Winifred Hodge Rose
Assigned reading:
Primary runes in the bind-rune above: Mannaz, Eihwaz, Algiz, Ansuz, Ingwaz, Dagaz, Kenaz.
A Framework of Thought
I wrote in Study Guide 1 about how our sensations have to go through a process of interpretation before we can make sense of them as meaningful perceptions about the world around us, whether the outer physical world, or the inner world of the imagination that bridges to the Otherworlds. Our physical sensations are picked up through our sensory organs, transferred through our nervous system and into our brain, and are there interpreted based on instinctive, rational, and cultural cues and imbedded information. Our imaginative perception system works in analogous ways. I discussed the role of our souls in both of these processes.
These systems are our ‘perceptual framework’. It is partially instinctive and built into our body systems, and partially learned and conditioned by our life experiences and by what we are taught, and how we are taught, about the world around us. Our ‘framework of thought’ works in similar ways. Part of it is instinctive: we have an instinctive ability to learn language, for example, and to use it for communication along with body language. Much of it is constructed through our responses to our life experiences, to what we have been taught and learned, and through social conditioning. Though I’m calling it a framework of ‘thought’, emotion is intertwined with these thoughts as well. This whole instinctive / conditioned / reasoned amalgam of complex mental and emotional action and reaction is the core of our Hugr soul, though other souls such as Mod are involved, as well.
As we perceive this amalgam in ourselves and others, it may at times seem to be a shapeless, churning mass of many strands tangled together. But at its core, it is not: it is an exquisitely detailed framework that our Hugr constructs and maintains throughout our lifetime. Hugr latches onto our instinctive mental and emotional capacities during the earliest period of our life to begin building and operating through this framework of thought, and continues for as long as our Lichama is able to sustain mental functioning. All of our thoughts, experiences, reactions are material for Hugr to use, to construct and modify our own framework of thought. This framework shapes the way we think and reason, the way we react and desire, and our perceptions, attitudes and judgements about everything around us.
In a nutshell, here is how it works. We use all of our perceptions, our thoughts and ideas, our desires and longings, our reactions and judgements, to build a picture of the world around us, and of our place and role within it, which seems coherent and logical to us (though we may not like it, nor feel we have chosen it ourself). Each experience and each thing we learn either strengthens and confirms this framework of understanding, or it helps to fill in missing parts and weak spots, or it challenges part or all of the framework because it is so different and does not fit in with what we have already constructed.
Along with this process come emotional reactions: defensiveness, curiosity, enlightenment, anger, rejection, resentment, fear, avoidance, rationalization, excitement, acceptance, and many more. We take in experiences and ideas, and we send out thoughts, ideas, reactions, attitudes, words and deeds. In the center of the framework lie our desires and longings, the deep roots of Hugr, shaping everything that passes through. Everything, as it comes in and as it goes out, is shaped into coherence for us as it passes through our framework of thought, built up over our lifetime.
Depending on the associated emotions, we may be open to re-tuning our framework in the light of new understanding and information, or we may hunker down in our framework-bunker and defend it for all we are worth. If we are too open to influence and change, our thought-structure becomes shaky, confused, garbled; its foundations are insufficient to support the large but flimsy superstructure of new, unexamined and untested ideas, thoughts and desires that are shoved into it at every opportunity. If we are not open enough, our structure becomes a stagnated fortress, unable to expand, adjust, evolve; increasingly maladapted to an ever-changing environment. It handicaps our ability to interact with others in constructive ways.
Our Hugr constructs and maintains our framework of thought, and expresses itself through it as we live in this world of Midgard. We can see the framework as one of Hugr’s hamas, a soul-skin that it creates during Midgard life. When we look at it in this way, we can see a linkage between Hugr’s thought-framework hama, and Aldr’s Werold-hama (see my article Aldr and Orlay: Weaving a World). Aldr’s Werold-hama is a fabric made of our life-experiences, woven on the loom of Time and Ørlög. Hugr’s framework of thought is the way it operates in human social space in Midgard; its loom is the society, the mental and emotional context, within which we live and take action, both inner action and outer action. Our Werold records our life-experiences, while our Hugr’s framework of thought shapes our life-experiences, our perceptions of them, and the way we take action in response to those perceptions.
Hlutro Hugiu: Clarifying the Hugr
In the assigned reading I talk a bit about this process of clarifying the Hugr, creating a hlutro hugiu, a clear or pure Hugi / Hugr. When we understand the role that Hugr’s hama, our framework-of-thought, plays in our life, our thoughts, our actions, we can see the importance of this clarification of our Hugr-soul. If our whole perception of the social / mental / emotional world around us, and our sole basis for action and reaction in that world, is a muddy, clouded, tangled, stuck-together mess of bits and pieces, our own actions are going to be ineffective and counterproductive for ourselves and others. There will be mismatches galore between our perceptions and actions, and the actual situations, thoughts and emotions of others around us, all working at cross-purposes.
The clarification of our Hugr is a process of self-examination, of honesty and objectivity about ourselves, our thoughts, actions and choices in our lives. We can think of it as a quality-control process to ensure that as our framework of thought continues to build, day by day, the things we select to build into it, and the way it is built, are worthy, true to our highest standards, and meaningful. And we can work our way through what has already been built, our current way of seeing and interpreting our human, social world, to see what components and structures might need restructuring, based on a more objective perception of the world around us.
Our Hugr can learn to observe our conscious self, and others around us, with clear eyes and an unblocked heart, a heart and mind full of courage and wisdom, to deal with the human world-outside-us as it is, and not as we fear it is, or wish it were, or are determined to force it to be. This does require a great deal of courage, insight and wisdom, strength of character, honest understanding and compassion toward ourself and toward others. This is a life-long process of inner learning and development: it is the path of clear-sighted wisdom and stout-heartedness that is Hugr’s true nature and destiny, that it will carry forward into lives yet to come.
The Role of Desire
Hugr’s deepest roots lie, not in thought itself, but in desire, longing, yearning: the inner part of ourselves that reaches out into the world for what we truly want, with all our heart and soul. Thought, courage, character, behavior, all the traits and strengths of the Hugr soul, both positive and negative, are capacities that Hugr develops in order to pursue and achieve its deepest desires. This is where we need to begin, in order to gradually and progressively clarify our Hugr.
Tightly wound with desire and yearning are other deep emotions. We fear that we will fail to attain our desire, or that we will lose it, if we do attain it. We are envious of others who have what we desire. We become angry and defensive when we compete and contest with others who we perceive are taking or threatening what we desire. When Hugr is focused upon these threats to its desires, it develops subtle and intelligent, but exploitative and selfish ways of thinking and acting. It develops a framework of thought that interprets the world around it as being hostile and threatening, ripe for exploitation and manipulation, and considers that its task in life is to react accordingly.
I think that if we look within and around ourselves today, in every direction, we can see this happening within our sociopolitical world. I think that the current social / political / economic problems we are all struggling with are a massive manifestation of collective Hugr and Mod reactivity. This illustrates how powerful these souls can be, and how difficult it is to handle the situation when they switch into their negative modes. On all sides of the issues, the deepest drivers of people’s actions are fear of losing what they desire, envy of others who have what they want, and angry defensiveness against whatever stands in the way of achieving their desires.
When I say this, I do not at all mean to imply that people’s deepest desires themselves are ‘wrong’, neither our own, nor anyone else’s. The ‘wrong’ comes when those desires are pursued in selfish, violent and exploitative ways, rather than pursued as a collective and cooperative venture where others’ desires and needs are respected, as well as one’s own. Whatever way one goes about this, our Hugr and Mod souls are deeply involved, and hence the need to clarify our Hugr and direct our Mod’s Will appropriately.
Exercise 10-1: Your Deepest Longings
Disclaimer: Read through this exercise first, and decide how safe it is for you to pursue it. I realize that it could be overwhelming. Yet, to make progress in healing our souls and our lives, it’s important to reach the point where you can do this kind of exercise. If the exercise appears overwhelming or unsafe, consider whether there is some way you could slowly ‘tiptoe’ into the experience, and / or create a safe space for yourself that would hold and protect you while you pursue the exercise.
Become still, and sink your awareness deep into your Heart. Use your physical senses to sense your heartbeat and the flow of your life-blood in and out, and how your breath and the movement of your lungs work with it. Feel your heartbeat, and sink into that sensation.
Use your other-senses to tune in to what is there, at the root of your heart: your deepest longings, yearnings, wishes, desires. What do you truly, truly want, more than anything else in the world? What longing lies at the very root of yourself?
Tears may flow as you do this; you may feel a ‘wallowing’ or churning sensation in your breast, a roiling of emotion, a desire to shout, sob, growl, howl or roar, or experience an unexpected bursting-out of galdor. The energy may want to follow its natural flow from your heart into your throat and voice that express what is in your heart, or that block this expression. Let this energy flow, let it churn and stir things up within your breast: this is your deep-Hugr waking up and coming into your awareness. It’s uncomfortable and unsettling, disturbing, but necessary for your deep-Hugr to rise into your awareness like this.
Write about this experience in your Daybook; you may or may not wish to share it with others. Often, this feels very intimate and private, and sometimes it is emotionally clear, but difficult to express in words and rational description. Often, when we put our deepest desires into words, they may just seem like trite platitudes. The very process of ‘wording’ or verbalizing these feelings may rob them of much of their power, so don’t force them into words unless that feels natural. Often art is a better way to express these longings: through music, poetry, painting, dance, etc., and this can be done in the imagination as well as in the physical world.
As you work through this exercise, one time or multiple times, discover some kind of symbol, token or key to these deep longings of yours, that you can use as a shorthand for focusing your awareness. It could be anything: perhaps a bindrune, a color, a piece of music, an image, a few words or a poem, the memory of an experience, or a sensation within your breast.
Exercise 10-2: Attuning Actions with Longings
As you go about your daily life, keep a part of your awareness on the token that symbolizes your deepest longings. During the day, and at the end of the day as you go to sleep, evaluate how well your actions and thoughts are attuned to your deepest longings, and how they serve to either bring you closer, or cause you to drift away and be distracted from the heart of your Hugr. Gradually, guide this awareness and attunement between your deep-Hugr, and the daily actions of your surface-Hugr, into becoming a habitual frame of mind and basis for daily action.
This is the first step in clarifying your Hugr: becoming aware of the deep-Hugr’s longings, and beginning to see how well, or how poorly, your daily thoughts and actions match up with those longings, and move you toward achieving them.
Here is a personal example. One of my own deepest longings, as well as I can express it verbally, is for a stable condition of inner peace and tranquility, that I can maintain as a refuge and as a wellspring of pure, nourishing spiritual energy, amidst all the turmoil of daily life. Anything that goes on in my thoughts, feelings, and in the world around me, can and often does disturb, roil and muddy that beautiful and tranquil wellspring, the token of my longing. I hold the image of this wellspring in my mind, imagining it located in my breast, heart and throat, and try to attune my thoughts, emotions, words and actions in such a way that they feed clear water into the spring, rather than disturbing it, polluting it, or cutting off its flow. The more I am able to keep this up, the stronger and more stable this wellspring of peace feels within me.
More Clarification of the Hugr
Clarifying the Hugr involves—not necessarily the separation of thought from emotion—but the awareness of how our emotions are involved in our thoughts. Once we achieve that awareness, we can choose how we want to proceed from there. Are the emotions involved in our thoughts supportive of our thought processes? Do they help us achieve what we want to achieve by our thinking? Or do they distort our thoughts and sidetrack or coopt our purposes for thinking?
Here’s an example using the emotion of fear or worry, which often colors our thinking. Let’s say that we are worried about our financial situation, and fear the consequences of it continuing. That worry and fear may overwhelm us, to the point where it is hard to think clearly and act rationally to work on the problem. We may use the tactic of avoidance and excuses because of our painful emotional reactions, or even fall into a state of subdued panic, so that we try not to even think about the problem in the illogical hope that it will ‘just go away.’ Here, strong negative emotions are seriously blocking our thought processes, preventing us from actually pursuing rational approaches to the problem.
When we have learned to clarify our Hugr, this cooptation of our thought processes by strong emotions can be nipped in the bud, if we choose. Instead, the emotion can be used to motivate clear thought, instead of to block and confuse it.
A primary characteristic of a strong Hugr (and Mod) is courage, an attitude that should never be undervalued, but should be brought into play whenever we are faced with a problem or situation. This needs to be super-emphasized: courage is a fundamental characteristic of Hugr and Mod. Life is full of challenges, great and small, personal challenges and challenges that are part of our membership in larger circles of family, community, nation, world. I believe that one of the main reasons for the integration of Mod and Hugr into our soular system is their quality of courage that allows us to survive and thrive in the face of all the challenges of life. At a very basic level, courage is what keeps us alive and able to act in this world, and it is the gift of Hugr and Mod, our Midgard-oriented souls.
So, back to our example. Fear can paralyze rational thought, and prevent us from finding workable approaches to our problem. Or else, the emotion of fear or worry, when it first begins to arise within us, can trigger our clarified Hugr to sit up and take notice, and realize that courage and clarity of thought are needed. Then, the fear or worry can serve as a spur, a motivator, for clear-thinking, analytical Hugr and courageous, strategic Mod to focus all their powers to find the best mode of action for our situation, and pursue it.
The same process can be applied for other emotions, such as anger, indignation, impulsiveness, discouragement, etc. It also applies to situations where we are not trying to solve a personal problem, but are trying to understand something clearly, which has strong emotional overtones. We are daily faced with obvious examples of this, such as social conflict and climate change. These are major issues that are saturated with emotional overtones as well as factual components. We need a clear and courageous Hugr, with a clarified framework of thought and perspective, to be able to pursue deeper understanding of these vital and complex matters, and form a clear perspective that allows us to respond in the best way we can. Fear, anger, outrage, can overwhelm clear thought about these matters and drive destructive responses, or they can energize our thinking and our desire to seek rational, workable solutions, depending on how our Hugr handles things.
Having a clarified Hugr does not mean we have removed emotion from our thinking; it means we recognize the dynamics in operation among our emotions and our thoughts, and are able to use these dynamics strategically rather than becoming overwhelmed by emotion which is blocking our rational thought processes.
Emotions as Fuel for Hugr
A clarified Hugr is sensitive and aware of emotions as they arise within us, and is able to judge when action needs to be taken, based on these emotions. Our emotions are like signals and responses that go on all day and night, responding to our inner and outer environment, building on each other and powering our actions, thoughts and attitudes. Hugr can read and interpret these emotional signals; as it says in the Havamal (verse 95): “Hugr alone knows what lies near the heart; Hugr alone knows Sefa.” (See my article Sefa: The Soul of Relationship, about our Sefa, the place where we hold what is closest to us, what matters most to us.)
The point here is that Hugr knows our emotions, is alert to them, and will use them as ‘fuel’ for its thinking and actions. Then the question becomes: do we want our Hugr to use our emotions to act in negative ways, such as powerful envy and greed, manipulation, deception, vengefulness, and so forth, to gain its own selfish ends? Or do we want our Hugr to take a different path, to use its powers in different ways? As we pursue the process of clarifying our Hugr, we become aware that Hugr accesses all our emotions, positive and negative, and that we can choose how those emotions will power Hugr’s actions in our life.
Here we return again to the matter of ‘building character’, as I discussed in the previous study guide about Mod. A person of good and strong character still has negative and weak emotions and impulses, just like everyone does. But such a person’s Hugr and Mod have the skills to handle such emotions and impulses, either turning their energy into alternate, positive forms, or else simply choosing not to use that particular emotional energy, without trying to beat it down or beat themselves up for having such emotions. Being aware of what lies within us means that we can choose how to respond to it; being unaware means that we are driven by subconscious impulses that can lead to disruption and harm in our lives and actions.
Exercise 10-3: Making Friends with Hugr
As I wrote about in the assigned reading, Hugr (and Sefa) is the soul where we feel the emotions of love and friendship. Hugr longs for trusted relationships, for networks of social interaction and mutual support, and all the emotional richness and complexity involved with this. Hugr’s powers of thought are designed to support our participation within complex networks of human activities and interactions. And equally so, for our relationships and activities with non-physical beings such as spirits and Deities.
Friendship, trust, understanding, knowledge, loyalty: these things are highly valued by Hugr, and it is the Hugr within us that urges us to pursue and maintain these things with others. Likewise, it is the Hugr who feels wistful, envious, or vengeful, when these gifts of human interaction are not working the way Hugr wants them to. So, among the first things to do as we work with our Hugr, is to make friends with it ourself, and promote its friendship with our other souls. I find it a bit difficult to ‘prescribe’ how to do this, since each of us has our own ways of pursuing friendship. But there are certain things we may all agree on, as being good ways to begin the pursuit of a friendship.
Very often, one of the main things that appeals to us about our closest friends is that we ‘like the way they think’. When we say this about a person, ‘the way they think’ certainly includes emotional factors as well as intellectual ones. Emotions as well as thoughts are major components of friendship. Here, we are firmly within Hugr’s domain: thoughts enriched by emotions, emotions clarified and expressed by thoughts, all serving as the medium within which a rich and satisfying relationship can grow.
So, here’s the challenge for this exercise: make friends with your Hugr. Get to know and understand your Hugr, using the approaches I’ve outlined here and in Study Guide 8: understanding Hugr’s deepest desires and longings, understanding what motivates it, how it responds to positive and negative situations, what its reactions are like, beginning to understand the framework of thought it has been constructing during your whole lifetime, and observing how it thinks about things. Approach this as you would a new friendship with another person you think you will like, not as though you are being critical and controlling toward yourself and your own behavior.
This is obviously not something that will be done in a couple of meditation sessions! Just like building a friendship, it begins tentatively and grows with time, as you get to know yourself and each other better. Any friend you make is not going to be a ‘perfect person’, and part of building friendship and trust is learning how to deal with our own and our friend’s imperfections. Same with Hugr: approach Hugr as an ‘inner person’ with its own strengths and weaknesses, its own ability to learn, change and grow, its own needs and motivations, its own patterns of thought and behavior.
I know it’s confusing, because all these things relating to Hugr are our own Hugr-soul, our own thoughts, feelings, motives, so it’s hard to understand how to do this as though we are dealing with two different people. Try to identify, within yourself, the ‘observer’ who can stand back and see things about yourself objectively. The one who says: “I am feeling frustrated, I am feeling relaxed, I am thinking about what I should do, etc.” How do you know these things about yourself, know what you (and your various souls) are thinking, feeling, doing? You can only know them by observing yourself, which means there is something within you capable of stepping back from the ‘actor’, the one who is doing / feeling / thinking these things, and is able to make these kinds of observations.
This observer-self should observe your / Hugr’s thoughts and behavior with a friendly, interested attitude, an attitude that says: “I know you’re not perfect, but you’re very interesting and intriguing, very deep and strong. I think we’ve got a lot in common and I’d like to get to know you better.” (To further add to the confusion, Hugr is also an observer of our self, as I am suggesting here that our self can observe our Hugr. It’s sort of like standing between two mirrors, and watching the multiple reflections. We will get into this additional layer of complexity later on, but it needs to build on the layers I’m discussing here.)
Something to keep in mind: when we make friends, or have any other kind of relationship with another person, positive or negative, it is largely the other person’s Hugr (and Sefa) that we are forming that relationship with. Humans interact ‘Hugr to Hugr’, though of course other souls are much involved as well. Human activities, including relating to each other, involve all our souls, but the souls that are primarily responsible for building and maintaining relationships of any kind are Hugr and Sefa. In learning to create the most healthy relationships with others, it also behooves us to create a true and trusting friendship with our own clarified Hugr.