What tells us we are lost?
In the forest I listen. Trees swish and sway in the breeze. Birds call out and insects flit around. Sounds are a hum, a rustle, a buzz. Movement is rhythmical, gentle. There is a natural force. It is not noisy, threatening, demanding. The sounds, smells, motion, form a chorus of life. Even a storm is beautiful. Man has to be careful or will die, but it is not a terrible death. There is a passion in the wilderness. Not the passion of strong emotions and feelings. A different kind of passion. It is a passion of grace and harmony. You can not love the wilderness. It has more than a petty love we can offer. You can experience the passion of life in the wilderness if you listen because there is no human there. Man has a passion which is petty. The experience of natures power, its passion, is beautiful, religious. Man has turned it into rituals, beliefs, myths. All of that has led us to where we are now. To return to nature we have to see all that. We can't just go back to reclaim nature. It was never a thing for humans. We are just one of the things in it.
We have lost our natural selves. We look for a way to recapture it. To regain our passion for life. In nature passion is a grand affair. You can not see where any of the particular sounds and movement come from. It moves like a great pulse and breath sweeping the earth, seen not in this or that tree, butterfly, ant, or lizard, but as if all are living in the one force. That force can be hostile. The animals are known to squabble amongst themselves. It also seems man is pitted against this force. Fighting and struggling, pushing and shoving, arguing and disagreeing. Are we a part of that force, sometimes in harmony, sometimes antagonistic, sometimes oblivious, sometimes wise, or, in what we call intelligence, have we taken a different turn altogether? Why do we search for passion when is just there, naturally?
The wayward life.
The propensity I have for such
matters arose in me when I was a young boy. In many odd ways, inwardly and outwardly, such insight would show
up. However no importance was given to it in any way. Actually
since it put me in conflict with my ordinary life I found it was a
difficulty. However don't we all have such conflict? What is this
ordinary sense of intelligence we have as young people that is
treated so badly by our culture and society? Slowly I become part
of my working class, bourgeois culture, suffer from poor education,
and follow my weak instincts for pleasure and the like. This is a
fact. It is not seeking understanding. I was not very scholastic
nor did I have any strength of character. In my 20's, as my
terrible, but ordinary, life fell apart around me, some of the
intelligence re-emerged.
You have all seen it. Driving fast,
drinking, smoking, drugs, failed romances, poor social ability, hate
of work, bad lifestyle, and so on. Alert to the pain and torture I
was putting myself through, I saw these things for what they were
and began to de-condition myself. It was without teaching or
instruction. What books I read were from my own search and
enquiry. It became a deep inquiry. There was no sense of study or
experimenting. It was me going into my own psychological enquiry and
finding out about myself. Still I have
maintained a life in the ordinary world. Not with ease, or
success. I found a pseudo-solution in minimising my involvement,
somewhat like a religious person in a secular society. It is my
neurosis to want to be a normal person in a neurotic world.
What are the practical realities of a religious
mind in the world? Is plain and simple existence in a troubled world
possible? What is the response you have to corruption, deceit,
confusion, and patronising, complacent, totalitarian ideology?
It doesn't surprise me that we have ambiguity. This seems consistent with duality. That means to me that while I can have an experience of what is, it is experienced in terms of the observer, who sees the observed separate. That includes my deep inner experiences, awareness of the mind, listening, watching and so on. Now with this ambiguity, we ask, therefore, what actually is? It seems obvious then, that this is the continuing dialogue, the duality, and is not actual. That is it is not what is. Now I am not implying there is a sublime state of pure undivided consciousness. I am just working through the negation, and so what is, is not the result of me.
The habit of knowledge.
I have been watching a TV series recently about string theory. As I listened I felt it was a continual dualistic enquiry trying to integrate the mind and the world. Now that string theory offers a formula containing wave and matter into a pulsating energy, won't they then want to look at the smaller details of the string, and begin with some point within it? Then they are back to the same scenario of the atom and its breakdown. Of course there will be new material discoveries from string theory which will mean new technologies. When it comes to a theory why do we think of it as making a better fit for us in the world, when it will only ever fit into the world as it is. That world, as it is, is the world we live in. We are not confident, not secure, not harmonious, in the world and seek theories to address this. But for our predilection to be obsessed with and expand knowledge, we would not be disunified. The latest unifying theory will not change that.
Is an avid interest in learning enough? We have different understandings. We even have a different meaning for the word truth, real, energy, life. There is a difference of perspective. One that lies in the mind and the use of words, in thinking. The very idea of meaning and understanding is connected with thinking. The mind processes are intimately part of thought. Thinking and words are immediate. When you think, the mind is processing. Not; I have a thought; I don't understand; What's the answer? The contextual particularities of the sentences are quite irrelevant. Simply- There is thinking. This different perspective, one of a minor being chattering away to themselves, when noted, allows the being to see their fragmented existence. Then there is an awakening to the vast and unending energy that is the beauty of the universe.
The brain, thought, is constantly restating, reaffirming, what is known, memory, the past. That is, the known "is" and the unknown "is not". So we only see the known, and cannot intelligently learn, explore, investigate. Any threat to the known is taken to be danger. So we have to wonder what is a danger? Really we have to face up to our emotional, mental, conditioned selves, and just learn.
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