On Sunday Tiger won the Masters. On Monday Notre-Dame burned. On Tuesday my younger son, whom I met when he was 41, turned 53. On Wednesday I ran across philosopher Carlyle, who said: “Change yourself, and then you’ll know there is at least one less rascal in the world!” On Thursday the Mueller report was made public. It was the same day a friend told me that when he was nine and Star Wars first hit theaters, he saw the film 25 times. On Friday, via the above photo, I encountered the spirit of the universe (playful, loving, deep) in the form of a quilt titled “Mother Earth” by textile artist Galla Grotto. On Saturday, the day before Easter, the day I’ll bury my dog who died in January, I amused myself by reflecting on what all these events have in common.
I’ve known the answer for a while. But every situation reveals new meaning.
All moments are a sacred opportunity to learn about ourselves, since, after all, our responses are only about us. Plus, there’s the invitation to place whatever we learn in service of our answer to that oh so helpful question: Who will I be or die trying?
Steve,
Who will I be or die trying?
“Die trying,” implies quite a number of things. David Bohm and Krishnamurti explored the nature of fragmentation in what we call reality or consciousness. Our capacity to imagine is so quick and so powerful, that it loses track of what it is doing and mistakes its creations as independent from the common source, that is, the assumed observer created what is being observed. The observer is the observed and what is being observed is the observer, one source, both projected and reified as different and somehow separate and independent. This statement, the observer is the observed, is oblique to most even when hearing it a thousand times. When this capacity to imagine is quite, inactive, silent or empty, we still observe what is being sensed, our sensory experience. What isn’t there is the psychological entity that is trying. The observer is the observed means that the assumed goal and the phantom trying are two sides of the same coin, mirror reflections in a house of mirrors.
What gets interesting is that all the wishes and hopes that together form what we experience as the observer set up or imply an imagined game that the observer must solve or win. In reality this movement is like a dog chasing its tail believing that the tail is something other than itself. Quickly and very early in life, the relative insanity this creates settles in as an assumed normal state. David used the metaphor of fog or mental smog which, being immersed in, implies all sorts of problems, hopes and goals. The point is; it is the fog that creates these assumed challenges. He and Krishnamurti understood that this fog is the source of our struggle, internal conflicts, and suffering, not the imagined dog’s tail we chase living in our self-created fog. What is needed, Dave proposed, is for some force, like the sun or wind, to blow away the fog, which, by implication negates all the problems and challenges that living in the fog present. Living day in and day out in fog is the problem, not how often we trip and fall being blinded by the fog. We busy ourselves trying to clear away all the imagined rocks we trip over in the fog, when the true source of our dis-ease is the fog itself, which is simply a misuse of our capacity to imagine, including the assumed ‘me’ that dies trying. Fog can’t blow away the fog. Something other is needed.
All the best.
MM
Steve,
I am blown away by the gift of the Mother Earth image plus your revelation about the feeling of being watched over. Surely the image strikes me as one that watches over me. It is astoundingly beautiful. It is hard to believe that some angelic hands were not part of its creation. It is startlingly more real than a realistic portrait or photo as its soul quality are like that of a true Icon. Listen to Braco’s talk about Prayer and Icons on http://www.BracoYouTube.com(official site) The image you sent took and takes my breath away as it literally seems to breathe upon me a Spirit Breath of Renewal as it were. Thank you. Your written piece follows as an accompaniment of pure witnessing to the events as they unfolded this past week.
Much loving gatitude,
Michale
St. Johnsbury, VT