Marion Milner on Mysticism and Creativity

(Field, 1937, p. 205). Real wisdom, writes Milner, only grows under the conditions of utter loss of all sense of purpose, standard or ideal.

Emptinesss is also a theme in On Not Being Able to Paint. Here Milner describes a process of "contemplative action," which involved giving up the wish to paint or draw an exact picture of everything she had seen. When she was able to break free from mechanical copying, she experienced a complete lack of self-consciousness, accompanied by the feeling that the ordinary sense of self had disappeared. Milner compares this to states of blankness referred to in mystical writings, such as the Tao te Ching. While analysts have correlated these types of experiences to the "satisfied sleep of the infant at the mother's breast" (Milner 1950, p. 154), Milner suggests that blankness is the beginning of "something," a necessary prelude to a new integration: "May they not be moments in which there is a plunge into no-differentiation, which results (if all goes well) in a re-emerging into a new division of the me-not-me, one in which there is more of the 'me' in the 'not-me', and more of the 'not-me' in the 'me'?" (Milner 1950, pp. 154-5). To explore a confusion of "me" and "not-me" also is key, for Milner, to experiencing joy in living. It is to indulge in reverie (Milner, 1950).

Dragstedt (1998) suggests that in calling emptiness a phase of the "fertility cycle of creativity," Milner meant a state of "expectant waiting." Milner acknowledged that sitting with emptiness could elicit considerable anxiety, both because it evoked childhood trauma and elicited feelings of voidness, uselessness, meaninglessness. However, from states of emptiness moments of transcendence could arise.

Thus far I have discussed Milner's view of emptiness in terms of relinquishing the clinging to self and as a phase of the "fertility cycle of creativity." A central distinction, however, must be made between regenerative and unregenerative emptiness, or "good" and "bad" emptiness, in her work. For Milner, only good, regenerative or "pregnant" emptiness is conducive to psychological and spiritual growth. In Eternity's Sunrise (1987a), for example, Milner distinguishes between pregnant emptiness and the traumatic effects of a mother's too soon or too sudden absence, which can result in painful experiences of blackness. These experiences, in her view, can be so unpleasant that unconscious memories of them can interfere with accepting them as "one phase of the fertility cycle" (Milner, 1987a, p. 164). The same is true in cases when emptiness or "nothingness" is based on a denial of "somethingness" - something one wishes not to see or know.

Dragstedt (1998) explains that for Milner, conscious imaginings are surrendered in a different way in regenerative versus unregenerative emptiness. In unregenerative emptiness, the reality of the world and body can be wiped out with unconscious hatred, potentially resulting in madness. In regenerative emptiness, the individual surrenders conscious imaginings not with hatred, but with a "willful kind of resignation." This kind of emptiness can lead to refreshed awareness, creative regeneration, and, in some cases, mystical awareness (Dragstedt, 1998). Good emptiness is exemplified in a quotation from one of Milner's patients, a boy who had told her when painting a house, "There are two kinds of black, horrid black and a lovely shiny black" (Milner, 1987a, p. 164). Milner believed that problems