering, but without complaint, inwardly reconciling himself with his fate. On the other hand, responsibility in the dissolution phase is not an extension of responsibility in the manifestation phase. It is a completely different type of responsibility, where a person does not consider any specific individual violations—they become insignificant and practically invisible when viewing the object as a whole, its entire history, and its subtle inner meaning, which is precisely what concerns and for which the person is responsible. Responsibility, for example, for the object’s adequate interaction with the world is not even considered in the dissolution phase. Of course, the object is out of balance with the world; what matters is that the object’s mission is fulfilled in its entirety and in its most essential, subtlest sense—for this, the person is responsible. Often, he takes responsibility for someone else’s guilt, but again, not in the way that the other person who made the mistake would. For example, he may apologize to the creditors of a deceased person, offer them sincere condolences, and they, understanding they will receive nothing better, will listen with gratitude—though perhaps with hidden dissatisfaction—and thus bring closure to a long and unpleasant chapter. Similarly, a country’s president may apologize to the relatives of citizens who died in an accident, such as a plane crash. Of course, the president himself is not personally responsible for the plane crash, but he symbolically takes responsibility, apologizes to the victims’ families, pays compensation, arranges pensions, and so on. All this does not compensate for their loss in a real-life sense, but it brings closure to the narrative.
Question to the reader: What kind of responsibility do you most often feel and take upon yourself—abstract, concrete, or global? Do you often take responsibility for the actions of other people? Are you inclined to take responsibility for a project that has just begun? How do you react to minor irresponsibility of others when they break their private promises and commitments? Think: is there a difference between your social behavior in such cases and what you feel inside? Do you consider general responsibility mere rhetoric, or does it hold meaning for you?
Life Programs
A person’s life programs and narratives unfold not only in time. At every moment, they are somehow present in his inner world, in his perception, and his modality of perception significantly affects how he sees this program, how he reacts to it, and which resources are activated or, conversely, lost. One should not assume that the current state of affairs unambiguously determines a person’s perception of it. In reality, different people may relate to and react differently to the same objectively existing plot twist, and thus methods that seem highly effective with some people lead to completely opposite results when applied to others—and the reason for this, first and foremost, is the difference in their relationship to a particular private archetype.
Within the archetype of creation, a life program is perceived as expanding, unfolding, being created—boundaries open, long-term loans and extended commitments are taken on, with very vague ideas about how all this will be realized. The person feels a certain enthusiasm, as if setting off on a long journey. One should not assume that this phase evokes an unambiguously positive attitude in all people. First, for many, the creation phase means a time when unpleasantness will occur—unpleasantness one cannot prepare for, because it will come from the most unexpected direction. Second, the enthusiasm accompanying the creation phase is often perceived as false, unmotivated, unjustified, and people guided by other archetypes tend to have an a priori negative attitude toward the very situation of creation, toward forming a new life program. They believe there is nothing to discuss now, that one should not make predictions; only when the manifestation phase comes, or even better, the dissolution phase, will we see. But then, strictly speaking, it will already be too late. “Chickens are counted in the fall”—this is true, but incubating eggs and caring for newly hatched birds still requires special attention and has a unique charm entirely absent in the fall, which, admittedly, promises the charm of chicken soup.
Thus, abundance and unlimited resources characteristic of the creation phase are perceived by some people as a perpetually active factor that will never change, while others see it as an abundance of unexpected misfortunes, difficult turns of fate, and so on. Few people remain neutral toward the creation phase; the vast majority have either a clearly positive or clearly negative attitude toward it. Conversely, the phase of manifesting life programs itself evokes a sober, calmer evaluation: most people clearly understand that this is a necessary part of life. Some find it boring; others, on the contrary, see in its calm flow, balance, fairness, and harmony between the person and his program with the environment the true meaning of existence. Here, resources are limited but sufficient if the person’s and program’s needs are reasonable. He strives for them to be reasonable, and if he occasionally goes into debt, he tries to repay it later. Here, if not static, then a dynamic or cyclical balance with the environment emerges, which seems capable of being sustained indefinitely. A person’s attitude toward such situations may vary: some find them boring—sweeping the same floor every day, wiping the same children’s noses, making and unmaking the same beds, knowing tomorrow will repeat the same; cooking food that will be eaten, and dishes that will become dirty again. Yet Eastern philosophy treats such cyclical duties with extraordinary attention, considering them higher and associated with the cycle of birth, manifestation, and destruction of the Universe.
It is important to understand that life programs are those that are socially comprehensible and obvious—for example, studying at an educational institution, working at a certain firm, etc. There are other programs that follow certain laws, such as the program of developing relationships with another person, a partner. This may be a work partner, a friend, a lover, a spouse, or a child—in any case, in relationships with a partner, a person inevitably enters, at certain moments, the creation phase, when qualitatively new traits and circumstances emerge in the relationship; the manifestation phase, when the relationship proceeds in an established way and a certain theme is worked through; and the dissolution phase, when something in the relationship is irreversibly and permanently lost, or the relationship itself ends.
The effects accompanying the creation phase of a relationship plot are usually very vivid. Some become attached to them and value only these moments, forgetting that the seemingly inexhaustible resources of mutual perception, kindness, joy, and love, at some point when the relationship phase shifts to manifestation, become limited—and then it turns out that this couple has a certain external activity theme to which they may be better suited. The couple receives from the environment no more love than they give to the surrounding world. Many people do not understand this at all, and when the relationship shifts from the creation phase to the manifestation phase, they perceive it as a great failure or an unfair fate that inexplicably cools their passionate feelings. A similar effect occurs when transitioning from the manifestation phase to the dissolution phase, where mutual resources sharply diminish, the couple is deprived of what they need, tensions arise where things previously flowed smoothly, the environment seems to introduce ever-new causes for discord, and it becomes time to look at each other with entirely different eyes, evaluate the time spent together, understand what was missing in the relationship, draw conclusions, and part ways—sometimes yielding their place in life to someone else. Some people do this voluntarily, wisely deciding it is wrong to occupy another’s place and accepting such a fate; others fight desperately, destroying the remaining good that was created during the creation and manifestation phases. However, in any case, understanding that a person’s and their partner’s psychology changes significantly depending on which time phase is currently active helps greatly in better understanding oneself, the partner, and the situation, and in adequately orienting oneself within it.
Question to the reader: Which moment of meeting with friends do you enjoy most: the meeting itself, the conversation, or the farewell? Which of these moments seems least pleasant to you? How do you usually part with people—leaving room for future contact or cutting it off? When ending a romantic relationship, do you remain friends, distant partners, bitter enemies, or simply nothing to each other? When meeting a new person, do you immediately seek to determine what role they will play in your life and how the relationship should be built? What did you think when someone first confessed love to you in your life? Evaluate the modality of your thoughts from the perspective of the dialectical archetype.
As with everything else, a person’s ethics significantly depend on the modality of the archetype currently guiding him. Here, both the general foundations of ethics and their essence, their content, change. Truly few people have a unified ethical system. Therefore, when reflecting on one’s own ethical system or someone else’s, one should always ask: how is my (someone else’s) ethics modified when a particular private archetype is strongly activated within the universal?
The ethics of the creation phase are fundamentally hedonistic, or one could say, nonexistent. It sounds like this: “Good is what is good for me, what pleases me at this moment. That next moment it might be something else—this doesn’t matter. Everyone can take care of themselves.” This kind of ethical system does not take the surrounding world into account, but the person does not set this as his goal either. He is at the center of this world.
The ethics of the manifestation phase sound approximately like this (its general principle): “Live and let live. Regulate your relationships with reality so that they are mutually beneficial and convenient.” Here, ethics exist, but they are secondary to reality. It attempts to discern the fundamental laws of the world and human existence within it, formulate them, and find optimal rules of conduct. The main principle guiding the person here is that behavior optimal for oneself is also optimal for the surrounding environment. Generally, this principle, questionable and even entirely false in other temporal phases, is a certain approximation to the truth in the manifestation phase—if understood reasonably.
In the dissolution phase, ethics change radically. Its main principle: “Good is what is good for the world. If in the process I am destroyed, then I must choose the optimal way of this destruction, but in no case preserve myself. Self-sacrifice is good, sacrifice is good, the flourishing of others is good, and wisdom lies in understanding that everything in the world is transient and nothing should be clung to—especially one’s own values and God.” The world here is understood, however, quite or at least sufficiently abstractly, not as in the manifestation phase. Here, a person develops a completely different relationship to ethics. If in the creation phase ethics could be considered nonexistent, and in the manifestation phase they were significant but subordinate to reality (as one sometimes says about politics—“the art of achieving the maximum within the possible”), then in the dissolution phase ethics are above reality. They are formed; they are, in a sense, the result, the highest and most valuable result, the outcome of the object’s life development. Therefore, in the dissolution phase, a person is often very dogmatic when ethical conclusions have already been made, believing that life as a whole should be subordinated to them. The level associated with direct exchange with the surrounding world loses its significance here, and the ideal, more subtle level comes to the forefront, with ethics being one of its most vivid manifestations.
Question to the reader: Do you accept the gifts the world offers you without condemning yourself for it? Do you believe a person always owes something to someone and must always limit their behavior? Do life narratives end over time? What do you consider the fundamental value of life—joy, work, or compassion, self-sacrifice? Which of these three values is most present in your life?
Life Positions
The author will not elaborate on specific life positions according to their modalities. Instead, he offers the reader the following useful exercises:
Reflect on your main positions regarding both worldview and principles of behavior, relationships with other people, and determine in which modality they reside. Do they belong to the phase of creation, manifestation, or dissolution? (Sometimes this is difficult to determine, but most often it is possible.) After that, consider how your life positions would look if the modality of time were changed. How to do this? Consider, for example, the position expressed in the Russian proverb: “God protects the cautious.” It clearly belongs mostly to the modality of manifestation, characterizing a person’s life as a stable process. In the creation phase, it might be expressed as: “He who catches a perch will pull out a catfish.” In the dissolution phase: “Whomever the Lord permits dies in time.” Think: are you satisfied with translating your life positions into other modalities? If not, why? And how should your life position be formulated in another modality?
However, not all life positions are consciously recognized and can be articulated in words. How then to delve into the subconscious? One possible way is simply studying one’s own language and one’s attitude toward various wisdoms or mere reflections that claim to be life positions or express someone’s life positions in different modalities. If a judgment suits you, your position approximately corresponds to it; if it does not, try expressing it in another modality. As exercises, the author offers the reader several Russian folk proverbs and suggests determining the modality in which each proverb is written (most often this is not difficult, and in rare cases, two modalities appear in the proverb, in which case the reader is asked to identify both), and then attempting to formulate it as two proverbs (or one’s own proverbs).
- Arcan is not a cockroach—has no teeth, but eats the neck.
- Ran from the wolf and ran into the bear.
- Without clothes—not without hope.
- To a beaten cat, only mention the rod.
- Was—was not, lived—did not live, know that it vanished.
- Looks into the coffin but hoards money.
- Any magpie dies from its own language.
- Bare—oh, but after the bare—God.
- Sin is not laughter when death comes.
- Gifts and wisdom blind the wise.
- The pig sang in another’s voice because it ate someone else’s bread.
- Assumption is better than reason.
- Went straight but fell into a pit.
Opposites
In the creation phase, opposites manifest themselves. They do not yet enter any relationships—antagonistic or otherwise—and do not contradict each other. They merely declare themselves, and the plot of their future interaction, their confrontation, appears only conditionally, largely in a playful manner. At the same time, the phenomenon of each opposite can be extraordinarily vivid and, for the person, largely unexpected. Thus begin many fairy tales—suddenly evil appears, a dragon emerges from nowhere, demanding tribute in the form of the tsar’s daughter. Likewise, from nowhere, good appears—the hero Ivan-tsarevich, whom fate compels to challenge the monster. This phase is usually vivid, but how things will proceed and how it will end is absolutely unclear, and the reader’s or person’s interest, who themselves fall into this plot, is very high. Here, strong polarization and sharp evaluations occur; everything is seen in black-and-white. Between good and evil, as between other pairs of opposites, there is nothing in common—they are absolutely opposed.
In the manifestation phase, a tug-of-war occurs. Opposites enter into a struggle; they are no longer so antagonistic. Common traits emerge between them; it becomes clear that opposition is a dialectical relationship—that is, there exists a common situation generating both opposites, and they “settle their accounts” with each other. However, the struggle between them is quite defined; it is always clear who is on one side and who on the other, and the tension is high. Yet the situation qualitatively changes: if in the creation phase opposites were separated by an impenetrable wall or even further apart—each in their own world (e.g., good in the world of angels, evil in hell)—now they have a direct relationship, even if merely pulling in opposite directions. Thus, a person becomes the arena of the struggle between good and evil; thus, a student appears at the junction between knowledge and ignorance, pulling him in opposite directions.
In the dissolution phase, contradictions between opposites are somehow resolved. They are perceived as two parts of a single process, and their synthesis is revealed, or the situation as a whole shifts so that almost no trace remains of the original confrontation. It turns out that evil indirectly brings good, that good cannot exist and evolve without evil, that these are two perspectives on a single evolutionary process—just as ignorance turns out to be a lower degree of knowledge, and knowledge a higher degree of ignorance. A carnivore turns out to be the highest stage relative to a cannibal, a vegetarian the highest stage relative to a carnivore, and even higher stands the person who eats nothing at all.
Question to the reader: Which of the three views described above is closer to you when considering such opposites as hard life—easy life, praise—criticism, seriousness—irony (or frivolity), God—devil, light—darkness? Which of the three modalities of viewing these opposites is absolutely unacceptable to you? Which seems correct to you? Which do you allow yourself in secret from others?
Freedom and Necessity
Each temporal phase has its own freedom and its own necessity, and they differ greatly from one another. If you want to understand another person who speaks about limitations on their freedom, pay attention to which archetype is dominant for them.
On the surface, in the creation phase a person feels maximum freedom. In reality, he feels no limitations and has no control over the course of events: gifts fall upon him from the sky, blessings pour like from a horn of plenty, possibly along with misfortunes he cannot foresee. He has no special obligations regarding what happens, and in this he is free. However, he has no ability to control what is happening, to filter events—and this is his necessity. His freedom lies in being able to direct his attention as he wishes, but not in protecting himself from the stream of impressions coming at him from all sides. A child can run through all the rooms, shout, disturb adults, but if someone gets annoyed, he may be scolded, slapped, or even pushed out of the room—and he must still accept this unpleasant environmental impact.
On a creative level, in the creation phase, cardinal, fundamentally new ideas, revelations, and solutions come to the artist, and he cannot regulate or predict this flow. He is free to choose among the ideas appearing in his mind, but he can do little to regulate their arrival. If the needed thought or plot comes—good, he rejoices; if not—he must patiently wait until it does, or settle for what is available.
In the manifestation phase, a person, viewed from the outside, is much less free. He is in a certain situation of relationships with the world, subordinate to a certain ritual, specific rules of behavior, and exchange of energy, information, goods, and services with the external world, and must remain within the bounds of existing agreements—paying bills, and so on. His freedom operates within these boundaries, these agreements, and for many people, this kind of freedom is preferable. In any case, he has a certain goal to which he can subordinate his life and activities, and his freedom lies in accomplishing his tasks better, more effectively, possibly faster—but necessarily adhering to the limitations imposed by the external world and his own inner situation. The quality of freedom here lies in the fact that the person largely controls his situation, possesses tools that, on one hand, certainly limit him, but on the other, also liberate him—and this second quality seems exceptionally important and attractive to him, often making him prefer it over the freedom of receiving gifts falling upon him like unexpected arrivals.
One could say that if in the creation phase a person sits under a tree waiting for something to fall on him—though he cannot say in advance which fruit it will be—then in the manifestation phase, within his available income, a person places an order, and receives exactly what he ordered. In other words, he has a certain freedom in realizing his will, as long as this will does not contradict his main narrative.
In the dissolution phase, the object’s controllability is significantly higher; he is even more ritualized and formalized. A frequent plot of the dissolution phase is a ritual that once had the meaning of work and allowed a certain freedom within it, but now this freedom is gone, leaving only a dead dogma, behind which one can only guess the original meaning, now practically lost. In this phase, the laws governing what happens are very clear; the person is fully subordinate to them and can oppose nothing—they are maximally unfree, viewed from the outside. On the other hand, on a subtler level, he is maximally free, stepping beyond the narrative as it was understood in the manifestation phase—that is, beyond the narrative of the object’s relationship with the world, the self with the world—and possessing the freedom to interpret and understand it on a subtler level, so to speak, on a meta-level, on a higher abstraction than the ideas themselves, and the possibility of creativity, particularly in choosing the path of sacrifice, the method of this object’s offering. This is the freedom of a biographer writing the life story of a deceased celebrity, or of an author composing an obituary, summarizing the life of a recently deceased person.
Question to the reader: Which of the three kinds of freedom is most attractive to you—the freedom of a child playing on a playground, the freedom of an adult realizing his project under difficult external conditions, or the freedom of an elder who consciously reflects upon and comprehends his life? Which level of predictability do you prefer: completely unpredictable, mostly predictable, fully predictable, predictable in broad outlines? Which kind of situation is better for you: a) complete uncertainty and freedom of action; b) a situation broadly outlined and regulating the main content and forms of your activity; or c) clearly defined rituals in which every detail is predetermined?
Self-Assertion and Self-Realization
For each person, there are definite modalities in which self-assertion and self-realization occur. If you want to raise his self-esteem, you must express yourself in a modality adequate to him; otherwise, the effect may be the opposite. The same applies to his self-perception. In some situations, praise is extremely important to him; in others, conversely, he expects criticism—and this is often determined precisely by the modality of the situation he is in.
Self-assertion in the creation phase resembles that of a child—he affirms himself with each new gift received from fate, and within a moment this self-assertion ends, and he suffers and agonizes until he receives the next. Similarly, the self-assertion of a creative person who understands creativity as producing fundamentally new ideas or discovering entirely new plots—at least new to himself—as traveling to lands he has never visited—self-assertion for such a person is tied to the constant discovery of new perspectives, new ideas, new experiences. As soon as this flow is exhausted or becomes somewhat monotonous, self-assertion ends, and the person gives himself a lower evaluation: he is not satisfied with memories. His self-realization is quite contradictory because his self, what he understands by the word “I,” constantly changes, and a memory of how he was well-realized half a year ago does not satisfy him at all. Now he is different, and for self-realization he needs new experiences, new ideas and actions that express his current “I”—that is, who he is now. Such a person vitally needs to constantly learn, study, and master something new, and manifest it to the world from within himself.
Self-assertion in the manifestation modality most often consists in a person’s identification with a functioning object or process in the real world, for which the person takes responsibility. He sets certain goals and achieves them, ending up in a stable narrative of relationships with the external world, bringing order into the world and obtaining a relatively stable place within it—then a sense of self-assertion arises. Here, characteristic of the manifestation phase, self-assertion occurs through activity—activity that produces results and places the person in balance with the surrounding world: he takes something from the world, gives something back. At the same time, self-assertion is related not so much to the intensity of exchange processes and constructive work, but to their correspondence with the person’s own qualities, natural talents, and inclinations. The person feels these inclinations within and believes their realization constitutes work in the world. Thus, if self-realization in the creation phase is self-realization as a lucky person, a whimsical twist of fate, expressed in how many gifts fell upon him during today’s day (on a higher level, this is the creator who counts how many successful ideas came to him today), then in the manifestation phase, it is not about luck or chance, but about building a narrative of one’s relationships with the world, and self-realization lies in the effectiveness of this narrative and its correspondence to the person’s inclinations and talents.
Self-assertion in the dissolution phase has a completely different character. Here it proceeds through self-sacrifice: either the person serves the idea of destruction, participating in the destruction of certain objects of reality, or, with fuller immersion in the dissolution phase, he destroys himself. He sacrifices what he has, striving to bring as much benefit as possible to the world and to understand some higher meaning, the subtleties of his and others’ existence, which are not visible in the manifestation phase but become visible precisely here, as the narrative of existence reaches its end.
One form of self-realization in the dissolution phase is teaching, when a person gives his knowledge and skills to students, thereby losing something personal—his potential, his enthusiasm, his love for the subject. Every teacher knows that teaching the exact same course two or three times means destroying it within oneself. After that, one must either switch to another teaching topic or radically change the course. However, the very process of destroying the subject within the teacher and transferring knowledge to students may fully correspond to the temperament of self-expression, in which case one can say it proceeds under the archetype of dissolution.
Under the archetype of dissolution fall charity, work with people without hope of improving their condition—for example, work in homes for the elderly, hospices, or hospitals with seriously ill and dying people. It includes the creation of farces, parodies, and, in a broad sense, any activity related to art—that is, symbolic reflection of real processes. When a process is reflected in art, it transitions from the manifestation phase to the dissolution phase, and thus the artist, as creator of artistic reality, simultaneously acts as the gravedigger of reality in the form directly experienced by people. The final death of an era appears in the memoirs of those who lived through it.
Question to the reader: Are you close to Oscar Wilde’s idea that the best artwork is a person’s own life? What would you prefer—to walk down the street along with a demonstration or watch it on television? Are you expressive when ill? Answer this question and ask your loved ones for their opinion on this topic. What gives you more pleasure—when unexpected ideas come to mind, or when you successfully realize them? Does a serious mood hinder your self-expression? Does a lighthearted, cheerful, playful mood hinder your self-expression?
Weak Points and Fears
To understand a person’s fear, one must necessarily examine the modality of time to which it corresponds; by changing this modality, you can imperceptibly to the person either make this fear manageable or, sometimes, completely eliminate it.
A typical fear associated with the creation phase is fear of the future. “I don’t know what awaits me, and I fear it. I am not confident in myself; I don’t know how I will react in a qualitatively new situation. I don’t know if I will be able to come up with what I need, since I am not confident in my creative impulse. Old evil is always better than new, because at least it is known.” Such are the common doubts and fears of the creation phase. Here, one must believe even when there are no grounds for belief, and one cannot rely on experience; one must be able to believe in oneself without special justification, entering new situations, expecting surprises.
A common fear in the manifestation phase is the fear of losing control, of stepping outside the boundaries set by commitments: the fear that the external world will change its attitude toward the person and their endeavor, stop supplying them with resources on time, stop needing the product the person offers to the world. Moreover, the process or ritual itself may become unstable—it may start swaying or even collapse. Circumstances may arise that prevent the person from realizing the formed action plan. Unlike the creation phase, where fears are usually irrational, in the manifestation phase a person knows what she fears. She often has a concrete enemy with whom she fights, and these battles are part of her life order, partially ritualized, with long-term methodical preparation. When these battles occur, the person suffers losses, her enemy also suffers losses, both draw conclusions from the fight, and continue preparing for the next. Moreover, the person has a rough idea of her enemy, possesses information about her plans, intelligence reports on new weapons she intends to use, and her weak points are completely exposed—she sees them and tries in some way to compensate for or patch them up. (For the creation phase, conversely, a characteristic feature is a completely unexpected attack by an unknown enemy and the discovery of unknown holes in defense, of which the person had no idea.)
What does a person fear in the dissolution phase? At least not destruction as such. It occurs in this phase quite naturally; the person is adapted to it and accepts it. However, this destruction may proceed too disharmoniously, may be associated with poor understanding of the subtleties of the deep meaning of what is happening, and the inability to direct this process so that it brings benefit rather than harm to the surrounding world—that is, so that it is sufficiently ecological. For example, in old age, it is important for a person to have the opportunity to help their children and grandchildren—not so much physically or economically, but with wise advice. If this opportunity is absent—for instance, if the children do not listen, or the elder has nothing to say, or his memories of the past have no one to hear and draw important personal conclusions from—then this very lack becomes the suffering of the elderly person.
Diseases characteristic of old age are, obviously, its inevitable attribute. In the author’s opinion, they precisely indicate defects in the person’s and their physical body’s passage through
