Category Archives: existentialism

Change Means “Mangled Guts Pretending”

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Ann Voskamp, writing from a conservative Christian viewpoint, reflects great depth stemming from having endured great loss in her life. And she notes in her book, “One Thousand Gifts” that, “awakening to joy awakens to pain”, and describes joy and pain as “two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who do not numb themselves to really living…Life is loss.” She also interprets Jacob’s wrestling with God as an inner spiritual battle that we all risk if we desire to change into the expression of our inner essence that so many of us fear. She describes the quest for wells which hold living water, noting that these wells don’t come without first seeking them with desperation and that “wells don’t come without first splitting open hard earth, cracking back the lids. There’s no seeing God face-to-face without first the ripping…It takes practice, wrenching practice, to break open the lids. But the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt he is.”

But, now I want to share the same truth in the words of someone from a vastly different perspective, Tony Kushner, the noted playwright and author of “Angels in America” and more recently author of the screenplay for the movie, “Lincoln.” A character in “Angels in America” poses the question, “How do people change” prompting the following answer:

Well, it has something to do with God so it’s not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out…and the pain! We can’t even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It’s up to you to do the stitching. And then you up you get. And walk around. Just mangled guts pretending.

Wow, that is intense! “Mangled guts pretending!” Notions like this is enough to deter anyone from changing, to opt for the status quo, personally or collectively. Or, as Shakespeare put it in Hamlet, to, “cling these ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.” (Shakespeare, in Hamlet)

And I can’t help but apply this to our country in its current turmoil. As Bob Dylan sang decades ago, “The times they are a changin’” and it is producing great political and social turmoil. And one point made in the brilliant movie Lincoln was the tremendous social unrest that Lincoln knew the country faced when he broached the subject of the 13th amendment.

 

Group Think, Collective Psychosis, and Spirituality

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Indian novelist and social critic Arundhati Roy wrote one of my favorite novels, The God of Small Things, which I strongly recommend. She has been outspoken about political and social injustice in her own country and even in our country. He outspoken views have gotten her into no small amount of trouble with her own government. Recently in Amy Goodman’s radio program, Democracy Now, she was interviewed about the U.S. declaration of war on Iraq a decade ago and used the term “psychosis” to describe the decision. Now, I think “psychosis” might have been a bit over the top. But she does offer a very insightful, critical perspective about that decision, a perspective that is now agreed upon by many in this country. (Ms. Roy interview link: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/3/18/arundhati_roy_on_iraq_wars_10th)  Cultures do function as individuals in a sense and can be “mentally ill”, even psychotic. And it always takes someone from the outside, someone who is not caught up in the collective madness, to point in out. Thus the important role of Ms. Roy and other brilliant thinkers from other cultures.  Circular reasoning often prevails. We have something in mind that we want to do and then devote our rational processing of data into legitimating the conclusion to which we’ve already been led. Or, to quote someone (whose name I no longer recall), our thinking is often “the belated rationalization of conclusions to which we have already been led by our desires.”

I know I sound like a broken record, but “this is a spiritual problem.” Now to call anything a “spiritual” problem and, already acknowledging there is the “broken record” issue with me, I myself want to say, “Oh, barf me with a spoon!” It is so easy to pontificate about “spiritual problems” and even more so I know that I’m doing so on some level, playing back an old recording in which I achieved cheap ego satisfaction from heaping “hell-fire and damnation on a lost and dying world.” Well, that is not what I have in mind. That is too simplistic. The solution I had in mind back then was very immature, reflecting spirituality seen as a rational process in which certain precepts merely needed to be accepted and followed. But by “spirituality” here I refer to the gut-level values of our culture, values that are usually reflected even in our religion. And, if we were honest, our supreme value today, our true “God” is consumerism, or “stuff.” We actually believe only in “stuff” and our heart lies with “stuff.”

But the spirituality I now value and seek to practice…and admittedly do so very poorly…is that of a new direction. It is a focus on the “eternal” but not in terms of time and space but in terms of value or quality. It is simply to recognize that our world is ephemeral, that there is an Ultimate reality that is present and expresses itself through this world. And our ephemeral, mundane world can have meaning only when we live in reference to that other dimension. Thus we daily “chop wood and carry water”, not knowing what the outcome may be, but knowing, i.e. “believing” and “hoping”, that it was make a difference. T. S. Eliot described it as the need to “offer our deeds to oblivion.” Of course, this offends our grandiose ego self who wants to know what the outcome will be and wants the outcome, especially the part that we played, to be really magnificent. But we can’t know. But we can take comfort in the hope that, collectively speaking, “There is a divinity that doeth shape our ends, rough hew them how we may.” (Shakespeare)

I offer two poems which so beautifully emphasize this external reference point, one from the East and one from the West:

First, from Lao Tzu:

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness:
�Thus we are helped by what is not
To use what is.

And then there is a lovely sonnet by John Masefield in which distress in our life is seen as an occasion to “thrust on that Unseen” and “cast to the devil’s challenge” the man’s “yes”. For, the devil’s challenge is a resounding “No”, an emphatic declaration that our life does not have any meaning and that our efforts are futile. When that spirit of negation rears its ugly head, that is the moment to look around and find the beauty that is nearby in our world, to offer a “random act of kindness”, and try to do so anonymously and without ostentation, and perhaps offer to love to one of God’s critters, human or otherwise. In other words, “get over ourselves” for a moment which is what the black hole of despair is often about.

Man has his unseen friend, his unseen twin,
His straitened spirit’s possibility,
The palace unexplored he thinks an inn,
The glorious garden which he wanders by.
It is beside us while we clutch at clay
To daub ourselves that we may never see.
Like the lame donkey lured by moving hay
We chase the shade but let the real be.
Yet, when confusion in our heaven brings stress,
We thrust on that unseen, get stature from it,
Cast to the devil’s challenge the man’s yes,
And stream our fiery hour like a comet,
And know for that fierce hour a friend behind,
With sword and shield, the second to the mind.

Epistemic Closure and the Republican Party

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I had my weekly cup of coffee with God earlier this morning. As we sipped our celestial Starbucks, he pointed to an open-air classroom nearby where young gods were studying, preparing for their future rule of various worlds. “Let’s listen in,” he suggested to me. I obliged readily, knowing of course who I was dealing with.

The “young gods” were being lectured to about epistemic closure, the notion of living in a bubble and assuming that one knows about everything when in reality he/she “knows” only through a small prism. The teacher then ran a video that I have shared here before from Saturday Night Life, illustrating the phenomena vividly. (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9yn49_mr-belvedere_shortfilms#.UUWfUDctU9U)

Then the teacher continued, “Now for a couple of days we are conducting a laboratory experiment in epistemic closure on an obscure little planet called Earth. We are very concerned about this cosmic poison for wherever it gains a foothold, it is almost impossible to eradicate; and it is the one thing that prevents us from accomplishing our Purpose. It is Satan’s favorite weapon.” He then pointed to the screen and zoomed in to a place called “The United States” and suddenly the din of the Republican Party’s internecine squabbling filled the room

Now laying aside my reverie…

Those of you who look on from other countries must be appalled at what you are seeing in the current performance of my country’s political circus. But, please note that the gods are giving you a lesson about what can happen in your own country if it, or any faction within it, draws its boundaries too narrowly and refuses to broaden them. Now I am wont to note at this point of this argument that this tendency is present with all groups, liberal and conservative. HOWEVER, let me note this time that the “open-mindedness” I advocate will never be found on the extreme right fringe of any group as people of that sort desperately hate open-mindedness and desperately cling to “truth” as seen through the narrow prism of their hate-filled heart. It is amusing on one hand to watch the ultra-conservative’s quest for “purity” in their own rank as it creates frustration and consternation within their own ranks. But on the other hand it is not amusing at all, but very sad, as we see in the Taliban what would happen if our culture did not have sophisticated structural limits.

But this boundary dilemma is part of the human experience and reflects a tendency that we have to watch for even in our own heart. With my government’s current impasse…and specifically the Republican imbroglio…we have an object lesson in the lunacy of the human heart, individually and collectively. We are our own worst enemy; as Pogo once noted, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The human temptation to create a cocoon…an Eden on earth…can be so compelling that it is counter-productive and can even lead to our own demise. As W. H. Auden feared, “We have made for ourselves a life safer than we can bear.”

The answer is “self” awareness or “consciousness” which we can never acquire unless we first recognize that we don’t have it in the first place. In other words, the first step in seeing the light is realizing that we live in darkness just as Plato told us in the 5th Century BC and Jesus told us a few centuries later. And that is to name only two who have offered light in our darkness. Others certainly preceded them and many have come since and are even present today. “But Truth met him and held out her hand. And he clung in panic to his tall belief and shrank away like an ill-treated child.” (W. H. Auden)

 

A Hand Reaching Across the Abyss

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I’ve invited some blog-o-sphere friends over this morning to play and you too are welcome! I asked momma last night, “Can I have some new friends over Saturday morning” and she said “Yes, as long as you are nice to them this time.” So, ya’ll come on over and we’ll play in the back yard, making mud pies, playing house, playing church, playing tag, wrestling, and such. AND, this time, I’m gonna try to talk one of you cute little girls into a private moment of, “I’ll show you mine, if you’ll show me yours!” (No, I actually never played that game but kind of wish I had’ve!)

This little reverie is a thought I have already shared with a couple of my readers and reflects what a delight it is to meet kindred spirits from around the world. Discovering you makes me feel connected even more to the world, appreciating the power of words and imagination to reach across the abyss that separates us all. And this power is useful with all relationships, cyber as well as real-time.

And, as I start each day now I often think of it as “another day on the playground.” I start it with my favorite friend (my dear, lovely wife Claire) and the second runners-up for that honor, Ludwig and Elsa, the two most beautiful dachshunds that ever lived. But then I go to work, or go to “Wal-marts”, or visit with friends, and still it is “another day on the playground”, this lovely world that God has given us.

And, according to Shakespeare, with mere thought, we can escape the bounds of space and time and commune with each other. For, “If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, injurious distance” would not separate us! The Bard had in mind something relevant to an Archibald MacLeish observation, “Winds of thought blow magniloquent meanings betwixt me and thee.”

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then despite of space I would be brought,
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay.
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee;
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But ah! thought kills me that I am not thought,
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,
But that, so much of earth and water wrought,
I must attend time’s leisure with my moan,
Receiving nought by elements so slow
But heavy tears, badges of either’s woe.

 

Musings About an Identity Crisis

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I wish you first a sense of theater.

Only those who know illusion

And love it will go far.

Otherwise, we spend our lives in confusion

About what to say and do about who we really are.

This poem by W. H. Auden presents an essential quandary in our quest for identity. If you find yourself wondering about “who I really am” then you have already opened a can of worms and have an identity crisis in the offing. And please note that an “identity crisis” is often a luxury, one that millions of people cannot afford, being the urgency of the day-to-day grind of trying to make a living to provide for themselves and their family But for those of you who have this luxury, I’m going to share some thoughts about the nature of identity.

The notion that “I am” assumes a whole lot. When I think about who “I am”, I am practicing selective attention as the question brings to mind only memories that are consistent with presuppositions about myself that I have been permitted and find myself comfortable with. Everything else has been excluded. But the “everything else” is still there and always beckons in the unconscious, coming to us in fears, anxieties, projections, and dreams, good and bad. Addressing an identity crisis is to realize that we have drawn the boundaries of our existence too narrowly and that the “crisis” we are now feeling merely is an opportunity to broaden these boundaries. It is to realize that our identity….the one that I’m presenting here as a false self, even as a charade in some sense…is very necessary and is not to be totally discarded. It is to realize merely that it is only part of the picture, only the surface of our real identity and for that identity to have meaning we must allow some of its excluded context to surface and be integrated into our sense of self. That “false self”, or “ego”, is very important. The problem lies only in our insistence that it be the whole of ourselves.  Failure  to recognize this is to find o living a very shallow life.

Let me illustrate with a snippet from another Auden poem in which he notes how that most of us “drive through life in the closed cab of occupation.” By this he meant that a person often, if not usually, sees the world through a template which is often best characterized by his occupation. Thus, a physician sees people through a medical model, an educator sees people as children needing to learn, a clinician (such as myself) sees people with the cold detachment of a diagnostic manual. But, Auden’s point was not merely about “occupations” but about a template, an ego structure through which all of us see the world, be it “occupational” or otherwise. This ego structure is our identity, our “false self” or persona, which always needs to be enlarged. And when this “enlargement” takes place, it does not invalidate the template…usually. The template usually serves a useful purpose. But we need to see the world through broader terms than we are wont to do when totally subservient to the template that with which we are so familiar and comfortable  that we can’t even see it and are actually averse to seeing.  (Emily Dickinson noted, “The mind too near itself to see itself distinctly.)

Let me illustrate with Mitt Romney. I think Romney was, and is, an intelligent, good human being. He had many qualities which could have made him a good President. But his worldview, his “template”, got in his way and posed some real problems in his campaign, best illustrated in the surreptitiously taped 47 percent speech to wealthy donors. His template demonstrated an extreme rigidity which often left him appearing very awkward and socially maladroit so that he often missed the nuances of personal and public interactions. For, Romney is a “corporate” person, a “corporate” mogul and persons of this cut do have a place in our culture, be that good or bad. He sees the world through the eyes of a corporate mogul and was not able to give this viewpoint pause on occasion and approach the public in more personal terms. It is not that he was “bad”. It is just that he was Mitt Romney and that “Mitt Romney” was, and is, a “corporate mogul.”

(An equally valid point is the “literarylew” is merely “literarylew” and sees the world through the template that comes across through his blog. Those who know me personally also see how clearly that “literarylew” is part and parcel of who I am, it is my identity, and yes, it really gets tiresome on occasion, or at least as annoying as hell!)

 

Neurophysiology and The Question of Meaning

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Politico has an interesting article today about the role that neurophysiology plays in shaping our political viewpoint. (http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/left-right-the-brain-science-of-politics-88653.html?hp=l11)

I have been curious about this research for the past year and recently ran across another blogger (Neuroresearchproject.com) with a similar curiosity. I also strongly recommend that you google the name “Jonathan Haidt” to listen to a psychologist discourse re a similar vein of thought.

This research would have given me pause at one point in my life, causing me to doubt myself, my faith, and basically everything. This research suggests that our life is largely determined by circumstances far beyond the grasp of our mind. But, now my response is, “So…..????” For, I have now feel that my grasp of reality is so very finite and is so shaped by circumstances that I can never wrap my brain around. And at times I ask, “How could I have ever thought otherwise?”

I used to be a lot more arrogant than I am now. (And, yes, I still have the taint of arrogance in my heart!) Life is just an incredible mystery and I’ve learned to find glory in that experience.

Sure, we need to study and study and study. We need to speculate as we have always been wont to do. And we will learn more and more as we go. But ultimately we will always come down to….nothing…or, as I like to put it, “No-Thing.” It is when we allow that primordial Emptiness to give us pause that we can be disrupted from the humdrum routine of the dog-and-pony show that we call our life and allow a Mystery to visit us and experience somewhat the Mystery that we are. It is there that we find our Source and then that we experience the temptation of turning that new Friend of ours into still another contrivance for our ego.

I’d like to share a poem by Edgar Simmons about detachment and its role in helping us to discover the Glory in this mystery of No-thingness.

THE MAGNETIC FIELD

Distance…which by definition
Indicates a separation from self
Is the healing poultice of metaphor,
Is the night-lighting of poetry.
As we allot to elements their weights
So to metaphor we need assign the
Weight of the ghost of distance.
Stars are stars to us
Because of distance: it is in the
Nothingness which clings us them
That we glory, tremble, and bow.
O what weight and glory lie abalance
In the stretch of vacant fields:
Metaphor: the hymn and hum of separation.

Thandie Newton’s “Being and Nothingness” Experience

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I share a video clip below from a young actress, Thandie Newton, who speaks at a TED conference about an identity crisis she experienced when just a girl and continuing as she became a fledgling young actress. She had the courage to find wisdom in her early twenties that I am only now trying to discover at thrice the age.

She speaks of self and separateness and uses the term “self” as I would use “ego.” She describes this self as a “vehicle to navigate a social world comprised of the projections of other people,” and noted that it is designed only to cope with the fear of death. She presents it as a false reality which left her feeling empty and alone.

She spoke of her discovery that “awareness of the reality of oneness can heal us” and described this realization as the loss of the false self, the ego self. Newton experienced what I would call “grace” as she embraced the world as she realized that it embraced her. She stopped drawing the distinction between “me and thee” that Western culture is so intoxicated with.

I want to conclude with an observation by Pema Chodron about our “shared humanity” and how that we can experience this “oneness” when we are willing to come out of the darkness that Newton was born into just as we all are:

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity. (Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times)

(You might have to copy and paste the following clip.)

 

 

The Neurological Roots of Experience

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I am fascinated by the neurological dimension of our lives. For years I have read about the neurological “god spot” which some have posited as an explanation for our religiosity. And more recently I have shared re the neurological components of our political belief systems. Very recently I have met NeuroNotes  in the blog-o-sphere who has whetted my appetite for this subject and also a local neurologist who suggested some interesting reading material for me.

As I delve into this world of science I am also delving more deeply into the spiritual realm and in the recesses of my mind I am teased with the notion that religion and such scientific speculation cannot co-exist. “Why these scientists are trying to tell me that God does not exist, that God is just some result of neurological wizardry, and that I should grow up and just forget about all of that “God stuff.”

But, I find that my faith deepens the more that I read and study. For, I discover that “God” is much more than a rational construction, that ultimately He is a mystery that lies beyond the grasp of my rational, conscious mind but is nevertheless present in some inexplicable fashion in even in this very intellectual/spiritual curiosity of mine. Even the Bible teaches us that God is “the author and the finisher of our faith” and that He is in us, “both to will and to do his good pleasure”. Though we struggle we discover that ultimately is God at work in our heart all along the way. And I quote Leonard Cohen so often, “O bless this continual struggle of the Word being made flesh.”

In some sense we are all merely a blob of protoplasm, a mere animal, a “poor, bare forked creature” (King Lear) but one who is blessed with an intentionality, a spiritual intentionality to achieve some purpose beyond himself. That intentionality is the breath of God’s Spirit seeking to lead us in the direction of “peace on earth and good will toward all men.”

Let me share a verse from the Bible that I feel is relevant and then close with a note from Shakespeare.

Jeremiah noted:

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

And Hamlet said:

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.

Meaning and Meaninglessness in Spirituality

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Richard Rohr writes powerfully and eloquently about the need to live in the domain of “duality” and recognize the specific relevance of the notion in the realm of spirituality. We do “see through a glass darkly” as the Apostle Paul once noted because this world we live in, which we daily imbibe (usually without any conscious awareness) is made up of infinite complexity, teeming with paradox stemming from this “duality.” One simple example is merely a favorite notion of mine, “We are not what we know ourselves to be. We are much more than that.” But being mere mortals, clothed in flesh, we have had to carve for ourselves an identity fashioned from the ephemeral so that we can function in this beautiful world, a world which…ephemeral thought it might be…is God’s creation.

As we pursue this path which Rohr and others suggest, we must “wrestle with words and meanings” (T. S. Eliot) and thus we dive headfirst into this maelstrom of ambiguity, confusion, doubt, and fear. This is because, here in this land banished from conscious awareness by our “common-sense” day-to-day world, we discover “meaning” and learn that “meaning” inevitably taunts us with “meaninglessness.”

Let me explain why with a simple philosophical maneuver. Imagine a world in which everything was colored blue. In that world, “blue” would therefore not exist for “blue” has no meaning without its complement, “not-blue.” Asking someone to pay attention to “blue” would be like asking a fish to see water.

And the whole of language lies in a similar matrix. However, I must insist that I don’t spent a lot of time wondering about the meaning of most words that I use! If I did, I would soon be swallowed up by an abyss and cease to be functional! I thank the good Lord for this neurological gift as some are not so fortunate. But some words I do deign to explore…to name just a few…god, love, truth, and “right”… and most importantly, in my case, deign to explore the word “Lewis”, the origin of Literary “Lew”. With each of these terms, which I have deemed significant, their complement (including opposite) has to be considered in order for the words to have meaning.

Let me close with an excerpt from W. H. Auden about this treacherous journey. The “Star of Nativity” is speaking his Auden’s Christmas Oratorio:

All those who follow me are led
Onto that glassy mountain where are no
Footholds for logic, to that Bridge of Dread,
Where knowledge but increases vertigo;
Those who pursue me take a twisting lone
To find themselves immediately alone
With savage water or unfeeling stone,
In labyrinths where they must entertain
Confusion, cripples, tigers, thunder, pain.

Wind Imagery and Transitoriness of Life

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T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is one my my favorite poems of all time, It is a powerful statement of mankind’s existential plight and of hope in the midst this hopelessness. He grasped the transitory nature of life and used vivid imagery to convey this. For example, in one of the Quartets (Burnt Norton) he wrote of, “Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind which blows before and after time. It reminds me of a favorite scene in the movie, American Beauty, when two characters are silently watching a video of the wind silently buffeting a plastic bag, conveying the same message of Eliot’s line.

And on the same existential theme, here is a poem by E. L. Mayo:

THIS WIND

This is the wind that blows
Everything
Through and through.

I would not toss a kitten
Knowingly into a wind like this
But there’s no taking

Anything living
Out of the fury
Of this wind we breathe and ride upon.

I conclude with the context of the Eliot quotation above:

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.