Marion Milner
A frequently interesting book that I was tempted to give up on when my own dullness got in the way.
I'd never heard of the writer, and have completely forgotten how this book ended up in my library, however I am glad to have read it.
Philosophy is not a particular interest of mine but I found myself in agreement with Milner's approach to living.
There were brief hints of her personal life allowing the nosy reader me! sneaky glances at a woman who is brilliant with her patients but, perhaps, devotes too much time to working and worrying about working.
I've finished the book and would love to know more about her, Perhaps I will get her 'A Life of One's Own' in the hope that it is more personal.
But this was an intriguing read that will stay with me, Despite the subtitle, "A Way of Keeping a Diary", this is not a selfhelp book nor even a creative writing guide.
Marion Milner examines "beads" in her diaries, moments of intense personal experience which, through introspection and selfanalysis, offer her insights into her individuality.
When I began reading "Eternity's Sunrise" I was startled and delighted to find I shared some of these beads with her in her visits to Greece.
Yet when I read on I lost this sense of identification as her writing became increasingly selfabsorbed and distant from my own experiences.
I shall hold onto her concept of beads as insights in my own diaries into my individuality, and also to the book itself for her vivid descriptions of the Greece I have myself known.
Yet somehow the Eternitys Sunrise's early promise failed to deliver and I have been left with a feeling of disappointment.
This was a satisfying read in that the author was aging at this point and became if possible even more introspective, and it was fascinating to follow the delight she took in seemingly simple things but on a much deeper level.
Internalizing experience can happen at a lot of levels, and it seems to me that as one ages one seems to see eternity more easily in the mundane.
I think that's what I'm trying to get at as what I found in this book,
Marion Milner also wasn't just any aging woman, She was someone who'd explored her inner workings from the time she was young, had spent years helping others do so as a psychoanalyst, and had never stopped growing and learning and considering that there was something deeper she needed to get at.
So many people seem to decide that they're "finished" at some point and become more knowitall than questing.
I feel that it's our quests that really define us and make us wise rather than just knowledgeable.
The book is organized as a kind of internal travelogue, It follows her on four different trips to Greece, and a visit to Israel, paying attention only to what stood out for her, observations if you will that she identifies as "beads" as if she were putting together a string of prayer beads, each one special for its own and her own internal reasons.
This isn't what one expects from a travelogue, There isn't anything that a casual tourist looks for, It will appeal only to the tourist of the psyche, playing with the images that stand out for the author in her travels, viewed as one might read the images in dreams.
Some passages that I penciled stand out:
p: "Now I knew what it was I had missed in the other two visits, when there had been no time to climb the mountain, knew that it had not been that I had wanted just to see what flowers and birds were there, nor to get to the top, nor to find the Bacchantes' cave we really knew we'd never reach it, but rather to achieve something of what arriving at a holy place by mechanical transport deprives one of, the sense of spending, not one's money but one's self, to get there.
"
See the Greek play, Bacchantes by Euripides, "O hidden cave of the Curetes!" sitelink mit. edu/Euripides/bac , which the author had been reading while on an earlier trip to Greece,
p: "I had certainly found that the whole idea of turning one's attention inwards was deeply threatening to some people.
"
p: Contemplating the Daphni monastery Christ Pantrocrator mosaic ", . . could this be a glimpse of a new vision that the artist who made the mosaic was speculating about, perhaps not even knowing that he was, a secret doubt whether the wholesale rejection of the body which had become so embedded in the way Christianity had developed since the days of Christ really was what Christ had meant Could it be showing the mosaic maker's own intuition that to be truly human did not mean denying the body but redeeming it from the bodymind split that practical life in the world so often seems to demand, redeeming it by a recurrent resurrection, not after death but in this life And, therefore, not retreating from bodily love but going deeper into it, finding richer and richer possibilities in relationship, in psychic and physical creativeness, bringing the full inner body awareness into being together"
All of this was of course the author's personal musing, reflecting on her Christian upbringing and coming to terms with her early rejection of that teaching and her interest in nature and in paganism and later in psychology.
Although the author was a Freudian psychoanalyst, she occasionally referenced Jung and skirted around Jungian ideas, In fact throughout her four books that I've now read she made reference to what she called the "inner gesture" and an "Answering Activity" or "the sense of something other that lives one.
" All these I found leading to or similar to what Jung referred to as the Self,
I'll stop sharing passages here and leave the rest to be discovered by those who choose to read the book, as I think I've made clear by now that this isn't so much a travelogue of Greece and Israel as it is a travelogue of Marion Milner's unique vision of life, and an invitation for others to find their own unique visions of life.
There are some passages that refer to her earlier books and are likely best understood if one has read them, but I don't think any lack of familiarity with those books will detract too much from understanding this one.
I just feel lucky to have read them and feel
as if I know the author better to start with.
This was almost like finding as yet unread letters from a dear friend,
I'd never heard of the writer, and have completely forgotten how this book ended up in my library, however I am glad to have read it.
Philosophy is not a particular interest of mine but I found myself in agreement with Milner's approach to living.
There were brief hints of her personal life allowing the nosy reader me! sneaky glances at a woman who is brilliant with her patients but, perhaps, devotes too much time to working and worrying about working.
I've finished the book and would love to know more about her, Perhaps I will get her 'A Life of One's Own' in the hope that it is more personal.
But this was an intriguing read that will stay with me, Despite the subtitle, "A Way of Keeping a Diary", this is not a selfhelp book nor even a creative writing guide.
Marion Milner examines "beads" in her diaries, moments of intense personal experience which, through introspection and selfanalysis, offer her insights into her individuality.
When I began reading "Eternity's Sunrise" I was startled and delighted to find I shared some of these beads with her in her visits to Greece.
Yet when I read on I lost this sense of identification as her writing became increasingly selfabsorbed and distant from my own experiences.
I shall hold onto her concept of beads as insights in my own diaries into my individuality, and also to the book itself for her vivid descriptions of the Greece I have myself known.
Yet somehow the Eternitys Sunrise's early promise failed to deliver and I have been left with a feeling of disappointment.
This was a satisfying read in that the author was aging at this point and became if possible even more introspective, and it was fascinating to follow the delight she took in seemingly simple things but on a much deeper level.
Internalizing experience can happen at a lot of levels, and it seems to me that as one ages one seems to see eternity more easily in the mundane.
I think that's what I'm trying to get at as what I found in this book,
Marion Milner also wasn't just any aging woman, She was someone who'd explored her inner workings from the time she was young, had spent years helping others do so as a psychoanalyst, and had never stopped growing and learning and considering that there was something deeper she needed to get at.
So many people seem to decide that they're "finished" at some point and become more knowitall than questing.
I feel that it's our quests that really define us and make us wise rather than just knowledgeable.
The book is organized as a kind of internal travelogue, It follows her on four different trips to Greece, and a visit to Israel, paying attention only to what stood out for her, observations if you will that she identifies as "beads" as if she were putting together a string of prayer beads, each one special for its own and her own internal reasons.
This isn't what one expects from a travelogue, There isn't anything that a casual tourist looks for, It will appeal only to the tourist of the psyche, playing with the images that stand out for the author in her travels, viewed as one might read the images in dreams.
Some passages that I penciled stand out:
p: "Now I knew what it was I had missed in the other two visits, when there had been no time to climb the mountain, knew that it had not been that I had wanted just to see what flowers and birds were there, nor to get to the top, nor to find the Bacchantes' cave we really knew we'd never reach it, but rather to achieve something of what arriving at a holy place by mechanical transport deprives one of, the sense of spending, not one's money but one's self, to get there.
"
See the Greek play, Bacchantes by Euripides, "O hidden cave of the Curetes!" sitelink mit. edu/Euripides/bac , which the author had been reading while on an earlier trip to Greece,
p: "I had certainly found that the whole idea of turning one's attention inwards was deeply threatening to some people.
"
p: Contemplating the Daphni monastery Christ Pantrocrator mosaic ", . . could this be a glimpse of a new vision that the artist who made the mosaic was speculating about, perhaps not even knowing that he was, a secret doubt whether the wholesale rejection of the body which had become so embedded in the way Christianity had developed since the days of Christ really was what Christ had meant Could it be showing the mosaic maker's own intuition that to be truly human did not mean denying the body but redeeming it from the bodymind split that practical life in the world so often seems to demand, redeeming it by a recurrent resurrection, not after death but in this life And, therefore, not retreating from bodily love but going deeper into it, finding richer and richer possibilities in relationship, in psychic and physical creativeness, bringing the full inner body awareness into being together"
All of this was of course the author's personal musing, reflecting on her Christian upbringing and coming to terms with her early rejection of that teaching and her interest in nature and in paganism and later in psychology.
Although the author was a Freudian psychoanalyst, she occasionally referenced Jung and skirted around Jungian ideas, In fact throughout her four books that I've now read she made reference to what she called the "inner gesture" and an "Answering Activity" or "the sense of something other that lives one.
" All these I found leading to or similar to what Jung referred to as the Self,
I'll stop sharing passages here and leave the rest to be discovered by those who choose to read the book, as I think I've made clear by now that this isn't so much a travelogue of Greece and Israel as it is a travelogue of Marion Milner's unique vision of life, and an invitation for others to find their own unique visions of life.
There are some passages that refer to her earlier books and are likely best understood if one has read them, but I don't think any lack of familiarity with those books will detract too much from understanding this one.
I just feel lucky to have read them and feel
as if I know the author better to start with.
This was almost like finding as yet unread letters from a dear friend,
Following on from A Life of Ones Own and An Experiment in Leisure, Eternitys Sunrise explores Marion Milners way of keeping a diary.
Recording small private moments, she builds up a store of bead memories, A carved duck, a sprig of asphodel, moments captured in her travels in Greece, Kashmir and Israel, circus clowns, a painting each makes up a 'bead' that has a warmth or glow which comes in response to asking the simple question: What is the most important thing that happened yesterday
From these beads sacred, horrific, profane, funny grows a sense of an answering activity, the result of turning ones attention inwards to experience real joy.
What Marion Milner conveys so vividly and inspirationally is her lifelong intention to live as completely as possible in the moment.
With a new introduction by Hugh Haughton, Eternitys Sunrise will be essential reading for all those interested in reflecting on the nature of their own happiness whether readers from a literary, an artistic, a historical, an educational or a psychoanalytic/psychotherapeutic background.