TO JOSEPH, AGE 8, BEWILDERED

Dear Joseph,

Given the way you are, your life will tend to be an adventure and a dangerous one at that, since you have no inherent real idea of “normality” or “conventionality.” And though you may feel fear; that in itself does not inhibit you from going to the edge or even over at times. “The way you are” may be the result of your last lifetime in which you were killed as a rabbi in a concentration camp, to be brief: all your “convention” and “obedience” led you nowhere, got you nothing, and was the downfall of your people. Then you were born premature in this lifetime and bonded with no living beings, setting you immediately outside, making you inherently “outcast.” You were attacked by the Richman boys at an early age, then you were beaten by your father not soon after, and noticed that you naturally could move outside of your own body. Soon enough the ghost in your room appeared and opened your eyes to absolutely different realities and stuck around a while as well. Then finally, at age seven, you got very sick and vanished before your own eyes; you learned that you could cease to exist just like that. You may have taken after your father who was impulsive and willful, as well as your mother, who had the “sight” of her Indian blood and its Buddhist-like outlook, though with much of an inherent sense of magic powers, combined with the rousing Irish fiddle and poetic thrust. Your Scots-Irish Cherokee Choctaw grandfather dropped dead rollicking his Irish fiddle in front of his corn liquor still. The fearless love of adventure of your ancient Viking ancestors via your grandfather’s italian “lion” heritage still stirs in your blood along with the blind faith of your great-grandfather who fought with Garabaldi. And so your life will prove to be an adventure often fraught with too much danger. But both the Lord and the Gods will hold you close enough that you may finally come to realize your place in the world and in the context of the Heavens, though, at the same time, it may never come to fruition in this lifetime. Reincarnation is as a “serial adventure,” causing us to return so as not to miss the next episode. And life is Saturday morning 1950s black and white TV for children. All daring adventure mixed with absurd cartoons and craving for cookies and more cereal. However, life is not so simple as watching action series and cartoons on Saturday morning: there is the matter of your fate and your destiny, which are interwoven. Your destiny are the choices you make and the directions you take within the context of your fate, for you are part and parcel of your own fate, that is , of what happens in your life. 

IN A DARK, COLD, DAMP CAVERN WITH NO IMAGES

The cultural and societal directions of this country and the world seem to be regressing, becoming more tribal and defensive and fearful, and dangerous as a result. People cannot adapt or assimilate to new and different cultures and societies, unwilling and unable to adapt themselves. I have become strangely more religious these days. It could be because I can no longer see how I or anyone else can possibly make life better for myself or my world. The fact that too many people suffer “out there” becomes less and less bearable for me. On one hand, I live in Heaven; on the other, I live in Hell. One must be able to live in both worlds.

His moments of life were passing before him so utterly clearly, like water flowing in an icy mountain stream. But he could not sense either the gods or the God speaking to him or to anyone in any way. Time was slipping like sand out of his grip and all he could do was sit and wait—and die more as each moment passed. He waited, not patiently--desperately. It was no wonder existence had become so meaningless and absurd to him; God no longer spoke nor cared and he was utterly alone. Only in his dreams was there any hope, but they too were as empty as himself. He was a shadow; it was as if he no longer existed. And yet he wanted to exist; he wanted so much to be. He was as a voyeur spying upon himself, waiting for a sign of life, waiting for God to notice him that he may notice himself, waiting for the slightest word that he may hear himself. 

The room had not changed but the shadows were not the same. He could not find words; there was only dark oily smoke in the cold cavern; he held cold coals in his hand but his mind was empty of any image. He was a blank and, though he stood there in the smoky, dark coldness, he was nothing. He might as well not exist at all; the embers were barely burning under a deep cover of ashes. All he needed was fresh fuel for the fire and the whistling cavernous wind would cause him to burst into flame once again. What purpose could he burn for now? 

His writing was hopeless, literally and figuratively. People might read it, but he would see that they could only shake their heads in pity at his inability, his pathetic grasping at straws as he sank down drowning in his own hopelessness. His anger came from his last grasps and gasps; he had to pretend that he “had something,” knowing that whatever it might be would never be apparent to him or anyone else. He could only see that he had grasped nothing at all after a lifetime of hoping and praying and grasping. He recalled the words of Leonard Cohen: “Only drowning men could see him.” And here he was drowning, yet still could not see him. Drowning in aloneness, standing in the cold, dark, smoky cavern staring at blank rock face with dumb, frozen fingers and no thought to warm them, much less move them. There was no voice in his soul, no art in his heart, no sign in his mind. He had ceased to exist.

If he attempted to “sit,” he would doze off. He might sit in the hot tub and gaze up at the stars, which were faintly visible. He hated being faced with nothing possible to do or be. He had the thought that this place he was in might be Hell itself, though he knew that the physical pain could make it much, much worse. He was grateful that, comparatively, his life was very “blessed” and that he was in fact very “lucky.” Yet there was a profound sense of sadness and incompletion that weighed heavily upon him. “Next lifetime I’ll be a scale,” he thought, “so that people can weigh heavily upon me.” Such humor. Philosophers and scales share this same fate.

THROUGH LOVING FLOWS "WISDOM"

People do not “find” the Truth or Reality, nor can they “define” it as an understanding of what it is. They can only “be” it, i.e., live it as their lives, but when that occurs, this moment, even in all its heartache and pain, is us, is our life, is me, is my life. We want it not to be so; we want it different; we want it the way it “should” be. When I have said that “wisdom comes through me,” I meant it, in spite of the self-effacing comparison of my wisdom to a “miniscule divine fart.” That was probably a bit too self-effacing. But let’s face it: all we really have is our selves and that which is seen as the Self, the greater component or being of all of us. Whatever we may name that, many of us hold it to be true, some from traditional belief, some from a kind of logic and common sense, and some from both. We as ourselves are not unaware of the existence of many selves, but we know it all only through this one that is our self. This is necessarily true; “ego” is not bad, though it must be aware of itself as part of the body of many selves if it is to function in reality. In truth, we are not separate from each other on most levels, though we are definitely separated on the physical and in the way the physical acts on the emotional and mental “bodies” which we also include; so we may feel and think quite differently from each other, but my own sense and belief is that we are far more similar emotionally than we are different. It’s just that some of us have more of a mental control of our emotional component than others. This may be necessary in a controlled social environment but such events as “falling in love” or as mass anger as a consequence of mass injustice may easily overcome any social inertia or blindness.

In truth, I think I do know how wisdom comes to one. It is never through choice, for the “initiation” into its truth is not one most people would choose at all. I didn’t, but it happened anyway. One could say it was my “fate” or that I was “blessed by God” if one had such an imagination, or simply that it “happened as it happened,” and I “stepped up" to it. One could even say that it really was a blessing sent to change me if I could but accept the responsibility and seize the opportunity, in the awareness to see it as such. As a most self-centered person, I had been pretty much oblivious to others. I was amiable enough, friendly and kind, but my life revolved around me, my wants, my visions, my hopes, my beliefs, which were very overbalanced on the “me side.” I hardly even noticed that my first wife was there. She was a beautiful, kind, intelligent, and loving woman whom I mostly ignored, engaged in my own intense spiritual quest. We went through a lot together but I never talked with her or touched her. I broke her heart, her inherent faith. I never bothered to know who she was; I was more important in the “great scheme of things.” I read so much “wisdom” and meditated upon so much “wisdom” but it never even dawned on me what wisdom even was; I thought it was so much “arcane knowledge.”

In time I had a daughter who was born with severe autism. She became the center of my life. My life revolved around her, not me. For twenty years I took care of her and supervised others who did so, the later time being pretty much just her and me, before she moved into the care of a supported living agency at age twenty. Caring for someone other than myself as I did for a long time changed me. It was my choice; I left my work to see if I could improve her condition, and even if I did help in some way, it certainly improved my condition. Putting someone else first was not hard for me. It was the natural result and expression of my great love for her. I finally recognized that there are others people than just myself. In this time I began to notice in my writing to myself, which I had been doing for years, began to flow with a kind of “wisdom,” a love for all beings, a profound appreciation of life and others, a sense of beauty and kindness that I had never experienced before. She “opened up my heart,” as it were, which still had a long way to go. Then, I remarried, and very quickly, my wife had an accident in which she became disabled and in excruciating chronic pain of fibromyalgia. And again I found my normally quite self-centered life revolving around the love and care of another. I had to learn and am still learning how she feels and how it is to be trapped in a suffering body. I willingly took much of this pain upon myself in hopes that it might alleviate her level of pain. I believe that this is possible but that pain begets pain also. I had to be able to “bear up” under it weight and not be crushed by it, which still remains a rather daunting task after eight years. My wife opened my heart in a different way: I learned what love is. Kahill Gibran’s words on love in The Prophet come to mind:

When love beckons you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you, yield to him

Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him,

Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.

Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun.

So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.

He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.

He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart,

And in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s     pleasure,

Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,

Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,

And weep, but not all of your tears.

If we can learn what love is, which can only be by our own experience of loving and of being loved, wisdom comes of its own accord, not ours. Love opens us to all of life, which can be most devastating, yet also with overwhelming joy and beauty.  

WE ARE STORIES THAT SPEAK OURSELVES, OUR LIVES

We like “beginnings.” We not only tell stories of beginnings but are stories of beginnings. We may remember and know endings but they are usually not what we aimed for. Our lives are our stories. Our life is our story. We may even see it as a story “about life” but it is from our own eyes. We are stories to be told and each of us wants to tell our story. Some of us even do, but we make the mistake of thinking it is “for others” when it is actually for ourselves. If we can’t hear and don’t know our own story, no one else can hear it. And others will not know how it is to be me or you except through their own veils and filters of understanding and interpretation. We tell our story that we may listen and come to know ourselves in some way. And telling your story is not easy for our current mind and way of seeing things is quite different from the mind that was there almost in another world and another time, another place. Every story we tell of ourselves starts somewhere that is somehow “new”; we “begin anew” with each story, which is more than a memory, for we are telling it as if we were someone else we are now observing, and as if we want to make it more or less intelligible to others than ourselves. We tell it as if others are listening to us, which is to say that we are performing the story for others, which is true if we but realize that we are not just ourselves but are closely interwoven and intertwined with others and vice-versa. In fact others may listen if we are able to find the interwoven threads of this great tapestry of which we are all a part in time and in space.

"WISDOM" AND ITS FOOLISH WAYS

There is "wisdom" coming forth from me. How is wisdom to be "transmitted"? Is it even transmittable? Is it meant to be transmitted? I have a perception that what happens is meant to happen as it does and holds valuable lessons for each of us in that respect. It is up to us to accept and to understand such things. The traditional term for it would be akin to "God's will," which consequently attends to a kind of fatedness and the notion that "God watches over all." This does not diminish our power as ourselves in the world at all; rather, it denotes that this power of ours exists within the context of both fate and God.

I have "dreams" before I awaken which amount to "wisdom to be shared." Sometimes I do though probably more often I am distracted by my life and don't get around to it. My "sharing" is simply writing it down as best I can as I am attempting to do now, or less so, it may make its way to my blog (here!) where it may be read by the number of people I can count on one finger. So my words and thoughts, as "wise and earth-shaking" as they may be, reach essentially no one in this form. However, the thoughts are "out there" and "in the air" more than they were before they reached me. That may be a good thing; it may help the "general mind" ever so imperceptibly slightly, like a very faint breeze that moves two leaves in one distant, never-seen tree. My "wisdom" may attain to a miniscule divine fart.

Wisdom, however, exists for itself, not for the one through whom it may flow. It is the "metaphysical force" for which this blog is named. We exist for it, not it for us, though to live by wisdom's dictates, if you will, does enhance our own existence to the extent that we realize that there is no such thing, that we are but nothing at all, that all our identification with that which we believe ourselves to be is for nothing. This does not mean that we are worthless and our lives are pointless, for that is not true until, of course, we realize that we don't exist as we believe we do. Obviously, there is an irony, a paradox, but until we are able to actually understand it and be with it, TOO MUCH IRONY MAKES ONE OVERWROUGHT.

One of my purposes is to bring about an ability to accept and understand what we still call "ourselves," to the point that we can see and be beyond this which we define as and "know" to be ourselves. I am old enough and do know enough that I no longer care so much "what people think," as if they are even able to think, and as if even if they were able to think, that they would have any awareness of it whatsoever. Even at this point in the process, people only believe that they are thinking, when in fact they are more "being thought" than actually thinking. Witness the recent presidential election as one sure proof of this.

The real goal of existence is to get to the point at which you are FREE, which is to say that you realize that YOU do not exist but are essentially a figment of the imagination, not YOUR imagination. The ancient Greek notion that humans are as "playthings of the gods" is rather accurate, for we are as pieces upon a playing board, each believing that we are a specific piece and making our own consequential moves. But we don't, fate does, at least until we realize that we ourselves are integral to fate itself and the workings of fate. Tibetan Buddhists say, "We hold the lotus in our hands." I use the word "fate" rather than "God" so as not to ruffle feathers; feathers do not fly, the bird flies, though the bird does have feathers. But once we realize our place or even non-place in the process, we begin to get some kind of a grip on what is happening: Metaphysical Forces in Flux: What on Earth is Happening? We are able to find ourselves, that is, our absence of self, and therefore freedom within the process of existence. I do not "play with words" here: I am being most specific (though, admittedly, the words may be playing with me). And at the same time, I'm not sure if we can or are meant to "master" this kind of being. I surely haven't but that may be simply because I still see myself too much as an "I." "I" inherently is an obstacles to freedom, for "I" is inherent boundary and limitation; not evil or bad but inherent to existence in the body. We are "bound" and do need to realize this as well, to the point of appreciating and even enjoying to the utmost our "bounds" and our "prison." Realizing that this is all sound rather too Gnostic at this point, I'll give it a rest.

TO JOSEPH: REMEMBERING HOW IT WAS TO BE YOU

As I look at your school photo probably from 1955, I know exactly the bewilderment and confusion you felt. I see the sorrow and disappointment in your eyes, and the grimness through which you try to smile for the photographer, who tells you to “say cheese,” but you cannot; you can only move your lips into a line of resignation. You are wondering, I know, “Where is the hope I’m supposed to have? Where is Jesus who is supposed to love me, to take care of me?” I know that these were your prayers, which are not supposed to be the prayers of a child. I know that you had already had experiences and memories that let you see through and even beyond time and space and form, but that you did not understand them and found yourself even more confused and disappointed and alone. I know that you lived in fear, both at home and at school, and that only when you were alone in nature, away from home and school, did you feel any peace. I know that you lived very much in your own world, which became too large to bear at times but never too small. I know that you did not understand the world very much, even feeling that you did not belong in this world, even in the body you possessed. And that you could not understand any of these things to the point that you were almost constantly overwhelmed by it all, bewildered by life itself, especially by people, and particularly by people who came too close to you, and that you either became paralyzed or like a wounded animal when they tried to touch you or hold you. You had been like this from a very young age. I will tell you more.

             I know that you sensed and had learned from your own experiences, even at a very young age, that you were neither locked in to time or space, and so you were aware of yourself in many times and many spaces. In your despair, you called out to your future self, me, to come and help you, for it seemed that you would be trapped in this existence as a child forever. You knew you could not comprehend or help yourself, but that perhaps I, the future you, might be at least able to explain to you what was happening and how you would finally be able to get through it all and survive as yourself. Well, Joe, I have finally come, finally arrived, to help you. I know you are still trapped as that bewildered little boy and I have come to free you after sixty-two years. It has taken me this long to find you and to understand exactly how you feel. It has been too long but I am here now for you. And I love you very much. It has taken me this long to even realize how fettered I was in the same chains that have imprisoned you for so long. I am with you now, Joe.

             When I tell you things about your life and about you, you may remember them well or not. Sometimes there is too much pain in remembering, so we choose not to, and try our best to get on with living our lives. I did this, but eventually we have to return and unravel and unlearn all that became twisted and consequently learned in the wrong way. I have tried to do this.

             You were born six weeks before your nine-month birth date. You realized that you had to free yourself then or that you would die before you could be born. Your mother had to inhale your father’s cloud of constant cigarette smoke and it was filling your little lungs and choking you, smothering you. So you kicked hard and she fell on the ice and down some stairs, breaking her water. You were born in the taxi on the way to the hospital and were so small and frail that the doctors had you put in an incubator, a little box with a lamp inside it to keep you warm, just like the kind that was used to hatch motherless chickens. You were fed with a bottle and were so small and frail that you were not held much in the two months that you were there before you were allowed to go home. You did not learn to “bond” through human touch and had become solitary and alone in your existence. When your mother tried to pick you up, you squirmed, fought, and screamed; human touch was overwhelmingly intense, even painful to you. It felt as if you were being shocked with electricity. Even when people looked directly at you into your eyes, that too was overwhelmingly intense and painful; you could feel the energy from their eyes going into you through your eyes and it was so powerful that you felt as if it would literally cause you to explode, as if you were being electrocuted. You could only bear to look at people peripherally and could not bear being touched or even having people in your close proximity. Your mother would bring you in your carriage to the park and place you under the trees blowing the wind, where you would watch for hours on end. I am still mesmerized by trees blowing in the wind and still could watch for hours.

             You were not a “normal” child. I know you really did try to “fit in,” but even your parents couldn’t understand the topics that you brought up at the dinner table. Once you got over the shock of transferring from a small, “country” public school, Roosevelt School, in Colonie, New York, to a large city, Catholic school in Albany, you did “take” to the whole concept of “Jesus, my friend” thoroughly, and would talk about concepts from the Baltimore Catechism such as the “nature of God as Supreme Being,” the “nature of the essence of love,” and other such topics with your parents. They had no idea what you were talking about whatsoever, and could only shake their heads and make fun of you by calling you, “Pope Joseph”; “The Pope speaks,” they would say in their inability to understand the philosophical, theological, ethical and moral issues that you were trying to convey. It had taken you much longer than normal to learn to talk; your parents thought you were “retarded,” though were too embarrassed to seek medical attention for you. And then when you did start talking, you immediately started asking philosophical, existential questions that were beyond their level of superficial conversation. You were serious and wanted to understand what life was about, but your father could only ridicule you. This is when you developed a level of stuttering equivalent to a speech impediment. You could barely get a sentence out without severe stuttering and having to stop speaking. Within a year you became a child who hardly ever spoke, and so your teachers thought you were “retarded” (which was the word commonly used at that time) as well. You were anxious and distracted. Perhaps it was that you had to be “somewhere else” in your mind because the invasiveness and demand of your environment and the world itself was just too unbearable, too difficult to satisfy. I know that at school you would look out the window at the trees blowing in the wind and lose yourself in that movement and beauty, only to be sharply interrupted by the nun’s shrill demanding voice: “Joseph, pay attention. Answer my question.” You would look up, now afraid, licking your lips, and suddenly would feel sharp pain on the knuckles of your right hand as she hit you hard with a ruler. You would cry out but more inside than out, and then become very quiet and afraid. You felt so forsaken you could not even cry; but tears flowed inside your being. You would stammer something in response to her question that you could not even recall hearing. In disgust, she would then call on someone else, and you would go back into your sad, lonely dream. The other children did not laugh; they too were afraid. Going to this school with its demanding, harsh nuns all dressed in black, with clicking rosary beads around their waist, clicking as they rushed down the aisle with a ruler in their hand to smack your knuckles or to hit you upside the head with their open hand, made living into a constant hell for you.

I suppose it is a bit unfair to say that you were not “a normal child.” Are there actually any “normal” children at all? There are definitely “normal” adults. They are the ones who carry on their lives without ever questioning who or what they are or what they are doing. They go through their lives as they believe they’re supposed to and then they die as they’re supposed to. This is not a bad thing at all; in fact it may be quite fortunate for those who are not “normal.” You were normal enough to pass for normal to a certain extent. In today’s world you might have been diagnosed in one way or another and even placed in “special ed,” but now is now and then was then.

             You did eventually adapt yourself to the social world of your peers and the adults, perhaps by the time you reached puberty. But prior to that you were very solitary, not so antisocial as aloof and unsocial. At age ten, a boy, Frankie Drislane, who lived three houses down the street, who was sickly and frail, perhaps having been affected with polio at a certain point earlier in his life, and who the kids on the block called “Drizzlepus” because he looked so sad as if he were going to cry, invited you to his house. In truth his mother invited me in as I was walking by to have tea and cookies with Frankie, who was a bit younger than me, whom I didn’t know well and wondered why he moved so slowly and stiffly like an old man, but I never thought any less of him. All I remember is that he brought me to his room and proudly showed me his stamp collection, with the stamps mounted in books with pictures of stamps. The moment I saw the collection and how dignified and cool he felt about it, I was hooked on stamp collecting. He had been able to create a whole world for himself that he could call his own. For the next five years or so I would spend every dime and all my time on creating a most incredible stamp collection, alone, sequestered in my bedroom. I would relish and cherish every single moment of it. I would be able to shut out the whole world and live in one of my own making in which I was the master. I absolutely loved it. And I became quite knowledgeable in the hobby in its myriad and esoteric details. In this time I somehow found a Russian penpal, probably through Cub Scouts, who sent me letters with Russian stamps on them, which I soaked off for my collection, and found a message scribbled underneath the stamps, that said “Please help me.” I put a dollar, earned from collecting bottles and hauling them a mile away to the closest store to collect deposits, in the next letter I sent and never heard back from my friend again. But the stamp collecting saved my poor little psyche from having to deal with an insane world. I still had to go to school but I played sick as often as possible by pressing my forehead up against the warm radiator, sprinkling some water on my face, and going into my sleeping parents’ room and telling my mother, “Mom, I don’t feel so good.” She would put her hand up to feel my forehead, and would say, “My God, Joseph, you have a fever. Go to bed.” She would call the school and I would be home free. I was able to miss many days of school this way, which was wonderful. As time went on, she paid me fifty cents an hour to collate her many Chamber of Commerce mailings consisting of so many pages that I lined them up from the dining room into the kitchen which included the dining room table, the buffet, and the kitchen table. One these days she would tell my father I was sick and call the school. I would collate while watching Truth or Consequences and I Love Lucy, and get paid for this. It was like heaven.

TO JOSEPH: THE CONTEXT, ORDER, AND MEANING OF YOUR LIFE

I know you seek to understand what is happening in your life now at age eight. I know you seek to comprehend the very dynamics of life itself, wondering why it is as it is and even why and how you can come to such false conclusions. You have already begun the “quest” of your whole life: to find context of being, order, and meaning. You will seek it everywhere: through relationship and love of others, through nature and the physical pleasures of the body and mind themselves, through detail and focus of mind in minute work, through spiritual paths and the many ways to God and many divinities, and spiritual paths and others ways that avoid God altogether, through the responsibilities of caring for others and your family, for taking care of those who need you and upon whom you may focus your attention rather than only yourself. Such choices will lead you into great anger and despair but also great joy and fulfillment. You will experience profound pain on many levels of being as well as the pleasures of life. You will suffer for others and for yourself. Your remembered mistakes and oblivious hurting of others will cause you heartache and regret throughout your life. In the end you may become a decent human being who loves and cares about others and knows yourself to a much greater degree. You may attain an understanding of who you are and what life is, where you meet and what is required. You will find that there are as many vantage points as there are contexts and that all orderings must give way to chaos so that you may pick up the pieces and reconstruct order in a manner than now fits who you are, for old ways die hard. Yet context and order must be sought, found, created, destroyed, remembered, and recreated. In this process meaning is found and purpose exists. To be human is to climb the highest mountain and gaze upon all existence and to descend into the deepest, darkest abyss and experience the inherent agony of humanity, especially your own. Though life be Heaven, it is also Hell. One must learn to seek the Heaven within themselves and how to maintain it without themselves leading them astray so that they forget who and where and what and why they are. If we cannot find the Heaven, we are destined to Hell until the next opportunity, the next quest, the next lifetime, the next form, presents itself, which all, as is taught by some, is our own choice.