THE FAITH I POSSESS

Life and its demands, its requirements, its rules, its regulations, even its well-worn patterns-become-beliefs-become-traditions demand their pounds of flesh, their money and angst and submission. It is a deadly game played, a stupefying and numbing game, a giving up of the soul in bits and pieces until one must not only play but be … dead. The body itself requires that it be fed, that it’s teeth be cleaned, that it be made to survive healthily as long as possible, that its bed be comfortable, though it is the mind the requires that the body be attired fashionably and that it maintain an attractiveness in society. It all requires the maintenance of a certain level of control of all external and internal forces as if there could actually be such a thing, as if we could respond instinctively and intuitively and most appropriately to all stimuli, like a sunflower’s trope towards the sun. And so we end up in contrivances of all sorts that will give us the impression and belief that we are in control and possessing the image of success, of this control, whatever it may be. If not material wealth and social power and fame, then at least savoir faire, a convincing pretence of such, or perhaps a little of each, though a small amount of pretense properly applied can cover a surprisingly large area and last a goodly amount of time.

          I once more consider “taking all my writings and publishing them in an actual book.” At least partly so that I can bury or otherwise hide a few copies in a redwood trunk and then find that said redwood trunk next lifetime so that I can be further bored out of my wits. If life cannot be “tongue and cheek(s),” it has no purpose. My life has purpose. To be able to be self-denigrating in a most humorous manner allows me the wherewithal to successfully denigrate other selves as well. But why? Why would that be a life purpose? To remove the one thing we are most proud of and that we hold onto to prove that we are worthwhile in this world: self-image. Self-image, which is false at heart, self-deceitful, usually mean-spirited (especially in its showy, smiling, goodness), superficial and simply stupid. We are good creatures at heart though generally know no better in mind, though which we sin against the God of our own being, not because we are evil but because we just don’t know what’s real, because we are so utterly ignorant of ourselves, especially of ourselves in the world. Even the world is not evil, though the devil best dwells in our minds and souls here. To be in bodies with which we come to identify is utter and complete temptation to become what we are not, and to cause a rift, if not an abyss, between our true selves and our false selves. We make wrong choices based in wrong identity, mistaken identity, and only life itself, or, the gods acting upon us through the exigencies and emergencies of life, has the effect of sloughing off our false skins and our false notions and identities, returning us to a true semblance of our being. It is not that there is “hope”; rather, it is that truth does will out in the end in spite of us and our stupidities. And it is not that “life is cruel”; we cannot blame life for our own blindness: life just comes at us, as it were, and we just respond poorly until we finally learn, by trial and error and perhaps even by divine grace, how to respond appropriately, according to our true nature, true being.