Category Archives: poetry and prose

Humility, finitude, limits

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A passionate concern of mine is that we don’t see reality, we only “see through a glass darkly” at best.  One might even say that I am obsessed with this notion as I have found it a valuable insight in my life and believe that it could be relevant to others.  This insight has an humbling impact on me, helping me to realize that when I discourse, or “hold forth” as in this blog, I am not presenting Truth but merely my own perception of “truth.”  If suddenly, the world discovered me and understood this perspective and said, “Aha, this is It!”, then civilization as we know it would immediately collapse.  For this is a perception that is not valid for everyone and certainly not valid for the billions and billions of people who keep this “dog and pony show” afloat with their “less enlightened” outlook on life.

I’ve quoted Anais Nin before, “”We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”  And so what we see in the world, what we say about the world, says a whole lot about us.  Our version of reality is just that, “our version.”  Just yesterday in Huffington Post, I discovered Gangaji who noted: 

People who live their lives unaware that they are telling themselves a story consider their thoughts to be descriptions of reality. If someone else has a conflicting description, that person is considered just to be wrong. It is a leap into maturity to realize that our descriptions of reality are our versions of reality. Certainly there is nothing wrong about a version of reality, but the recognition that it is a version, rather than reality itself, is humbling to our version of ourselves!

And so it all comes down to humility.  Can I find the Grace of God which will allow me to humbly accept that I am a finite being, with a finite grasp on the world, and therefore be a bit more open-minded about those who see the world differently?  T. S. Eliot declared, “The only wisdom we can hope to find is the wisdom of humility.”  And then he added, “And humility is endless.”

 

passion

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One of my favorite lines from e.e. cummings is:

since feeling is first
e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world.

 

 

 

Einstein and spirituality

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I deeply admire the spirituality of Einstein though I think he called it his “religious sentiment.”  He shows that it is possible to appreciate science, to believe deeply in the scientific exploration of our world, and still maintain faith.  In the quote below he describes the “delusional systems” that we are all susceptible to and the prison that they constitute.  He encourages us to broaden our world, to realize that we are all in this game together, even those that are vastly different from us:

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Ideology run amok

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A mind run amok is dangerous.  If life is reduced to reason, life is impoverished.  There is more to life than ideas.  There is more to ideas than ideas.  Ideas without that “more” are very limiting.  I guess I’m talking about ideologues here.  And they are scary as hell.  These people…in many cultures… will kill if you don’t believe their ideas.

Goethe had this in mind when he noted, “They call it reason, using light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being beastial.”  And, Rabindranath Tagore wrote, “A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it. “

Rules for speech

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A fundamentalist preacher from my youth once posed three rules for speech:  Is it true?  Is it kind?  Is it necessary?

Hmmm.

This should give us pause from time to time.

Just for the record, the above bromide was brought back to my attention today by Steve Roberts (coolmindwarmheart.com) who attributed it to Eknath Easwaran and an old Arab proverb:  The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers.

 

conflict habituated relationships

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Mobi Ho, in his introduction to  book, Thich Nhat Hanh’s, The Miracle of Mindfulness, describes how the disciples of Hanh attempted to facilitate reconciliation in Viet Nam after the war ended in 1973.  He noted that these disciples “persistently refused to support either armed party and believed that both sides were but the reflection of one reality, (my emphasis) and that the true enemies were not people, but ideology, hatred, and ignorance. (my emphasis)

How can opposing sides of any issue be merely “the reflection of one reality”?  Even more so, how can this be the case when both sides are armed to the teeth?  Ho believed that the answer is because both sides of the conflict were slaves to “ideology, hatred, and ignorance.”  T. S. Eliot described these peoples as “united by the strife which divided them.”

This is also relevant to the field of mental health.  In my trade, we have a term for couples who are joined at the hip in intense conflict and would never leave each other for any amount of money:  conflict habituated relationships.  I once knew a couple who spent the last 35 years of their life, living at opposite ends of the same house.  They hated each other intently and ravaged the lives of their children.  But they could not do without each other.

I believe that Ho was very astute in his observation that the real issue in conflicts like these is “ideology, hatred, and ignorance.”   It is as if the people are “the toy of some great pain”.  (I think that quote comes from Ranier Rilke).

And, to conclude, I can’t help but apply this phenomena to our current Congress.  I fear that the real issue is that many of them are mere ideologues, filled with “hatred and ignorance” and are willing to “ravage the lives of their children”, i.e. the American citizenry.

And one further point.  Ideology is ideology.  Be it conservative or be it liberal, ideology is ideology.  The point is to have ideas, of course, but not be so blind as to bludgeon other people with those ideas.

Paean to Julia Kristeva

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I discovered a blog that I really find interesting.  It is entitled “The Rumpus.net” and is about culture.  The posting which caught my attention is the author’s paean to one of my heroes, Julia Kristeva, who I feel is one of the best critical thinkers/writers of our time.  The author describes his “love” of Kristeva, based on her critical mind but also on her beautiful face on the cover of one of her most important books, The Powers of Horror.  I could relate completely.  I was taken with that book and also found that she was beautiful.

One of her teachers and mentors, Roland Barthes, describes what it is about Kristeva that I find so intriguing:  she changes the order of things; she always destroys the latest preconception, the one we thought we could be comforted by, the one of which we could  be proud.  What she displaces is the already-said, that is to say, the insistence of the signified.  What she subverts is the authority of monologic science and of filiation.

In short, she is very subversive.  She questions “the assumptions in which we are drenched” (Adrienne Rich)


 

Julia Kristeva changes the order of things: she always destroys the latest preconception, the one we thought we could be comforted by, the one of which we could be proud: what she displaces is the already-said, that is to say, the insistence of the signified; what she subverts is the authority of monologic science and of filiation.”

Prayer and God and such

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It was about a year ago that the Bolivian miners were rescued from the bowels of the earth.  I was so deeply touched by their ordeal and the heroic efforts to rescue them and when they were successfully brought to the surface of the earth again, I was even further moved.  I remember praying for them daily and when they were rescued I thanked the good Lord for his mercy.

This experience helped me to further understand the mystery of prayer.  Even as I prayed, I knew that there was no God “up there” with really big ears, considering the prayer volume from around the world, and pondering over what he would do.  And I certainly knew that my simple little prayer, coming from someone so completely obscure, was not going to persuade God to intervene.  And when they were rescued, I’m afraid the cynical thought crossed my mind, “Hmm.  Now what’s going to happen when the next mine disaster occurs?  Will God be so merciful?  And if not, why?”  Sure enough, within the next month or so two more mining disasters took place and everyone of the miners died.

So, why pray?  Is it just a foolish gesture like so many of our intellectual hoity-toity contend?  Perhaps so.  I just don’t know.  But, even with all of these doubts and suspicions of my own cowardice, I pray daily.  One could say that I even “pray without ceasing.”  I do this, first of all, because it centers me and calms me.  And that is one important dimension of prayer.  But I also pray because spiritual teachers from eons past…and present…speak of the importance of prayer.  Does it make a difference?  I have no definitive answer but these aforementioned spiritual teachers suggest that it does.  If nothing else, it releases good karma and hope into this void that has us all.

And a central issue in all of this speculation is, “Is there a God?”  I believe there is but He is far beyond our intellectual grasp and can be known only with a faith that is willing to look beyond our rational mind.  He is so transcendent that we cannot own him like the fundamentalist believe.   BUT, he also is immanent as in “the kingdom is within” and he is with us each moment and there is a critical sense in which He is us.  Or, as Paul put it, “nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

The Shadow and Identity

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Maturity involves acknowledging the shadow side of our life, embracing it even, and learning to live with it all the while disallowing it from predominating in our life.  It is there.  We can deny it, even put our blinders on, but it is still there!  Even those who live an Ozzie and Harriet life still have a shadow side.

And relevant to this shadow side, I’d like to share today’s posting from Richard Rohr:

Expelling what you can’t embrace gives you an identity, but it’s a negative identity. It’s not life energy; it’s death energy. Formulating what you are against gives you a very quick, clear, and clean sense of yourself. Thus, most people fall for it. People more easily define themselves by what they are against, by who they hate, by who else is wrong, instead of by what they believe in and whom they love.

Gilgamesh and The Shadow

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I finally got around to procuring and starting to read a book that has been around a long time—If You Meet the Buddha On the Road, Kill Him:  The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients.  (Sheldon Kopp, 1972)  This is a must-read for all psychotherapists and psychotherapy clients.  It delves elegantly and eloquently into the essence of therapy and the intricate boundary complications between a therapist and his/her clients.

One of my favorite anecdotes from the book is his discussion of the Gilgamesh myth and an early example of the shadow.  He describes how Gilgamesh was an oppressive tyrant who became so overbearing that his subjects consulted a goddess, Arura, and asked her to intervene.  Arura, displaying feminine wisdom, knew that the answer was to create a double for Gilgamesh who would wrestle with him and teach him that he too was a mere mortal.

And that is what our shadow does—reminds us that we from the dust of the earth like all people and creatures.  We want to think that we are noble far beyond the herd but if we openly acknowledge our shadow when we look at “them”—those people who embody all the things we loathe—we have to humbly confess, “There go I but for the grace of God.”  Or to quote a favorite bromide of mine, “What we see is what we are.”

Let me quote Kopp:  Each of us has such a shadow from which he flees.  Each man is haunted by that specter of a double who represents all that he would say “no” to in himself.  To what extent I deny my hidden twin-self, you may expect to see my personality twisted into a grotesque mask of neurotic caricature.

And here are a couple more gems from Kopp, “All of the significant battles are waged within the self.”  Or, as W. H. Auden put it, “We wage the war we are.”  And then Kopp notes re a client of his, “He prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.”  Shakespeare put it this way, in Hamlet, noting that we prefer to “cling to the ills that we have, than fly to others that we know not of.”