RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,322
(always wanting to escape this life)
"The smells of earth will always be
our reference points. Lighter fluid
or stove fuel, scorched oil, a vinegar
dressing, a deviled egg, a just-unwrapped
cheese, a sip of wine or rum: all offer
distant echoes of the early cosmos."
-
I realized one day - after some
reflection, that for most of my life
I've been trying to escape it. Reject it.
Life. That's not too logical, nor can it
be proven, but I stand by it. In addition
to the train accident, I've had various
other, highly-intimidating, versions
of-get-out-of-life dramas. They all
culminated, let me make clear, in
the 12 or 14 Biker years, within
which I probably undertook every
conceivable way to die. Speeding
on an unsafe vehicle. Alcohol. Arms.
Taking chances at highway speeds.
It can go on, but I'm not going on
with it - suffice it to say that it all
was a death-wish acted out. Another
failure?
-
Why would anyone be like that? I ask
myself these questions, over the rubble
of too many wasted years. I come up
with lots of versions of why: things
I compose to tell myself of my own
indications. 'Look about you, at all
that you see. You acted like the donkey
in a comedy. In primitive representations
the Donkey is the lower animal self.
Christ himself rode a donkey into
Jerusalem. He did so to indicate his
triumph over, his psychic superiority
over, and fulfillment of the goals of
his 'psychic' stage of human initiation
amongst the world by mastering his
lower nature. He is lauded! But his
goal was not to be King of this world
or of the Jews. Instead it was to show
a means and the way to seeing through
the illusion of the separate self and
discover the essential nature of the
Mysteries of God.
-
Now, I'm not sure what that means,
except that it's valid. It's an opening
which can bring a person forth, out,
into the broader realms of consciousness
so as to see the artificiality and the
falseness of this world - as it is
presented to us, and 'formed' by us.
-
So much for that - it's already getting
to sound way too high-minded to go
on. If there's one thing I always disliked
it was pretentious babble. It's mostly the
ultra-grad school types who endlessly
write and rewrite their papers, later turned
into tenure-books, about things like 'The
Influencing of Doctrine : Outer Premises
Present Within Dante's Vision of Hell'.
Great chatter for the cocktail party at the
home of the Dean, but not for me and
not my style. Many things are sacrificed
in those sorts of pursuits : the University
crowd gives up all pursuit of capital and
economics, while doggedly pursuing,
instead, the chained-slavery of taking
a seat along the mandatory-disciplined
treadmill of University slavery, for a
cheesy lucre of stability and security
amidst chaos which they then propagate.
-
My starting point was about how I
spent too many years and too much
time trying to somehow loosen the
mortal ties that bound me to this world
(I wanted to say 'crummy' world, but
I've recently sworn off value judgments).
And it's true. I probably would have
done anything to see if I'd perhaps NOT
survive it. It was a form of enflamed
and extended suicide-by-urges. No one
stopped me because no one really knew,
though I'm sure that - among my cohorts-
there were a few more intuituve types
who could sense that I was seeking a
final mission-to-the-death. But it never
happened. I survived every mangle and
each rainy-street/bald-tire episode at
speed. Tumbles and falls there were,
but the Death (that release sought)
never happened.
-
A fool is known by the fool-clothes he
wears, the outer raiment of the garments
of an idiot let loose. That was often me.
Right now - thank you - I'd prefer to
live on.
-
The tragic betrayal, as I see it, of this life
is the falsity that comes with it. That is
what must be fought off, struggled with,
and overcome. It takes many forms: the
grandeurs of riches and silk, the fast cars,
the grand homes, the materialism of many
layers of junk, the endless seeking for more,
the myopic worship of money, the ignoring
of the essential (and endless) self. Its a high,
and a very difficult, pole to vault, but each
of us must try. I know; 've been trying it
all of my life.
-
Our essential nature, then, which in the
language of philosophy is described by the
word 'Consciousness' and in the language
of theology by the word 'God,' could
rqually be described as 'Oneness,' or, for
ethics, 'Goodness,' or for emotion, 'Love.'
Aesthetics would call it 'Beauty.' But these
descriptions are useless, fall short, and
are always inadequate. We are 'reaching'
here far past anything which a language
of words can give us. Perhaps, in the same
way, the word 'failure' just indicates, instead,
'inadequate.' All those billiard ball words
just bang into each other, but nothing ever
perfectly fits into a hole (nor a 'whole').
At the heart of each one of these lies the
same Mystery. As Plotinus puts it: 'All
consciousnesses are the various members
of THAT.'
-
We can never not be, since we are being itself.
The world is a world of suffering, from
which we must disconnect ['horrific nightmare
that disappears as we awake']. Even if the
physical world moved, I shall not move. Even
if it is destroyed, I shall not be destroyed.
No comments:
Post a Comment