Perspectives and the Weight of the World

The image is of course that of the Greek god Atlas holding up the world.  In Greek mythology Atlas was a symbol of strength and endurance.

Funny though, in this particular depiction it appears to me that the weight of the world is forcing him to his knees.  It is interesting how perspectives can change depending on one's state of mind.

I wonder what would happen if he just lay down and let it role off.

He'd probably feel a whole lot better.

It Seems Odd

To me.  This outpouring of joyous celebration that I see in scenes on the news reports of the death of
bin Laden.  It is as if the hometeam has finally won the World Series after years and years coming in runner-up.  Like the scene in Beantown (Boston to those of you who live afar) when the Red Sox had bested the hated Yankees in 2003 I believe it was, after many years of futility.

I live about sixty miles north of Manhattan and quite a few individuals in my hometown commute to work in Manhattan on a daily basis.  While I do not know anyone intimately who was affected by the events of 9/11 I am acquainted with a young girl here in town who lost her father that day.  Another young man whose family lives in town was killed in the disaster.

I don't know... I guess I expected a reaction that is a little more sober, a little more somber, a little more respectful of those people who were so shockingly and painfully touched directly and left behind that day and who will no doubt have some very painful memories dredged up over the next few days and weeks and perhaps months.

But what I see is clinking glasses in bars, high-fives, table-pounding and dancing in the streets.  And I cannot help but be reminded of those pieces of news footage that we see so frequently in third-world countries, where radical fundamentalists burn effigies of their enemies or worse drag the dead body of the actual enemy through the street, shooting guns into the air and assorted weapons held high in celebration because their hated enemy has been brought to his knees, or perhaps even to his grave.  To me those are scary scenes, thousands of out of control people joining in a celebration of violence.

I do not consider myself a bigot but I have to admit that sometimes when I see those scenes I think to myself "those people are nuts", the operative terms being "those people".  Them, the other, the ignorant, uneducated, unenlightened.  I don't mean those terms in a derogative manner.  I firmly believe that scenes like this play out repeatedly in third-world countries because of political and social oppression that denies basic human rights to citizens, one of those basic human rights being education.  Another being the opportunity to live without the fear of bodily harm.  It is unquestionably these traits (and no doubt others) that breed violence and bloodlust into a society of people.

And yet there we are, good old educated, enlightened Americans living in the equal opportunity Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave behaving just like "those people".

Odd.  Somehow.

A New Heaven and a New Earth

“it is only that, acting upon his naïve conviction that what he wrote was dictated by an unseen voice and that his paintings were no more than reproductions of what the inner eye had already perceived, Blake threw a brilliant light into a realm that for most men is sheathed in darkness of disbelief.”

June Singer, The Unholy Bible

This is an interesting passage in light of what I now know about manic-depressive illness. Did Dr. Singer see that William Blake was manic in his “visions”? And if he was then his voices were real. Through his mania he heard things that those of us who are “normal” would never hear and saw things that we would never see.

It is both curious and exhilarating to me that those periods of mania are desirable in their less hypo forms by the people who experience them. Perhaps the hypo-manic stages are undesirable and frightening because they tip over into that realm that exists in each of us where the darkness, the evil, the uncontrollable, the Devil resides.

Tyger, tiger burning bright…

I wonder if the “new heaven and the new earth” is that place at which we arrive that is the final culmination of human life whereby unconscious and conscious come together and integrate to create a whole new human existence. A new heaven (unconscious) and a new Earth (conscious).

As of Yet Untitled

I see at last that all the knowledge

I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me—

Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,

The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness

And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

- Randall Jarrell



We insist on believing that there is meaning to and relief from our pain. It must end, there must be a way to be, a place to go where somehow we can find a way to make it stop and when finally at that place there will be something, some thing that will make it all obvious. There will be gifts, a magical, mystical power, maybe wisdom, bestowed and we will see so clearly how it was all worthwhile. A newfound sense of freedom is what I have always hoped for. A certain knowledge what would one day gloriously catapult me into some other as of yet unimagined way of being, some other as of yet unimagined way of seeing, some other as of yet unimagined way of living. An existence of joy and freedom – I will rise up with wings like eagles, I will run and not get weary – a profound release, an incredible lightness of being.

And then sometimes I resign myself to those words of Mr. Jarrell. Those thoughts are not true. That place of freedom and lightness of being does not exist, it will not come. This is just pain for no discernable purpose and this is just darkness for no other reason than the fact that pain breeds darkness.

I used to think those thoughts, and sometimes I still do. Mostly I exist in paragraph one but sometimes I slide into paragraph two. I’m learning to live with ambiguity.

For Where Your Treasure Is

There your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:21.

There is an interesting dichotomy between body and soul. As an aside, or perhaps more accurately as a precursor to what I am about to say I have long pondered what exactly is the soul. What is that thing, that substance that defines the human soul? I have come to a conclusion that the soul is comprised of numerous attributes all culminating in that which is the essence of the person. One might call it the Self, the Center, the Christ. The Logos.

The attributes that define the Self, the mental and emotional, the unseen attributes, you cannot actually locate within your physical body but given a little thought you know it to be there nonetheless. You cannot see or hear your emotions or your thoughts, all that makes up your non-physical existence but that does not make them any less ‘there’. That we cannot view them underneath a microscope does not make them any less real.

As an aside this is where our scientific thought fails us in so many ways, or rather I should say this is where the notion that science reveals all truth fails us. Science declares that in order for something to be true, let us use the word ‘fact’, it must be observable and repeatable given the same set of external criteria, which is to say that if all factors in an experiment remain exactly the same every time than every time I should get the same results. Scientific fact. The truth. So let me ask, is that they way emotions and thoughts work? Hardly. Can I view emotions and thoughts in a laboratory on a petrie dish, define the physical conditions and know with confidence that my test will yield the same result time and time again? Hardly. Yet we know that thoughts and emotions exist. We know that humanity is comprised not only of material but also that which is immaterial. No scientist would dispute that.

But that’s another story for another time and let me get back to my original thought which was the dichotomy between body and soul.

That which ultimately decays and dies and that which lives on forever.

Our mental and emotional systems are meant to operate. If they are shut down for years and years they do not wither and die as will a physical body part. Use it or lose does not apply to that which comprises our souls. The pressure of non-use builds over the years, like a pressure-cooker. Steam building up in a closed container, it does not dissipate but rather increases in strength, searching, straining for a way out until one day it explodes. The pressure finally exceeds the level at which the heart and mind can bear and the result is bursting forth of contents, most probably in a very destructive and ugly mess.

Use it or face the ugly consequences would be a more apt way to describe the phenomenon.

There is a good reason for this.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Free Your Mind

And the rest will follow.

Sometimes when I’m driving at night on a dark highway in the pouring rain I can’t see a thing save the lights of the car ahead of me. In those times I always have the same thought which is “if this guy in front of me drives off the road I’m going right off the road with him”. Because the only thing keeping me on the road between the lines is the tail-lights of his car. In the driving rain and darkness I have no peripheral vision. To the left, to the right and above me is blackness and I am concentrating too intently on that which is in front of me, which amounts to nothing much more than his lights.

That’s a perfectly fine way to get home safely on a dark, rainy night. It is however a hell of a constricting way to live a life.

Tunnel vision would best describe my manner of living for all these years.

*****

There was a dream, and one day I could see it. Like a bird in a cage I demanded that somebody free it.

I have to admit that I’m not a big one for listening too closely to song lyrics. I generally prefer instrumental music and even those tunes that I have liked over the years it’s always been more about the music underneath the lyrics.

But every now and then…

*****

Let us say that you have a child, a boy but really it doesn’t matter. The key is that you have a child and this child is over eighteen years-old making him legally an adult. For arguments sake we’ll say that this child, this boy is twenty-three. Legally an adult, too young to have matured fully. In fact very far from having matured fully (as anyone with a 23 year-old son knows). Anyway…

The 23 year-old son has cancer that requires chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is not a pleasant experience as we all know. Nausea, vomiting, hair loss, energy loss, etc. Unpleasant. To the max.

But he does it because he has to and he experiences all there is to experience with a round of chemotherapy. Sick as dog and bald to boot.

And just as he is starting to feel better, getting his strength back, getting his hair back, getting his 23 year old life back the doctor tells him he needs to undergo another round of chemo.

And your son, your child, that walking, talking, living and breathing PIECE of you says thanks, but no thanks.

Ah, you say, nobody would do that. No rational, intelligent, reasonable human being would make such a decision when his life is on the line.

Clearly you have never, ever encountered a 23 year old boy.

Some might say I should be using the term ‘man’ when referring to a 23 year old male person. I would refer you to my previous sentence.

What would you do? Well here is what (at least most of) you would do. You would tie him up, in chains if you had to and you would physically drag him to the hospital if you had to. There would be no question of letting him make his own decision. He’ll die without the treatment, you are his parent, there is but one option and you will not stop until you see him sitting in that chair, hooked up to that I.V. drip. And you will do it again, and again and yet again if you have to. And nobody but nobody would question you for your guerilla tactics.

But what if that sickness that your child carries around is a sickness of the soul? No less potentially lethal and manifesting itself in a hundred different ways simultaneously.

You know that the only potential “cure” is going to be with a healthy and continuous dose of psychotherapy (and medication if necessary).

What does a parent do in this situation?

And at what point does it become ok for the parent to ask the child to sacrifice themselves in the interest of saving the parent?

Because as any parent knows the loss of the child takes the parent also.

You Are Not What They Say You Are

I can read all the books about creativity that I want, it ain’t going to make me creative. Although it can help me to know that potential exists. What I need is to dig in, push past the fears and see what’s in there. I need to push past the fears and clean out the muck. That feels the most relevant right now. Too many thoughts born of holding them all in for a lifetime, never letting them out, always doubting them, doubting myself. Let them loose, examine them, see what they’re made of, be inquisitive rather than disdainful of them. Discover what I am made of.

I do not think that You are anything like they say You are. I sense You as a force, an energy, shimmering unseen to our naked, physical eye. And yet consuming every square inch of what we call ‘space’. Flowing through and impelling everything that is. The life force that holds it all together. And part and parcel of that energy is all that we think and feel, our mental and emotional energy and that which includes our capacity to both love and hate. It includes our capacity to create anything and everything that I can bring into being from my mental and emotional energy.

I think You are there and here. “Out there” and “In here”. Not a stream but THE energy that glues all that is together. That which connects me – however indirectly (and yet so directly) to the smallest particle of matter in an ocean on the other side of the planet and in outer space a million miles away.

The Christ. I AM the way, the truth and the life. I have long puzzled over this statement. But it is the answer… when we come to discover the question. After a very long and arduous and intensely personal struggle.

The Christ. The Center. Somehow this points to the very core of ourselves, the center of the human being. Of course I can never be sure, at least not right now but it seems rational that You would exist in material form if my theory of “every idea and expression of idea points to something that already is” is true. And I sense that it is. It would make sense that You had come in human form to show us that the way to You is somehow the way to our true self, the center of our being. It is both the path to me and the path to You. I could never quite put my finger on it but it makes sense to me now.

It is both interesting and rather sad that as I reach for You and (I think) get ever closer to You the more ‘out there’ people would take me to be. But the fact is that the more I reach for You and the closer I get the less ‘out there’ I become.

*****

It is very odd to be headed somewhere and not have the slightest idea where. I still have this idea that I should be ‘doing’ stuff, ‘accomplishing’ things. What I haven’t the slightest idea. Making money? Curing cancer? Saving lives? I don’t know.

I wonder if that isn’t quite true. I suppose it can be true if that is what I choose. But in the end that which I accomplish doesn’t help me much. I’ll be dead as will everyone that is to come. So much distraction comes from without and it is so hard to close my ears to it. So hard to shut it out and not allow myself to fall for that which others impose on me as necessary. Do I let society define what is important for me? Do I let the people around me dictate what I should or should not be doing. Does somebody else get to determine what is good or bad, right or wrong, useful or useless?

Striving after wind.

Is it not true that anything that flows from me, represented in the way that I choose to represent, done in a such a way that I am capable of representing, does that not automatically make it good? Simply because it is a work of my hands and my mind and my heart brought into being by me… the image of God.

I have been wanting to say this for a very long time: You are not what they say You are.