Now, there’s a word you don’t see much any more. Don’t you KNOW that nobody is perfect, and that most people who do “good” things are only considered good because they are on our side? Don’t you know that depth psychology relegates ALL action to very simple outgrowths of primal hormonal and instinctual processes? The knights save the ladies because they want to IMPREGNATE them. The lance is obviously a phallic symbol, and the armor symbolic of emotional detachment. As Foucault notes. . . blah, blah blah something in French.
Mercifully, I will let that person stay talking in his or her own universe. What I think it is most USEFUL to think, and which is not contradicted by any empirical evidence of which I am aware, is that we possess the power to focus our awareness. We can ignore or indulge our sexual instinct. We can engage in greed, or abstain from greed. We can grow in subtle ways, and we can DECAY in subtle ways. To reject the possibility of growth is to build a cage for yourself, then complain about it. From my perspective–the outside of many such cages–this is a really ridiculous combination of idiocy and farce.
I see people limit themselves. They say “I will go so far, and no further”. This is the value of the hero. He walks up to the line, then says “Hey, watch THIS”, disappears for a time in the darkness, and comes back with a rooster. Roosters are useful. Why a rooster? Why NOT a rooster?
Need he be perfect to cross that line? Of course not. He is merely pointing out a path that can be followed.
As I am slowly, in this granite-like brain of mine, coming to realize: we are meant for growth. Growth is our natural tendency, if not acted on by outside forces. Social institutions can do that. Government can do that. Fear, of course, can do that, and is the principle culprit.
As I say from time to time, this blog likely appears revelatory at times–and certainly I may be letting slip things I hadn’t intended to–but it is certainly not intended to be a “Daily Me”, which is what I very definitely did NOT want to create. I don’t Twitter and never will. My work on Facebook is mainly posting political stuff, although the occasional slice of life does appear as well.
I will offer this, though, in a spirit of discovery, of possibly eroding just a little bit of someones current limits somewhere:
I like to fantasize myself as a spiritual soldier, who reincarnates over and over. I like to imagine myself as a paratrooper, who looks for the darkest spot on the map and drops straight in, knowing full well it will be hell, and that he will be utterly alone for a long time. Hold the line. That is the mantra, and it is a good one.
I imagine myself meeting a bad end most of the time. I have probably been stewed and eaten, hacked to pieces, crucified, starved, stoned, tortured to death, sodomized, and spend decades in painful prisons. Perhaps because of a chickenpox scar in the middle of my forehead, I think last time I might have been shot in the forehead–executed. I have been vilified by large crowds, hated, spit on, ostracized, abandoned.
Yet, none of this fazes me. It’s what I do. That is the job of the soldier: to keep going. One of my favorite movies, now, is Battle: Los Angeles. I love Aaron Eckhart’s First Sergeant, and if I were in the military, that’s who I would strive to be: the man who does what needs to be done because it needs to be done.
This is not a melancholy that causes this post, but actually a sense of fullness and strength. I feel good.
Can we not posit on some level that our soul knows the difference between physical suffering and spiritual suffering, and that the former is so insignificant across vast spans of time that it can be ignored for all practical purposes, even in great quantities?
I will let you into my room. It feels right. On my front wall, I have a ram’s horn that I blow whenever I move into a new place. I have lived many places, and got into that habit some time ago. It just feels right.
On each of the four walls I have one of the Four Dignities (scroll down a bit) of the Tibetans.
Over my bed I have a makeshift airplane made by one of my children at an early age that I thought was quite clever.
When I wake, I have pictures of a veteran of two 1,000 dayKaihogyos, Tarthang Tulku, and Jack Schwarz.
I have no silly ideas that these men are perfect. They merely represent paths that I can follow, and which in my own undisciplined way I do try to follow.
I have my plan to save the world in six steps (reform financial system, create credible alternative to moral relativism in a post-religious context, invent machine to talk with ghosts, cure cancer [I do actually have actionable ideas on this], start a church, and build a better psychotherapy), my goals for this year, and last, but not least, a ridiculous, stupidly naive, idealistic, hopelessly romantic poem that I love. I’ll leave you with that:
The Impossible Dream
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star
This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause
And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star