ADDRESSING LIFE LIVED SO FAR

As I get older, my time becomes more important to me due to the fact that I have less of whatever remains as each day, each hour, passes. I am quite aware of this and would like to be able to get at that which I seek to understand about life and particularly myself in it, as part of it. I waste far too much of my time in various distractions. Life itself is a distraction; survival requires much focus and energy. But it is a distraction from which we may glean not meaning but reality, for which meaning is a poor substitute. Suffice it to say that people tend to believe that if they have proper meaning, be it God or flag or money or things or even self-discipline, they have grasped reality. I am using a word, “reality,” here that is simply just one more concept, one more meaning. Words and their meaning definitely veil that which underlies, that which precedes meaning or interpretive thought. I see that this is leading in a cosmological or theological direction. I do have views of my own acquired somewhat from experience but obviously interpreted experience, and also from my own sense or logic, which I think, often quite erroneously, that others must possess as well and as similarly.

I intend to pursue this course in which I address various issues and questionings present in my “search for understanding,” which is, perhaps more accurately, my “search for greater context.” It is thus an expansive search as the concentric circles move out from the center, while, simultaneously, move in towards the center, as in the proverbial onion layers. “In is out and out is in.” I don’t tend to confuse myself but such a direction can often appear to be either directionless or seemingly moving in the wrong direction. When passed by another train, one feels like one is moving backward. Or, my joke about moving “two steps backward for every one forward,” one finally reaches one’s destination by having moved in the “wrong” direction. Alice in Wonderland-ish.

I have pursued this course alone, for the most part, though writing some in my blogs (the latest being metaphysicalforcesinplay.blogspot.com) over the years and also sharing some now and then with my Pacifica Graduate Institute graduating class and the Monterey Bay Friends of Jung. At this point I will publish to all three on a regular basis. My friend, prior classmate, and deep philosopher, Norland, noted that he reads my communications to the group, and it is encouraging to hear that at least one person reads what I’m saying. An audience of just one is sufficient. The truth is that I write for myself as if I were writing for all my selves and vice-versa. If I am able to hear myself, that is enough. Anyone else is “icing on the cake.”

In my life, I have had many multi-dimensional, multi-temporal, and otherwise “other-worldly” experiences which have led me to experience and interpret events differently than in a “normal” way. It may be that I have a different context, and consequently a different way of seeing and interpreting. I will mention my various experiences as time goes on but not now. I would rather focus on issues and questions important to me, though my “back-story” is sometimes relevant in presenting the issues.

For the last few years, I have been very interested in the actual place of Christianity in history, which is to say, how it came about and together, from whence it came, and what, if anything, is original about it. For many years I practiced Zen Buddhism diligently, and, before that, Theosophy, and mixed in at various times, Roman Catholicism (in which I was indoctrinated from childhood through adolescence). I have also been and still am a serious student of Daoism. Obviously, the whole notion of “God” and what that term means is central to my comprehension of context. While I don’t believe in “God” as the concept is presented in mainstream Christianity, I do understand “something that is referred to as ‘God.’” I am not disturbed by the use of the term and understand what people mean by it, even though most have no idea of what they mean. What is called “Gnosticism” has also been quite central in my studies. There are notions in Gnosticism, quite in opposition with Christian belief and doctrine, that I find to be most fascinating from a deeply logical perspective. (“Christianity itself may be ‘only an episode—though a very important episode—in the history of Gnosticism’” [Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity: From 330BC to 330AD, Legge, University Books, 1964, p. 111]). Then there is the presence of “magic,” as it exists in religion, the Bible, with its positive “white magic,” negative “black magic,” and scientific aspects. Magic is so prevalent in Christianity as an instrument of power, of miracle-making, including literal destruction. There are evil Hindu demigods, such as Ravenna (if I recall correctly), who compel obedience of the “good gods” due to the performance of purificatory rites and disciplines. I prefer the “truth” of the Buddhist notion of “what is” as the purer order of existence or being, or the wuwei (“noncoercive action”) of Daoism (which itself fell into the practice of magic as the norm within its long history).

These are some of the issues which I intend to explore and develop in future publications.

MY GRANDFATHER, JOHN HUTCHINGS

John Hutchings (1879-1927)

My mother’s father was of probably half-Indian blood, though perhaps more. His family had been marched from Georgia to what is now Oklahoma in 1838-1839 in what is called the “Trail of Tears” in which 4000 out of 15000 Cherokee died. The original family itself was half Cherokee and half-Scots-Irish and may have been split in Georgia when the US Army took the darker complected ones and left the red-haired, light-skinned ones. My mother’s grandfather, whom I believe was also a John Hutchings, was a Cherokee medicine man, who branded himself as a medical doctor, since the white culture frowned on Indian medicine people. He ministered not only to Indians but to whites, as a “country doctor” known as “Grandpa Whitecotton.”

My mother’s mother, Lena, referred to her husband, John, as a “reverend,” which indicates that he may have been an itinerant preacher, probably Southern Baptist, though a lot of Indian medicine people also took the title of “reverend,” for they were considered by the Indians as holy people with magical and healing powers. John and Lena had eleven children of whom my mother was the youngest, born 1927. Her father died in 1927 before she was born—of a heart attack as he tended his corn liquor still. He was 48. He had once had a farm in Arkansas but it was apparently foreclosed upon, forcing him and his family to become migrant workers, picking cotton and corn, and also as sharecroppers. My mother talked about how they would manage corn storage bins, moving the corn between bins before the rats could get to it, but this would have been a story told to her by her mother or her siblings. Speaking of good stories, in early May, 1934, when my mother was six years old, Bonnie and Clyde stopped at her home, either around Paris, Texas, or Hugo, Oklahoma (since my mother never acknowledged that she was born on the Choctaw reservation in Hugo, Oklahoma, always saying that she was born in and lived in Paris, Texas). Bonnie and Clyde and their gang asked if they could stay in her barn for the night. My grandmother, perhaps knowing who they were and perhaps being afraid, since they were not particularly picky on whom they shot, let them stay in the barn. They gave her a dollar. They were ambushed and killed by a posse of lawmen a few weeks later on May 23.

My grandfather had other skills. He was such an expert fly-fisherman that he brought CEOs of large corporations (probably oil and gas and railroad magnates) on two or three-week wilderness trips into the forests of the Choctaw Reservation in Mississippi. He also played a wild fiddle and could sing. As already noted, he was a migrant cotton and corn picker, along with his family of ten children and wife to help. He worked a corn liquor still which was highly illegal during Prohibition (1920-1933).

A further digression. John Hutchings was probably really only of Cherokee blood (of the 50% or so Indian that he was). When the Cherokees got to Oklahoma from Georgia, the original Oklahoma Cherokees were not welcoming at all. However, the freshly-arrived (and starving) Cherokees were accepted into the Choctaw land of Oklahoma, essentially becoming members of the Choctaw Nation (or Band).

BEING LOST AND BEING FOUND

Often, when I sit down to write, I know what I want to be saying, but then, I sit down to write it and my mind goes blank. I believe that every direction leads somewhere, which is to say that every thought leads somewhere, though I do not know where, much less direction. 

When I was younger I would go off the beaten track, as it were, in my walks in deep, dark forests. I would tend to follow deer trails, lines of least resistance in the steeply terrained woods. It was fine with me to become "lost". If worse came to worse, I could backtrack to a certain extent. Sometimes, after hours of walking, I would have to turn back and follow the way I came. But more often than not, I kept on going until I "came out somewhere" onto a road or a human trail, and I would eventually get back to where I came from. Once it took me thirteen hours. Once I had to spend the night in front of a great hearth in the foundations of a manor house that must have burned down a century ago. In that great hearth I had made a big, hot fire, dislodging an owl in the process. It was so hot that I took off my clothes and lay on the warm stone as light snow fell around me and I could see the reflections of curious eyes of many animals who were circled around the old stone foundation.

If you are lost, the best thing to do is to be lost. Being lost is even the best action to take until, of course, you are no longer lost. "Being lost" is a proper and accurate state of mind leading to "being found" or, better yet, "finding your way out." I have found my way out many times, having first been lost. But "being lost" does not mean that you despair; it only means that you are "lost and not found." We must be able to be in this state of "being lost and not found" if we are to be able to ultimately find our way out and through. And though we must be able to be lost when we recognize that we are lost, it is not to become a permanent state; we are not to adapt or accept our "lostness" as "normal," coming to live in our own "lost world." And this is what people do when they allow themselves to be imprisoned in their "lostness." Lostness is a state of mind and perhaps of temporary place but it is in reality a part of our journey in the forest until we are able to find our way; it is not meant to be a permanent state. We often say, "He is lost," implying that he's "beyond hope, a lost cause." Peope do "lose themselves" in myraid ways, but it is usually a case of reaching a point at which they "let go" of themselves and just were unable to come back again. But to be able to "lose yourself" implies that you previously were "with yourself," and I think that our culture and society promotes its own brand of "lostness" and self-disconnection in so many forms, such as consumerism, materialism, sexuality, indifference, narcissism, nationalism, addiction itself. "Lostness" is disconnection from oneself and many kinds of false identities, such as one's body, one's possessions, one's romance, one's drama, one's God. 

If you are lost, do you "stay put," believing that someone will be looking for you and will find you. Or do you "keep moving" while looking for a way out. This may depend on your particular environment and local provisions for survival. If I knew I could not survive, I might stay put, but I would tend to keep moving to find a way out. We each end up doing what we do when we are lost. If I found that I could survive right here where I was "stuck" in my lostness, I might choose to settle right here and thus "find myself" in my lostness. Or, knowing that I could not survive here, I might keep going and take those chances as they arose. 

In "being with our lostness," do we become it so intensely that we accept it, that we experience ourselves as "utterly lost"? Can we possibly attain an acceptance of ourselves as "lost"? And, if so, can we move from that sense of self? Once we have seen our lostness up close, do we have a sense of no longer trying to escape? Do we have a sense that we are actually finding ourselves, as in "I was lost but now I'm found." When I am "lost" deep in the forest, my surroundings are strange and unknown; I may panic in the realization of my "lostness," my inability to find my way out. But as the forest, as my environment, becomes more familiar, even more of an ally, more of a beautiful comfort that a place of the unknown, it in itself begins to show me the way out. This has happened many times in my life, but each time I had to finally give up my own certainty as to "the way out" and allow myself to be led out, to be shown the way out, by my relatedness with the forest itself. I speak simply here, perhaps somewhat metaphorically, but there is a relational truth here that truly exists.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE WITH THE NORMALIZING OF HATRED IN AMERICA

What do we do in a society where it becomes the norm to hate and to act out upon certain segments of that society? What do we do when there is no longer any social stigma or peer pressure for those who openly espouse and practice brutal and unethical behaviors? Once it was seen as shameful for people to intimidate and attack others because of their race or religion; they wore hoods to cover their faces. Now it is something to be proud of. Is hatred-as-the-norm a triumph of just ignorance? Was the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1920s and 30s just a result of ignorance? Obviously not. It was the rise of indifference though, and the rise of avoidance and obliviousness to injustice and brutality. 

Is this happening now in our country? How is it that the man running for President bragged that he could grab a woman's "pussy" whenever he wanted to and without any ramifications whatsoever, and was elected President by Americans? Is this a "liberal" problem? To my mind, a creep is a creep. And then he said it "just lockerroom talk," as if not actually doing that made it socially acceptable. Is this kind of thing actually acceptable to those who voted for this man? If so, America is in for a very bleak future, though I am quite aware that such mistreatment of women and of minorities, both racial and sexual, has never really subsided very much. That people could be treated as less, much less as less-than-human, is still the case. The genocide of Native People cannot be glossed over either. But, I digress.

If you were a Jew in Nazi Germany as the process of hatred was developing, what were you to do? If you had Christian friends in the community who had once treated you with respect and as German equals, what were you to do when they allowed themselves to be coopted by the social propaganda and did nothing as you and your people were singled out as pariahs and discriminated against? Most "good citizens" hope for the best or at least hope that this would be just a passing phase. Jews were aware that such things had happened to them in many societies throughout their history. But as Nazis came out in force and Brown Shirt thugs began to attack them, smashing their stores and beating them, how did they feel? What could they do? They believed in so-called democracy, but also knew, I imagine, just how fragile cooperation among people of different beliefs actually is. They probably realized that "faith in the goodness and fairness of others" is absolutely dependent on whether people had food on their table and money in their pockets. So most of them followed the rules and did what they were told. They knew they were outnumbered and out-manned.

I realize that to mention the predicament of the Jewish people in Germany (and elsewhere) at that time in history is provocative. I am not Jewish and perhaps am overly assumptive, if not arrogant. But what do decent, law-abiding Americans who "believe in democracy" and who actually have "faith in the goodness of others" do at this point in our American history? If the Jewish minority of Germany had "spoken out," they would have been crushed. However, we Americans who are ethical and democratic in our beliefs (and I realize the irony of that as I say it, for many Americans have grievously suffered at American hands), are in the majority and have not been coopted as yet. We have ideals of justice, of fairness, of equality, and of ethics. We have the responsibility to stand up to injustice, hatred, bigotry, corruption, greed, and the usurpation of power by those who seek to control America and its people. 

LEARN TO FEEL WHAT YOU FEEL

We must learn to feel what we feel. We must learn to be able to identify how we feel, what we feel. To "identify" in this way is not to "figure out," not to mentally analyze, but to know "this is joy," "this is grief," "this is fear," simply because the feeling is that clear and strong within us. If we do not know what we feel, we may readily believe others when they tell us what our feeling is. Or tell us why it is that we feel this way. Whether it is intentional or not, good or evil, our power is taken away from us. If we are angry or we are hurt, we must know this; it is specifically borne in us and is for us to feel and to see. It is not to be given up to someone else, nor is it to be judged to be "wrong" or "bad" or "evil," or even "misinformed." It is only when our action follows from our inability to know ourselves and is a reactive expression of it that it may become wrong, or bad, or evil, or it may also be right or good. To pretend that we do not feel, or to ignore our feelings and not recognize them, nor identify them, numbs us from ourselves, from our bodies and our beings, and separates us from each other as well, making us quite alone in the world and in our own life. We feel that we do not belong here in the world with other people. Some of us, because of trauma that we may have experienced in our lives, absolutely feel that we are separate from humanity itself and do not have a part with others in the world. And we may not even be aware of such a feeling and its accompanying belief and behavior. This is why it's so hard for many people to even be aware of themselves as feeling in the first place, for feeling for them may be a most painful experience, a most sorrowful and grief-stricken experience. 

I was born six weeks early and kept in an incubator, a plastic box with a heat lamp like they use to hatch chickens, with very little human touch for another six weeks. I did not know human touch. After three months alone in this way, being touched was most intense, invasive and frightening to me; I recoiled from it in fear and pain, causing people who loved me to lose patience and label me as a certain kind of child. At that time it was called "childhood schizophrenia"; now it's "autism." My father was a medic in WWII and was present at Normandy Beach on D-Day and at the Battle of the Bulge. He was artistic and drew pen and ink drawings of the battlefield. They looked like a Bosch painting of Hell with my father standing right in the middle of dying men surrounded by body parts. This affected him deeply; he suffered from PTSD. When I was a young child with my inability to relate normally, he thought I was being defiant, came after me and beat me, terrifying me to the point that I could not even move. And I could see the images of the battlefield in his mind. He had no idea where he was or what he was doing; he too was terrified. The hardest part for me was to reconcile that this pain and violence came from someone whom I knew loved me. He was never able to talk about what happened or how he felt. There was no medical program available for WWII veterans to "debrief" or otherwise treat them. Their children, if they were fortunate, came to somehow understand why this was happening, though this did not diminish the bodily pain and shame, and the psychological terror. I learned to outrun my father; I could see the condition "coming on" and just got out of his vicinity and hid where I could. I never told anyone about it until I was in my twenties and my father never told anyone about either the war or about his treatment of me. He could never bring himself to identify with his pain and I think it did much to make him a sad man and to destroy his health. In retrospect I wish I could have "been there" more for him but I wasn't. I moved to California, three thousand miles away, to "feel safe," and this, as a grown man in my twenties. The hardest part is that I always knew he loved me very much but that he felt so bad about hurting me that he couldn't accept himself, nor could he ask me for forgiveness. 

And so, we must be willing to know how we feel and why we feel that way. Sometimes I notice that I feel a certain way--sad, happy, angry, etc.-- though I cannot really see why or how I do. Usually the reason "comes" to me in due time. Sometimes it's not even so personal but almost a collective feeling, a social barometer, so to speak. I do see how people's emotions are manipulated by those in power as well as any social media, and that societies are highly susceptible to what amounts to propaganda. It is so important that we learn to know ourselves.

MY "EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA" PRESENTED TO A SAGE PHILOSOPHER

First, let me present what might be called the existential/ontological dilemma and seeming opposition that I have been grappling with and seeking reconciliation for many years. You may be familiar with it and it may be very basic and simple for you with your philosophical background. Simply put, it is the question of the "here and now" vs. the "there and then," or the pragmatic vs. the metaphysical. One perspective is that of our existence as simply unmediated and unprincipled, i.e., as inherently without meaning but certainly happening here and now and to be utilized optimally for not just ourselves but for all extensions of such, viz., the community, the world. This notion is very well-presented and articulated in Daodejing--"Making This Life Significant"; A Philosophical Translation by Ames and Hall (2003). The authors see Daoism as quite philosophically Pragmatic, citing James, Dewey, and Rorty. However, the text itself, utilizing the "recently discovered Bamboo Texts," states:

"In carrying about your more spiritual and more physical aspects and embracing their oneness, 

Are you able to keep them from separating?" (90)

The other perspective in this equation, if you will, is the notion that we are spirits embodied in flesh and this being between spirit and matter is called soul. I have tended to be "torn" between the two, but see that the twain does meet, and meet well, in Daoism. This Daoism was further "developed" into ritualistic and social Confucianism and also into a kind of metaphysics in Buddhism (I am referring primarily to Zen, which may even be seen as a Japanese form of Daoism-Confucianism, according to my interpretation of Suzuki). Zen does hold to a sense of eternalness and unchangingness in its notion of "true nature," or "suchness of being," and, in that respect, is dissimilar to Daoism, which is more nature-based and change-based, or cycle-oriented. The more metaphysical perspective, which is mediated, structured, and principled, is also strongly present within Gnosticism (apparently in all of its schools), at least up to a certain point of development. The same is true for Theosophy. However, once awareness reaches the pinnacle of the seventh chakra, the self moves into the Self and becomes boddhisatvic. I apologize for mixing all these religious metaphors. 

My point is that I am able to get a grasp of being in the here and now while also being in the there and then; we are multi-leveled beings. But the Daoist realization is NOT one of "understanding" or "wisdom" but rather of experience in the body, in the embodied soul that feels all of this livingness. It seems that such experience is just about impossible for a Western mind trained in principled logic, and, yes, magic (as opposed to what I see as spiritual transformation). James Hillman, of archetypal psychology, is a most notable exception; he understood the vitality of the embodied, feeling soul so well.  

FATE'S GREAT WONDER AND GOODNESS

The only "saving grace" for me that allows me to "press on" and live my life each day is that I believe that my life is meant to happen as it does and that my challenge and role is to glean or learn from it in order to become a "better person," obviously, to the world itself and not just me as an individual. What keeps my life in place is the "cement" of my responsibilities to others and even myself. Such responsibilities are the "blinders" this donkey wears so as to not stray from the "crooked and wide" road he is on. It is only my belief in the "good of fate" as a guide and teacher that keeps me moving in just this pragmatic and natural "faith." I profess a rather Daoistic view of life, which would seem at odds with my belief that "my life is meant to happen as it does." The Daoists would not say that it is "meant" but rather that it happens as it does because that's how it is, and that one must learn to be present and aware as much as possible in order to be as fully in and best responsive to the moment as possible. They do moralize things as "good" or "bad" though they do recognize responses as well as events that are "increasing" or "decreasing" to the integrity and reality of the moment. They also recognize the "habit" of responsive ritual that assists us in self-discipline and in otherwise "doing the right thing." I may be misinterpreting Daoism but I think I'm being pretty accurate.

All that is interesting, but, in the meantime, I have people who are close to me who suffer great physical pain and must live with it, and themselves deteriorating as each day comes and goes. I even happen to fit in that category. I overexert myself all the time and then suffer painful consequences. But I don't tend to further suffer in my mind over any of my physical suffering, whereas other people do. At times I may even be depressive but I'm not depressed; more of a tending to than an active state. But I am affected by the sorrow of people, of the "pain of the world," called weltschmerz by Schopenhauer. It is something I always want to somehow alleviate by bringing some kind of "understanding" or awareness to people. I realize that we all die, that death is imminent for all of us, that we do in fact fall apart in due time, and then vanish from the face of the earth. I find the last fact to be utterly amazing, for I find myself to be so identified, for instance, with this little book-lined office in which I word; I am literally surrounded by all this stuff on my desk and in front of me all these words I have written, seemingly endlessly. And when I am gone, the mess will be right here on my desk; my words and my books standing alone. But, in truth, no one hears them or reads them even now, in spite of any interesting, much less "valuable," things they may hold. Such is life and fate.

So I continue to take even this bodily and sometimes emotional and psychological pain with a certain kind of peace and acceptance; it is always life speaking to me. God or the gods don't tend to speak to me as such but life does. In other words, I speak to myself, often even as father to child, or as mother to child, for each speaks differently, and I do my best to hear this pain and suffering and lack of understanding that comes from the child. I actually have a black and white third-grade school photo of myself right next to my desk; it does speak volumes to me. My lips are set in a kind of grim smile. My eyes portray a pained anger behind the black-rimmed glasses that were broken in half and that I repaired myself with electrical tape after my father slapped me hard across the face, smashing my glasses against the wall, after I put my elbow on the dinner table. I let this little boy speak to me whenever he has the need or desire. I also hold him gently now, offering a bit of rather late consolation.

So, there is no escaping ourselves or our history. Telling our stories does help to free us of ourselves, even if told just to ourselves. Even if told to others, they are still just told to ourselves, for others are not ourselves; they are themselves. They have their own experience, as we have ours. In other words, it is we ourselves who must learn from life as it has come at us, while also realizing that, in many respects, it is we ourselves who have molded both our lives and ourselves to be as they are. Our reactions to what happens are all internal, all within us, right down to the pain we may feel in our bodies. I once meditated (zazen) to attain a semblance of peace but that gave way to trying to be able to see who I am and how I am, what I feel and how I think and vice-versa. Peace is somewhere in the mix but has been ruled out as a goal in itself. I believe we are here to make our own sense of both our lives and of existence in itself; we are not just here to "feel good," especially when the world itself does not. Rather, I believe we are here to help as best we can. Help who?, you may ask. Help ourselves, which is everyone.