[This builds on an earlier writing where I quoted Grandfather Stalking Wolf: "A man who is not living his Vision is living Death."]
I realize that I enjoy being knowledgeable when I am teaching class. This is ego of course but also something to build on. I am an Instructor, it is my role to have knowledge to impart. And the sort that interests me is not technical information because most of that is in a book and one can locate it, or absorb a lot through self-teaching. What matters to me are the somewhat hidden things which someone has to discover by experience, and which when passed on, give a perspective and save the person from going down the same blind alley. Communicating what doesn't work, and the subtleties of some things that do is important if people are to make progress. We shouldn't all waste time (and other commodities) re-doing the same things! It reminds me of a friend's story of why he became a Trainer. Well, now I am a Trainer, too! It might be a natural role as one gets older. Soldiers (employees) become Officers (managers) who become Generals (Trainers and planners, CEOs, etc). This could seem like puffing myself up, except that what I teach is just some bits of Programming (no pun in 1010-did), and that not even very well - as I was reflecting yesterday in the Thinking Room.
So this is still about the Vision of belonging and being part of and having a role. It is just levels of Maslow's enormous pyramid-scheme, which dominates the skyline no matter where one lives. I feel safe knowing that some part of me (my contribution) will live forever entombed in the monument of Ego to the future. Perhaps that is just part of being Human (or human beings) so I am not going to fight that. But I won't roll myself up in it like a blanket and go back to sleep either. The question is: How to have a Vision without being a Subject? That is all.
This morning as I woke I had some sort of insight in to that (which I have forgotten). I came across what I wrote a month ago about Vision, and how at home I can have things however I want (because I live alone). OK, that is ego too, but it keeps me from having to re-visit some issues endlessly. As Dr. Bronner said, "Unless constructive-selfish ... like Mark Spitz..." So being that way is simply efficient, as long as I am not attached to the details (which would be, well, attachment. I am running out of parentheses.)
I need to combine efficiency when alone, with effectiveness when with others, and steer around the ego-boulders all the while. That only gets me started on the vision-journey, it doesn't even address where to go, or how. This might take a while... What is worth working toward?
Friday, April 29, 2016
Saturday, April 2, 2016
Tiamat
This is what is real. In Egyptian naming there is Ma'at, the Divine World Order. This is everything that we know, everything we can know. Everyone is in love with what we can see, talk about. Of course. What else is there?
But there is also Tiamat: primordial chaos. Chaos is an unfortunate word here, because what was before what is, was peaceful. It was simply unformed, not turbulent. There were no forces clashing, or things being created and destroyed: this was before all that. This is like the Void that I talk about - all possibility, no actuality.
The Void gave rise to all that is - Experience. These are the Two Real Things. When people talk about Nirvana or culmination of some kind, they always ask, "What are we going toward? What is there after this?" The least cruel answer is that there is nothing else. All that is, all that God made here and now, is sufficient! It doesn't matter if there is a Heaven or Hell, because we cannot confirm or deny it. It is irrelevant to the people looking back at you today. It is said that we are made in God's image. But the important point is that what we call God is only an image. Tiamat gave rise to it. Vishnu is said to dream all of Creation. Shiva is said to dance existence in to being. There is no other God, or reality. You are that. You are God's fingers and eyes and ears. You are the love of God. Not as a metaphor or a symbol: actually. All that you see, everyone you know is "What God Hath Wrought." Nothing else exists. Is that not enough?
The reason that I am on to this right now, is that I listened to a song called Procession, by New Order. I used to listen to it long ago, but had to stop, because at that time the person that you would say is "me" was not happy. Perhaps not actually depressed in the clinical sense, but he had no one right then to care for, or to lean on. He had to be self-sufficient. I heard the song again last night when looking for something else, and I was crushed by the wave of horrid feelings that washed over me. Had I been so sad before? I had stopped seeing my friends because I was weighing on them. My family was far away and I would not have sought them out for that anyhow. So when I heard the song last night for the first time in probably two decades or more, I suddenly faced a terrifying gulf. Everything I know about myself now seemed blythe and unimportant. What could I say to that person?
Recently I was talking with my fiancee and she wondered what makes some people go forward in to growth and flourishing, and other people fall back, or give up? This is in fact a version of Camus' famous statement: "The only real Philosophical question is whether or not to commit suicide." Few people do, and I am not so much talking here about actually taking one's own life, but I would have words for someone who makes that choice. Everyone faces difficult, painful, or perhaps even shattering experiences. Au'hua'a saw her community self-destruct and a thousand people throw themselves off a cliff.
But this is not "your" pain. Your experience does not belong to you. It is all that is, you don't get to claim any of it for "yourself", because remember? You of yourself do not exist except as part of Tiamat, rendered in to form as Ma'at. Your pain is the pain of being, of creation, of giving birth. All that is, is Formlessness changing in to Form. It is painful! That does not belong to you!
In the song it says:
You have the power to go forward, or not. You choose and it is so. But your choices affect others. Not only ones you know, but people around you, and in your future that your touch could heal. You have the power, but not the right, to make others' world turn black and white.
For me, this song is like a thread. I had very little support in my life for my view. I was not a spiritual person at all then. The thread, playing over and over as I listened to the song driving on dangerous snowy roads was like hearing the Sirens sing, and also hearing people who cared about me, people I know I could help, crying out. I was being torn in two. But when my fiancee asked me the other day what made me go forward a few years ago when it seemed like I was facing only walls, I had no words for her. I felt it, with my very being. There is no other answer.
It is not a question of good and evil, of chaos being bad and life being good. There is only one thing, and it leaves us no place to hide in Philosophy, ideology or Religion. We are meant to create, not hide. There is only forward. If you choose to permanently exempt yourself from being, or just fully being, you will be missed. There is no replacement.
But there is also Tiamat: primordial chaos. Chaos is an unfortunate word here, because what was before what is, was peaceful. It was simply unformed, not turbulent. There were no forces clashing, or things being created and destroyed: this was before all that. This is like the Void that I talk about - all possibility, no actuality.
The Void gave rise to all that is - Experience. These are the Two Real Things. When people talk about Nirvana or culmination of some kind, they always ask, "What are we going toward? What is there after this?" The least cruel answer is that there is nothing else. All that is, all that God made here and now, is sufficient! It doesn't matter if there is a Heaven or Hell, because we cannot confirm or deny it. It is irrelevant to the people looking back at you today. It is said that we are made in God's image. But the important point is that what we call God is only an image. Tiamat gave rise to it. Vishnu is said to dream all of Creation. Shiva is said to dance existence in to being. There is no other God, or reality. You are that. You are God's fingers and eyes and ears. You are the love of God. Not as a metaphor or a symbol: actually. All that you see, everyone you know is "What God Hath Wrought." Nothing else exists. Is that not enough?
The reason that I am on to this right now, is that I listened to a song called Procession, by New Order. I used to listen to it long ago, but had to stop, because at that time the person that you would say is "me" was not happy. Perhaps not actually depressed in the clinical sense, but he had no one right then to care for, or to lean on. He had to be self-sufficient. I heard the song again last night when looking for something else, and I was crushed by the wave of horrid feelings that washed over me. Had I been so sad before? I had stopped seeing my friends because I was weighing on them. My family was far away and I would not have sought them out for that anyhow. So when I heard the song last night for the first time in probably two decades or more, I suddenly faced a terrifying gulf. Everything I know about myself now seemed blythe and unimportant. What could I say to that person?
Recently I was talking with my fiancee and she wondered what makes some people go forward in to growth and flourishing, and other people fall back, or give up? This is in fact a version of Camus' famous statement: "The only real Philosophical question is whether or not to commit suicide." Few people do, and I am not so much talking here about actually taking one's own life, but I would have words for someone who makes that choice. Everyone faces difficult, painful, or perhaps even shattering experiences. Au'hua'a saw her community self-destruct and a thousand people throw themselves off a cliff.
But this is not "your" pain. Your experience does not belong to you. It is all that is, you don't get to claim any of it for "yourself", because remember? You of yourself do not exist except as part of Tiamat, rendered in to form as Ma'at. Your pain is the pain of being, of creation, of giving birth. All that is, is Formlessness changing in to Form. It is painful! That does not belong to you!
In the song it says:
Its a problem, you know, that's been there all your life:
How to make you see the world without you, that just turns black and white?
You have the power to go forward, or not. You choose and it is so. But your choices affect others. Not only ones you know, but people around you, and in your future that your touch could heal. You have the power, but not the right, to make others' world turn black and white.
For me, this song is like a thread. I had very little support in my life for my view. I was not a spiritual person at all then. The thread, playing over and over as I listened to the song driving on dangerous snowy roads was like hearing the Sirens sing, and also hearing people who cared about me, people I know I could help, crying out. I was being torn in two. But when my fiancee asked me the other day what made me go forward a few years ago when it seemed like I was facing only walls, I had no words for her. I felt it, with my very being. There is no other answer.
It is not a question of good and evil, of chaos being bad and life being good. There is only one thing, and it leaves us no place to hide in Philosophy, ideology or Religion. We are meant to create, not hide. There is only forward. If you choose to permanently exempt yourself from being, or just fully being, you will be missed. There is no replacement.
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