Out the door on my way to water aerobics digital recorder in hand I said; “I am not loyal to myself” and thus indignant when no one else is. Plutocracy has been the rule of my life, born of poverty and then taught to go along to get along because everybody was better than I could ever be.
In a sense I was taught Escape and Evasion from the enemy; somewhat akin to what I intuited from the U.S. Navy Seals I came to know. This is to me, for now, is exceedingly astonishing. My mother was, in retrospect and only now recognized, the best teacher a boy could have to be real in a time of anxiety and chaos. KISS or Keep It Simple Stupid is something I’ll, of need, keep telling myself from now on; for however short or long, “from now on goes.” . . . and today is a good day to die, the warrior’s credo.
If only for myself, my sense the Great Prophets, around whom all religions were formed, then decayed into meaninglessness, is true. Then they were informed and inspired by the same force seen from differing points of view in: time place, culture and circumstance. And they who would lead in fact served in humility and humiliation as Jesus did dying on the cross. Leaving behind those who followed him in charge of themselves something so precious it is inconceivable to others who in their time and place can be taught; what in essence can only be experienced in an I/Thou relationship.
Not I alone, but we all, born sullen to discipline. Fleeing the teacher who fails to convey the essence for a host of reasons, principally none of us being capable of perfection including the Teacher. The Teacher Taught.
Some have a genius for the genius of The All; the personage of what we seek by a multitude of names, for me it was just “God.” The Buddhist, however, refused as did the Taoist etc., to so name: the source and this explains, at least to myself, why Lao Tzu electrifies me. Merely a different modality of teaching the same thing once so utterly foreign to my fear of being unworthy of life, love or liberty.
I am more than fond of Eric Hoffer, and many others, but he principally. But of, or about, his thinking; even I need to stand upon my own participation and responsibility to discover meaning in a meaningless time. Like the Who creating/teaching those I would blindly follow, having no gender or form but dialog in the crystalline night seeing not a crown of stars but beyond all that to the origins of all we can know in life. Oddly for most it is in the last vision while dying, the Light, The Love seen our soul as spirit arising to our truth. All life dies but in dying knows better the origin and meaning of everything. No matter, all my speculations regarding the after life, I will still die knowing only death forever or for a moment.
The why and what for I write is to annotate the process of Being Here Now. It is, and always has been, a journal: travel notes on The Way and we are the resurrection. Many paths, voices, definitions; all leading to the same conclusion. Yet these truths are not self evident; but must be experienced in context of the real; not ideal.
In summary. In a sense what I advocate. Is that we become both pragmatic and ecstatic. To discover what we are as self defined . . . there are limits if you settle for wealth as currency but none if you find your wealth as indefinable. What you see is all you get versus what you cannot see, yet long for, but can never have as enough.
You can know everything, but in the knowing, know nothing. All else is about The All; but not The All. . . .The Real Deal. . . . and all will be well
"Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries."
—Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
121108 12:39 loyalty misplaced
© 2012 by Jack Spratt - All Rights Reserved
