I consciously avoided posting yesterday. I am feeling, with greater clarity, the role this blog often plays for me in distracting me from, or allowing me to channel in sometimes nonoptimal ways, unpleasant feelings.
I watched 2 and a half movies yesterday. I watched “Towards the Within”, a concert film from 1994 featuring Dead Can Dance (which was explained as a metaphor for making inanimate musical instruments “speak” or dance), Bohemian Rhapsody, and the second Harry Potter, during which I did my drinking.
I liked all three films. Harry Potter of course I’ve seen many times. I watched all those films many times with my kids. Toward the Within felt like a spiritual experience. Lisa Gerard has such a powerful and evocative voice. I found it emotionally draining. Much of that music would be highly suitable for Holotropic Breathwork.
Bohemian Rhapsody: what can you say? Queen is fantastic. Unique. Nobody else like them.
And as always, when I sleep all the images and scenes flow through my brain. It’s like I store them, then they go on spontaneous playback when I sleep. Perhaps that is exactly what happens.
Be all that as it may, it occurred to me this morning, waking up in silence, the sun beaming through my windows, that all of our minds are filled with a lot of perceptual clutter, with countless images from countless movies we’ve seen, TV show’s we’ve watched, music we’ve heard.
There is a primary experience below all this, the one you get when you camp or go on a retreat and spend a week away from radios, cell phones and TV’s. I wonder how many people walking on an average street in America today have had this experience: a week absent from all media. I think the young, who were raised on phones, who had phones and other electronics in their cribs, would have particular difficulty.
But there is another speed possible, and at that one that is most likely more human in most ways.
Don’t fear silence. Don’t fear inactivity.
And I will note that meditation is not really something you can plug into a life otherwise filled to overflowing. You can’t “do” silence. It is something you allow. It is something you invite, and then wait, as long as it takes.
To reiterate the philosophy taught in Kum Nye, first you learn to relax, then become mindful–you become aware of what is there in totality, including deep within you–then, and only then, you focus on what is healthy and beautiful and good, and grow it. That, properly, is meditation. But meditation cannot be rushed. It takes time, patience, and space.
Tarthang Tulku created Kum Nye as it exists in his books, as I understand it, to create a bridge between the average life of someone living in our hyperkinetic world, and the possibility of truly deep insight. But that was in 1975 or so. Our pace of life has, what, doubled since then? How often do people stop by their friends houses uninvited and bring cake or cookies? How many people feel they have the time to pursue meaningful hobbies?
There are of course underlying economic realities in play, too. Our money supply has roughly quadrupled since 1980. This means most of us are roughly one quarter as wealthy as we would have been had there been stable currency. Ponder that. Ponder how much time you would have if you could earn what you earn in one quarter the time. You could double what you make in half the time you work currently. Higher true incomes of course would affect demand and thus prices, but there is a core truth in this rough analysis.
The banks are driving all of us batshit insane. Why, I can’t say, other than habitual greed for money they can’t spend, in pursuit of essentially meaningless lives.
This is my two cents–which should be worth 8 cents–for today. Why economists are not up in arms about all this is a sociological problem I have not solved. I emailed some 300 of them my argument. Only one replied, and he misunderstood me.
They take the problem to be intelligent monetary policy. I assert that having ANY monetary policy is stupid, and that it amounts to granting legal status to thieves to ply their trade with impunity. The amount of money in circulation should be fixed, once, and never changed again.
Oi: you know, I had my astrological chart done, and one of the alignments, I forget which one, said I was destined to be a Cassandra of sorts. Of course, another said that I had the spirit and relentlessness of Leonidas, whose name I had not heard until I looked it up.
No lives leave the world untouched. Even the name Cassandra survives, and reminds us we should sometimes listen to the people telling us things we do not want to hear, or indeed are not even emotionally equipped to hear. Truth can emerge from all places. Watch for it. This is in large measure the game of life.