how beautiful it is to live in the appreciation of the fundamental mysteries of existence.
looking back on my life when i’m 80, what am i going to think?
“When things are shaky and nothing is working, we might realize that we are on the verge of something,” Chodron writes. “We might realize that this is a very vulnerable and tender place, and that tenderness can go either way. We can shut down and feel resentful or we can touch in on that throbbing quality. There is definitely something tender and throbbing about groundlessness.”
…
“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”
“Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life.” - Joseph Campbell
a regurgitation of my daily repititions
by this time tomorrow, i could expire. what do i need to say?
i want to communicate the way i experience the sacred. i look out into a parking lot watching people go about their business while i wait for her to get off of work. my body feels light, relaxed, and completely without tension. my emotional self (the corrolary to my bodily self) similarly feels relaxed an light, with no concern for responsibility or fear. the spectacle of life before me has become vividly clear. the brisk, cool breeze finds its way into my car through the opening of the slightly open window while it brushes the leaves on the trees.
this moment is so full. this moment though, has arisen from a recent history of considering my life, existence in general, music, movies, laughter, despair, etc, etc. communicating the experience of the sacred without communicating the context/history out of which it has been experienced seems short sighted and a bit lazy.
i guess i feel like i can’t really capture the immensity of the feeling of completion, of the sacred. the feeling of complete fulfilment comes from, for me, a consideration of the most fundamental questions … and not necessarily answering them. simply considering, for example, what it means to have purpose, what it means to question the purpose i want to have, unifies me with something so special, so important, so essential, so sacred that i feel i’ve reached a point where i can be at peace with anything, with everything. this point is of paramount importance to me, too, because i feel, now, that it is my duty, my purpose, to live from this place. that is to say, it’s my purpose always be connected, to always be unified, with this sense of centrality. only then can my life be beneficial for, properly helpful to, those around me. only then can i be of service to my self and others.
but reaching this point and staying there is so difficult. it takes effort i have yet to even comprehend. it takes something i yet to even glimpse. what honesty must i have with myself and others? what determination must i muster to try without trying to reach and remain in this place? What priorities must i found my actions upon? it is, i feel, a great task, a great practice, a worthy practice, to embark upon such an endeavour. perhaps however, i ought to console my self some. for the desire within me to live such a life seems already worlds away from the objects of my childhood desires.
tomorrow i may die, this i know. tomorrow i may witness the spectacle of life for the last time. i shall, until that time comes, devote myself fully to the endeavours of my choice. I shall not do anything with less than my complete attention and effort, nor without my complete honesty and dignity.
In the court of aunthenticity, I face ultimate judgment, not of my peers, but of and for myself, each moment I, with all my attention and might, decide to either do as I know I ought, or not. With the weight of a million bottles of xanax, impulsive desire tears me down, toward the depths of guilt, shame, servitude and self-mutilation. It may, perhaps, be of interest to this court as to the nature of this weight: for it is the very weight which placed me on the steps of authenticity. The wanton within, the socially precribed me tears ever so subtly at the cloth of my self’s unity. It at once whispers in my left ear “consume, consume, consume” while in my right I scream “listen”. An anxiety ensues which is at first pernicious, permeating my sight with fantastic pain, severing ties with the world which I never thought seperable: “ought I really smile at every individual I make eye contact with”? A new feeling bubbles to the surface. At first fear, nausea, nervousness; but this gives way to incessant inner dialogue. Reason has, as the case normally is with these matters, paradoxically presented itself to me as the objective source of my subjective interpretation of what I ought do, or not do. Reason says, with good reason, to be temperate with the consumption of substances.
a dose of hope
“No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future that is not hidden in this present moment. Take peace! The gloom of this world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within reach, is joy. There is a radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look. Life is so generous a giver….”
- Fra Giovanni 1513
What Shall I do?? Or, What Purpose Shall I Devote My Effort To?
“Accomplish something in the world, men tell me. Shall I then publish my grief to the world, contribute one more proof for the wretchedness and misery of existence, perhaps discover a new flaw in human life, hitherto unnoticed? I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent.” Kierkegaard Either/Or
“Do you have the time to listen to me whine, about nothing and everything about it”? So begins Billie Joe Armstrong’s song, “Basket Case” of the ever popular and mainstream band, Green Day. That should appropriately set the tone for this entire blog. Whilst changing the oil of a 2009 Mercedez with the license plate, “UCSB Almuni”, this song came on. I wasn’t irritated so much by the fact that the owner of this car was sitting in the waiting room watching “Maury Povich” while I, also a UC graduate, was changing her car’s oil; I was irritated that the socio-political-economical structure within which I live and work has pre-determined, for the most part, who “succeeds” (whatever that means) and who does not. (Except, that is, for those pathological cases which sacrifice almost everything to become “successful). My beef isn’t simply with this structure, however; this structure, and its apologetics, is/are far too superficial: it is merely the symptom of a deeper sickness. What that sickness is exactly though, I can’t accurately characterize yet. Take, for example, the common greeting, “how are you doing”? Now, aside from the fact that 99% of the time people don’t want to hear the honest answer; why has this, and not other greetings, become one of the most appropriate greetings to use? Why are we walking around like a bunch of existential thermometers? Of course one can say that to be human is to experience, among other things, suffering. But in our particular case, the suffering is especially acute. One can cite dozens of examples from popular culture exemplifying the spontaneous expression of existential dissatisfaction e.g. Billie Joe Armstrong. The lower classes, the 9-5ers, the upper-middle classes share the superficial, vacuous promise of consumer driven capitalism: material goods and wealth will feed your visceral hunger for a deep, legitimate, meaningful purpose. What are we to do? What can I do? A mere brick in the wall, a tooth of a cog in the machine of profit driven, greed impelled capitalist over-production, over-consumption, de-humanization? What am I to do when everywhere I look, almost every person I know is hopelessly stricken to the core by the cut-throat values imparted on us by father culture? (I call culture, “father culture” as a reference to Daniel Quinn’s works. Instead of “mother culture”, as he calls it, I prefer “father culture”, given the prevalent “you just need to work harder” message). I don’t have an answer to these questions yet. I’d like to reconcile the desire for an answer to these questions with the desire to live a relatively nice life. Time, however, is of the essence. I’m alive once, or so it seems. This is the one time I will be alive. What ultimate reason do I have to put up with the cultural niceties that make me sick? What ultimate reason do I have to bend to the will of father culture? I don’t want to eat meat. I don’t want to buy things made by people in other countries being paid a fraction of what they need to survive on. I don’t want to buy a house. I don’t want to bring kids into this world (I don’t want to have kids). I don’t want to have a good FICO score. I don’t want to vote for this semi-asshole instead of that asshole. I don’t want to buy a new car. I don’t want credit cards. I don’t want to jail myself in debt. I don’t want spend all of my money on shit I don’t need. I don’t want to support a poltical/economic system that celebrates the exploitation of innocent peoples. I don’t want to be an environment killing consumer. I don’t want to use things on my body that give me cancer. I don’t want to consume things that give me cancer. I don’t want to support imperialism. I don’t want to support anti-intellectualism. I don’t want to be a speciesist, sexist, racist, xenophobic bigot. I don’t want to be part of the circus show anymore.
fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
fuck.
