SOURCES OF OUR THOUGHTS & OUR ABILITY TO RESPOND TO THEM

In reading about various modern philosophers, such as James, Dewey, and others, what appears is the notion of “our thoughts” as “ours” as distinct from “our thoughts” as “not ours” but, rather, as coming at us and into our minds, thus causing us to “reflect upon them,” to “think about such thoughts.” This reminds of James’s metaphor of consciousness or thinking as a flock of birds (or of thoughts) in flight, but only thinking when the flock stops and perches, thus “thinking about itself,” “gathering its thoughts,” as it were. One understanding, perhaps of the Greeks, is that our thoughts comes from the gods, who are seemingly interested to see what we will then do with them. Isn’t this supposed to be a great source of their entertainment in Olympus? So we receive the thoughts and then try to “make sense” out of them, try to determine how they might be best applied in our lives or even in the lives of humanity.

          These “thoughts that comes at us” seem like they very well could be sent to us by the gods or by God for those who “believe,” or that they are the thoughts, the overall penetrating collective consciousness of humanity as a whole, perhaps having been initiated by those overlording gods watching down. Having had many “organizing thoughts” that seeming came “out of the blue,” I am willing to subscribe to some overweening source of such thinking consciousness, be it divine, collective, or both. How many times in my life has “something” stood directly between me and impending death? How many times have I “sensed” danger and moved instantaneously in my muscular intelligence with nary a single thought? Is this the body’s wisdom of survival and preservation or could it be my literal auric “guardian angel”? Am I to find myself, an unbeliever in the manufactured “blue-eyes Jesus” or the “protector of the good Catholic (or even simply Christian) sheep,” paying homage to my guardian angel, who could very well be right here in some kind of fashion at my side? That something could so personally care about me brings tears to my eyes and a hope welling in my heart. And it could also be an inherent, even divine, part and aspect of myself. Could such a self-caring and self-protective aspect be a vital element of each of us? Is this seeming metaphysical reality a literal part of our physical being, seeking to protect and preserve us from harm? All I can honestly say is that I am clearly aware that I have been saved from harm and from death many times in my life, and it seems as if that protection was even external to me, or at least external to my awareness, my consciousness, my thinking of it.

I believe in what I would call “the fatefulness of each moment,” in one’s responsiveness to “what happens” in each moment. It’s not that things are “meant to happen,” but rather that we can mean ourselves to respond accordingly, which is to say, to comprehend ourselves enough to know how to respond in the moment. In other words, we learn from whatever occurs; we learn to respond in a way that enables us to be who we are in life. It is as though, when something happens, we ask “What is this that’s occurring?” “What is happening right now?” And we take it in as though we were observing it not so much as ourselves, but from a distance. “How best do I respond to this if I do not have to be limited to being myself with all my known responses?” So whatever happens, we are able to transcend our reactions, our limited responses, and incorporate a more knowing, a more inclusive response that is therefore more effective, more appropriate, wiser. Thus, I am able to truly learn from whatever happens how to be a better human being, on a personal scale and also on an interpersonal, collective scale. “Not-self” becomes a very good vantage point from which to respond. If “I” am not there to react emotionally in anger, hatred, vengeance, fear, desire, craving, habit, etc., the response does not cause one more chain reaction. I may attain a level of acceptance and of understanding, even appreciation, or even wonder and mastery. There is no “hope,” no “God,” no expectation that the outcome or result must be any particular way. It is as it is. To attain this level of understanding is profound.

THE ERSATZ BODHISATTVA

Did I “give up nirvana out of compassion for humanity”? Perhaps. Or else I simply had to choose to return for my own karmic purposes. But a “poor substitute” still may somewhat suffice in a world lacking even that.

          Well, let’s start at the beginning. But, hmmm, which one, and was that a beginning, an end, or a replay? At what point, then, to plunge in? Suddenly, great waves of sorrow even at the thought of “going there” once again. I am sometimes hammered by desperate dreams of repetition in which I present the same series of numbers or letters endlessly in an attempt to finally “get it right” even though it really is exactly the same as it was endlessly before. Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence all over again. There is no “doing it over and over until we get it right”; there is simply do it over and over, the eternal sameness. This would drive anyone insane.

          Is it that we all inherently know this, and so choose to be born into the distraction of being in bodies, in flesh, identifying with such, dying to such, and then again choosing to repeat the cycle until bodies themselves as potential forms end, but then finding another form in which we might find almost ultimate distraction, until finally the pralaya occurs, and we are once again absorbed into ourselves-as-nothingness?

WHEN I CREATED ALL AND INHALED IT BACK TO NOTHINGNESS

In the early 90s I was engaged in practicing Buddhist vipassana meditation. In those days I actually had various “experiences” during my meditation. Some were rather literally phenomenal. This is one to be noted:

I suddenly realized that when I exhaled, I was literally creating not just the universe but All. My mouth was the mouth of God literally creating all Life, all Being in one exhalation. I was not aware of myself as God, nor was God aware of itself as God; it was a literal experience, not a conceptual one. “God” was simply a function of “creating” in itself. In that exhalation, All was created, All was breathed into beingness. That exhalation lasted an endless eternity. Then, just as suddenly, I inhaled, and when I did so, all life and being, was drawn back into nothingness, and ceased.

It was that simple.

WISDOM

The gods gave me challenges in my life to which I had to find the proper responses. One must make the wise and right choices or be doomed to fear, anger, and belief. There is nothing to cling to for safety. It is a maelstrom. But one learns that even the maelstrom in all its undeniable power moves in certain ways. One learns how to respond by going with the flow and rolling with the punches. One learns that to be hardened is to be brittle, unable to move, unable to see and recognize what is happening in the moment. One learns to be supple and quick, soft and caring, and no longer stupid and oafish. One learns compassion that stands up to all in its selflessness, for if I am not here, you cannot stop me. I learned to put others first after the gods gave me others who needed me to put them first for their own survival. To do so, another gift from the gods, was easy for me, for the gods taught me love and, for those I loved it was second nature for me to put them before me, or at least know them as myself, for they had already become an integral part of me. I found and expressed the proper responses to that which the gods imposed and graced me in my life and thus attained a level of self-understanding and of life itself and my role in it that comprised a degree of what might be called wisdom. Wisdom is simply a response to what is happening that does no harm but may actually help to bring relief to the situation. Wisdom only comes in the absence of oneself, when there is not an “I” to be attended to. Wisdom is a selfless occurrence, therefore possible to anyone who is no one, at least in that moment.

Such “wisdom” therefore necessarily leaves one rather deflated, even sad, when it finally comes to mind, for it does not suffer pride of accomplishment or love or caring or anything. Wisdom is not a self-reflective act but rather a non-self-reflective occurrence; there is no self, no sense of self, at all in wisdom.

WHAT HAPPENS IN OUR LIVES

When I was in high school, I was acquainted with many students in my high school. I had a few friends but most I just said “hello” to now and then. A good number of students had graduated with me from grade school, in fact probably most. But I had few that I was close to, much less “knew.” Part of that was because such was my nature. I could be funny and charming but I didn’t tend to “let people in,” as it were. I had little confidence in myself and conversed with a few friends but not many others. I actually preferred being along—at least up the point, maybe 16, when I was found and claimed by a beautiful girl and then fell in love, which changed everything as she became my friend, my lover, and we had our incredible adventures for the next couple of years. Prior to that, depending on the season, the boys in my neighborhood would either play baseball or football in my backyard, while I would be up in my room diligently working on my stamp collection, with them all yelling in the background. I had absolutely no inclination to join them.

          My own inclination is to “seek greater context” for my life and myself. This has been my lifelong quest. I was presented with Catholicism as that context and I did learn many important lessons, such as the importance and reality of “mystery,” of “not knowing,” but I ultimately “threw the baby out with the bathwater” and went on my own personal “search for understanding” rather than accepting what I had been trained to accept. I am philosophical by nature and also seek peace and solitude actively every day. I look at what happens in life and do what I can to incorporate it into my own reality which I have created from whatever I have learned of life and my own experience of learning it. “It” is always a work in process. I don’t claim it to be necessarily “right” but it is what I have to work with; I am what I have to work with. I have no choice but to be with myself even as I am. So the “philosophizing” part is much like perpetually adding pieces to the unending jigsaw puzzle that I am and that will never be finished, not even after I die.

          But there is another part: the memories of my life, the stories of my life. Sometimes these take great precedence over the philosophizing, over the putting it all together so that it might make some kind of sense. The memories, the stories have their place. They appear to be the life and color and sound and feeling in each of the myriad pieces of the endless jigsaw puzzle that comprises me and my life. And they often rise to the surface of my consciousness, probably embellished into much more than they actually were, but in retrospect, in memory, we add to the story for effect and for meaning, for our lives must have meaning to us. We are always to be forgiven for such expansion of soul and spirit and heart. And we can no longer tell the difference anyway between “the fact” in itself and how the event impacted us and registered itself in our consciousness. In terms of our memories, are there really even any “facts,” clean cut and certain? We remember what we saw, what we heard, what we felt emotionally or physically, what we thought? All of it was fed to us through our own senses, our own experience. No body cams then or there. Perhaps reports and point of view from others, but probably not. We have no choice but to have faith in our memories, even as we have no choice but to have faith in ourselves, flawed as we may be. No one else is going to tell our stories to ourselves. We must be able to do that for ourselves. We know ourselves best, which is to also say that some of us don’t know ourselves at all. To know yourself is the primary goal of being human if you subscribe to the classic humanism of Socrates or even if you are unaware of that. To me, that equates with “loving God.”

          To return to all these fellow students at my high school and before that, they are now a part of my being, my life, my story, myself. I never anticipated at the time that they would be so stored within my mind and available for instant recall—but they are. I can even hear their adolescent voices in my memory. Last night I dreamed that I was talking to some of the girls with whom I was only slightly acquainted. We are still physically of the time but are now speaking with a wisdom of age, and are thus able to convey a warmth and a touch that would have probably not been possible during our youth. People do not lose their beauty. It may seem to retreat or be covered over but it can rise to the surface to meet itself in others. We do carry each other within ourselves, almost as though they were ourselves. When they die, they do not leave us, but even become more a part of ourselves, perhaps since they can no longer carry themselves as they did. But it never a burden to us to contain others in this way, for they somehow enhance our being with themselves. Of course, the sweet ones are easier to include and the sour ones a bit difficult perhaps, but they all bring something to us that is needed in some way. Perhaps this is the all-encompassing circle and experience of love, or simply of being. Perhaps there is no difference between the two. 

WHO ARE WE? WHAT ARE WE? WHY ARE WE?

I have asked these kinds of questions, really, for most of my life? I know at least that some others do, though many do not. Is it a luxury to ask such questions, only for those who are not burdened by the responsibilities of life? The philosophes? I personally believe that some naturally harbor such questions, regardless of class or burdens of life. In fact it may be those most burdened by the responsibilities of life that are most driven to the point of having to ask such questions. I initially wondered why I phrase it collectively, that is, as “we.” Why not “I”? Because it is “we” who are all in this human situation of living and not just “me.” “We” each have “our” life and are responsible for ourselves, yes, but we are each faced with pretty much the same or at least very similar dilemmas of existence. Though we are certainly not the same and are unique to ourselves, we share what it is to be human, though even that varies according to culture and custom.

As we get older and find ourselves unable to find answers within ourselves, many “turn to God.” I tried this when I was much younger when my daughter with autism was born. I realized the powerlessness of praying to a powerless god bolstered by tradition and corporate religion of fear and guilt, and this tradition also taught the presence of “divine love.” But I saw that such divine love is already the state of existence in itself. It is that situation of all “being in the same boat,” of all of us being human together and realizing that we are here to love each other. This is a most necessary requirement and reality of existence though it is certainly not realized and is equally not dependent upon any divine entity. My own philosophic leaning is Stoic, which can translate into Zen Buddhism that holds that each of us is possessed of a “true nature” or “suchness of being” which is seen as our “ground of being” in which everything “is as it is.” Pretty inscrutable, yes, but, to me, better than pretending that life is different than it is by using “God” as a metaphorical crutch and the Devil as a “fall guy.” This is what it has come to, though it may not have begun as such before the corporate and doctrinal religion took over. I have also studied and participated in Daoist thought and practices, especially the Yijing (or I Ching) for many years, some of them as an I Ching “consultant,” in which I counseled people through the use of the oracular advice of the ancient Yijing, which precedes the Bible by perhaps 1500 years, and presents a literal system of dealing with the challenges of living in the world. I haven’t particularly put it to use for a few years due to its complexity, however, I have recently attained a book that delves further into the details and essences of Daoist thought and practice. The Daoists see the essence of existence as energy emanating from various greater sources of energy. I will not explain these three types of energy but suffice it to say that this approach ties in with Hindu and Theosophical thought and, I have to admit, explains the energetic basis of existence and all forms that I literally saw with my own eyes when I often ingested LSD over forty years ago. I suppose I just lost all credibility with you but I trust my experience and I remember exactly what I saw. 

So now the question of who we are or what we are opens immensely. It gets so big that we can no longer “wrap our minds around it.” For instance, the Daoists also teach that the stars in our universe that have exploded over the eons were reduced to dust floating through space in the universe, came into the earth’s atmosphere, fell to earth, and became part of the soil of the earth, of which our bodies are composed. Consequently, we are literally “made of star dust,” which I’ve heard before but never quite understood.

These various topics upon which I write are brought to the fore and are often opened up enough that they are not “completed” and remain open-ended. This is probably as it should be and most certainly as it is.

GOOD FORTUNE

I manage the walk down the stairs rather well on this day and sit down in my once comfortable chair in my office, which I suppose could be called my library since one wall is mostly covered by three bookshelves that just about reach the ceiling, and the other wall has two bookshelves that extend its whole length three feet high. This “library” continues into other rooms: one bookcase right outside my office, one double one in the living room, one in the dining room, one in the bedroom, six in the garage, as well as some piles of books on the desk outside my office. I am here in the morning to check my stocks and to see if they might be up enough to sell and also to check if there are stocks low enough to buy, while also considering their dividends and their inherent financial strength as other integral elements. Once I dreaded this but now I enjoy it. I try to read the market as best I can, though I have often majorly misread it by buying stocks too soon in a big correction. Now I follow my wife’s good conservative advice of taking small gains rather than waiting for larger ones. Statistically, stocks will rise four or five percent far more often than eight or nine percent. Now I takes gains and then reinvest if the stock is still rising. The stocks that are more stodgy or have fallen, I hold and take dividends from them, some for years, for they were bought badly and stupidly when I once followed the advice of so-called “expert investor” reports, like Kiplinger’s, though they did give me good “tips” regarding “intermediate” bond funds. Now I hold those I cannot sell and otherwise “swing trade” with the rest. In a rising or steady market, it can work if you are able to pick the right “bottom feeders,” as they are called (though they all too often can feed on us). And like I said, I enjoy the detail work now. I went from reading “spiritual” and philosophical books to actively trading stocks and reading history, including historical novels, and good novels in general. I enjoy the trading as I once enjoyed the details of stamp-collecting, or, let me say it, philately, as a child. And I read at least two books at a time: one upstairs with my “upstairs” glasses which I read next to my wife as she reads and one downstairs with my “downstairs” glasses which I read in the bathroom, otherwise called “the reading room.” Right now, Roman history downstairs and Goya and Daoist meditation techniques upstairs.

From my chair here in the office, a designer office chair that my ex-wife had discarded probably twenty years ago, I look out at what is now a forest I have grown in our tiny back yard. My view of the suburban neighbors’ houses is totally blocked by trees of all kinds: three Italian pine Christmas trees I planted, a large apple tree (now producing some incredible Granny Smith/Pippen apples), a tall red bushy New Zealand tree, a lilac-like tree, a magnolia tree, a tall birch, five or six live oak trees, and an assortment of other trees, including two tan oaks. The night-blooming jasmine that I planted now wends its way among the outside of two live oaks. In the 6x6 sunny section, there are grapes and tomatoes growing now. When I say “I have grown” this, I mean that I have planted some and tended to the growth of the others through pruning, tying, and wedging 4x4s against them to help straighten them out. I remove the lower branches of the trees within the perimeter of the yard (which includes two pines, two live oaks, and one tan oak) so one can walk around beneath the canopy or sit out there in the shade on a hot day. The hot tub (spa) is on my deck in the shade of the live oaks, though I use it sparingly since the heat inflames my nerves. At my previous home on thirty acres that I bought from Dick Smothers of the Smothers Brothers in 1987 and sold in 2001, I nursed and protected what grew into a veritable forest composed primarily of live oaks and pine trees on a multi-acred hillside that was once a vineyard, which are now quite visible when I drive by the place. I love forests. To have “husbanded” one makes me happy. Even my little backyard forest gives me the visual sense of being in a forest right here in the ‘burbs.

My wife, in her high level of chronic pain from fibromyalgia, now sleeps and actually sleeps a lot due to the pain. Pain actually causes the body to shut down in this way. This gives me time, in addition to attend to stock trading, to writing and reading. Yesterday was our seventeenth anniversary of our commitment to each other (and the formal marriage came later). She changed my life completely and has been as a blessing to me in my life. Her life has become extremely painful for her to live from day to day, but she smiles through it, grateful to share it with me. When the pain started getting unbearable nine years ago, she wanted me to help her end her life, but I had too much faith at the time that she would “get better.” She never got better but only worse, to higher levels of pain, but she has in some way become able and willing to bear it. And so it is. And so we are always loving each other deeply and immensely, which, to me, is beyond my wildest dreams. I am most fortunate indeed to have Amy in my life.

I speak of myself and "my good fortune" but my life revolves around taking good care of Amy as well as my daughter, Sarah, who is now grown, and my step-son, Vic, also grown. Both kids are disabled: Sarah with autism, Vic with CP. While I am proud of my forests, I am more proud of Amy, Sarah, and Vic. "Others" figure strongly into my being; they and others like them are central to it. I am most fortunate because I have been favored enough by the gods, as I see it, to embrace that which has been given to me in my life. To find oneself responsible for others who cannot care for themselves--and to accept and appreciate the exigencies of such a situation--is one key to great happiness in life. Such is my good fortune, my profound blessings. Good fortune, in its totality, is not easy to bear, by any means. There is always irony and paradox to be recognized, and to quote myself: Too much irony makes one overwrought. But life is good regardless. We learn to be here now with the greatest of joy and sadness in our hearts. Kahlil Gibran, wrote in The Prophet:

When love beckons to 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. 

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. 

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; 

For love is sufficient unto love. 

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God." 

And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. 

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself. 

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: 

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. 

To know the pain of too much tenderness. 

To be wounded by your own understanding of love; 

And to bleed willingly and joyfully. 

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; 

To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; 

To return home at eventide with gratitude; 

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.