Reply
Thu 13 Jul, 2006 02:22 pm
Let's talk about fog. Or, as is one of the benefit of this medium, I'll talk, and you'll listen. Let us center our minds now, on the aspects of our identity that lie in obscuring shade. The funky smells we don't let ourselves detect, the irritating buzz we pretend to not hear. All metaphorically speaking, though. We are all soap cented clean, and we have long since forsaken silence. Herein lies the problem.
We nest, here, upon our tower of souls, where the foul things are supressed to a minimum, for comfortable denial. Denial of the harsh truth. We do not know ourselves. We are chaos. And outward the glistening facade is playing the rock, showing ease, showing wisdom. A shell, this facade is, a forcefield sealing the world off from the black holes that our unsearched souls really are. An our souls remain unsearched, because they are contained within this field, never being alowed to freely reflect themselves, because we see ourselves from the outside.
Any and all reflection is strictly policed. By religion. By dogma and tradition, and more recently fashion. Our consumer habits, and the way they are encouraged by even greater consumers is real confirmation. There is an easy, prefabricated answer on offer for every concievable question. It's almost as if we have given up on the goal of stilling our hunger, and settled for satiation. The modern meaning of the word identity has become the mix of brands you're wearing, the car you're driving and how you earned the money to buy it. We replace it as often as we can. Get the newest model. Why?
There is an easy answer why. Idle time. In idle moments we might come to think about the black hole that's pulling at us. About all the things that are bothering us. Irritations we live with, suppress and battle against. It is a battle no one can win, so we escape the field, and bury ourselves under dousins of fabricated needs that require satisfying. Then we tell ourselves that is why we're here. To live forever with stuffed bellies and hungry mouths. Satiation is the compromise.
One of many compromises, come to think of it. Another is the various agendas on the global political stage. We seem torn between two conflicting driving forces, needing the boost of both, but struggling with their inevitable conflict every day. The paradox is that without the harsh and unjust trade laws that send most of the profit our way, we would not be able to police the world and maintain the fragile peace that is near breaking many places across the globe. Our good deeds are funded by our bad deeds. Our good deeds are needed because of our bad deeds. So instead of peace we go for eternal truce, continously bargained for. But who can bargain with such leverage? So we meet again, said the hammer to the anvil...
Then there's the careful and onerous trivialization and disarming of the facts, that we all hide behind. It is conducted with great skill and care, this process, and the aim is to justify our conduct, our turning want to need so recklessly. Feeding the void, delaying the inevitable confrontation with the big black holes in the deepest cores of our personalities. In truth it is not a hole at all, and certainly not black. It's more like uncharted territory. Wisdom carried through the generations unheeded, and now, because of satiation, unsought.
Hmmm....an interesting stylistic departure.
Have you read Gurdjieff ? This sounds somewhat like his description of "ordinary man" who essentially "asleep" most of the time and is run by a committee of disjointed "little me's". There are also aspects of Krishnamurti's ideas on "conditioning".
No fresco, I haven't read Gurdjieff. But I may have been exposed to his ideas indirectly.
Incidentally, I am working on a story of sorts under the title of 'diaries of a sleepwalker'. The idea is an attempt to clarify the border between reality and fantasy. This is all for my own benefit, and not not spurred by further ambition. I just like to rant.
Anyway, the exact point where fantasy and reality merge is not easy to find, and I suspect that this border is one continously crossed and very ill-defined. Maybe just another dualitic notion?
Quote:Michael: I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex.
Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?
The Big Chill
Quote:"Life is something that should not have been."
Schopenhauer
Life is too overwhelming for most of us, except for saints and madman. We flee to the shadows and peek out now and again.
and Gurdjieff was considered a saint by some and madman by others.
Hiyah Fresco!
Sounds like its time to go back and read Beelzebub once more, eh?
kuvasz,
Nice to hear from you ! There are occasions on A2K that a mention of G looks viable. Many times, as you well know, its like shouting into the wind !
Thanks for the intro to Gurdijeff. I haven't heard of him before...
kurvasz wrote:I was serious about how we all hide in the shadows, and peek out onto a world that scares and bewilders us. Gurdjieff was speaking of an integration of self and of honesty that Jesus was speaking about too.
It seems to me that all our famous wise men through the ages were pretty much speaking about the same things.
Maybe the only difference between Jesus and the Buddha, for instance, is the worlds they lived in. Jesus would have used phrases, angles and logic patterns compatible with his age and the ways of his people. So would the Buddha have done in his time, and since the message is reflected through the culture the wise man lived in, it is possible that the figures that our conflicting religions were founded on were all conveying the same message.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace