01
We know what we want,
but we don't know what we ought to want.
We don't know how to know what we ought to want.
Ought to want in light of what?
In terms of what?
This becomes particularly illuminating
when we take into consideration
the oft repeated experience
of the worst choice we have ever made
becoming, over time, the best choice we ever made,
and vice-versa.
So any choice/decision is likely to be one we want
and one we don't want
at different points along the way.
Evaluating our life based on how much we have
that we want and don't want at any particular time
has no meaning over the whole of our life.
Therefore, I take wanting out of consideration
as a way of gauging the value of our life,
either that,
or start wanting to identify ourselves
with the flow of our life,
living spontaneously in response to what is happening
and what is called for that we are uniquely equipped
to offer with our skill-set,
our virtuosity,
and our original nature,
dancing with the moment
and letting nature take its course.
Then getting/having what we want
would be living in accord with the need of the moment,
and wherever that takes us
would be another situation in which
we would meet spontaneously in response to what is happening...
I take that to be the best life we are capable of living,
and the journey would be fascinating!
02
It appears to be contradictory.
All contradictions do.
Don't let that stop you,
or even slow you down.
On the one hand,
my best all-weather,
all time and place
advice to you is to
sit down,
shut up,
open yourself
to the emptiness/stillness/silence,
listen/look
until the mud settles
and the water clears
and something stirs to life,
emerges,
arises,
winks at you,
or calls you name,
and suggests that you follow
where it leads...
On the other hand,
my advice to you
is to keep moving
in an "It's easier to change directions
than to get going" kind of way.
Develop the ability to be empty/still/silent
while on the move
and you have it made.
Oh, and learn when to think
and when to stop thinking.
When to step out
and when to step in.
When to ask
and when to sense/intuit/feel/know.
And when to know when you know.
And when you don't have a clue.
And when to stop thinking.
03
Joseph Campbell recommends
drawing a circle around something,
anything,
and designating what is within the circle
as holy/sacred unto you,
then contemplating the now holy/sacred object/being
in all its wonder and glory,
so that it becomes a source of wonder and glory
and resonates with the radiance of the divine.
This is an exercise in bestowing reverence
upon the mundane
and thereby transforming the mundane
into the sacred and profound.
This is one way perspective/perception
transfigures the world,
making transfiguration a power residing
in our point of view
and changing everything
just by the way we see it--
by the role we ascribe to it.
Which is what people like us have done
with the cross and the Bible, etc.,
where seeing makes it so.
04
Our role is to humanize the experience
of being alive,
to personalize it,
with the quality of our attentive presence
with all that is present with us
in the day-to-day experiences of being alive.
We transform life by the way we live it.
We sentimentalize life by the way we live it.
We make life holy and sacred
by the way we live it.
By the way we honor it and adore it
and cloak it with reverence
and compassion,
empathy and goodwill.
We bring life to life
by the way we experience it
and treat it.
By the way we respond to it
and treasure it.
Our own life
and the lives of all those
who share the experience of life,
of being alive,
with us.
We behold treasures everywhere we look
every day.
When we remember to do so.
05
Our role is to realize,
balance and harmonize
the contradictions explicit in being alive.
For instance,
there is the one
that constitutes the ground
of everything we do from birth to death:
LIFE EATS LIFE!!!
And being a vegetarian doesn't get us off the hook.
Everything was eat has been killed
so that we might eat it.
And we whiz right by that one all the time,
without giving it a nod.
Refusing to acknowledge the sacrifices
that go into feeding us makes things worse.
To say of , spinach, say,
"It has no awareness of dying for us,"
demotes plant life to the place of nonexistence,
and refuses to consider the consciousness
of all living things.
Forests know we are coming for them
with chainsaws and bulldozers.
And they grieve and mourn their destruction
and our preference for concrete and steel.
Our place is that of realization and reverence
for the shared nature of our relationship
with nature,
and our place in the family
of all living things.
06
Pelagius (354-418) was the first person I know of
to declare that it is an abomination
to say babies need to find favor with God,
and that nobody can sin for some one else,
and nobody can atone for someone else's sins.
Needless to say,
Pelagius fell out of favor
with the church of Rome,
but was a staunch proponent of truth,
nonetheless.
I don't know how anything as
clearly obvious as what he proposed
can still be heretical
after all these years.
But.
Denial has always been
what the church--any church--
does best.
Has to do best to stay in business.
07
Joseph Campbell liked to say,
"God isn't out, God is in."
Meaning we do not "find God" in the world,
or in the Cosmos,
we "find God" in the inner space
of heart/mind/soul.
Not "out there"!
"In here"!
And, we are back to
emptiness/stillness/silence
as the places to look for,
listen for,
God.
The things that arise/emerge/appear
"out of nowhere,"
are the signs and images
pointing to God--
to the invisible source
of those psychic energies
that have always been called, "God."
In a book from medieval times
is found,
"God is an intelligible sphere
whose circumference is nowhere
and whose center is everywhere."
From that point of view,
we are all the center of God.
So, look within.
Listen within.
And wait "for the mud to settle,
and the water to clear."
08
Joseph Campbell said that our psyche
communes with our consciousness via
the symbols of images and dreams
and the impulses of our heart/soul.
As we learn to listen within,
we hear the voice
of That Which Has Always Been Called God.
And, in that we all live within a similar proximity
to that Source,
we would do well with fewer preachers
and more listeners/hearers
tuned to the Inner World.
09
Hearkening back to #3 above
and drawing a circle around
what is holy to you,
there is a limit to that
which Joseph Campbell calls out
when he says,
"But you can't put a circle around
the Mystery beyond it all,
yet at the heart of it all."
The Mystery is transcendent to everything.
It is "That which cannot be named."
"The Tao that can be told/named/explained
is not the eternal Tao."
"The path that can be perceived/acknowledged/recognized
as a path is not a reliable path (Martin Palmer)."
We cannot say what we cannot say,
and have to let it be
as an infinite source
of amazement and wonder.
Birth.
Life.
Death...
10