I will share one which I think was mainly me, and one that I think was larger.
As context, I will comment that I realized Saturday that there are always two stories in me, always two ways of representing everything that I do and which happens to me. One views work and change as unwelcome intrusions, and interprets them as such; and the other is the counter to that. It is a sort of Emergence created in response to the emotional torpor which characterized my home, and which I have carried with me all these years. It’s the alarm clock, the wake up bell.
Somewhere between these two stories is an unformed, inchoate me. That I am inconsistent is obvious. Why is now more clear to me.
And I will comment that in the few original Buddhist Sutras I have read, like the Heart Suttra, they don’t say “there is no self”. What they say is that everything we see and feel is interconnected in space. There is no Self, and there is also no Not Self. There is a cloud, with whispy tendrils, which changes form and evolves continually. We are those clouds. And somewhere in there is the release of the “Tight-Holding”. I will call that my translation of the Pali “Tanha”. The monkey trapped by the monkey trap.
Be all that as it may, I was a new servant at a hotel, waiting on a very, very demanding guest. Everyone was terrified. You had to do this, say that, then do this, and it was all very precise, all absolutely necessary, or he would be furious.
This energy is in me. The salient part is the anger and rigidity of the guest, but the rest of me has to deal with it.
I said two stories: I suppose it would be closer to say two story-lines. The stories are told daily in continuously varying ways, with differing energies, differing purposes, and no doubt take one another into account.
FEELING this energy, though, was good for me. Feeling tension is the first step to resolving it. Most of us don’t feel most of the tension that is manifestly there. It just feels like us. It feels like the water we can’t feel all around us, as fish. It is “life”. It is how life “is”, and absent substantial reflection and meditation, most people will cross life in that state. This, too, is Duhkha.
The other dream, a lot of people were living in ice water. Rock and roll was referenced. I saw leather pants and the Rolling Stones, or at least the vibe of the Rolling Stones. Then a giant wave came crashing in, and drowned many of the people.
Here is my interpretation: much of this country–and no doubt other countries–is sustained by what might be termed the Rock and Roll ethos, which might more broadly be called the Pop or even Consumer ethos. Ironically, some of the most vocal opponents of physical consumerism are animated culturally by its superficial priorities.
Broadly speaking, beginning perhaps in the late 40’s through the 1970’s, some portion of our society cast off all the historical anchors that held us together, and which provided protection in times of true need and true difficulty. This was made possible by historically unique and unprecedented improvements in the physical ease of our lives, through technology and simple abundance.
Put simply: life was not that hard, so no firm foundations were needed. In such a soil, hedonism takes root easily. Ask yourself, though: do you think Mick Jagger has led the ideal life? He is more or less the poster child for the sexualizing of life, and the rock and roll lifestyle. He has grown old. He is perhaps 75 now. What does he have, really? Do you think he has the loyalty and love of children and grandchildren? Maybe, maybe not. That would not have been a large part of his calculations back then.
It seems to me he has spent most of his life chasing highs. New music, performing old music, parties, sex and sex and sex and look at him. All the highs fade. The bright lights dim. Sooner rather than later he will have played his last concert. Then what? Who is he? What is left?
Much of our nation occupies that rough cultural space. It rejected patriotism, Christianity, tradition. Marriage–or at least uncomplicated, lifelong marriage. Children. All the boring things that boring people do that makes them stable and measurably happier than the hedonists.
I was reading that in San Francisco–and this is just the people commenting publicly, although it seems reasonable to think this is a national and even global problem–that the suicide rate is through the roof. People who used to just put out a “cry for help” are going after it seriously now. Not all are succeeding, but many are. They saw, in their words, a “years worth of suicides” in the last month.
What do you cling to, when everything you have chosen was superficial and designed for a world which is easy? Who do you cling to, when you have rejected loyalty as an arduous and inconvenient virtue? What do you cling to when you have largely rejected the concept of virtue itself, which includes courage, true love, the pursuit of wisdom and learning, and honest compassion?
The ice wave gets you. You were, in reality, living in a cold place–made warm solely by the illusions facilitated by your vanity and lack of self awareness–and when all the bad came, you had nothing.
As to how this relates to me, I survived. But I lived there. I belonged there, or at least part of me did.
I’ve been watching the show “The Good Place”. I have been ambivalent about it. On the one hand, it is really funny sometimes, and it has caused me to think more about the after-life. But on the other, they make a mockery of things they probably should not make a mockery of. Heavens and hells exist. To the extent they were exploring the subtle craziness behind the concept of eternal salvation or eternal damnation after a single lifetime–one conditioned by many factors beyond the individuals control–I liked it.
But at root, it partook of what I will call “Rock and Roll” culture. It was deeply superficial, in meaningful and important ways.
So by coincidence, fate, or divine intervention, when I went to Netflix to watch it last night, it had reset to the first episode. It couldn’t figure out how to easily get where I was, which was about episode 38, so I decided to watch a short documentary on Islamic dervishes.
[I will note that I play the didgeridoo 30 minutes a day, mostly to clear my sinuses–which it does fantastically well, especially once I learned Circular Breathing–but I have also read that humming helps tone down the Vagus Nerve. I do literally everything I can think of and/or know about to calm down.]
It is striking how much more seriously people in other countries take religion. It is not a joke to them. They see life and death every day. You NEED religion to keep your sanity and to live happily. No doubt watching that influenced me in my dreams.