Empathising with Flaubert

Done more research about creativity, epilepsy and watching the mind and found detail about Flaubert's epilepsy and his writing about it:....

The onset of his epileptic attacks allowed Flaubert to abandon his education at law school and, in many ways, created a space for Flaubert to live a life of the imagination.

He was working away at studying for his law examinations, had taken a brief break from his studies and returned to Rouen to visit with his family. While home, his older brother Achille and he had gone on a trip to look into the possibility of buying a cottage. On that ride in the dark which is unimaginable to us now because we live in a world that is perpetually filled with light pollution, Flaubert had his first attack of epilepsy. His falling allowed him to return to a life of reverie and, although there were innumerable fees to be paid to the gods of modern day medicine, his time became his own.

But what had happened? What had transpired in his mind? Later, he would write to his lover, Louise Colet, in a letter the following:

"Each attack was like a hemorrhage of the nervous system. Seminal losses from the pictorial faculty of the brain, a hundred thousand images cavorting at once in a kind of fireworks. It was a snatching of the soul from the body, excruciating. (I am convinced I died several times.) But what constitutes the personality, the rational essence, was present throughout; had it not been, the suffering would have been for nothing, for I would have been purely passive, whereas I was always conscious even when I could no longer speak. Thus my soul was turned back entirely on itself, like a hedgehog wounding itself with its own quills."

The fireworks of the self caught in temporal agony. The space of the self becomes expansive and vast. I understand this particular possibility of the self because it resonates with what I've felt in the past. The agony of seeing past the limit. The limit of the agony past seeing. The seeing limit of the past agony. There is a space of consequent understanding here which belies any simple attempt to map the mind.

A lot i can empathise with here, now where is one of his books... :-)

Forum post about Epileptic Meditation

:-) Another post i wrote going back to other way - into a community of epileptics interested in meditation ...

hope you are all keeping well. So busy today didnt stop but managed to stay fairly chilled by not setting aside mad energy for later :-p....

I have have temporal lobe epliepsy since 10 yrs old and started meditating at 16. I have been a practicing buddhist for 14yrs now and am very interested in meeting others that apply mediataion to their seizures. I find that as opposed to being a healing exercise for my seizures, my meditiation helps me to understand and work with the subtle minds that surface during a seizure.

I have found mostly negative outlook on epilepsy from buddhist who dont know much about it or the mind, and also from epileptics whose main aim seems to stop seizure through many medication experiments. I have epliepsy that is hard to treat and as such my epileptic state has become part of my spiritual path. Someone on a Buddhist forum mentioned that Buddha for example cant have had epilepsy because he was a blessed being, well they miss the point of a Buddha entirely...

Buddhas start as normal human beings, and from that point (hindered by an as-sortment of the sorts of things humans have to deal with e.g. epilepsy) they work with their obstructions gaining a deeper and deeper knowledge of them so, knowing their true enemy of delusion, they can become released from it and therefore help others who are also 'drowning in samsara'.

A true Buddhist would see nothing as a complete dead end to their path, even in the most difficult conditions. My meditation smoothes my seizures, i think when i am most successful i become one with them and gain much insight.

Long time no speaky...

I have just resigned from my local council :( I have been trying to represent young mothers and disabled but i keep having seizures couple of hours before the meetings when i am all prepped and ready to go. I think the stress triggers them.

So maybe i post here more often now i dont get all that paper work. Thankless task being a councillor, no pay, lots of paperwork and everywhere you go in your town people stop to debate with you whatever else you happen to be doing. Also you get blamed for anything people dont like and label as inactive by people who dont bother to stand for local councils or maybe even turn up to vote ... what a world.

Anyway i posted this today about Epilepsy and Tantric Meditation ...

Hey everyone :) I have been on a rolling sea journey with my epilepsy recently. I use to have sharper attacks but now they are smoother and put me in a different space for a long time. I have been working with a mahamudra relationship to my seizures for a while now, there is no room for attachment at all once they start to hit and i think this has been a great gift to me to make to most of where my path is concerned. The mind is wilder or deeper now than it has been in the past, my absence and simple partial seizures rolling into each other. The only thing that feels like delusion when i am relaxed is a fear of drowning. Like if i ride on the ocean of the mind in epileptic state i can feel more closely the actual waves and motion of it, but that entails looking into the ocean which is deep. A cave looks like the best option :-p If i let go i am not sure if convention will prevail and i am a busy mother of young children on that level. So i guess although diving seems like the best option for my bodhisattva mind... it is scary in its formlessness and i am not sure if that is what this manifestation of reality right now is about. Anyone heard about epileptic tantrists? I think my epilepsy is very different from grand mal from what i have heard from those who suffer for it - they pretty much 'leave the building' when it happens. I am there to witness the process of mind, which has always set me out as a bit strange and interested in deep process. :-p Just chatting ^^