WHERE MY STORIES "GO"

Sometimes I convey myself and my life by telling stories of things that I have experienced in my life. Such stories seem rather compelling in the moment. But a number of realizations and further directions occur after I tell the stories:
  1. I realize that I am not simply a series of stories about myself in my life.
  2. The stories lead to a context that is larger than myself or my life, or to a place of all stories in all lives. In other words, I go both bigger and more inclusive, and deeper within myself to a place more of "human existence" than of "personal being" (though the latter is still there).
  3. Once I tell the story, it is as though it has been "published" or is now a "major motion picture" and is other out of my hands and something about me which has now been externalized and is no longer very "personal" to me. In telling such stories, I seem to "lose" a bit of myself. 

We tell our stories about ourselves, believing that they are ourselves, that they are what "makes us up" to be as we are. I think we tell them so that we might be "heard," and thus have more proof to ourselves that we do in fact exist and have our own lives. Some of us may tell our stories to others but I think we all tell our stories to ourselves; we just have to know that we are somehow real. I don't think that to tell our stories is narcissitic or self-centered, but, rather, human. Why did we once make paintings of bison in caves? Why do we "pass down our histories"? Perhaps that is the only thing we can really "leave" of ourselves to others. Like "do this in remembrance of me."

So, of late, I have conveyed a few stories, perhaps also to demonstrate what I see as philosophical points or simply observations of what it is to be human. We use our own lives as examples of this or of that, of wisdom or of folly, of success or failure, of pride or of regret. And we are the authorities on our own stories, our own experiences, even if our reading of ourselves is purely subjective. If I can show people how I feel about something, they might very well be able to feel it too. So, our story-telling can make us more human and bring us together if we speak from what we call our hearts. What I'm trying to say is that telling our stories has the potential to bring us close to each other. And why would we want to be "close to each other"? Because that's actually who we are and why we are here; that is the natural outcome of ourselve if we were free enough to actually be ourselves.

WE CAN DO THE RIGHT THING IF WE DO IT RIGHT/WRITE

I write because there is always something wanting to be said; always an unspoken voice wanting to be heard. I write so I can hear it, so that I know it has been said. The world has not been saved by whatever has been spoken, written, but it has been changed, perhaps even improved a very light bit, because something that wanted to be said has been said and I have heard it. I am probably the only one changed by my writing, and so I keep on telling a story, never knowing where it goes or even where it comes from. It seems to come perhaps from my interpretation of my experience, but, though it may be my interpretation, is it actually of "my" experience. Back in 1970, I was a Conscientious Objector, objecting to my participation in the war in Vietnam. That is a story in itself but I was "assigned" to work in a residential care facility near Millbrook, NY at which I was a "child care counselor" or houseparent to a group of "emotionally disturbed" boys, ages 3 to 12. Most of these kids were from Harlem, NY, and had lived hellish lives before they were taken out of their living situations and put into this "institution" where I worked. When some of them first arrived, they were very afraid of the trees, which flailed wildly in the wind at times. The kids thought the trees were monstrous and were going to "get them." They had actually never seen such "wild trees" in their lives and thought that they were somehow moving on their own volition. I, man of the world that I was, and one quite familiar with wild trees, helped allay their fears. But the interesting part is that when I was a very young child, my mother parked me in my carriage in the park near where I lived, and I watched the trees moving for hours, and came to believe too that they were quite alive and moving on their own. I had forgotten about that until these little kids came along, and I still have the same thought when I walk these days in the Forest of Nisene Marks, a great redwood forest where I walk frequently. In fact, I tell people that the "big joke that the trees play on humans is that they all move their branches around at the same time so that humans will think it is the wind blowing."  

When I moved to my house in the "burbs" ten years ago, I looked out this window in my office and saw only houses around me. Now I look at out and see ... trees--pines, oaks, apple, birch. The biggest one blocking the view of the houses is an Italian Pine Christmas tree I replanted (and there are three others at various stages of growth). And my yard is so tiny. In 1987 I bought Dick Smothers' (of the Smothers Brothers) estate on thirty acres and nursed every little tree, most oak and pine, until there was a literal forest on the ex-vineyard in front of the house. Trees are mostly good listeners and very rarely answer back, though one time a dead branch fell, hit me in the face, and gave me a bloody nose. There was no wind, it had been listening to my babbling, and must've had enough. Three inches more and it could have cracked my skull. Such a sense of humor.

Now a blue jay is looking around for peanuts that I sometimes put on a plate outside on the deck. My daughter tells me that it is not "environmentally sound" or perhaps even "morally correct" to feed wild animals. But she seems unaware that it was the wild animals that tamed us humans and that they are far more "civilized" than any human beings. Though I have always wanted to have a bumpers ticker (still another silly) that read: "I eat dogs and I vote," just to irritate people. It is the sheer, stupid complacency of society that has always bothered me. This is why I am compelled and condemned to be the Devil's advocate. 

Let's talk about that. I already noted that I was assigned as a Conscientious Objector to work at the children's institution for two years. Within the first week, my boys started school at the on-campus school. And within the first week, the young and inexperienced teacher complained to the administration that the boys were "out of control" and "unteachable." And then within the first week, the administration had a meeting with the institution's "medical team" who decided that all of the boys should take Ritalin as a "mood stabilizer" so that they can be "properly educated." I will avoid "going racial" here. I was quite unfamiliar with Ritalin and did administer it initially to the kids before they went to school.
When they got home and all went to sleep, I realized that they were now quite "under control." The next day, before school, I made a deal with them. I said, "If you guys will be very good in school and do what the teacher says, I will let you stay up on Friday night and watch Creature Features, make you pop-corn and hot fudge sundaes, bring you out for pizza every week, and make hot dogs out on the barbecue." On that day I refrained from giving them the Ritalin just to see if they would keep their part of the bargain. And so for a few more days. Then, on that Friday, I got a call from the teacher, and she said, "The boys have been wonderful. That medication makes an absolute difference." For the next two years, at every weekly meeting, the administration and its doctors lauded themselves on their "profound success" in drugging the boys with Ritalin, and I dumped the Ritalin down the toilet every single morning. The Epilogue: as I neared the end of my two-year stint (in which I had become as a real parent to the boys), at one of the weekly meetings after the administration once again complimented itself on its great success, I told them, "For the last almost two years, it is the boys themselves who changed their behavior because I asked them to and gave them some minor positive reinforcements. In fact they have not received a single doze of Ritalin since the very first day." The administration threatened me with arrest and jail for what I had done, but they knew that if word got out, that they would be utterly ridiculed, if not sued themselves. So they had no recourse but to fire me just a few days early. Sometimes we can do the right thing, if we do it right.

PERPETUALLY SEEKING BALANCE: PERPETUALLY FINDING AND LOSING IT

"Seeking balance" is no simple task, for all moves all the time. From a Daoist perspective of unprincipled knowledge in which "events" are perpetually occurring, including oneself, there is not the psychological or spiritual comfort of an "unmoving, eternal center." There is no "God fix" available; rather, everything happening has its own being, its own reality, itself. All of this is taken into account, if not literally, then metaphorically, though still as attentively as is possible. This is necessary simply because all of it is so; all of it is occurring here and now, including ourselves. Even Zen presupposes a "suchness of being," a "true nature," as it were (and as it is). This too is all-inclusive, and, now that I think about it, even similar to Jung's notion of "Self" (though I have little regard for the most hypocritical man in spite of some of the insights he conveniently took from others while claiming full credit). And living in a most principled culture (in the sense of "absolutes" and "eternals"), I too have my staid beliefs in so many archetypes of reality.

So, though I may espouse a hoped-for Daoist and/or zen (with a "small z") perspective, I also find myself quite drawn to certain Gnostic beliefs (accounted for by my Catholic Calvinistic early "education" as well as my years of Theosophical training). In spite of the Daoist/zen leanings and my profound appreciation of filtered sunlight through the redwoods, I am fascinated by the Gnostic notion (as in Valentinianism but reflected in so many other places) that as the spirit incarnates in the flesh for the purpose of "knowing the flesh through being the flesh," it, now as the soul, the place of being "between" spirit and matter, necessarily identifies with the "lower," which is matter, flesh, and its particular survival desires, which are overpowering. That we are supposed to be able to rise above, i.e., to transcend, this identity of the flesh, of survival in the flesh after we have so successfully made the transition into human being, is fraught with much inherent difficulty, if not impossibility. And this is the pronounced quest of probably all religions: to get back to where we were with what we are. Even the Daodejing wants us to return to the purity of our "primordial state." And even the most sublime Christian or Theosophical teachings and/or magic, no matter how well understood and even known do not necessarily get us anywhere beyond ourselves, our current state of being. This is precisely why the Gnostics believed that only "God" could pick us out of the crowd and "save" us from the darkness of existence in the flesh. And then, once chosen, one was really "in for it," since now one had no choice because one was "anointed," i.e., "enlightened." I didn't mention Native American religion, which is kind of a cross (no pun intended) between East and West.

This "transmutation" or purification of "lower being" to "higher being" has always been my existential dilemma. I have sought to understand it from many vantage points and have tried many ways and rituals and spells and all kinds of actions to "transcend" myself. In some ways I have succeeded, while failing as well. Bob Dylan's lyrics, "There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all," come to mind (Love Minus Zero?). As I've previously noted, the closest I come to resolution of this riddle is in "sitting," in which I am just "here with myself as ever I may be." Provision of "breathing space" is seemingly the very best I can do for myself, which is to say, for everyone else as well. I once titled a blog, Taking a Breath in the Scheme of Things, so it has been with me for a while. A few people actually related to that theme. But I only sit occasionally these days. I'm disciplined when I'm disciplined, and otherwise not so much. My religion is my own and no one else's. If my soul shall be lost, I shall lose it and no one else. I wish. As if everything in my mind and my heart were actually mine. As if there could even be only me. No, truly, I am you as well as me. I am the other, both within and without. Sarte said, "Hell is other people," and he was so right. But, again, just where are all those "other people"?

I like writing this blog. It makes me think that someone is actually listening, and perhaps even understanding, and even better, enjoying the "conversation." I like to believe that there are people who see things much as I do, and question as I do. I'm sure there are, though I don't know what I would talk about if I met one. I have met people who "think along the same lines," as it were, but people that think like me also tend to be a bit argumentative, if not opinionated, even megalomanic. People have told me I'm "judgmental" and "too provocative," though to me, I simple assess and ask questions. Sometimes I am of the mind that one can "understand"; other times I believe that one can never possibly understand, but can only accept.

ON BEING A WRY SOLILOQUIST

On my "business card," "Soliloquist" follows after my name. Yes, it is humorous and people find it amusing; I find it amusing. But it is also quite true: I talk to myself quite frequently, though usually when I'm alone in the forest or in the car. However, when I talk to myself around people, I think that they think I'm talking to someone on a phone stuck deep in my ear or somewhere else. When I read, I often read aloud to myself, which uses one more sense, allowing me to better comprehend what I'm reading. Some of the stuff I read is dense and abstract, which makes sense because I'm dense and abstract, and perhaps here like attracts like; such texts "speak" to me. I have waded through so many esoteric texts with unflailing interest; things that no one in their right mind would want to read. This could lead to a right-brain/left-brain discussion but that I think would be too counter-intuitive at this point (and that's supposed to be wry and you're supposed to appreciate my wryness).

One perhaps realizes the inherent lack of reality in and of speech if one observes it and oneself and other selves over many years. Speech is chatter/chitta. It can be communication but mostly isn't. It is good for fixing broken things and overall surviving. It is a marketplace commodity. Ancient hieroglyphs were inventory and shopping lists and invoices. It was not used to convey essence. I meditated silently many years, beginning with Christian contemplation as a child, moving to Rosicrucian "exercises" (like "using my mind" to make a candle flame rise and fall) as a teen, then Theosophical "metaphysical/mystical" meditation (not unlike Christian contemplation in its context-orientation) through my 20s, then to all sorts of Buddhist approaches (zazen and vipassana). I still "sit" but in a context which is now more my own than of "Buddhism." The primary focus for me for a long time was to simply see how "I worked," i.e., how my mind and overall organism, including speech, functioned. I suppose I learned a lot; just don't ask me what it is. It's not like that. It's more like the "no-knowledge" of the Daoist wuzhi, touched upon in my previous post here.

The problem is: we know something but we never really know enough to be able to say anything accurately, i.e., completely. Nothing is adequately comprehended. Neils Bohr said something to the effect that we can have either accuracy or clarity but only one or the other, never both. That kind of ties in here. David Miller, a professor at Pacifica made the point that as soon as one says one thing as "true," it is necessarily untrue; I take that to perhaps express that there is no defining, for defining necessarily excludes essential aspects of reality. Being a person with various social responsibilities, I cannot simply "retire to the hermitage" (though maybe such is impossible anyway, for we "bring the world with us" wherever we may go to escape it). For me, there is perhaps one rule that I always try to practice: kindness and love towards others. Most of the time I fail miserably but sometimes I do not. I am one of the fortunate ones for whom life, in spite of its weltschmerz, or "world pain" (also noted in previous posts), holds an upward turn. But also, as I too often say, "Too much irony makes one overwrought."

So, I overuse speaking at times, and just about always retrospectively note that I should have kept my mouth shut, not so much because I may have said the proverbial "wrong thing," but because people hear only what they can hear, sometimes less than that, and rarely more. And I tend to expect too much and too much comprehension of the human condition. And I am too abstract and too cynical and sometimes too sarcastic, and humorour when I should be serious, and serious when I should be humorous, so what's a guy to do? How does one convey care and love to others? Genuineness? No, probably oversentimentality, downright corniness, and teary emotionality. People love a good drama, and, what's worse, believe it. Ya gotta be able to pump that shit out right from the heart, believe me. In our culture, even a nice Buddhist "warm smile" is generally unseen, if not misinterpreted. All accuracy is necessarily lost in clarity, so be clear and get over it. You have not sold or otherwise lost your soul. You just have to learn to love bacon (which is easy for me since I was raised on it).

BOTTLE WITH MESSAGE INSIDE

I treat this blog as if it were the book I finally write, my ongoing journal, and the akashic records, unsure if there is even anyone "out there." Not unlike being stranded on a desert island with thousands of empty bottles, notepaper, and pens.

I am a scholar and a philosopher, possessing a Ph.D., and with different interests that tend towards, I suppose, "existential questions," but go in other directions as well. Sometimes I even attempt to define a perspective that I find representative of my own thinking. My sources are so much more articulate than I am. I also do this for my own education and edification. I don't know if these "bottles with messages inside" go anywhere other than the other side of the island.

If anything, I am a "zen practitioner" (with emphasis on the lower case "z") and a Daoist (at the stages preceding the "fall into magic", as it appears to me). Here is something most interesting from Daodejing: "Making This Life Significant"; A Philosophical Translation by Ames and Hall (2003), a source my wife used in her doctoral dissertation:

"Wuzhi, often translated as 'no-knowledge,' actually means the absence of a certain kind of knowledge--the kind of knowledge that is dependent upon ontological presence; that is, the assumption that there is some unchanging reality behind appearance. Knowledge grounded in a denial of ontological presence involves 'acosmotic' thinking: the type of thinking that does not presuppose a single-ordered ('One behind the many') world, and its intellectual accoutrements. It is, therefore, unprincipled knowing. Such knowing does not appeal to rules or principles determining the existence, the meaning, or the activity of a phenomenon. Wuzhi
provides one with a sense of the de of a thing--its particular uniqueness and focus--rather than yielding an understanding of that thing in relation to some concept or natural kind or universal. [...]
[I have an affinity for brackets.] Knowledge, as unprinciped knowing, is the acceptance of the world on its own terms without recourse to rules of discrimination that separate one sort of thing from another. Rules of thumb, habits of mind and action, established customs, fixed standards, received methods, stipulated concepts and categories, commandments, principles, laws of nature, conventions--all of these prejudices require us to intervene [...] resulting as 'a hardening of the categories.' Having stored past experience and organized it in terms of fixed standards or principles, we then recall, anticipate, and participate in a world patterned by these discriminations." (40-41)

I sit here among the palm trees, in a the gentle breeze, waves lapping on the shore, pondering my navel, writing strange little messages, putting them in the bottles, one by one, and setting them afloat in the great universal sea.

BEING CAREFUL OF WHAT YOU SAY

I do tend to forget that someone may actually read what I say here. I often write as though this were some kind of personal journal. In fact I am somewhat careful of what I say even in my personal journal, knowing that someday I'll be dead and that my daughter may even read what I say (though I rather doubt she'll ever be that bored, assuming that the Oakland A's will still be in business). 

I have my own rather stupid seven-year-old sense of humor that I always think is funny. Seven-year-olds love fart jokes and obvious plays on words, like "Good doctors have a lot of patience/patience." It may be that I maintain such a sense of humor because it simply irritates people. Some of my humor is actually so subtle that no one even gets it. Maybe I like that because it too irritates people. Talking is a very mixed bag. People misunderstand everything. Nothing is ever clear. Philip Glass wrote an "opera" consisting totally of singing the written instructions that came with a new refrigerator. Linda Ronstadt was one of the "performers"; she sang a certain "part" from the instructions. There were protangonists and antagonists, sweet parts and violent ones, and all refrigerator instructions. Humans interpret even very clear, very "scientific," "technical" texts. We give everything "meaning" and "nuance." Some of my simplest, silliest jokes actually offend people. Purposeful silliness, which can be parody, satire, and, of course, cynicism, may be experienced as ridicule, which it also can be. Perhaps there is really only "innocence" in "seven-year-old" humor, and not in seventy-year-old humor, which can get quite "stale." It may be quite true that I demonstated symptoms of autism as a young child and never really got over "living in my own 'other world.'" I do not say this to be funny in any way. My daughter has autism and I did have symptoms of such as a child. I don't rock any more, but I still have a bit of touch aversion, inability to speak socially and/or conventionally (going, rather, right for the philosophical, noumenal jugular, even with complete strangers). Having been born six weeks premature and spending the first two months of my life mostly untouched in an incubator, I'm pretty sure, had something to do with how I related with human beings, including why I always found them to be rather strange and robotic; as a child, I often referred to them as "flesh machines." Such things I should not admit, admittedly, since they could brand me as "a bit bizarre" or at least, strange. However, once I learned to speak, I could entertain, even perform for, others. Perhaps it was Venus-on-my-ascendant (Sagittarius). Yes, I was once a "professional astrologer" (even before I was a hippie). Aquarians tend towards magic and metaphysics as well as philosophy and the like. But, of course, I digress.

Life itself is a digression. Mostly it is wasted in distraction and other survival activities. I learned how to survive well and have tried to help others in their survival, quite literally as well as metaphorically. I do get "seriously philosophical" much of the time, which can be a euphemism for depression, but is a problematic activity of the soul, and, moreso, the mind trying to "understand it 
all." The only certain way to understand it all is to not and accept that as Reality. Which is absolutely why I lean towards Zen and Daoism and appreciate the wind moving the trees very high up in the local redwood forest. Oh yes, the forest-silence as well. These are some of the facts of my existence, and perhaps why I believe I am ... sane, though others may not agree. It is important to be careful of what you say. It is best, in my estimation, to actually say nothing. Think everything but say nothing at all. But, since I have responsibilities other than myself, speaking is necessary. When I say "speaking," I mean saying that which must be said, which is not the same as buying donuts or making dinner; it is a much different, more essential, nourishment.

HUMAN BEINGS "FINDING HEAVEN"

Since I was a child I every so often, after watching people on the street living their lives, asked myself, "Am I actually one of these?" It's not that I ever saw or imagined myself to be from another planet or even of another species; I just marveled that I could be one of these human beings, or even inhabiting a human body. I have always simply wanted human beings to be humane, which is to say, aware of, even caring for, others than only themselves. I was always so struck by their loudness, gracelessness, crudeness, obliviousness, and insensitivity. I am aware that so much of this simply is part and parcel of the deteriorating physicality of the species in itself, but there is also the utter need to escape from the weltschmerz, Schopenhauer's term, for the "world sorrow," the "world pain." But I am digressing into philosophical tangents.

I have often felt, since childhood, that the body, though beautiful in so many ways, is just disgusting. True, in my hedonistic hippie days, when the body was to be literally worshipped, I was most devoutly religious in that respect. However, I still saw us humans as fancy worms. I found myself to be a firm believer in the notion of the spirit-within-flesh, quite imprisoned, and having to learn all about this incarnational descent to be culminated in ascent to spirit, over numerous lifetimes. I definitely took to the Gnostic notion of the profound difficulty of disidentifying with the flesh, no matter how deep the "true spiritual understanding." Such "transcending" based upon one's ability to "transmute" was far easier said than done. Of course, being taught in Catholic school of the "evil" and "sinfulness" of the body did much to train my thinking along such lines. 

At this point, it is obvious to me that the species seeks to survive by propagating itself, and that the survival instinct is inherently more powerful--and deeper--than any such "comprehension" anyone may have about "physical existence." However, it may be that, as one is able to come to "deeper" comprehension of what it is to be human, some kind of "transmutation" does occur. It could simply be that the species prefers to leave such tasks to those more capable of carrying it forward, that is, the young, and not the old. Though an elderly one may see himself as always youthful, there is still no fool like an old fool. One can perhaps remain youthful and creative in mind, but not in body, regardless of good health and stamina. Even trees know this. 

I never know where these "conversations with myself" that I am sharing with a more or less non-existent audience will lead. This much is obvious to me anyway. They just "go where they go." I once got lost in the Los Padres National Forest, just south of the New Camaldoli Hermitage, and decided that I would follow a stream in the belief that it would "lead to the ocean." Instead, I followed a most-meandering stream for hours until it was almost dark, before I finally followed a deer path, climbed up the steep ridge, and saw the sun setting over the ocean. In other words, my meandering doesn't necessarily lead to any "greater context" whatsoever. I am definitely a seeker of Greater Context, but I think one must find "heaven on earth," before one can ever go to heaven. This is often enough like finding heaven in hell, but such is probably required, at least to my mind.

If I were an alien, I would report back to my superiors: "These human beings, as they are called, are most strange. They emit noises from their upper orifice and refer to it as 'communication.' It is most cacaphonous, shrill, unharmonious, and often violent. Whereas the noises they release from their lower orifice tends to be deep, resonant, and pleasant, though they complain of the odor and find it to be 'offensive.' I believe it would behoove them to change their mode of interaction." I have yet to discover what planet or galaxy I come from.