WE ARE STORIES THAT SPEAK OURSELVES, OUR LIVES

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

"WISDOM" AND ITS FOOLISH WAYS

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

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

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

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

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

TO JOSEPH: REMEMBERING HOW IT WAS TO BE YOU

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE OTHER SIDE OF CONTEXT

Previously I spoke of the necessity of “finding context” for oneself, noting that we are “lost” until we “find a center to ourselves,” a place in which we belong and in which we are “safe.” Context, in itself, may internal and/or external, that is, we may have it “within” ourselves and/or find “belonging” outside of ourselves. Some of us attain an internal context while never finding an external one, while others find an external context, such as religious group, nation, “cause,” etc., without ever having an internal one. Of course it is probably best if one can attain to both contexts, though external contexts change over time rather too quickly and radically at times, while internal contexts may also change as we change in our self-interpretations and worldview. While “having a context” is utterly important if one is to have a “ground of being” within oneself and a “place” in one’s community, if such a context is in fact false, we have a problem with and in our very existence and being. People may collectively choose a religious or a political context for themselves which leads to their individual and collective destruction due to its inherent falseness and unreality, as when the Germans elected Hitler as their leader in the 1930s. Individuals may also interpret their own “true feelings and insights” incorrectly, for instance, if they have a belief that God does or God doesn’t exist, or the body is good or the body is evil, or people of a different race are a threat or are also human and can be trusted as such. Thus, a wrong context can lead us to personal and/or collective disaster, as evidenced throughout history.

          In my blog, Metaphysical Forces in Flux: What on Earth Is Happening? (metaphysicalforcesinplay.blogspot.com), I asked a question of the Yijing (I Ching), the ancient Chinese oracle, which I have studied and worked with over the last fifty years. I would like to be able to provide the history of this oracle system with its 4096 possible permutations that occur in the moment and movement of time but will resist in this moment. On October 28, 2016, I specifically asked: “What is happening in the world at this juncture in time?” I posed this question with a desire to understand what was occurring politically and socially in the United States, given the upcoming presidential election. Normally I tend to ask questions relating to my own life but this was more of a collectively-focused question. The response was telling. Rather than interpreting it myself, I will convey the actual words of the text, The Taoist I Ching translated by Thomas Cleary, both quoted and somewhat paraphrased. As you read, consider it a response to the circumstances of the presidential election process that had been continuing for eighteen months. My minor comments are in brackets. I have italicized sections that are worthy of note. I would hope that the reader will draw his or her own conclusions.

          First, the “current moment” is presented. Hexagram (or gua) 32: Constancy. Long persistence. Thunder, active, above, wind, penetrating, below. Acting gently as the breeze, active yet serene, neither identifying nor detaching, the mind steadfast and the will far-reaching, therefore constancy. This is genuine application in real practice. Following upon the previous hexagram fire, or illuminating the inward and the outward, aiming at profound attainment of personal realization, so that illumination is all-pervasive. But this is not possible without a constant mind, which means single-mindedly applying the will, the longer the stronger, not slacking off. Thereby one may comprehend essence and life, revealing a path of development. [18 months of campaigning definitely demonstrates “constancy.”] However, constancy must be correct; abandoning the real and entering into the false is not developmental and is faulty. Blind practitioners in the world go into deviant paths, taking what is wrong to be right, aggrandizing themselves, boasting of their practices and cultivating vain reputations, striving all their lives without ever awakening; most assuredly capable of constancy but constant in aberrated paths, not in the right path. To seek eternal life in this way hastens death; when your time is up, you will have no way out and cannot escape the blame. Therefore correctness is necessary. Even correctness is only possible through constant practice of what is correct. What is correct is the true principle, which is the Tao of body and mind, essence and life. This path appropriates yin and yang (or negative and positive), takes over creation, sheds birth and death, escapes compulsive routine. It requires flexible, gentle, gradual advance, ascending from low to high, going from shallow to deep, step by step treading in the realm of reality; only then can it be effective. A great affair which endures long unchanging requires great work that endures long unceasing before it can be achieved. The constancy that is beneficial if correct is the constancy that is beneficial if it is going somewhere. But if you want to practice what is right, first you must know what is right, investigating truth, reaching the basis of essence, thereby arriving at the universal order. The work of comprehending essence and arriving at the universal order of life is all a matter of thoroughly penetrating truth.

          Next, there are the “moving lines” which denote changes that are occurring and will occur or are recommended to occur before the final “outcome” hexagram. They are in chronological order. As the “current situation” hexagram, the parallel and correspondence to that of the presidential election is, to my mind, uncanny, and evident enough:

Moving Line 1. Deep constancy; fidelity brings misfortune. If one does not distinguish right from wrong, one enters deeply into false ideas so that they persist extensively. If one plunges in deeply without clearly understanding true principle, even if one wants to seek what is right, on the contrary one will bring on misfortune.  [This occurrence can pertain to both leader and followers.]

Moving Line 3. If one is not constant in virtue, one may be shamed; even if right, one is humiliated. One may be strong and correct and determined in practice of the Tao, but if strength is not balanced and one is in a hurry to achieve attainment, one may advance keenly yet regress rapidly, thus not being constant in virtue, and shaming oneself. What is the shame? It is the shame of setting the heart on virtue but not being able to be constant in virtue, setting the will on right yet being unable to constantly practice what is right. Following the path in practice yet giving up, even though one is correctly oriented, one is humiliated. [I would say that we have seen this occurrence come to pass.]

Moving Line 4. No field, no game. When strength is in the body of action, the time is for doing, like having fields to plow. If one dwells in a position of weakness, the will inactive, constantly embracing the Tao but unable to put it into practice, is like empty fields. This is constancy without action.

Moving Line 6. Constancy of excitement is bad. Thinking one has what one lacks, that one is fulfilled when one is really empty and aggrandizing oneself, concerned with oneself and ignoring others, is called constancy of excitement. With constant excitement, the culmination of aggrandizement is inevitably followed by ruin, the culmination of elevation is inevitably followed by a fall. Ultimately one winds up being destroyed. This is constancy fooling oneself and bringing on misfortune. The proper way was never taken. [It seems that the “fall” with its “ruin” and “misfortune” are yet to happen, however, they are foretold.]

This is followed by the “outcome,” the hexagram that follows from the current situation and the changes it holds:

Hexagram 41: Reduction. Diminishing excess. Above, still, mountain; below, joyous, lake. Having something to rejoice over, yet immediately stilling it; by stilling the joy there is no errant thought. Strength and flexibility are balanced, emptiness and fullness are in accord; strength does not become rambunctious, flexibility does not become weakness. Reduction is therefore diminishing what is excessive, adding to what is insufficient. This is the existence of increase within reduction. Previous to this is halting, in which one can stop where there is danger, preserving the primordial Tao in the midst of the temporal, which requires the removal of acquired conditioning [which is social and cultural belief that has been “learned”], i.e., traveling the path of reduction. Reduction as a path means not following desires but stopping desires; many people cannot be sincere in it, and if one is not sincere, one cannot finish what is started, will fail, and will also bring on blame. Whereas if one can be sincere, every thought is true; sincerity of mind naturally shows in action. Good fortune comes even though one does not try to bring it about. However, such sincerity must be correct, such reduction must be correct. People in the world who contemplate voidness, stick to quietude, forget about people, forget about their own bodies, and go on like this all their lives without change, are certainly sincere about reduction, but they are faithful to what they should not be faithful to, and reduce what they should not reduce—thus there is decrease with increase, which is still faulty. So if one can be correct in sincerity in reduction, discern whether it is right or wrong, whether it is false or true, understand it in the mind and prove it in actual events to the benefit of all. Actual practice in real life is most important, to finish what has been started. As long as one has not yet reached the serene, equanimous realm of the middle way, work cannot be stopped; one must daily reduce for the sake of the Tao, daily increasing one’s accomplishment. When strength and flexibility are balanced, there is flexibility in strength and strength in flexibility; strength and flexibility are as one. One has gone back to the origin; the spiritual embryo takes on form, and from this one receives the bliss of freedom and nonstriving. One’s fate now depends on oneself, not on heaven. Be sincere in reduction, and within reduction there is increase. This is no small matter. [The “serene, equanimous realm of the middle way” in which there is “balance” between “flexibility” and “strength” is the kind of reality that is seen as our future.]

I felt compelled to present the oracular view of “context,” both as truth and as untruth. Now, how do we find real, true, “correct” context? Reality and Truth, that in which we seek “live and move and have our being,” are most elusive, though not illusive. To see it, we must be it. there have been many people throughout history who have given themselves to this quest for reality and truth. I am aware of the sentence in the preceding hexagram: One’s fate now depends on oneself, not on heaven. There is a Tibetan Buddhist chant: Om mani padme hum. It was translated to me as “You hold the lotus in your hand,” which can be taken to mean that we contain our fate, or at least an aspect of it, within ourselves. Our fate lies within our hands. Like “God” or “the universe,” it is not just “out there”; it is also “in here,” within ourselves, even as we are within it.

TO BE CONTINUED

An excerpt from my book-in-progress, Understanding the Dilemma of Human Existence

I began questioning what I had assumed to be reality at the age of seven. At that point I wasn’t so aware of a dilemma involved in human existence or that any particular choices were to be made. My awareness was one of recognition of other dimensions of existence, beyond that which I had understood to be real. In addition the different reality of other people and how they affected me became very apparent. Three events occurred that affected me deeply, causing me to want to know and to understand what life was all about and who was I in it.

             First, after moving into a “new” house in Albany, New York, in 1954, I awakened one night to see the figure of a man standing at the bottom of my bed looking down at me. He was very tall and wore a dark pin-striped three-piece suit. His head was tilted to the right in an extreme angle, his tongue hung out of his mouth to the side, his eyes protruded like a frog’s, and his arms hung limply at his sides. I was so horrified that I was paralyzed, unable to utter a sound or to move. A few nights later, the man returned, but not visually; rather, as an invisible presence with a soft voice. He apologized for frightening me, for he realized quickly the effect of his visual presence upon me. In time, he became my friend and close companion, returning almost every night for probably two years. We talked and discussed many philosophical points about life and living and what it was to be human. He also comforted me when I was in pain. Much later in my life, when I was twenty-one, I was motivated to research in the local newspaper, the Times-Union, and found an obituary and a short news article about a man who had committed suicide at the house I moved into with my family, six months before we moved in. He was a banker whose wife and children had left him because he drank too much. One day he came home and hung himself in what probably was his bedroom, now my bedroom. He was very sad but very kind and knowledgeable. I never told anyone about him until I was twenty-one. When I finally told my mother, she was aghast, and asked, “How did you find out?” That is another story I will tell in due time.

             Second, my father, who was a decorated World War Two “hero,” and who had been in the Medical Core, serving on D-Day at Normandy Beach and in the Ardennes Forest in the “Battle of the Bulge,” had been through the profound horrors and confusion of war, and, though undiagnosed (as was the norm for most returning veterans from that war in those times) probably suffered by PTSD. He often saw me as a “defiant child,” though I probably suffered from a degree of autism as a result of being born six weeks premature. I exhibited various signs of autism and was slow to develop verbally and auditorily; in other words, I didn’t hear adequately and therefore was slow to respond, thus seeming “defiant.” My father lost patience of my “defiance” and began taking a belt to my back, not stopping until he was either too exhausted or he drew blood. At these times, which were extremely frightening and painful to me, I couldn’t understand why he was doing this to me. I knew he loved me and could not comprehend why he was doing this. In time, though, I did understand. I would see in my mind bloody, deafening, explosive battlefields in which men were dying and bodies and parts of bodies were strewn upon the ground. I felt absolute fear and confusion and paralysis. I wondered why I was having these thoughts and then I realized that I was seeing into my father’s mind, into his thoughts. I also realized that in his mind he was on that battlefield that I was seeing and reacting to. I understood that my father was “somewhere else” when he beat me. This didn’t lessen the physical pain or damage but it did diminish my inability to understand what was happening with him. And though I had an understanding, I still harbored much resentment that he somewhere within himself chose to take his rage out on me, his small child. I realized that other people, even if they loved you, were capable of utmost cruelty. At these times, I would try to flee into the safety of my bedroom closet, where my mother kept her fur coats hung upon hangers but reaching down to the floor. I would curl up in the fur coats like a small wounded animal. My friend, the “ghost in my room,” would talk to me at these times and console me, telling me that my father was a “victim of war,” that I should forgive him, that I was “good,” and would “get through it and be ok.”

             Third, in the fall of 1954, I got very sick, probably with a flu, though I’m not sure what it was. I lay in my bed in my room gazing out the window at a cold, orange sunset. I had a very high fever. As I lay on my left side, looking upon my body covered by a blanket, I saw a mountain range in the setting sun. As I watched, clouds came and enveloped the mountains, pouring down endless rain for an eternity, after which the mountains were totally washed away. I lay there now seeing nothing where my body had been. An eternity had passed and my body no longer existed. Even my ability to “see” had vanished and I found myself in a state that was without any senses except an awareness of self. I assumed it must be “my” self.

             Who is to say what causes a person to “question existence”? Each of us has his or her own causes, reasonable or unreasonable, conscious or unconscious. There is much that has occurred during my life that has led me in many directions. I have thus sought to “understand the dilemma of human existence,” for I do see that the many directions offer many choices, or even just two choices, both of which must be understood to be co-existent. It may be possible to “transcend” physical existence while living in a human body, and to do so makes a certain definite sense, however, such an “achievement” may be “pure nonsense.” I have been living in this question ever since I arrived at the “age of guilt,” a result of Roman Catholicism indoctrination during my childhood. Even beyond religious teaching and belief, the issue of “spirit vs. matter” is certainly ancient and modern, without solution, but understandable in its paradox and irony. In due time I will get to its gnostic roots and the damage done to the human psyche. But damage without destruction may be seen as evolutionary change. If one believes that what happens is “meant” to happen, that omens are not necessarily ominous, and that each of us is part of and integral to our own fate, then one may learn to be able to ride upon the “horns” of the dilemma of being human.

I am writing this in what is to be book form because I do not believe that electronic transmission will be permanent but will, sooner or later, abruptly end. At that point we humans may all abruptly end, but, if not, someone may read my book and find something of value in it that might aid him or her in the living of their life. I want to “leave something” of what I have learned in this life and this is one way to do it. There are other additional ways, such as living by kind and loving example. In this book there is a smattering of knowledge, including cultural and philosophical correspondences, some of which seem to be beyond what is generally or even specifically known, at least as far as I know. There is some “tongue in cheek” in my writing, which is my way of expressing my particular anecdote: “Too much irony makes one overwrought.” If one person smiles, it will all have been worth it. If one laughs, I get my wings. My references indicate my age and generation: old.

             Much of this book is taken from my journals and from essays and “putting together of information” I’ve written over the years, arranged by different themes and topics. All of it relates to “understanding the dilemma of human existence.” What else is there, anyway? I will try to provide connection and explanation when it seems necessary, and may become quite tangential at times, as the spirit moves me. I will also let the spirit speak whenever possible. I might just as well have asked, “What is real?” or “Who am I?” We each have our own questions that come to us and for which we seek to understand an answer. And, while it may be quite true that legions of people do not question at all, preferring to avoid all discomfort and to believe contexts presented to them, be they business or religion or sheer survival, are able and willing to contort themselves to fit and to belong without question or even apparent awareness, these are those many others who find themselves unable and unwilling to do so.

             In my own life I have always tended to write down these choices made to not fit in and often the pain involved as a result of not being part and parcel of the “world,” that is, of the way in which life is “expected to be lived” by the greater majority. Some of us are aided in our eventual understanding of such a situation by what happens to us in life that is seemingly much beyond our control. For instance, I refer to my own premature birth “forced” upon me by my mother slipping on icy stairs, “breaking her water,” thus forced against the time of nature itself, to bear her baby six weeks early. From the beginning, then, I was not quite “normal” and spent the first two months of my life in an “incubator,” a small container with a light bulb for warmth used to hatch motherless chickens. I was so small and frail, for my father chain-smoked as well, that I was not touched or held except by nurses when they changed my linens and diapers. “Human touch” was infrequent and without love, warmth, or gentleness. Physical touch became overwhelming, uncomfortable, and even painful to me. I squirmed like an animal to get away, kicking and screaming and flailing; in time, people were not intimate with me and I felt safe though always alone, always different. Then, thirty-four years later, when my daughter, Sarah, exhibited signs of profound autism at two or three months, I understood how that was for her, and she understood that I understood. A very close bond was formed between us. I kept a detailed record of my own thoughts and feelings and still do almost thirty-five years later.

             I have also always read different sources, particularly of philosophy, religion, and history so that I might have some kind of understanding of what human beings have to say about themselves, their lives, and their worlds. I have sought to see what they have done and how they acted throughout history all over the world. Their thoughts over time and their consequent actions taught me much about what it means to be human, both for better and for worse. Much of what I have read has resonated closely with me, had “spoken” to me clearly, and has explained, in some respects, not only how I “hold” the world or “see” it, but why whole cultures have come to do what they have done and why they still hold such views of God, themselves, and humanity. For we are not so separate as we may think we are; we actually operate as a whole, especially now with the technology of the internet which provides an immediacy without time or space to give us a chance to weigh and to think, to reason. Much of what I include in this book is a result of my thoughts, some with particular purposes to bring new thoughts or evidence to light especially to specific audiences. There is much here that therefore sounds rather “academic,” containing footnotes and sources for the quotes I use. If, in my reading, I find that someone else has come quite close to articulating my own thoughts or something quite close to them, I have no problem in letting them do much of the speaking for me. Sometimes they are so well-spoken, in fact, that it would be a disservice to them for me to even attempt to paraphrase them. And the fact is that I find myself “in” various historical views and even in those who spoke them, as if I actually were the person who articulated them. I do not quite know just what will be included in this book, but whatever lends itself to an “understanding of the dilemma of being human or of human existence” is apropos. For, if something “speaks” to me, it may speak to another as well. The beauty that I am fortunate to be able to see may possibly be seen by another. The questions and needs that well up from my own soul and my own heart may very well reflect those of others, just as the questions of the most ancient philosophers are questions that I too have asked before I ever even knew of them.

             My writings here, then, will cover a spectrum of that which is quite personal, such as my own life, to that which is very abstract, such as my philosophical thoughts on cosmological topics. Some will be paraphrased renditions, primarily through the use of quotes, of various historical narratives or overweening points of view, such as the fascinating mythologies of the various Gnostic schools of early Christianity and from what they are derived. For, to understand the reasons how things are now and the foundations from which they arose does provide an understanding of current human nature and thought which is utterly vital if we are to survive and even thrive in our current world. The primary cause of the problems humanity is faced with throughout the world is a lack of historical and therefore foundational awareness. Those who do not know history are bound to repeat it in their overweening ignorance. To know history is to know oneself.

Central to this desire and need to understand this “dilemma of human existence” is the need for context, for a context for ourselves in which we may “belong” and thus “be a part of life.” Without context, we are lost; we do not even know what we are, much less who we are, or even why we are. Context most often takes the form of a story of ourselves in some way. It may be a story of our “people,” our race, our religion, our society, our nation, our family, or it may be more individualized into a story of “my spirituality,” my relationship with the universe, with God or gods, with the earth, with my “true nature.” And so we may spend our lives searching for stories, for cosmologies, that “resonate” with us, that “speak” to us, in which we can find ourselves. We may, in fact, discover many such stories that, themselves, overlap in so many ways, with us able to find a bit of ourselves in each and consequently coagulating them all into a still greater story, a still greater context and place of belongingness in which we are able to exist as we are, though still always searching for still greater boundaries. It is similar to Siddhartha moving from one guru to the next, absorbing what each teaches and presents, but then having to discover the next guru with the greater teaching. Each time he is filled to the brim and realizes that reality is bigger and more inclusive than he has been able to hold; he must consequently expand himself, his own reality to be able to contain that which is to come. I have gone to many religions, many philosophies, many ways of seeing, many experiences of being, often enough then returning, able to traverse a higher spiral of that particular story, and noticing that, at a certain point, the stories become much more entwined in the same spiral. The Gnostics present incredible “creation” stories, differing according to the main schools, but with quite similar results. The Plato-Christian stories, though different in the telling, also have quite similar worldviews and virtue. The Buddhist and Hindu and Daoist are not so different from the Plato-Christian, though they are utterly different in their telling and even in their conclusions. Then, of course, there are the philosophers and the mystics who also skirt and parallel the religious correspondences. Their various “movements,” from those of Blavatsky and Bailey, to Krishnamurti and Steiner are fascinating and amazing, all as sparks of intelligence and great heart permeating all existence. They all sit with me here in my library, waiting patiently to “hold company” with me, weighing the issues closest to the human heart and its existence with the human soul and divine spirit in the same body. If people but knew what they had to convey of their own experiences and their understanding and interpretation of that experience, they would not be the same. I am not the same. The gods and the God have spoken and continue to speak, but we do not believe that we can hear them any longer, and so we do not listen. But I have listened and, in the most profane and prosaic moment, have heard. It is not so much what they say but the fact that we realize that they have spoken to us; that they, as the ancient Greek “pagans” and Christians believed, walk amongst us still. Such realities, which we now hold to be more “sentiments” than truth, are noted in the NT, as when Christ says, “You shall find me in the very least of my brethren.” He is being both metaphorical and literal, which is exactly how both the Greek “pagans” and Christians believed that the statues or images of the gods and of God were “alive” with the presence of the god and God. Such statues were placed in locations where not only could they be visited by people, but where they could walk, frolic, make love, and otherwise romp in the absence of human beings.

             

CONSEQUENCES OF ONENESS: COMPASSION AND "WELTSCHMERZ"

I mentioned in my previous blog the "oneness" with all other people that I sometimes experience and believe to be our true nature. I did not mention that there is a consequence, a result, of this, or how this awareness may have come about in my life. I'll speak of the latter first. Up until 1982, I had pretty much been able to compartmentalize my life, keeping it more or less quite separate from those of others, pursuing my own challenges and goals, though also being able to maintain a marriage relationship. I had been able to "live in my own little world" and also in society well enough. Then my daughter was born with profound autism which manifested a few weeks after her seemingly "normal" birth. This had the effect of breaking down the walls I had constructed around myself over time to keep me "safe from the world" by holding it at "arm's length" away from myself. To use another term, when I realized that my daughter would never be able to "have her own life" (as I saw it then) and would always be "trapped" within herself (as I believed then), my "heart broke." I believe that this is what happens with all parents whose children have "profound disabilities," whether or not they acknowledge it. However, something else happened: the psychic "walls" that had protected me from the painful invasiveness of the world, of reality, came crumbling down. I found that I "felt" other people on a very deep level within myself, as if they were, in fact, me. I "become one" with everyone else; I was no longer able to compartmentalize myself as I had. I had compassion and understanding actively developing within myself. 

But such compassion and understanding, such a sense of oneness with others, also has its natural consequences. Schopenaur, the nineteenth-century German philosopher, coined the word weltschmerz, meaning "sorrow or pain of the world," which he said he could feel in his own cells, which came with his own sense of "oneness with others." If one has this sense and experience of merging with the other, you have no choice but of knowing what they are feeling, and also of feeling it within yourself. I believe that this pain and sorrow is the human condition itself, that is, that it arises simply from being born in a physical body. Even as a young child I felt that it was not "natural" for me to be in this body and that I belonged in and came from a place not physical at all. Being in a body has always seemed awkward and inappropriate on some deep level. As I got older and read various "stories" or myths or cosmologies, I understood more on why I felt as I did: I was a non-physical "spirit" who had been "born" into a body, into the material world. I was not as I "should" be; I was a "stranger in a strange land." I was very slowly making my way back, through being born into physical bodies in life after life, to my "original, pure nature." And this is true of everyone, regardless of their beliefs about it. I saw its correspondences in the natural world; everything is regenerated and evolving. Thus, it is "natural" for human beings to feel that "something is missing" or that they are not as they are meant to be; they do not feel "whole" because they are not in their "true form," but rather in a material body that is destined to deteriorate and die. And they must learn to dis-identify with their material, worldly existence and to identify with their non-material, transcendent being. Interestingly, this was an essential teaching of Roman Catholicism, though, when I was a child, it also taught that "the flesh" was a "temptation" in its pleasures, including the Gnostic notion that it was "evil" to "give in to carnal desires." What I see now is that the "Roman" part of Catholicism actually loves the body and sees it as "good", as God's good creation, as it were (which is more or less reflected in Aquinas), whereas the Gnostic part of Catholicism (as reflected in Augustine, Paul, and later, in Calvinism) in which the body and all creation is seen as "false" and "illusory" (much like the "maya" of Hinduism). It's not that sex is "evil," rather, it's that to identify with the body is simply false, for the body, by its very nature, dies, and if we are identified with it upon death, rather than with the non-physical "spiritual" aspect of ourselves, in which we find ourselves upon death, we have what amounts to a rather hellish problem that demands that we purge ourselves of our false identity with the transitory physical existence. Practically-speaking, if one is planning to climb a mountain, one prepares in so many ways, from packing oxygen to wearing warm clothing. When leaving the body at death, one prepares for the non-physical existence. I am being overly simplistic here in order to clearly convey the basic idea.

Sometimes I "go off in tangents" as they present themselves to me, and perhaps never return to the "original point." Such is life. When I walk in the redwood forest, I have sometimes found myself following deer trails far off the main path. Must I have a "deer mind" to be able to do this? No. However, it just may be that at a certain moment I am "possessed" by a "deer mind" and consequently compelled to follow the deer trail. It is also perhaps the curiosity of the hunter (though I've never hunted and have no desire to kill animals) that leads me. When I was much younger I purposely followed deer trails, almost as a tracker, and surprised many a grazing deer herd, some of which fled and some of which, apparently not seeing me as a threat, kept grazing as if I were not there. A good part of my reason for being in nature is to "not be there" in that way. It relates also to "not leaving a carbon footprint." Such "invisibility" amounts to the Hindu virtue of ahimsa ("harmlessness").