Loneliness and Our Connection to Others

Peaks Island Cairns

There was this article posted in The Guardian that demonstrates the soul baring desperation that underlies loneliness, even in the midst of all the accoutrement of adulthood and family and work. It got me contemplating loneliness and considering my own relationship to it. Read the article, it’s good.

A warning: I’m about to spelunk into some serious naval-gazing.

I’ve lived for a number of years in relative solitude and had grown fairly accustomed to the sense of loneliness — to the point where I even fought internally against the concept of a long-term relationship and had to come to grips with the entirely wonderful idea that someone could be in my life unto marriage, that someone would be there every single day, loving me, forcing me to temper my long suffering loneliness into an entwinement that yes, would entail compromise and the sacrifice of idealistic, boyish visions of self-sufficiency.

Why had I so deeply resigned/consigned myself to perpetual loneliness? I think it was a manner of coping with who I was as a person. Even as a lad, I’ve always had “eclectic” tastes, meaning that I can be somewhat withdrawn, stubborn, and judgmental, and as I grew older, I refused to capitulate to the demeaning standard of bullshit that popular society deemed acceptable.

Given my personality, therefore, I had determined that I was destined for eternal loneliness, and thus sought for reconciliation with my natural state of being. Creative writing–without a capitalistic purpose–had become an entrenched part of my existence (though my professional development has since necessitated some trimming of that sort of writing). An affection for mysticism has been part of this eclectic tendency. I like the philosophers of Zen, Sufiism, and holistic integralism of various Bohemian sorts. I fell in love with the passionate, drunken spirit-mind writing of Dostoevsky, Winterson, Rumi, Delillo, Pynchon, and whomever I happened to be reading at the moment. I found succor in running and hiking and reading and playing my djembe — activities that required no other to manifest enjoyment. I further discovered that going out to bars and clubs wasn’t about looking for sex or a soul-mate or any other person at all — it was about finding myself, and enjoying myself, and inviting others to come along for the ride.

Along this journey, from stubborn, eclectic individualism to marriage and a career, I’ve discovered that loneliness can be productive and beautiful, even as it dredges out a hollow in my heart. But I also rebel against the notion that artistic creativity is only produced from independent pursuits, and that things of beauty can only be created, Phoenix-like, out of despair. [Think of all of those poets of modernity, who killed themselves, seemingly out of creative consummation.] Rather, I think that what is created from the harmony and dissonance of relationships is simply different, and must be appreciated in it’s own context, apart and distinct from that which is a creation of loneliness. Times have changed, I believe, in the artistic sphere. Call it the Age of Aquarius or call it what you will, but there are too many talented and interesting individuals out there vying for attention for singular artists to dominate any one field in the manner Shakespeare, Picasso, and Davis once did. In some sense, the reality that has always been everpresent yet understated is becoming more definitive of our formal social reality: we are all artists, creating every single moment anew out of the materials of what has come before.

This freedom, this burden, of creative synthesis and production means that we all must become comfortable with the sense of loneliness and detachment from the hustle and bustle of everyday surface society. Otherwise, we will be unable to define ourselves, and we will become lost in the flotsam and jetsam of the concerns of others. Finding yourself necessitates two paradoxical movements:

• stepping away from society and social media and other outlets* (self-knowledge and spiritual understanding)
• stepping into society and social media and other outlets (knowledge of others and sharing)

*a definition: by social media and other outlets, I mean any mechanism by which we can connect to other people, whether Facebook, the pub, or speed dating

A balance must therefore be discovered, a balance that is difficult for us to achieve. A balance between being comfortable with loneliness, and being comfortable compromising with others in ongoing relationships. A comfort with solitude, and a comfort in being around others. A comfort with poetry, and a comfort with Twitter. A comfort with knowing ourselves, and a comfort in constantly redefining ourselves.

The hardest thing, perhaps, is to truly know yourself in a crowd of people who don’t know themselves. Or maybe the hardest thing is to truly know another person when you don’t really know yourself. Or maybe it’s all the same problem, and the solution lies right before us.

The MLK Memorial and Me

In February, I went to a conference in D.C. My wife came down to join me since I hadn’t been there before (update: wait, I have been there before, once as a young ‘un long ago, and another time for a brief few hours for a meeting. Forgive me, I have a really bad memory!), and we wanted to take the opportunity to explore. We don’t get out much, and I’ve barely seen much of my East Coast environs, barring last year’s visit to Philly. At the top of our list of things to see was the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial. It was the newest memorial, and also slightly controversial.

As we approached the memorial, we read quotations from MLK’s speeches that are engraved along a wall that leads up to his statue. We then walked around the central monument, which depicts Martin Luther King with his arms crossed, embedded in a chunk of granite mountain that appears to have slid forward from its face (“Out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope”). His hands are sinewy and strong, veins bulging, and his eyes gaze stoically across the water. There is a sense of calm and might, but also a sense of tragedy. The somewhat unfinished look of the overall work contributes to this sense.

We took our obligatory picture of his statue, and then my wife asked if I could take her picture in front of one of the quotations we had passed earlier along the wall. “It reminds me of you,” she said, somewhat shyly. We walked back over and I took her picture in front of the quotation, which read

“I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their heads.”

I asked her why it made her think of me. She seemed to feel that the reason why I am a teacher and work hard every day aligned with that quotation. I couldn’t quite see myself in it, however, and told her so. I realized I seemed brusque, but I couldn’t think of a reason at that moment to explain why. This post is my explanation.

A little further down the wall, I saw another quotation that did speak to me and about what I am passionately committed to in my work everyday:

“If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalty must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.”

I took a picture of this one as well. We then walked away from the MLK memorial towards the Roosevelt memorial, which is a long, meandering wall and pathway of red stone with many niches and spaces for reflection along the way. Quotations from F.D.R. are sprinkled next to reflective pools, waterfalls, and scattered stones. But it was a quote from his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, in a little niche that reached out to me. In fact, it linked together in theme with the earlier quotation from MLK that had spoken to me:

“The structure of world peace can not be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation . . . It must be a peace that rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world.”

This theme of common purpose, of a struggle for a global, overarching vision through cooperative effort, is what drives me and motivates me to do the work that I do. I was flattered by my wife’s belief that I do what I do because of a passion for human rights, but when I read the quotation she linked to me, there was a cognitive dissonance I didn’t feel comfortable with. I can’t quite place my finger on it, but it seems to have to do with a sense of martyrdom (“I have the audacity to believe. . .”), a stance of personal virtue, nobility, and challenge, that I can’t quite identify with.

An almost messianic passion, in fact, is a trait of many that enter into teaching as a profession. It is common for teachers to speak of teaching as a sort of “calling,” as if they have been drawn into the vocation by some higher purpose. I am frequently talked to by others who are not teachers as if I have entered into a sainthood, and given the respect and sympathy attributed to a monk — that is, with an incredulous, I-would-never-do-that-myself-but-god-bless-you kind of attitude.

This has always rubbed me the wrong way. Teaching is a profession. It is a job. And yes, it is a tough one, and it is especially tough when teaching special education in a high needs school in an impoverished inner city area. But I went into this tough career not simply because I wanted to make my world a better place, but because I wanted — purely selfishly — to develop myself as a leader, to learn firsthand the ground level effects of policy decisions, and become a part of something much greater than myself. I have no illusions that I am changing the world simply because I may impact a few childrens’ lives in the confines of one classroom. This is important work and the impact on one child’s life cannot be diminished. But I believe strongly that the system within which I work impacts our nation’s future greatly, and that I can learn how to work together with others to change the world by altering components of the system we work and live within. Teachers, parents, children, policymakers, state legislatures, mayors, citizens, these are the people that collectively will change the world. We must learn to look beyond our individual selves and work towards a common, global purpose.

This is why the second quotation from MLK and Eleanor Roosevelt’s quotation spoke to me. I’d like to think that I as an individual can effect great change, but realistically speaking, I know that whatever impact I can have on my own is nothing in comparison to what we can achieve when we work together.

Book Review: Sometimes We Walk Alone

Sometimes We Walk Alone by Ankur Shah

A delightful travelogue that carries the reader on a journey through the self, in search of the heart of love. Ankur Shah’s notes on his journey through Gujarat, following in the footsteps of Gandhi, are spiritual, simultaneously brooding and ecstatic. He peppers his narrative of events with introspection on modern existence and its travails, but never loses his focus on the very real and tangible beauty of the everyday, the glory of the hospitality of strangers, the wonder and joy of food bestowed by friends never before known until that moment, and the everpresent internal struggle between ego and non-violence. This is a tale that can thrill pilgrims of any stripe. And most importantly–introduce the uninitiated to the teachings of Gandhi.

View all my reviews

Paths to Divinity

It could be that spirituality is best defined by restraint.

Depth is attained by holding ones breath.

If I am to be a part of god, then I must be attentive.

Practice, and struggle, and work–

these are the only paths to divinity.

Hallowed Lives

To possess something of depth, there must be a relevant soul-searching ream of pain, as what has built up and calcified is scooped out, cleared out, cut out. Leaving the space for the blueprint of something new. In the erection of new life structures, you think of the manner in which windows will capture light, the space needed to sustain love. Policies are put into place, expectations are clearly set. From out of the hollows of your aching heart are formed crystals, that when dug up form the diamond terrace of your realized dreams.

The people in our lives are designed to mold us into who we want to be. To support, construct, motivate. If we are not here to enact something better, than what would be the point? Together, pressing the clay of our vision into higher planes.

All that exists is a matter of process, timing, development. We must wait, patiently, for the universe to unfold into itself, riding the waves of our suffering as we hollow our lives in preparation for the future.

The Race of the Waterfall

Us humans, we short-sightedly cling to each other like life rafts as we hurtle towards precipitous falls, as if we would be the ones to save each other. In the frenzy of the lip of the unseen, everything comes apart, and we find our fingers empty, our eyes filled with spray. It would have been better to have been beholden to the void before we fell. It would have been better to have been still, drowned already in the inevitable, serene in the knowing that there is no saving grace beyond the embrace of emptiness.

Who can blame us, in our cataclysmic euphoria of need? In our poverty of vision, we claim what is given to us as desirable. Whatever can make us feel good, temporarily, whatever can numb our feeling, temporarily, day by day until one day we find that we are nostalgic monsters, a distant alien force that must be fought tooth and nail by the oncoming generation. We wake up perhaps at the vertiginous pinnacle of that final descent into nothingness to find that we have become parasites, aging attachés of complacency, selfishly clinging to mythological ideals that w0uld label us heroes, label us entitled, label us good and whole and pure.

What matters, at that point, our pride? When our whole life flashes before our mind’s eye, it is the things we did when no one else was looking that is replayed. How did we comport ourselves then? Were we free? Were we ashamed? Were we utilitarian, were we idle? What has defined our integrity in our lives? Who are we? What is it that we have done to the world, to ourselves, to each other?

How do we carry ourselves as our world falls about us, and our hands grasp out into emptiness, and we find that there is nothing to support us but the quantifiable pull of gravity?

The Power of Prayer

It was September, 1975. Gunhild prayed every morning and every night, and often throughout the day as well. She would pray for all those that she knew, starting with her immediate loved ones, extending onward to personages known only through the news whom she considered to be “good”, such as the President. All of her known world, essentially, was included in her daily prayers. She was living alone at the time, having moved out of her sister Helga’s apartment in Los Angeles after the earthquake in 1971. Gunhild was terrified of earthquakes, and would often warn my parents about the impending “Big One,” much in the same way she was always warning us of the coming of the apocalyptic end of days, for which she was joyously awaiting the advent of The Rapture.

At this time she was probably living in Tuscon, although she may have been in Albuquerque, St Petersburg, Dallas, or Chicago. Helga referred to her sister as a “gypsy”, and true to this title, Gunhild seemed to have an aversion to settling for too long in any one place. Fiercely independent, and also terrified of airplanes, Gunhild traveled by train or Greyhound wherever she went. She eventually settled mostly in Tuscon, as her allergies seemed the least affected by the climate there, and there weren’t any earthquakes.

Anyway, to get back to the story, to that September day, wherever she was. She was in her apartment alone, and she had just got back from running an errand. She was walking from one room to another when she heard a voice tell her to “pray for the President.” She walked around looking for the source of the voice, but the radio was off, and no one was there. She thought to herself, “but I’ve already prayed for the President today.” But she shrugged and decided that it certainly couldn’t hurt. So she kneeled down right then and there and prayed for the President, for his safety, for his health, for his wellbeing.

Later she turned on the radio, and heard that an assassination attempt had just been made on President Ford in Sacramento. The would-be assassin, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, had pulled out a Colt .45 on Ford, but strangely, though the weapon’s magazine had rounds in it, there were none in the firing chamber. Almost as if one part of her wanted to kill the President, but another side of her didn’t really want to shoot him. She later told The Sacramento Bee that she had deliberately ejected the bullet that morning from the chamber, and the police found the .45 bullet laying on her bathroom floor. She didn’t plead in her own defense and was sentenced to life.

My grandmother was not one to lie, by the way. If she says that she heard a voice say “pray for the President,” then she heard it. She also was not one prone to any sort of silliness or flights of fancy, at least not until the onset of Parkinson’s in her late 90s, at which point such flights were quite understandable.

There is no doubt in my mind that the “voice” that my grandmother heard so audibly and forcibly came from within. It was a warning of intuition so sharp and immediate that she heard it as sourced outside of herself. This story makes me wonder about the power of prayer; it has been fairly well established by medical science that at the very least, prayer can heal simply through the placebo effect of calming the patient and providing a community of support. But what about the power of prayer to directly influence, psychically, the actions of another, even that of a complete stranger?

Stay tuned for more of my grandmother’s tales of the paranormal.

The Dream Boy

My grandmother and her sister—Gunhild and Helga—were what were once known as ‘witches’, and now known more aptly as psychics. However, they would have both had a conniption fit if they were referred to with either of those phrases, for they were both devoutly religious. My grandmother was a strong influence on my life, and I’m surprised I haven’t written much about her here before—perhaps because she is so close to my heart and upbringing that I don’t even think to speak in a detached manner about her. She left behind a lot of materials, both written and spoken, that I want to sift through when I finally get my stuff out of storage, and I will then write in detail about her amazing life and stories, as I think it’s about time.

But right now I wanted to introduce you to a story that she loved to tell, because it is all about me, and after all, that’s what this blog is mostly about, right?

When my father excitedly called his mother with the good news that another baby was on the way–two girls had already been born–my grandmother said, “Oh, I already knew about that.”
“And how did you know that?” my father inquired, bewildered.
“Helga has seen it in a dream, and she’s not sure, but she thinks that it is going to be a little boy.”

Yes, indeed, a full year before I was born, my great-aunt Helga had had a dream in which she foresaw my birth. She had not seen it fit to announce this dream to my parents, but she obviously believed enough in its veracity that she called and shared it with her sister Gunhild.

Sure enough, soon along came little Manderson, his peepee a-flapping in the florescent hospital lighting, popped out on the exact day, as a matter of fact, that his sister had come out two years prior.

So I was henceforth referred to by my grandmother as “the dream boy,” and she was so impressed with her sister Helga’s prescience that she felt the need to share this story about me to complete strangers. She would wrap up the story by pointing her finger at me and dramatically stating, “And there he is!” I was an extremely shy child and this always made me feel mortified, though perhaps vaguely proud, as if I’d somehow done anything other than just be birthed. She even felt the need to reiterate this story at Helga’s memorial, and as she wrapped up the story with her standard climactic finale, leveling her wobbly finger at me, all the random nursing home folk that had come by for cookies and gossip at the advent of another death turned around in their seats to get a peep of this mystery “dream boy.” I smiled weakly and hesitantly waved my hand at them, feeling that perhaps I was a disappointing sort of child to have been predicted. This trauma, perhaps, may explain my prior hesitancy in bringing up the story on these pages.

Gunhild’s sister Helga was a quiet lady who lived on her own in Los Angeles, and she tended to speak to my grandmother in Swedish and keep to herself, so I don’t know what other psychic events may have transpired in her life. But my grandmother had bucketloads of stories that could either be termed psychic events, or manifestations of God, depending on your inclination. I will re-tell some of these stories as time goes on, as they are simply too priceless to not be shared.

My grandmother has been on my mind some lately, so I had been remembering some of these stories, and I figured that I might as well share my little “dream boy” snippet. As you can perhaps imagine, having this story told about me constantly tainted me for some time with a slight insecure messianic complex, as I felt the need to somehow live up to that sense of promise and prophecy. I felt that I had to have some kind of purpose, that I should have been announced telepathically before even forming within my mama’s fallopian tubes. Now, however, the story is simply one of humor to me, in remembrance of my grandmother and her sister’s playful psychic abilities.

Confidence To Intuition

How do we descend into the thick of it, the thickened, coagulated density of emotion necessary to destroy illusions like a bird descendant upon its prey? By what authority, by what necessary quality, trait, experience do we find the strength to proceed intact through the cutting throng of desire and anger? How can we sever through doubt and despair, conveying truth and beauty to their highest destination point of divinity, through vehicles so dumb, so shredded by toxic interference, as our bodies?

There would seem to be two fundamental points of answer: possession of the confidence (point 1) to proceed beyond the superficial and into intuition (point 2). There are many other outlying tenets, no doubt, such as focus, humility, devastating life experiences and/or the ability to attune oneself so finely to pain that it becomes akin to bliss. But if we allow the complexities of circumstance and personality to fall to the side for the moment, these two points become apparent. Point one, confidence, being the conveyor, the arrow through the surface worlds, penetrating within. Without confidence, belief, conviction, knowledge, there is no means of fulfillment, no facility to proceed progressively to inner sanctums beyond surface tangents of perversion. Point two, intuition, being the explosive fruit onto the scene, the fecund address of the potential needs of future and present. The voice that speaks beyond oneself within oneself that knows exactly what must be done to preserve the delicate balance of life and death, of space and form.

How difficult to possess these jewels in tact, in full, in every moment of everyday, to reach across the void of ourselves true to form eternity. Our world crumbles out of balance all around us, within and without, flying apart at the handle that we hold so blithely, so close to our hearts. Do we possess the strength to listen? Do we have the faith for empathy? Do we have the knowledge to learn?

Clarify Butter

 

There’s a certain fear that resides in clarity. It is easier, perhaps, to allow things to slide by in undefined, habitual complacency. It takes hard work and effort, concentration and integrity of thought and character, applied skill and artful intelligence, to root down to the sources of a comprehensive and connective vision. To examine beyond the defined object encapsulated by the word “tree”, for example, to see it for what it is: everything, itself, an infinite god descendant in form, ascending towards the sky, forging networks across subterranean subconscient intuition.

There is a part of us that wishes to avoid confrontation, a groundless hope that atrocity will end simply through inattention and withdrawal. Until that moment when the terror of our darkest indifference makes itself heard, seen, and known forcefully and immediately enough to shatter our somnolent mediocrity. All things hidden, all things suppressed, all things buried become manifest in a thousand different tragedies until you unearth them with shuddering laughter, you expel them with suffering love, you exorcise them with whatever conscious, unforced form of acceptance and embrace that can make them yours. Words, music, dance, images, rituals. There is no escape from the invasive and totalitarian ardor of the universe. It must be channeled, it must be ridden, it must be sown.

The forms that the unknown will take already lie at the end and the beginning of our awareness—we just have to live our lives according to our inherent shape, allow our trajectories to occur, willfully, selfless, and hungry. The road to mastery mirrors the diminution of self-importance. The seeking path to god mimics the descent of science’s studies to the smallest of particles. Outward down, inward up, all roads lead to home. Clearly, the concern here lies with clarifying the weakest link within ourselves.

Stillness in the Eye of the Beheld

At every stage in the evolution of the human species, when we develop tools with greater and greater capabilities of empowerment, we also gain the capability of greater destruction, and vice versa. Every sword is double-sided, every tool a weapon. An airplane as the most accurate of guided missiles. Misguided youth and passion strapped with shrapnel, the stealthiest of dirty bombs. Every versatile development of intelligence bends alternately to creation or destruction—the greater the power, the greater the atrocity.

Yet in order to develop, we must chance our ultimate demise. There is no advancement without struggle. There is no progress upward without the danger of falling. This applies to all of mankind, as well as to the individual existence. The alternate threat and promise of extinction is what drives us to create. To distinguish ourselves from inconscient matter, to approach the flame of divinity, to grasp at it with groveling, greedy fingers of competing awarenesses, until we discover, the hard way, that we are all of each other, all of the light that we seek, all of the matter that we shed.

So on the way to this discovery we slaughter, we suffer, we sear our desperate imperfections across the face of the earth, spreading the disease of despair and hollow complacency with a missionary zeal that results only in complementary rage and anger, in blind lashing-outs by voices bound by their own inarticulate tongues of selfishness. This sickening beauty of humanity, the terrible power of our destiny. Killing ourselves to know of ourselves, so that we may better live alongside of our silences. The way Miles Davis kills everything around him for that solid punch of harmony in the midst of chaos. Creating the space for momentary beauty to shine out of its darkened backdrop of everything.

Not every flower will find the outward sun. But every form of life, whether fallen to the earth for sustenance to the hunger of the future, or rooted into the highest of heights, holds within the seed of bliss, the joyful dance of incomplete perfection. For not any one thing could ever exist without the other.

Evil as Good

In an experience with a shaman in Cuzco 2 years ago, one of the insights I gained from that little glimpse into the great unknown was that there is nothing to fear in all of the vast, seemingly demonic forces arrayed beyond our understanding in the cosmos. That all is of the light, a part of the entire. I’ve been kind of sleeping on that window of intuition, but I re-remembered it the other day as I was reading a section in The Life Divine, wherein Aurobindo is grappling with the question of the existence of evil and suffering in the world. And I then realized that this little insight I had was perhaps deeper in significance than I had originally thought. For me, personally, the recognition that everything in existence is a part of a greater whole, including the “bad” and evil things, was a stepping beyond my upbringing. I was raised as a Protestant Christian, and as everyone knows, the Christian theology, in a nutshell, is arranged around the concepts of good and evil as represented by God and Satan. The presence of evil and suffering is explained as the meddlings of the fallen angel in our material world, allowed by a distant God to challenge and torture us in our den of sin. But there is, of course, a strange paradox in such an explanation of evil, for it renders a supposedly omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God as suddenly reticent and detached from humanity and their suffering. This means either that this God is cruel, or that he is not in fact all-powerful, or both.

I’m quite certain that Christian scholars and mystics have grappled with this question throughout the ages, and have more than likely come up with some insightful answers based within the Christian dogma. As I no longer adhere to any religion myself, I am not all that interested in theological answers, but rather in a unitary spiritual, metaphysical vision. The deeper mystic, in any religion, recognizes the unity of all existences as an extension of God. For if God is omni-everything, if it is Brahman, if it is all-powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing, then it must necessarily include all of what we perceive as bad, in addition to all of the good.

This has led me to the idea that the very concept of “evil” is a necessarily human construct. After all, animals and plants do not create religions, laws, and codes of ethics for their behavior. If you agree with the principle of evolution, then you necessarily regard human life as an evolved form of life with a level of consciousness which goes beyond that which it has evolved from. As such, we have evolved into this perception of suffering and evil, and it is thus a mental construct, a product of our evolved mentality. And therefore, our conceptions of evil, though formed from fear and ignorance, are in fact an essential recognition of that which we must defend ourselves against, and ultimately transcend, in the effort to evolve. What we perceive and regard as evil are in fact powers beyond ourselves that threaten to overwhelm or lead us astray in our aspiration towards divinity. But in the bigger picture, these forces, so seemingly arrayed against us, are in fact a form of cosmic devil’s advocates that push us and nudge us and batter us towards perfection, honing us, challenging us. And when we recognize this greater truth, when we overcome our fear and ignorance, we get that much closer to transcending the existence and persistence of evil in our lives. In the light of this greater awareness, what was once perceived as evil and in opposition to ourselves transmutes into something with broader implication and potential, even a deeper good. All of this suffering, all of this evil, could be seen as teachers, bearers of painful lessons that we must learn. We must answer and overcome their challenges, and realize them as a part of the whole of existence. Both negative and positive, united, represent the entire picture. There is, therefore, nothing to fear. All is of the light, for all comes from the light and returns to the light, and has always been and will always be the light within itself, and of itself, and beyond itself. This is not to explain away your suffering. This is to say that perhaps you suffer because how else will you recognize delight? And this is not to explain away evil, and give it reason to perpetuate, but instead to say, for what other cause and purpose will we battle for what is right, and thus find our eventual, stumbling way into higher modes of existence, where evil is no longer what it was to our fractured, self-embattled minds?

Pure Essential Joy of Being

“The malady of the world is that the individual cannot find his real soul, and the root-cause of this malady is again that he cannot meet in his embrace of things outward the real soul of the world in which he lives. He seeks to find there the essence of being . . . but receives instead a crowd of contradictory touches and impressions. If he could find that essence, he would find also the one universal being, power, conscious existence and delight even in this throng of touches and impressions; the contradictions of what seems would be reconciled in the unity and harmony of the Truth that reaches out to us in these contacts. At the same time he would find his own true soul and through it his Self, because . . . his self and the self of the world are one. But this he cannot do because of the egoistic ignorance in the mind of thought, the heart of emotion, the sense which responds to the touch of things not by a courageous and whole-hearted embrace of the world, but by a flux of reachings and shrinkings, cautious approaches or eager rushes and sullen or discontented or panic or angry recoils according as the touch pleases or displeases, comforts or alarms, satisfies or dissatisfies. It is the desire-soul that by its wrong reception of life becomes the cause of a triple misinterpretation of the rasa, the delight in things, so that, instead of figuring the pure essential joy of being, it comes rendered unequally into the three terms of pleasure, pain and indifference.”

—Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

Death as Subservient to Life

“. . . the natural opposition we make between death and life is an error of our mentality, one of those false oppositions—false to inner truth though valid in surface practical experience—which, deceived by appearances, it is constantly bringing into universal unity. Death has no reality except as a process of life. Disintegration of substance and renewal of substance, maintenance of form and change of form are the constant process of life; death is merely a rapid disinitegration subservient to life’s necessity of change and variation of formal experience. Even in the death of the body there is no cessation of Life, only the material of one form of life is broken up to serve as material for other forms of life. Similarly we may be sure, in the uniform law of Nature, that if there is in the bodily form a mental or psychic energy, that also is not destroyed but only breaks out from one form to assume others by some process of metempsychosis or new ensouling of  body. All renews itself, nothing perishes.”

—Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

A Whole in the Whole

 

“The divine soul will be aware of all variation of being, consciousness, will and delight as the outflowing, the extension, the diffusion of that self-concentrated Unity developing itself, not into difference and division, but into another, an extended form of infinite oneness. It will itself always be concentrated in oneness of its being, always manifested in variation in the extension of its being. All that takes form in itself will be the manifested potentialities of the One, the Word or Name vibrating out of the nameless Silence, the Form realising the formless essence, the active Will or Power proceeding out of the tranquil Force, the ray of self-cognition gleaming out from the sun of timeless self-awareness, the wave of becoming rising up into shape of self-conscious existence out of the eternally self-conscious Being, the joy and love welling for ever out of the eternal still Delight. It will be the Absolute biune in its self-unfolding, and each relativity in it will be absolute to itself because aware of itself as the Absolute manifested but without that ignorance which excludes other relativities as alien to its being or less complete than itself. . . . It will be able divinely to conceive, perceive and sense all things as the Self, its own self, one self of all, one Self-being and Self-becoming, but not divided in its becomings which have no existence apart from its own self-consciousness . . . It will be able divinely to conceive, perceive and sense all these existences in their individuality, in their separate standpoint living as the individual Divine, each with the One and Supreme dwelling in it and each therefore not altogether a form or eidolon, not really an illusory part of a real whole, a mere foaming wave on the surface of an immobile Ocean,—for these are after all no more than inadequate mental images,—but a whole in the whole, a truth that repeats the infinite Truth, a wave that is all the sea, a relative that proves to be the Absolute itself when we look behind form and see it in its completeness.”

—Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

Reclaiming Christianity

Some watered down, politicized form of Christianity has swept across the nation, and it’s about time that real Christians began reclaiming it from the fundamentalist conservative “Evangelicals” who are tainting its name.

There is a basic and fundamental insecurity behind the so-called faith of these Christians, these hypocrites who dare to label themselves as believers without any attempt at understanding the bible for themselves, or any real faith in god. The only way that such people can pretend that they are good Christians is by surrounding themselves with other people who will pretend along with them. It’s a big collective fantasy, wrought with hysteria and fanaticism. They have created some idea of Christianity, filled with politicized propaganda and half-baked idealogies, that has little to do with any teachings to be found in the bible, and even less to do with any practical application of thought. These people are shallow, and dangerously susceptible to pointing fingers at anyone who might threaten their fragile illusions.

It’s pretty easy to tell a real Christian from these fake ones. When you discuss theology, God, etc with any real Christian, they are open to having their beliefs challenged, because they seek to find a way to deeper communicate these beliefs. They have a faith and deep-seated seeking for spirituality that will not be unsettled by such discussion, and they have an ability to articulate what they believe. When you talk to a fake Christian, they will not tolerate any challenges. They will either be attempting to “convert” you to their way of thinking, or they will simply not want to talk to you at all, except to label you as an enemy and shut their hearts and minds to you. This is because they do not truly know what they believe, because they have been told by their “group” what kind of beliefs they should hold, and have not gained these beliefs through their own seeking.

There is a reason that Church and State have been separated in the United States, and it’s a good one. But Republicans and the Christian Coalition, with their onslaught of Evangelical cheerleaders, have been attempting to render this separation null, claiming that the United States is a “Christian” nation. It is irrelevant what religion the majority of the people of the United States adheres to. Religion and politics are a dangerous and volatile mix, and the only reason that Republicans and any one else might attempt to harness it is for the simple, greedy cause of increased and absolute power. These power hungry “Christians”, voiced so loudly and crassly through firebrands and hypocrites such as Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ted Haggard, have colonized the name and image of Christianity in the United States, and tainted it, bitterly, with blood, bigotry, and money.

When you watch the news in the United States, all you see in the world are the latest doings of Islamic extremists, and the media has built up this distorted image of Islam as defined by terrorists and fringe groups. Similarly, you can imagine how the rest of the world must be viewing the United States and its brand of Christianity. It has become defined by bullies, blasphemers, and intolerant unilateralism. Is this really what Christianity is about? Money, power, and absolute greed? Absolute intolerance? Of course not. And it’s about time that real Christians began speaking up for themselves, instead of allowing their faith to be dominated and distorted by political propaganda and a militant small-mindedness.

The Eye in the Middle of the Storm

In seconds of self-awareness, Janet felt bliss in the middle of all of the noise. It was as if all this anxiety, madness, fear was designed just so as to enhance and demarcate clarity in the moments when it came, crystalline, dew-dropped, silent before the storm. There was no denying that even in her weakest, most insecure of times, Janet still knew that she was beyond all of it, beyond the stifling imposition of other’s jealousy or indifference, beyond her own vanity and ever-shifting self-image; she was somewhere already still, sitting neatly next to the stream, taking it all in, letting it all wash away of its own accord. Like a sieve, like a net of the heart, a purity that dirt could run through untouched. All that would be left of herself in the end were these treasured moments of beauty, when the light focused through her and everything she was and everything that she touched was perfect, in tune with everything that is. Then the light faded and she became human again, petty, insignificant. But the diamonds were there, hidden, nestled into the back of her heart, and she waited inside of herself quietly for the moment when the treasures would become illuminated into the outer world again.

Janet knew that these moments could be sustained, lengthened, and increased in frequency. But she also knew that she could not produce them herself out of thin air. She had to learn patience, and learn how to open herself to the light when it came showering down into her face. It seemed that the more that she relaxed and allowed herself to be herself, the more frequently that she felt ecstasy.

All of the noise, the fear, the anger, the gossip, the taking for granted, the holding onto things, the materialism, the fake spiritualism, the pseudo-intellectualism, the superficial, the one-dimensional, the apathy . . . all of it added up to barriers between herself and her own heart. She was already free, if only she listened correctly. The knowledge was there, flagrant, demure, unappealing direct and simple and baby-soft and harder than steel.

Janet slipped out of her seat on the bus and stood swaying calmly in the stuffy heat of a Phoenix afternoon. The double doors pulled apart, hissing, and she dropped down the steps with gravity like water, centered, moving with music and light. A man stared wonderingly after her, his hand looped in a supportive strap, craning to look through the graffiti strewn window. She had something that he could not see.

Women as What They Are, Not as What You Want

Men, why is it that you must limit your view of women to that of solely sex organs, as symbols of your need? Why is it that the level of desire that you feel for a woman has no relation to your heart?

What a waste of time it is just to use women for sex, when they can offer so much more. Women are more than bodies—they are minds, they are voices, they are perceptions. They are more than anything that could be defined by your understanding, or by your desire, or by what you see.

Any father who loves his daughter knows this; any brother who loves his sister knows this; any son who loves his mother knows this: women are the bearers of the light. Respect this source and you may come to know true wealth.

Just to be around beautiful women is a delight, like breathing in rainforest air. Just to talk with them, to sit near to them, to be with them, to watch the way they draw in the currents of the unseen like magnetic birds in the sky.

You are infatuated with untouchable whores when goddesses walk beside you. You are fed porn airbrushed Hollywood dreams and blinded to the reality of beauty in your everyday life, all around you.

While you are wasting your time idolizing sexuality, the sensuous numinous world exists right here beside you. You don’t need to reach out for her. Breathe. Look within. Beyond need there is knowledge, and beyond knowledge there is love.

To love a woman, to love women, to love yourself. Honestly, I really don’t see why there is anything much more important than this.

Vanity is in Holding Yourself Apart

I’ve been an elitist in the past, and I often still consider the majority of the populace to be stupid. But my fundamental belief is that within every living entity there is the potential—most often unrealized—of beauty and power, of divinity. We attempt to express this inner potential in a variety of ways, and we often fail to do much more than fumble ourselves blindly into misunderstood gestures. But given the right environment, given a certain amount of respect and love and leeway, we bloom inner light into the world like flowers.

It bothers me when I go out dancing, and most people are standing along the sidelines, just watching, as if they are waiting for some perfect place, some perfect person, some perfect music, some perfect substance to open them up and make them free to dance. All these factors are important, of course, to having a good time. But it’s never going to be perfect. Sometimes you just have to go out onto the dance floor and enjoy yourself even if there’s no hot chicks there, even if the music is just the typical top 40 songs from the last 10 years, even if the drinks are too expensive and watered down. All that we need is simple: a steady beat and a few simple melodic hooks. Your ass can shake in a variety of ways that won’t be defined by the music. Your hips can move in a variety of ways that don’t have to be uninhibited by alcohol. You know what I’m sayin? Your degree of openness and freedom and creativity are ultimately only determined by yourself.

Again, continuing with the metaphor of the dance floor, all it takes is one person letting themselves loose to get the party started. Then others begin to respond to the call of your challenge. And soon its just one big fiesta competition.

All the limitations that can be found in society can be found in yourself. If you are too good, if you are better than everyone else, if you are better looking, got more money, got bigger cars, got a bigger ego, than all you do is perpetuate the walls that make you petty. If you are not good enough, not pretty enough, not talented enough, too insecure, than all you do is perpetuate the walls that make you needy. Everyone else is held back because you are held back. All the world is bad because you are bad. All the world is vain and petty and desirous and hungry because you are holding yourself apart from it, because you are holding your divinity apart, because you are separating yourself from something that cannot be divided.

You are god, and if you can’t realize that, then who else will? And if no one else will, then how can you realize it? It takes humility. It takes confidence. It takes getting beyond yourself in order to know yourself in order to share yourself.

Reminder

When my focus slips from within me, I exist temporarily solely on the outside, a representative of what I do not know, a physical force with nothing behind it. My daily existence, my mundane tasks define everything that I am.

It is hard to keep the focus inward, when the world outside demands your constant attention. Sometimes you have to shut it out, stopple your mind, and just breathe.

We have developed a world that battles with us constantly for our energy, attention, and time. All of our spare moments spent watching something, doing something, playing something, smoking something. To turn off all of this extraneous noise takes the self-discipline of a monk at times.

Often I just sit and stare into this empty computer screen, waiting for the need to write to grow strong enough for something to explode out of me like it was meant to be. But then I close the window and play a game or watch a movie instead. Because I did not have the patience to sit and listen and wait for the words to come.

It takes struggle to transcend. It takes patience to get beyond the surface. It takes discipline to chisel out the god within.

How I need to be reminded of this, every single day.