Nice tree nemo. As for instilling a particular kind of energy into art buy the artist - I have taken that for granted for a long time, and indeed most artists I have known would agree, albeit in their own words and concepts - not mine. The difference is important though, because I feel artists have vacated their responsibility ... but that's another subject.
We should realise that the concepts of Foreign Instillation or flyer, along with so many concepts DJ introduced, are simply ways of speaking about things which do not fit within that framework of language or 'idea'. We have to create a handle to assist us in dealing, but there are many handles and we should never believe the handle is the thing. DJ used multiple ways of talking about the same thing - everything lead to the same point, but the pathways were not only arbitrary, they also had significance in the fuller understanding.
One of the problems with speaking of the FI is that our language itself is owned by the FI. So I use words and terms to come to comprehension from different angles, not all analytical. Thus the word 'owned' is a metaphor, not an accurate black-letter term that asks to be defended on the basis of grammatical rigour. It is not possible to speak of the FI objectively, because we are using a form of understanding exchange that has long ago become infused by the intent of the FI. However, I will attempt to say some things, so long as you realise these are only indicators for the same kind of receptivity nemo speaks of about in awareness of energy in art.
The FI is not a gadget implanted in some part of the brain. It could be better thought of as a hue. It is an underlying direction of intent in the whole way humanity perceives the world, and it has been different in different cultures. It suffuses our sense of who we are thoroughly, such that to attack it is to attack our very being, or so we deeply believe.
It set up a condition in our mind which activates the emotional centre of the mind - not the emotional centre of our body itself. There is a sub centre of each of the major components of our being, in each of the other major components. Thus there an emotional sub-centre in the mind, which becomes triggered by thoughts and 'bundles' of thoughts, which we could call complexes or patterns.
The FI filters through our entire mental processes to arrange a condition whereby we become emotionally charged. This charged emotion is emanated out of us - that is the important thing to realise. Emotions are like energetic light that floods out of us. It is not too big a step to realise that this discharge can be food for others, which is why we love and are energised by good entertainment. But the FI is designed to emphasise dark emotions - heavy, brooding, fearful etc. Not necessarily directly - that would be too simple. It set us up with the attraction to uplifting emotions, but with the underlying trajectory of them turning sour. It is very clever. The end result is a suffusion of depressive energy throughout our own being and into the world around us. The flyers are a way of describing the spirits who like to feed of this anguish - they are anguish spirits, and their effect is to drag us down and make us heavy.
Because the FI has embedded itself in our mind so effectively, it can not be eradicated. To do that would be to have to rebuild the mind from scratch, and would also separate us from our fellow humans in an autistic way that would be deleterious for our wellbeing. It is too late to eradicate. But it can be repositioned.
To reposition the FI, we have to break it's command. This command is like a beam of current that we are totally transfixed into - it is our identity. It is not the only beam option, but while we are transfixed within it, it is the only option - that is the nature of 'beams': they are each total universes in themselves.
To break the command of the FI we have to break the beam of our identity. DJ also spoke about this from a different angle when we talked of breaking our reflective shell. He also spoke of it when talking about detachment, when he explained no matter how hard to try to develop detachment, it can only come as a consequence of breaking the shell. Breaking the shell is just another way of describing breaking the beam. Both mean death.
It means death because there are two deaths - the perception of death as we approach it, and the actual death of the body. Adepts separate out these two, and have the audacity to attempt the first death while putting off the second. Which can't always work, because it's only by approaching the second death that we are able to deal with the first, otherwise it's just another mental game. This is a very sophisticated manoeuvre, but because it is actually written into another beam, which can cross our dominant beam, many people fall into this separation by sheer accident, which can be a good or bad thing for them depending on how they are able to put themselves back together, like Humpty Dumpty couldn't. Adepts of the Path - the path to realisation - know what they are doing, so are better placed to know how to rebuild their identity: they come this way by intent, not accident.
Once the beam of our identity has been snapped, the hue of the FI is also shattered. We don't need to root it out, we just need to grasp this opportunity to place it in our tool bag along with all our other tools, to be used when we decree, instead of its decree.
But the shattering of the FI hue, and replacement with a different direction that we 'face', a different beam, means that the flyers are not able to drink our milk like they used to, because they now find it has a flavour that is distasteful for them - it lacks that morbid anguish flavour, even when it is sad and fearful. The emotions become fresh, whereas the flyers prefer stale solar-plexus energy.
I could say a lot more about the taste the flyers prefer, because it has become an experience of considerable fascination for me. But that's for another time. One thing I will say, is that the energy generated by the FI is vicious. You can talk about it to almost everyone, in the abstract, like we are doing here, but as soon as you name it when it is activated, be ready for a viscous assault back at you. This assault is viscous by dint of the very fact it has the full backing of the person's soul. To attack the FI in another is to attack their soul, which is why the remedy needs to be so severe. (Rudolf Steiner has some good lectures on the death of the soul as a necessary gateway on the Path. These ideas I speak of are common in every serious tradition.)
