THE INHERENT WHOLENESS OF BODY AND SOUL VS. THE NEED TO ADD CHEMICALS

Of course the question is: Adding these chemicals, the drugs to my body for the purpose of having a certain effect or a counteraction in my body including my mind, does this actually improve my health and functionality? What of the “pain-killers”? Am I to actually have my pain diminished? The symptom placated, as it were? Does my experience of the pain as it is have a “higher” or, for that matter, “natural” function that is necessary for my human experience? Is serotonin, which reduces symptoms of sadness and depression and their particular perspective, actually to not be taken, so that I might feel certain things and attain perhaps a deeper and more comprehensive understanding and experience of myself? For the serotonin taken in this way seems to cut my consciousness off from the pain within the depths of myself which seems to hold certain kinds of awarenesses and revelations for me. It seems to me that many of my bodily ills come to me as a result of a adding these noxious chemicals to my body.

          In the exact same vein, as it were, there is the world of technology that takes control, that takes over society and culture, replacing, it seems, a vital “natural connection” within us. People become, in many respects, as almost crazed automatons, addicted to the electronic devices that come to control their minds and their behaviors. I can see that this kind of monitoring and supervision could improve the human race but that it definitely has not; it seems that this cyborgian reality has disconnected humanity from itself and each other, at least on a deep “human” level, far more than bringing it together.

The body begins to fail in all its pain and in all our loss. It stops working properly, required medical external treatments, some of which seem somewhat effective. One never wants them for one finds oneself more and more less human. Is this part of God’s Plan for: to us to see these meds and drugs that effect us in the body as they do as part and parcel of God’s Work? We are much better off if such is our experience, if our “improvement” is simply another expression of the goodness of “what is”. Or have we become cyborgs, part literally machine and chemical with a rather smaller claim at “being human” and a “greater need” to see ourselves as “less human/less natural” and more mechanical and lacking in human qualities like emotion and, in due times, intelligence itself—as WE become worked on, manipulated, even controlled by forces greater than ourselves. What we once called miracles are now part of the treatment for the machine that we become.

          In my mind I still find myself actually “praying for miracles” entailed healing in my own body and in my wife’s that enable me to endure as her companion and caregiver. This is my biggest prayer and it seems there is much rejected of the reality of “what is” in existence and specifically in my life and other’s lives. Most often, people who are “afflicated” must follow their afflication “to the end” without either recourse or alternative, though if a “still greater context” is found and experienced dependably, the existing rules, as they were, may be alleviated if you know how. I see myself as “somewhat advanced”, both my focus and preference, but also by a “faith in what is” perhaps even more than a faith in God, though what God is, or perhaps the function of God, is quite squarely present is all that is, denoted a level of faith at least as strong—and by my criteria immeasurably stronger than that of Christianity simply because it is not based in sentimental, magickal, elemental theory but it foundation laws of existence.

          But now I begin to tire and consequently fade quickly, having gotten up and finally taken the meds I use to help me get through the night with sleep and reduced pain: glips, hydro, and zolps. I suppose they are now part of me—as much as I’d prefer otherwise. Part of my dream now, though I think I can skip the “happy pills” and just let my depression down dips drown me a bit before I return to a semblance of human once more. I don’t know if “crushing the soul” on a regular basis weakens its fabric and future performance or if has the effect of consequently keeping it “flexible” and able to “go with the flow,” or hopefully create its own. The latter is what I ultimately count on. “Happy pills” make too much of a buffer between myself and myself able to be in the world; such buffer becoming a “wall.”

PAIN: ITS WISDOM, GUIDANCE AND VIRTUE

I would much rather believe that this excruciating pain is punishment from God for my transgressions and that it has the effect of purifying my soul, thus washing the karmic slate clean. Otherwise, I am to accept the pain simply as it is and with no “productive benefit.” The medieval belief that one’s suffering purified one’s soul and thus brought one closer to God and to Heaven helped to maintain the status quo of the innumerable slaves of the masters who were consequently accepting of their lot in life. The fat priests did their job of making sure the populace were willing to keep their backs bent and their untold suffering between them and the Lord, who was a great listener and who was waiting in Heaven for them when they finally loosed the crushing yoke of their meager lives. But they held their suffering and loss in this context and thus we able to live good, even happy lives, even as they were being crushed. I only wish that I could hold and believe that my profound physical pain held meaning and purpose for me, that it was purifying my soul at the expense of my body. Does this severe, crippling pain act on behalf of something sublime? Does it bring me a certain understanding? Obviously it does—in one way in particular: it severs my identity with my physical body, thus enabling me to be quite willing to let go, to even look forward to it, when the times comes to pass beyond it. This is one major benefit, for such physical pain puts one in a quite different state of mind and being than the normal bodily state. And I suppose that this being moved, almost against one’s bodily will, into a different, more “spiritual” state of mind and being, is another way of explaining the benefit of such. To be able to consciously disidentify with the physical life to a life beyond that, more sublime, as it were, than that is a blessing, for the physical life is inherently transitional and temporary, if not short and brutal (Hobbes?). To disidentify with it enables one to make the transitional out of it so much easier, and then to whatever follows so much easier as well. To be in the “proper reality” is like being able to speak the local language and thus communicate and relate oneself within it. To be able to speak the language of Heaven enables one to belong in it.

          Of course, I speak too metaphorically, not literally, though some, perhaps many, would take all this quite literally. I do wish it were as literal and as simple as the stories I have been told, that the Loving Father will reach down and pick me, his child, up in his arms, for we all know that he is a great giant and that we are as small dolls in his hands, or perhaps even as grains of sand in his hand, though I knew a woman, Roxanne, who suffered in Alaskan Outback as a child and had to beg for food at the Salvation Army and various churches where she had to sing for her supper. She had to sing, He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands, but she knew she had fallen through between his great gigantic fingers. Her younger brother, whom she took care of, stranded in a cabin in the deep snow, where they almost starved to death, came to my hometown, dressed himself as a clown, and went through the town putting a nickel in the parking meters that had run out of time, thus saving the owners of the cars from the impending parking ticket. He was soon arrested and jailed for this act of kindness. I don’t know what became of him or of his sister, who was a waitress and a poet of profound depth and beauty. Certain things, certain people, certain stories stick with me, in my soul, in my heart, in my mind, and become a part of me. Love demands this; love of our fellow human beings, who are not only as ourselves but are ourselves.

          So I seem to have answered my own question as to what may be the benefits of this most severe pain in my body. It may be that pain opens the heart so that the pain of others may be enabled to flow into our own heart, that we may be able to see that there is not “your heart” and “my heart,” but, in truth, only our heart. When I finally had to accept that my daughter had “severe and profound” autism and that she would be and she would be, the walls around my own heart crumbled and I felt myself to be the father of every single disabled child in the world. One’s heart does not usually open willingly but its walls are destroyed by the missiles of whatever life itself brings. And so, I prefer to believe that the gods themselves send those missiles to open us up to all life and expand us to include all life, which, I believe, is necessarily a most painful process since all that we have come to believe to be ourselves is absolutely destroyed. And in our devastation, we are shattered, but learn how to rebuild ourselves with the pieces we choose to pick up and put together in a better way until the next time. So I find that I am able to have this pain that is so in my body speak for itself here. I had no idea that this would happen, though I was guided by that same pain to come to my desk here, sit down, and write these words. In this respect, my pain has direction and it leads me. I could speak of pleasure and that I have had a life of profound pleasure. But pleasure wants more pleasure. Pain, I do not think, seeks more pain, rather, pain seeks to express itself and tell us another kind of truth about ourselves and our existence. I would like to say that in this expression of pain through me, through this mind and these fingers, the pain in my body has diminished. It has; I am less pained in this moment, in body and mind and feeling. If only it were so easy as that. But time will tell.

From "fragments" to "pieces of the mosaic eternal"

I have changed the blog title. Life is no longer “fragmentary” to me; it comes in pieces, in colors—all integral pieces of what I call the “whole,” the “mosaic eternal,” for, in time and space, it will come to be evident, though it is evident now only to those who are able to see it in non-time and non-space, which I am calling “eternal.” I suppose I have my own version of my own vision, which I do not relate to any particular belief system, though I suppose I must credit many of them for perhaps providing passing experiences of such “vision,” which I have consequently used in the creation of my own.

          I believe that one must be able to “find peace” in one’s life, not by self-deception but by self-revelation, self-discovery. If you will read my previous blog, you will see that I made the following choice: “I would much rather have gods who are “task masters” (on my own spiritually developmental behalf) and who care (in my own mind, if such must be the case), rather than no gods at all, because I know I so often do not know, am so distracted (by the drama of my own mind and emotions) and may be too hurt or too angry to care (about myself) at all.”

          As a result, I am finding that I am in fact very much in a state of peace of mind, emotion, and body—which is rather amazing to me, for I never expected it whatsoever. 

THE FAITH I POSSESS

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

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

SAYING WHAT IS NOT SAID

Whenever I write something, whenever I “make a point,” I am acutely aware that I am “opening Pandora’s box,” releasing so much more which has not been said. My so-called “thesis” releases so many anti-theses. In making a “positive” statement, so many negative statements are instantly revealed, though unwritten. David Miller expressed such points of view, noting also the revelation of so many “mis-takes.” To “say something,” one must “take a point of view,” “a position,” that, by its very nature, is de-cisive, that is, “killing,” as it were, other points of view which are also “true in themselves.” So, is it wiser or “truer” to not delineate anything at all, but to keep silent? Or is silence itself a particular point of view or position taken? It would seem that silence could be a definite statement and not representative of impartiality or a superior moral stance whatsoever. It seems to me that silence can be quite active, with its own inherent agency. For instance, if one does not vote as an expression of one’s disapproval, the absence of that vote is a vote for the “other side.” Of course, there are those who believe themselves to be “above it all,” and of the cosmological and metaphysical “greater context” in which time and space and humanity and history occur, so that they may deduce that “nothing matters” in such a context. I have been of that mind and still often am, however, it is a fatalistic and nilhilistic perspective that perceives one’s life and oneself as inherently insignificant, if not even invisible to the point of non-existence. It is a view that one is fated to nothingness, to be nothing. And it is an absolutely false view in that it holds the individual as somehow not a part of the whole, as not a participant in the unfolding of what happens and of what is. In fact and logically, we are a part of “it all”; we participate in the unfolding and expression of fate, of what happens, of life, and of our own lives in particular. What we may call “God,” “the universe,” the “Dao,” our “ground of being,” Self, or source, is not separate from us, not only “out there,” but also “in here,” within ourselves. Of course, this brings up the questions, “Well, then, just what are ‘we’”? and “Just how do we define ‘inner’ and ‘outer’”? Every thought we have digresses to another perhaps underlying thought and endlessly so. Nothing can quite ever be explained, much less understood in the way of explanations.

          To come back to my original statement that what we say reveals in its own particular way (which is not just “reading between the lines” and surely not necessarily oppositional or paradoxical) releases so much more of what is not said. I read somewhere that Wittgenstein said of his writings, something to the effect that, “the value to be found in this book is in not what I say, but what I do not say.” Forgive me for not being able to find the exact quote. However, Wittgenstein does reflect, in Tractatus, my own points here and elsewhere:

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did, it would have no value.

If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. 

What makes it not-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.

And so it is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.

If we take eternity to mean no infinite temporal duration but timelessness, the eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end…

God does not reveal himself in the world.

(John Gardner, Mickelsson’s Ghosts, Knopf, 1982, p.479)

          Everything we think, believe, and say is out of context because we do not, at least consciously, have a knowledge or even really a grasp of the possible vastness or simplicity of context. Our thoughts, and the thoughts of the “great minds” of religion and philosophy and physics (for that matter) weave in and weave out, warp and woof, ebb and flow. That which I present in my writing tends to be that which “arises within me” implicitly (to use Giegerich’s descriptive term in The Soul’s Logical Life, 45), or somewhat intuitively, which I then truly attempt to make explicit. If it simply provokes thought in the reader, I am satisfied. 

SOUL, IDENTITY, "LOCATION"

Just where are we “located”? This is a “loaded” question, requiring a multiplicity of answers.

          First, there is the “we.” The many “I”s. Theosophy (and Hinduism, in particular) present a person as consisting of the physical body, the emotional (or astral) body, the mental body, the soul (or embodied spirit). There are other sub-bodies, as it were, but this is sufficient to work with. It is said that the soul, which is “higher” or less dense than the other “bodies,” is inclusive of them. This implies that if the physical body is eliminated at death, the soul still includes the emotional and mental bodies, which is to say the feelings and thoughts (mind) of the person who did exist, which thus both “individualizes” the soul and limits its self-awareness, for it remains “tied” to specific feelings, thoughts, as well as memories. Just because it is now absent the physical aspect neither makes it “enlightened” or “purified,” for it remains “tainted” and even with a personality. It still has a long road to haul, be it purging of that which is false through the Catholic “purgatory,” or through myriad reincarnated lives.

          Second, if, in fact, we are souls (including mind, emotion, and body), or embodied spirit, just “where” is this. Doesn’t spirit permeate the universal? Would it be equivalent to what we refer to as “God,” that is, if it were purified to the extent that it was free of ego, which is to say, self and self-reference, which is to say further, from thought, feeling, and flesh? Wouldn’t it become as “pure energy” permeating the whole universe and even universes? There have been Hindu holy people who have stayed coma-like in meditation, maintained by devotees, apparently connected to their body by a thread of consciousness only, and/or not even needing normal nourishment. I have read of such things and known a few people who knew a few other people. I take it as true. Over the years I too have had my own “out of body” meditational and otherwise experiences, which took me out of my body and far out into the universe. I don’t think it was sheer imagination or a dream-state. I believe “I,” my consciousness, my self-awareness, traveled spatially great distances. I have also noted elsewhere in these writings that I have traveled through time, as it were, and experienced different reincarnations of my “own,” that is, of this soul of which “I” am the current manifestation as the person I am.

          Third, so where am “I” (or we) actually “located”? The answer lies in which level of being that we identify ourselves as primarily existing in and in which our living experience actually occurs. A case in point: Over the last ten years I have “moved” my “level of being” so that it is less physically-identified, less emotionally-identified, and more mentally identified and probably soul-identified. Very recently, I “returned” to a specific situation which requires greater physical and emotional beingness after a ten-year movement away from that kind of being. In that situation, which was a bit surreal for me, I remembered how it used to be but is not now. It was very clear to me that I had made such a shift out of necessity and out of love. My point here is not to be enigmatic or vague, as it may appear, but that this identity we have of “ourself” can express and manifest on many different levels in many different, even very distant, “locations.”

          It seems to me that we have a rather habitual bias that “we” are definitely located in the physical body, since the physical body is our primarily apparent locus of activity, even though our locus of feeling and thought may be even more primary than our body, especially if we consider that perhaps we have had many physical bodies that have “dropped away” over the eons, but the emotional and mental bodies have evolved and continued to develop for a very long time. We may have forgotten that this is so, believing that it has always been a “clean slate” upon each new birth, but there are many who realize that they have carried feelings and thoughts, if not actual memories, from previous existences. So it is that we have a “predisposition” to our physical existence, which is also a biological predisposition with the purpose of survival of our species, of “ourselves,” as we see it.

          At this point I could digress into the notion that “I” do not really exist but, rather, am a figment of my own imagination, which begins to flow more towards the Buddhist way of seeing. But I won’t go there for now. Rudolf Steiner’s view is that upon physical death, the soul “blasts” (if I recall correctly) out of the body into the universe, literally passing the planets and proceeding to the “edge” before being drawn back into the next body into which it has reincarnated. I have no idea as to the veracity of this. It could very well be that, for a physical body to be animated by a soul, that soul must literally focus itself within that body and thus be “contained” for a lifetime. Given some of my own experiences and that which I have read and heard, I don’t believe that such energy is necessarily that contained. Is not the whole notion of “enlightenment” one of one’s consciousness or awareness going beyond, while still including, the physical body? Don’t the various “saints” and shamans of religion “talk to God”? Of course, this leads me to “the cloud of unknowing” of Meister Eckhardt, which I will not pursue here and now.

          If an atom bomb exploded down the street, my body would be instantly vaporized. But that would still leave me right where I am. That’s how I see it. We think so many things to be certain, when they are not at all.

YOUTH OF DISTRACTION, AGING OF DEATH

We find much “purpose in life” in youth and middle age, in family and career. It is the “normal distraction of life,” it could be said. Such distraction = purpose and meaning. A very apt carrot hung before us that is truly motivating. And we tend to live our lives accordingly and engaged.

          When family and career fade and we are then left with ourselves in old age, we lose the “inherent distraction of youth and middle age,” and, left with ourselves and perhaps a spouse as well or even still with children, our bodies begin to reveal themselves as a painful limitation to our activities, even to ourselves “as we are,” or so is our interpretation. We begin to “bide our time,” to become more aware of our lives “slipping away slowly” (or perhaps even quickly). We find ourselves waiting to be out of these pained bodies that we still inhabit.

          “Life” in itself does begin to become invasive and demanding as the culture and society changes, dumbs down, loses itself even more in falseness, becoming even more violent and cruel and downright stupid, electing a representative president and government who takes pride in lying, falseness, violence, cruelty, and stupidity. The world goes merrily to “hell in a handbasket.” It becomes ominous and hateful; one begins to feel this weight upon oneself. The Kali Yuga brings us down on “all fours”; we find ourselves barking and biting.

          But then, it is the weight of the crumbling, the deterioration of the body, of the mind too—of the life one has defined for oneself and lived, be it partially or fully, according to one’s retrospective. Such is normal; it is preparation for actually looking forward to leaving the body. Some religions celebrate such a parting. My own perspective is at least an appreciation for the unfolding of my life, even in its strange and often painful ways. But the pain of life leads us beyond itself into something much more real, much deeper, so far within that it is beyond; it may be called the “underlying life” not just within the outer life, but which is the matrix of all life itself. It is not a belief system or doctrinal though it finds its way into those institutional contexts. I, with the suggestion of John Gardner, the author, may call myself an “opportunistic fatalist,” or what could be a “positivistic nilhilist.” The notion of “life’s unfolding” I see as “fate,” and I am a student of fate, a follower of “what is,” of what reveals itself in each moment, including my particular hopefully evolving, contextually expanding, response to it. It’s not so much that I see life as a “good thing,” rather, it is the “happening thing.” It is thus not to be denied, simply because it IS. One must participate, so why not make the best of it? And one makes the best of it by knowing what it is. And “what it is” is not what it means or how I feel about it, though those may be by-products of knowing what it is. And, of course, one cannot know what life is unless one knows what one is in this context of living. So, “knowing fate” is based in knowing oneself in the context of one’s life, which is the only context in which one can be known, for it is the only backdrop, the only comparison available that we have. We can only see ourselves in the context of our existence. That said, “our existence” is of a multi-leveled nature; we “exist” physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually (or, taken as one, psychologically). This is my particular perspective. I also see that there is some kind of “matrix” or “living structure” in and through which we exist, such “structure” permeating all existence, all life, in some way. This “matrix of being,” as it were, has myriad names, mostly religious. This would define me, not as an atheist, I suppose, but as a deist. But the deity is not inherent self-conscious and could be Nature, or the permeability of life, or even perhaps the “storm god” or “mountain god” of the ancient Hebrews. Do I “worship” such a “god”? No. Rather, I am aware of such a “matrix” upon which all like “hangs” and depends, like all children upon their mother, though I also see this matrix as fundamentally and completely existent within each person or thing, which is a central notion of pantheism, though my running joke is that I’m a “pantyist.”