Foreclosing on the past

It seems that all of us deposit layers of experience, like so much sand, at the bottom of the oceans of our selves.  It floats down there, unnoticed, and creates a layer.  “Experience” has stages–although often many stages can be happening at once, as often happens in youth–and this creates many layers, a sort of sandstone which creates a continual, but background, sense of self that is present forever after.

This rock influences everything which happens.  It is never fully past.  It is never truly gone until we experience it fully and integrate it into the present.  I have not fully figured out how to do this for myself, but I have in the Kum Nye method of contacting, paying attention to, merging with the breath, amplifying, and expanding.

But I feel there is a certain ruthlessness needed for the spiritual path.  It is not all easiness, light, and effortless kindness.  I think we all feel this. I think it is why many of us, despite our temptation to be attracted to it, find much of the “New Age” movement almost comical.  They don’t mean to be comical or corny, but so much of what they say and do is based on ideas which are demonstrably untrue, such as that the world is becoming more spiritual.  The opposite seems to be true, to me.  We are becoming more isolated, mechanical, rigid, emotionally stupid, superficial, and conformist.

This is why I cannot yet bring myself to become a vegetarian.  It is perhaps cruel to eat animals, but I do not want, yet, to reject cruelty.  The world is cruel.  The wild is filled with animals eating one another, enduring harsh conditions, and dying where they stand.

An honest life is negotiated between Yes and No.  A life of purely one sort or the other is a life of  either relentless compulsion or relentless spiritual torpor.  I would actually roughly conflate the two.  We are intended to use our freedom thoughtfully.