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Essays Page 5
Essays
Contents Et in Arcadia Ego Quo Vadis Death, God and Why Hope Smiles Passion utterly in love with its own Beauty Actually I am not sure any more, about the Arcadia or, for that matter, the Ego either, there, in Arcadia or anywhere else in the future. I seem with ageing (evolving?) to be dropping beliefs like drops off a shaking puppy regaining its original integrity. It is unsettling, but also rewarding for I seem to come closer to truth, of sorts. I was educated at a church school with its once a day and twice on Sunday certainties so I look back with some nostalgia at the lost convictions and feel a pang when, in films, I see communities gathering (as I stopped doing) with all that convivial, family/friendly certainty at a church on Sundays, especially at Christmas. As far as a personal God that cares about me, my behaviour or my welfare I am pretty much an atheist. I do regret that, partly because the word has such overlays of total disapproval, something dirty, beyond the pale, like a contagious disease contracted through some perversion. It seems the ultimate insult, like 'queer' of bygone times. But the shades of sexual mixing we now live with haven't caused divine lightning or turned offenders into pillars of salt. "Not yet", I hear the die hard (emphasis on die it seems as they approve of the death penalty and war) fundamentalists cry. But I believe in angels, indeed would claim to have been visited by one who beat energy into my heart centre with wings. So where does that place me? Believing in the messenger but not in the existence of the One who sent them! I also believe in nature Spirits, fairies, ghosts; over the years some repeated direct experience of one in my home, and the magnificent play of subtle energies. If I don't believe in heaven why is it I look forward to dying? not merely as an escape from the terrible things humans do on earth , but because I feel it will be a holiday, a change, on to some other adventure in a realm where love and harmony is the gentle, fragrant zephyr and where the body doesn't age as it does here and need so much disciplined daily maintenance. I don't look forward to annihilation in death, but that is often acceptable, when the world's weight is felt, oh too keenly! When I started TM I embraced the concepts of Cosmic Consciousness, God Consciousness and Unity Consciousness, Enlightenment. But now I see the insistent predilection of humans to have and to possess."I am or want CC, GC and UC and thus own them." I am nearer to the understanding that there is no "I". When I meditate deeply I don't find any "I", just even, eternal Being, devoid of personality. All waves have subsided and there is just the ocean, One and always One and nothing else, no "me". But that is a slippery truth and hard to grasp and even harder to live while there is an individual identity with all its my, mine and grasping desires. It is our individual perspectives, our identities that give our lives any zip, whether perspective of pain, fear, longing, obsessions etc. On the one hand I know that nothing matters and on the other hand everything does. I feel the pain of all the suffering, so so much of it that I wonder what I am doing on such a confused, sad planet. It is as if finding I am living unexpectedly in the pages of a violent story in a bizarre supermarket tabloid. I feel, too, such joy in babies, puppies, kittens, elderly couples holding hands and the delicious taste of my corn in summer. Life is contradictions and paradox. I am not sure of reincarnation any more either. I see the trap of the "I" clinging to wanting to continue. But why then do I often see myself, after death, meeting my first girlfriend, Lilla from Stellenbosch University, long dead, embracing her, laughing and melting in joy?. It is now 50 years and I still feel love for her. Is it just the projection of the anima on one's first love as the Jungian therapist Marion Woodman explained to me? and the inability or the refusal to reclaim one's soul back from its projection because that is to end the dream, the fantasy? We experience our souls in that projection and mistaking that for love are sold out ever more to be in love with oneself. But there you are, I still look forward to holding her, and "et in Arcadia Ego". Humans need signposts, milestones and a map of directions, characters for us to inhabit, clothes to put on and to take off at death. Because we are untrusting we need to feel there is a purpose and so find it, or impose it. Impose it on what? On that magnificent flow of life, of energy that comes from…where? and goes to… where? The "I' is a temporary illusion that gives form to the formless. We make "I" important. It is important. It gives a meaning to life for each one of us. Without "I" what meaning does life hold? When I shut my eyes and go into that silent realm inside that meaning vanishes. It could be a trick of brain chemistry, a self induced state where I sit drunk with the joy of Nothing, and nothing to do, nothing to fear, nothing to gain. Just "me", no not me, that can't be, because me is David Fiske and there is none of him there. He has been totally dropped, discarded, flung aside like the likeable, eccentric illusion he is and for those precious moments he exists only as a body that continues its natural processes while the body possessor lies with and knows the Universe, pulsed by Its Pulse and so has become the Universe or the Universe has become him The Sea of Energy in which we live, that laps at our feet, that roars in that Silence is there before, during and after every little action of ours. And when all actions cease in meditation or death we become what we always were. Impersonal and Universal. This energy is intelligent, so vast an intelligence that I must call it Wisdom, so creative, a Whole so unknowable by a part that the part must become Whole in an act of total surrender to know It. Surrender... to the Divine? I shrink from the word "God" but we seem to be back in a loop. That Mystery, which is not to be explained in sermons or moral guidance; not to be worshipped or feared, or prayed to. The Mystery that was before and will be after, that enfolds us always is here and for evermore. When, at death, I drop the illusion of David Fiske it is possible that in the illusion there will be other identities, other worlds and other experiences. Life Energy is rich enough and creative enough to permit my acceptance of that. These other realms make the story better. Flying saucers that take us to another, happier planet, that sort of thing. Even if fiction, they will allow me to go into death calmly, for if they are fiction I will never know that, if no consciousness to know that survives. There is nothing to lose then, as long as these fictions don't prevent me living fully and joyfully. But if true, what a grand adventure and isn't it wonderful? and aren't we lucky? Finally it seems possible that all illusions will drop. With a huge sigh the last completing breath will be exhaled by all creation and all the individual breaths luxuriously inhaled into the One. The Mysterious Nothing will be again Alone. With that last exhalation becoming surrenders to Being, all lovers become One, the drop disappears in the Ocean. Just Nothing. To me that seems, without the "I" like Arcadia, Heaven. Long may it last. Until the next mighty quivering, magnificent exhalation from the One; a collective individual inbreath from us and It starts again. Better get ready! Footnote. Jean Hudon of http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com suggested I explain the phrase, "et in Arcadia ego" as he did not understand the meaning or relevance. "And in Arcadia I exist", http://www.parnasse.com/etpnt.htm "Latin phrase found in Virgil's fifth eclogue that translates literally as "Even in Arcady, there am I…..the popular term "Arcadian," describes a utopian garden paradise where serene pastoral folk drink, dance and lounge around in an endless summer. It is here in this untroubled land that Nicolas Poussin's shepherds first encounter the solemn reality that all things must pass. " I learned the phrase from Evelyn Waugh's book "Brideshead Revisited". I read this wonderful book in 1957 in my first year at Stellenbosch University and for which I have had a nostalgic love ever since as it encapsulates my first University years as a "son of pleasure" in love with boozy conversations, fine dining and beauty. I have understood the phrase to imply the joy ('in heaven') Charles Ryder felt to be in love with Sebastian and the new exciting experiences of University life. It implies that I (ego) can be in Arcadia (heaven).
There is Silence, Nothing.
And there is Light.
Of Light is our world. The membrane between them can become permeable and we experience Silence too.
Silence amidst the living world.
In the living world Light dances.
Mostly we know nothing of any of this. We go busily about our lives.
But if we would take the time to experience the Silence the Light becomes apparent and we twinkle with this knowing.
It is not so much a question of finding ourselves but in stopping to misidentify with what we are not.
Meditation is stopping.
We care too much for the business of living.
And care not enough for the Silence and the Light.
There are ‘moment’ stopping events like looking amazed into the eyes of a speckled fawn when Silence and Light look back.
If we could be kinder the membrane becomes thinner.
If we could be kinder behaviour in the world would change.
Who knows where it could end?
We would be on the wondering, wandering path back to Silence.
Laughing, singing and dancing.
Quo Vadis?
I am at an age where people I know, friends, get old, become frail, die. And this often brings one up abruptly to the “Why?” and “is there?”
I find most discussion of God pointless and seldom better than hearsay or traditional dogma. The small trying to find consolation in imagining a BIG; as if the small part could ever comprehend the Whole.
6 months after learning TM, and while on a course in Austria with Maharishi, I clearly saw, in meditation, a golden celestial being. I know his name because he was connected with my mantra. When he vanished leaving me in a vacuum of intense desire I repeated this mantra frantically to bring him back.
Never again.
“Never, never, never”. (Lear)
I have once had an angel beat energy into my heart centre.
I have often seen golden light around trees.
I had a fire of light come from pine trees I had planted pierce my heart with such love that I exclaimed “I love you too.”
But most of my life has had none of that. The reality has been what you see is what you have and what you see is the usual and the banal.
The evidence is not for a God but against. No evidence of a personal god taking an interest in my life, encouraging when things go wrong, saving me from sin and illness and despair, threatening me with an after death punishment.
When one of a lifetime string of pets died recently our vet sweetly sent a card with a letter called “the rainbow bridge” which said my dog was waiting on the other side to greet me with a wagging tail. As I dearly loved all my pets and can still cry thinking of them and was amazed how each time I forgot how integrally they were a part of my life until they died it is a comforting thought; but in my case would make heaven a busy spot. How could I cuddle them all? And what about all those incredible number of animals, unloved and that died not mourned?
With maturity I seem to abandon the value of comfort beliefs for good sense.
“Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.”
“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.”
And yet, even so, one gets left with the mystery; gets left with the sense that all life is mysterious, in a wondrous way, so that it is better to allow for mystery than to seek explanations.
I recall:
William Blake, Pentecost
Much of Rumi is a poem about this.
“Close both eyes
“But listen to me: for one moment
“Whatever I was looking for
“Be melting snow
“I want this music and this dawn
“Escape.
How wonderful to cross the rainbow bridge and find him there.
Rumi was a man of great passion. He loved what he wanted and he wanted what he loved, before all else. That is the difference, the chasm that runs between us, being only half hearted, being what I term ‘sunny day meditators’ that fit it in when convenient. If what we want is the Fundament of Life then how can we make a hobby of our search for it?
Boehme “to know God you must become God”.
And do you think we can become the All puttering about on half holidays? My meditations and Taoist practices have made me certain of a vast energy that runs through everything. This energy has the characteristic of joy, self-containment and a bubbling consciousness that pushes life on. There is something about life that wants growth, wants to express delight and joy and wonder. It is the most fulfilling part of my day when It is there.
“Beware the barrenness of the busy life”. Socrates.
But our lives are so busy and thus barren of that Mystery that could give them fulfilment.
Yes, it is not easy; precisely because we have conflicting desires. We want the All, but we so constantly want many of the parts that our desire for the All gets clogged with tiny things. I am not promoting asceticism, even though the simplicity of a desert father has great attraction for me, but rather keeping alive in our heart what we most want.
For there is no reason why the All shouldn’t leap like a young foal in the realm of parts, that we should take great joy and have great focus in our dances. What would be the point of creation if not for that?
But I think there comes a time when one has skipped around so much that one yearns to slowly merge with Silence and then one can start to prioritise one’s life. If one’s life is too full of all those little cycles of taking garbage out, watching police thrillers it becomes cluttered. It is not that desire is wrong because it is desire that takes one to the All, but one must recognise that the desire for the All is one’s consuming desire. Then maybe life will start co operating with one to grant space for that. Just as a dear friend whom we have often befriended, even when it was difficult, makes time for us.
When people see my garden they admire the productivity. I tell them it is just hard work. And with the hard work comes the privilege of walking through and plucking at whim a juicy sweet cherry tomato. What a taste! And how grateful I am that I can do that! So much better than a packet of French fries!
My private drive runs off a turn around and High School kids park there. I find coffee containers, cigarette packs, condom packets, even a pregnancy test kit on the ground. I put a garbage bin where most of the rubbish gets dumped, but still litter comes. How can the world change till people feel the pain from doing this?
To feel the All we must be responsive to All. We can’t turn our beautiful earth into a litter bin.
But above all be gentle with the world and with yourself.
Things on our planet takes time. It is dreadful but we must recognise that. Some people create a vibration that just drags you down. We all create two pulls, one up, one down. Just some people create mainly downs and we all get affected by that.
We live in times of great change. How will it all end?
I’d like to live in a world where humans didn’t eat meat, where humans lived in harmonious balance with each other and all the rest of our neighbouring species, where we didn’t work for money. Where we deeply felt each other and each species and what we felt was joy.
Such a gap!
Amidst all our grumbles of how bad it is remind yourself also how beautiful it is. When you are too busy remind yourself that there will still be moments when everything passes and you can sink into inner Silence.
A useful tool is to take 3 sharp in breaths and lift your energy with them. First to take it to the tummy, second to the heart centre and third into the head. Then exhale with a long sigh through the mouth thinking “HU” pronounced “who”. You can do this as a deep relaxation, letting go all that is bothering you. Or you can do as a breathing of love into the world. A HU to spread benevolence into life and to awaken all that is not awakened to that ultimate truth.
Once you are a practised meditator this can remind you immediately who you really are. And who you are and what your life is outside of that can be so dramatically different. One day, hopefully, they will harmonise.
I use the breath a lot in my energy moving and meditation practices.
“The souls lives there in the silent breath” Rumi
I think the All embraces you with a Love you can’t comprehend and it waits with Infinite patience.
Now!
Till it starts smoking, sparks and finally becomes the Fire.
To live forever in eternal bliss.
?
No.
To live Forever As Eternal Bliss.
There you go,go,go
You GONE.
And that is, perhaps, the
!
There is so much wrong with me; so much I lack, patience, other virtues. The aging body no longer has that enviable youthful vitality and flexibility; so much I greedily want; but this is not to be a confession.
There is so much wrong in the world. So much I would have changed, that I disagree with; so much that causes despair and sadness; but this is not going to be a dump on humanity. Yesterday on a minus 8 C day I dug up some leeks and beneath the top inch of frozen earth were glistening worms which I carefully buried again. So wonderful that they continue their beneficial activities unnoticed.
I smiled.
This morning on the top of my compost pile tall beautiful braids of hoar frost sparkling in the morning sun and me about to do my daily Taoist exercises.
I smiled again.
In busy supermarkets I always stop when I see a baby and, after checking with the mother, bend over and often get a big smile which enters my heart, sparkles in my eyes and gets sent all over the world when I, later, smile at someone else. Think how easily smiles can spread.
Sometimes when I do my forms I suddenly discover something new in a move, and realise how it can be different when energy moves this way. Without any effort I am given a gift. Things can go wrong abruptly, but, miraculously, things can suddenly go right.
In Namaqualand in some special years after brief winter rains the red earth blooms with multi coloured flowers. Humans have nothing to do with this. It happens and we can only recognise the blessing and smile.
We try and try and try and then suddenly with Grace we might succeed.
On the internet I do my rounds each day of the gloomy news, the threats of war, the propagandas, the conspiracies, the cheating, the manipulations of politicians, the catastrophes. So what else is new?
Will it ever change?
I don’t know, but it can’t continue.
We need to build up the energy of Good and stop wailing over the bad.
No one else will do this, but us. Each Sunday morning I do a synchronised meditation with a great number of people organised by my friend Jean Hudon.
http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com/FocusArchives/MeditationFocus229.htm
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/FocusArchives/MeditationFocus214.htm
We link up, conscire and conspire. Our awareness merges in a larger whole. The vibration of the planet gets raised. One hour a week is not too much to ask of a person. That’s how a smile gets spread.
As an older man I often wake at night, which can be tiresome. Often I sit up in bed and draw my 3 breaths, belly, heart, then head and breathe the joy out into the world. I allow the inner smile to spread on my lips and feel oh so happy! What does not sleeping matter then? It has become a gift. The quiet of night is special and in that hush when joy gets birthed what Grace!
Nelson my web manager moved away some years ago and I did not know how to upload essays so none got written.
Out of the blue someone, Joe McCarthy, who had bought my e book and read all the essays several times wrote me asking if I wanted to converse. I immediately thought he might offer to upload essays. However I replied I was rather busy with harvesting crops but asked was there anything specific on his mind? Brief letters back and when I sent him “Quo Vadis?” explaining why I hadn’t written any essays he offered to upload any that I did.
So here we are, me writing and Joe, who had a lot trouble learning how to do this task, graciously said it made him want to dance, to sing, to smile.
Me in tiny, remote Sydenham, Canada and Joe in Kent making each other smile.
Aren’t the threads that bind the far distant a miracle?
Much is wrong. No doubt about that. The powerful cling on. The news is largely propaganda. The climate deteriorates. Humans continue over breed. Precious resources disappear. Tyrants linger. But then we see the smile of that little baby.
Isn’t Christmas the season for that? Letting smiles drop around us like blossoms from a well cared for tree.
Spreading
a
Smile.
I can look forwards, backwards, to the left and right, up and down. This gives me the directions for action. In the world of action, of personal activity I focus on what I am doing. The more pressing the action the more present I am likely to be, concentrating on what I am doing.
To each action I will probably bring an emotion, which is probably involved around the goal, what I want to achieve.
This is how we mostly live our lives.
In my mind I can look forward, to the future, to something I want to create or to avoid. It will please me if I achieve my goals and make me disappointed or sad if I don't.
We are all much the same as far that goes.
In my mind I can also look to the past, to memory, to things I want to remember or wish I could forget.
In happy moments we tend to focus on the present. We are busy enjoying.
In novels, as in our lives, all sorts of ramifications, complications, twists and turns get added.
As a youth I was full of enthusiasm, inventiveness and had a great joy in being myself and doing exciting things. Despite what, from a certain perspective, was a very troubled home life I remembered this as a period of happy achievement at school and at University. I was enthusiastic, infectiously so, always smiling, ready for a game or a laugh.
But at a certain point the desire to live and the desire to die became pretty equal. I was never depressed but often the thought of death seemed quite appealing.
I have continued like this and it has started to bother me. Why, when I embrace life with such enthusiasm, am so interested in such a variety of things, have so much to look forward to can I allow this brooding on death to be so ever near? Indeed Armageddon talk pleases me, for like Wotan in the Ring I look forward to 'the end', to the pulling down of the world I live in. It seems extreme hubris to desire the world's end because I wish my own! (However this should be a subject of another essay for I think we live in peculiar times.)
A few days ago I had a sudden insight.
My death desire only started some years after I began meditation.
We can look outwards or inwards. Outwards is the world of ordinary action. Inwards we go into the realm of subtler action. What we see inwards is still in the realm of activity and can take us into subtle experience of subtle worlds. But if we proceed, as in TM, we go beyond activity into pure consciousness. Transcendental Meditation allowed me to experience an inner state of awareness that was right beyond activity, transcendental awareness of the "I" without identity. It was very fulfilling and I could sit in that state so blissfully.
It made me realise that beyond action was a realm of Silence and Completeness which swallowed up desire, gain, loss, conflict and all those concerns of our lives. It was very tempting to want to return there again and again.
The mind gets habituated to meditative Bliss. I am told it is not an addiction as it is a beneficial experience; but I am reminded that Jung felt that alcoholics were incurable unless they sought the refuge of a larger power to which they could surrender, for their disease of wanting to destroy the 'self' was in fact a perverted desire for transcendence, for God. The only solution for them was to find themselves via a larger identity, something beyond the every day. Moreover, I believe, many dry alcoholics become subsequently addicted to religion.
After some time of transcending I found my little life seemed so very tiny with its concerns and problems. The annihilation of 'self' in death became a pleasing contemplation. I often thought that if I was given the choice of a huge win on the lottery or my death in sleep it would be a tough decision.
Mulling over all this recently I came to a happy resolution of my conflict of why this seeming morbid fascination.
In death I will merge with that Silent Bliss. That is assured. It can't be avoided or escaped. It is what is waiting for me, perhaps very soon too. I look forward to it and thus have no problem with it whatsoever, just a hope it comes painlessly while I am mobile, keenly conscious and that it doesn't drag its feet, but comes all of a sudden, with a quick leap, the death that stalks me.
That it will come no matter what is like knowing that no matter how much I spend I will have money in my account at the end. I can therefore spend as I like, in whatever way gives me enjoyment. Whatever I do my ultimate swallowing up into Silence will still come and hurrah to that. Please understand this metaphorically. It is not a prescription for financial folly. It describes an emotional tone of feeling care free in the world.
It is as if I need no longer worry about retirement and can enjoy the years before it; a very happy state, not so?
I feel liberated from fears of the future because I know what my future will be, my own happy death.
Thus liberated I can apply myself to allowing my life to unfold as it does and by practising right action.
When I light my wood cook stove in the kitchen there is that lovely moment sitting in the chair that I feel the delicious warmth caressing my shoulders. It settles over me like a warm blanket and allows me to contemplate the icy view from the window with aesthetic pleasure. If I was shivering it is doubtful I would enjoy this snowy view so much. But pleasantly warm I can see the snow and the scratching turkeys as lovely. Indeed, being warm I can feel inclined to tog up and do some Tai Chi on my drive as I know I will come afterwards back in to the warmth.
In other words knowing the 'warmth' of the Absolute All is waiting for me can allow me to be industrious and brave in the outside world.
While it is true that as the Ultimate end is Silent Bliss nothing really matters, on the other hand in the world of action every action has consequences. If I consume more calories than I expend in activity I will put on weight. An absolute certainty. If I don't tidy my office it will stay messy. I know of no elves that are going to help.
This being so I might as well live and act in a way that sows the seeds I want. Why scatter inedible weeds in my garden if I can plant what will nourish and delight me?
The realities of the world of action are rather dreamlike when compared with the Nothing of Transcendence but there is no need for our dream to be a dreadful nightmare!
In this 'dream' as each action has consequences then each action is important. And once I understand the consequences of actions I live my life accordingly.
People misunderstand the mystics if they believe the only importance is that Ultimate All and once you are 'there' you are indifferent to the facts of your life. That is as much of a half life as it is to live as if there is nothing else beyond.
Not understanding, they try to remove the 'self' to find the 'Self', the unbounded but surely it is with the little self that all the joys on earth lie. For so long as the body is alive this little self is present. Why not allow it its pleasures? There is little merit in pain and suffering for just their own sake.
Once you are certain of the All then life can be so deliciously tempting you can embrace it whole heartedly, just for the sheer joy of it. I think the Unbounded Nothing adds a spice to the relative. It certainly gives one endurance, for in the Sufi proverb 'all things will pass', no suffering is forever. A small adversity today doesn't mean a future of only that. Problems seek solutions.
While my wife has been away I have been doing a lot of standing Chi Kung. This requires being rooted in one spot, knees slightly bent and holding static arm postures for 10 minutes or more. It takes some grit to do this for 1hour and 40 minutes. The aim is purely relative, to purify the energy channels, circulate energy and accumulate it in the Dan Tien's. The aim is to sow the right seeds for me personally, to cultivate my own personal power, to accumulate as much internal energy as I can. Even though Death waits I can at least keep my health and energy till the last moment.
No one can do this for me.
We are faced with choice; the world of activity and the world of Silence. When you know the world of Silence underpins the world of activity it is wise to include it. Why be so busy all the time? Especially when some greater efficiency will come from entering activity with a clear tranquil mind. Joy is not easy for a fevered mind. Inner unrest forces one to see only problems and task after task piling up, on and on.
It is easy to place yourself on this treadmill and never get off it, blinkered and bothered, goals always ahead. What sort of life is that? Problem/solution, problem/solution over and over again, to the very edge of eternity.
On the other hand why deny the beauty and love of being alive by withdrawing too much in pretence that only the Silent All matters? There is sheer delight in feeling the waves of love spring up inside as you interact with all the points of consciousness around one, all the living things on this splendid earth. The joy is enhanced by bringing the All to it. Indeed that might be the very point of individual human life. Laughingly to walk through this beautiful garden, seeing the petals budding, blooming, plentifully falling, hearing the birds singing, singing oneself, sounding one's note, one's tone, a participant and an observer both. To honestly acknowledge this privilege. To walk in kindness and sensitivity to all living things. To delight in it all. That is life.
The All, that is Passion, so utterly in love with its own Beauty.
Is the head of your Government like that? Why not?
It seems thus that one can poise oneself gracefully, joyously on the edge of the chasm. On the one side the world of activity and the other the world of Silence.
To be Passion that is so utterly in love with its own Beauty.
Is there really a choice?
Now where are you?
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