August 27, 2016
Today is the Feast Day for St Monica ... St Augustine's mom and tomorrow is St Augustine's Feast Day.
At the moment I'm not sure whether I'm simply writing a few notes to myself or ...
I suppose it makes no difference ... in time we will know.
This experience ... today's writing experience ... is a bit different ... I'm sitting outside the apartment building ... enjoying the shade and a brisk breeze. The past two months have been terribly sultry ... an historic heat wave of sorts.
It's also my first attempt at writing since I stopped smoking and drinking coffee ... almost 2 months ago. In the past, my smoke breaks seemed to give birth to new thoughts ... what will I do without them? :-)
During the past two months I have often reflected on the fact that this is the first time in fifty years or so that my 'consciousness' is not clouded by the effects of nicotine and caffeine ... I'm still curious whether it will make a noticeable difference. How will I know?
Perhaps, like white light ... when viewed through a prism reflects all the colours of the rainbow ... my consciousness without the fog caused by nicotine and caffeine will reflect all ... or at least more ... clarity ... more truth ... wouldn't that be nice.
I only recently learned about this phenomenon of white light a prism and all colours. I may have had a personal experience the other day that points to the same phenomenon. I was sitting here that day as well ... staring at the sky. I noticed that a cloud had some colours in it ... like the colours of a rainbow ... but no rainbow ... only a small patch of colours. I took off my sun glasses and the patch of colours became a bright white spot. I think it was what they call a 'sun dog' ... an interesting experience especially the part where my sunglasses seemed to act as a prism.
I want to believe that St Monica and her son St Augustine are influencing my decision to attempt writing. I want to believe this ... there is no rational reason to support my wishful thinking. I think writing may be a bit of a psychological crutch as well.
Today feels good ... better than most days ... why? I'm excited about it being the Feast Day of St Monica ... it feels like I have completed the 'race' so to speak. St Monica is known mostly for her patience and her humility ... so today I'm telling myself I have completed the race for "patience and humility" ... ha ha ... the best I can hope for is that I have "completed the beginning". Click here for an interesting article on patience with God.
Read these 3 words somewhere today "completed the beginning" ... I think someone was quoting Churchill in he context of WWII. I understood the reference to mean winning a battle or even a series of battles does not suggest the war is over and you have won ... it only suggests you ... "completed the beginning".
For me ... that would still be a noteworthy achievement ... to have the comfort and confidence that I am truly on the right road for learning patience and humility. No easy feat!
I read the other day that we spend 98 percent of our lives waiting ... that's a lot of waiting ... no wonder patience is so important. Click here for an interesting article on waiting.
In the story of St Monica what is referred to as her phenomenal patience is actually her waiting for her son St Augustine to accept her faith ... the Roman Catholic faith ... she prayed daily and waited for 17 years ... and strangely enough shortly after St Augustine's conversion St Monica said ... "my work on earth is complete ... there is nothing more for me to do" ... and she died. Hmmm!
I often think of mom when I think of St Monica. I think one of mom's great disappointments about her life ... is her children's attitude to faith ... to religion ... in particular to the Catholic Church. She mentioned it to me several times in our conversations in the past 15-20 years.
Poor mom ... she probably blames herself in some way ... and yet nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that "religion" and "church" died before mom got married. The "religion" and "church" that mom learned about and embraced while growing up in North Bay was only a "ghost" when mom and dad started their family.
There are many parallels between the story of St Monica's life and mom and dad's life together ... of course I say there are many parallels ... perhaps just me trying to justify my thoughts, decisions and actions. Let me share a few anyway:
St Monica's parents were Christian yet they gave their daughter to a non-Christian man. Mom's mom ... Rose ... must have been staunchly Catholic because we're told she didn't approve of mom's marriage to dad ... simply because dad was non-Catholic. We're told Rose came to accept dad after the twins were born. St Monica's marriage to a non-Christian resulted in the birth of St Augustine ... considered by most as one of the greatest "Doctors of the Church". Mom's marriage to dad resulted in 10 children being born and while none will have the stature of St Augustine ... who knows what the future holds.
St Monica's faith was a simple faith ... mom's faith is a simple faith centered on the rosary.
August 28, 2016
St Monica loved to visit the Martyr's Shrines ... apparently she visited them every day. Reminds me of mom's unusual devotion to the Martyr's Shrine in Midland. I wonder when it started ... when her and dad lived in Midland? Mom has a cousin in Penatanguishene ... not far from Midland and the Martyr's Shrine ... the statue of the Virgin Mary I bought in Italy spent a few years in the church in Victoria Harbor. Did mom have a special "religious experience" in Midland? Not important ... just a bit curious about it this morning.
Today is the Feast Day of St Augustine ... St Monica's eldest son. St Augustine is a giant in the landscape of humanity ... an intellectual genius ... one of history's most successful seekers of TRUTH ... he wanted to see God's face ... he wrote in his book Confessions "Lord ... show me your face" and "Lord ... late have I loved you". The book 'Confessions' was written about 1,600 years ago and is still in print today ... not old copies sitting on someone's shelf ... new copies coming off the printing press. This fact alone speaks for the "eternal nature" of much of St Augustine's thoughts.
I just spent several minutes trying to find my notes on St Augustine ... my notes describing how St Augustine first appeared on my spiritual journey and how influential he has been. I can't find any ... so surprising given that I feel St Augustine has long been my guide and teacher in the intellectual and philosophical dimensions of spirituality and human nature/behaviour. I'm a bit sad ... I must try to recall from memory how I met St Augustine.
While looking for the notes I referred to above I read a sentence in some old notes ... circa May 2004. "Perhaps St Augustine is powering my pen ... who knows eh!"
Yesterday I wrote about several parallels I see between the life of St Monica and the lives of my mom and dad. Today I will suggest there is at least one parallel between the life of St Augustine and myself. Arrogant?? I hope not ... in today's (Sunday) readings I was reminded again about the importance of humility.
The details of St Augustine's conversion are described in his book "Confessions". In a nutshell ... he was sitting in the garden and he heard a voice telling him to pick up his Bible ... that was sitting on the table in front of him, open it ... and read the page where it opened. He claims the voice sounded like the voice of a child yet there was no child in the area at the time.
My conversion experienced also involved an inner voice telling me to get a copy of a large eloquent white book with the title "The Message" on the cover. The book was sitting on a table across from me in a restaurant in Waterloo. Two men were sitting at this particular table. For more details click here
One of the men sitting at the table was reciting the Beatitudes. While I recognized the words of the Beatitudes I had no idea that this elegant white book might be the Bible ... I discovered this fact several years later when I found a book titled "The Message" in North Carolina. The Waterloo restaurant experience remains a mystery to me to this day.
When reflecting on St Augustine my mind juxtaposed some of my earlier impressions from St Augustine's writings with my current world view.The following came to mind:
1) The first beatitude "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven" ... I have come to see the same instruction to humanity in ancient Chinese philosophy/spirituality.
2) St Augustine's Milan experience with the beggar ... "Eventually Conscience will Trump Money" thoughts.
3) St Augustine's paragraph on the profundity of memory ... today's noosphere theory(s).
4) St Augustine's sentence on torrent of human custom ... today's collective consciousness theory(s)
5) St Augustine's intimate community of friends ... today's collective wisdom theory(s)
1) "Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven".
What is spirit? St Augustine whose critical judgement is very well respected in both theological and philosophical disciplines started to embrace Biblical text after he come to understand/accept that "spirit" is a 'substance' ... non material, invisible, indescribable indefinable etc ... yet ... a 'substance' nonetheless. I subscribe to St Augustine's views. Seems a logical extension of this argument would make the "Kingdom of Heaven" the domain of "spirit" ... not restricted to time and space as our material world seems to be.
August 29, 2016
What is spirit? As I mentioned yesterday ... I believe spirit is substance. Matter is substance as well. Empirical evidence certainly points to the fact that the 'substances' spirit and matter are not compatible ... like oil and water they don't mix. Yet they do coexist ... in the same way you can fill a jar half with oil and half with water. Turn the jar upside down ... shake it all around and the oil and water will still separate. This metaphor seems to validate the well trodden expression that the flesh wars against the spirit and vise versa ... The War Within: Flesh Vs. Spirit
An ancient Chinese Sage ... Lao Tzu ... introduced a philosophical notion whose underlying intention seems similar to the expression poor in spirit ... "Wu Wei". Literal translation of the Chinese characters ' 无为' is "take no action" ... which suggests do nothing ... go with the flow ... like water, take the path of least resistance, like water don't attempt to flow uphill (ambition). A more eloquent and more visual interpretation is ... "Rather than making something happen, you find yourself in the back seat observing yourself doing things without struggle, force or motivation."
Let me share my understanding of this visual interpretation. First the words "Rather than make something happen" are talking about ambition, goal(s) driven, where there's a will there's a way and so on. The words "rather than" negate any personal, individual conscious inclination towards ambition et al. Moving on, the words "you find yourself" ... almost sounds like a surprise ... no road map ... no destination ... simply open your eyes and find yourself somewhere. The words "in the back seat" are powerful ... you are not driving this vehicle or flying this airplane ... you are in the back seat ... just along for the ride. Next, you are observing yourself doing things ... you are an observer ... not a doer. Finally, no struggle ... force ... or motivation. Sounds kind of surreal ... since you're in the back seat of something ... suggests a moving vehicle ... something is taking you from Point A to Point B without any stress or frustration. Where can I buy a ticket to get on this bus? :-)
The above paragraph sounds a lot like determinism, predestination, the notion that life is scripted ... as in Shakespeare's poem All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
To be "poor in spirit" is to embrace the fact that we have no free will ... something almost all people have serious difficulty accepting. I believe we exercised our free will before we came ... before conception ... we accepted our life's mission knowing all that it would entail.
August 30, 2016
Seems I want to revisit yesterdays visual interpretation of Wu Wei ... "Rather than making something happen, you find yourself in the back seat observing yourself doing things without struggle, force or motivation."
Another way of trying to understand Wu Wei would be to imagine yourself getting into the back seat of a taxi and when the taxi driver asks you where you want to go ... you answer ... take me where I should go. A kind and sane taxi driver would drop you off at the closest psychiatric hospital :-)
Humour aside ... isn't this what faith asks of us ... to each morning get into the back seat of a taxi and ask the driver ... who is now God or His surrogate ... take me where I should go today, show me what I should see today, let me feel what I should feel today, teach me what I should learn today and so on. You just sit back ... enjoy the ride ... and respond spontaneously to what happens during the day. (without struggle, force or motivation). As you 'travel' through your day watch for opportunities to exercise the recommendations of St Francis.
Today is the Feast Day for St Monica ... St Augustine's mom and tomorrow is St Augustine's Feast Day.
At the moment I'm not sure whether I'm simply writing a few notes to myself or ...
I suppose it makes no difference ... in time we will know.
This experience ... today's writing experience ... is a bit different ... I'm sitting outside the apartment building ... enjoying the shade and a brisk breeze. The past two months have been terribly sultry ... an historic heat wave of sorts.
It's also my first attempt at writing since I stopped smoking and drinking coffee ... almost 2 months ago. In the past, my smoke breaks seemed to give birth to new thoughts ... what will I do without them? :-)
During the past two months I have often reflected on the fact that this is the first time in fifty years or so that my 'consciousness' is not clouded by the effects of nicotine and caffeine ... I'm still curious whether it will make a noticeable difference. How will I know?
Perhaps, like white light ... when viewed through a prism reflects all the colours of the rainbow ... my consciousness without the fog caused by nicotine and caffeine will reflect all ... or at least more ... clarity ... more truth ... wouldn't that be nice.
I only recently learned about this phenomenon of white light a prism and all colours. I may have had a personal experience the other day that points to the same phenomenon. I was sitting here that day as well ... staring at the sky. I noticed that a cloud had some colours in it ... like the colours of a rainbow ... but no rainbow ... only a small patch of colours. I took off my sun glasses and the patch of colours became a bright white spot. I think it was what they call a 'sun dog' ... an interesting experience especially the part where my sunglasses seemed to act as a prism.
I want to believe that St Monica and her son St Augustine are influencing my decision to attempt writing. I want to believe this ... there is no rational reason to support my wishful thinking. I think writing may be a bit of a psychological crutch as well.
Today feels good ... better than most days ... why? I'm excited about it being the Feast Day of St Monica ... it feels like I have completed the 'race' so to speak. St Monica is known mostly for her patience and her humility ... so today I'm telling myself I have completed the race for "patience and humility" ... ha ha ... the best I can hope for is that I have "completed the beginning". Click here for an interesting article on patience with God.
Read these 3 words somewhere today "completed the beginning" ... I think someone was quoting Churchill in he context of WWII. I understood the reference to mean winning a battle or even a series of battles does not suggest the war is over and you have won ... it only suggests you ... "completed the beginning".
For me ... that would still be a noteworthy achievement ... to have the comfort and confidence that I am truly on the right road for learning patience and humility. No easy feat!
I read the other day that we spend 98 percent of our lives waiting ... that's a lot of waiting ... no wonder patience is so important. Click here for an interesting article on waiting.
In the story of St Monica what is referred to as her phenomenal patience is actually her waiting for her son St Augustine to accept her faith ... the Roman Catholic faith ... she prayed daily and waited for 17 years ... and strangely enough shortly after St Augustine's conversion St Monica said ... "my work on earth is complete ... there is nothing more for me to do" ... and she died. Hmmm!
I often think of mom when I think of St Monica. I think one of mom's great disappointments about her life ... is her children's attitude to faith ... to religion ... in particular to the Catholic Church. She mentioned it to me several times in our conversations in the past 15-20 years.
Poor mom ... she probably blames herself in some way ... and yet nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that "religion" and "church" died before mom got married. The "religion" and "church" that mom learned about and embraced while growing up in North Bay was only a "ghost" when mom and dad started their family.
There are many parallels between the story of St Monica's life and mom and dad's life together ... of course I say there are many parallels ... perhaps just me trying to justify my thoughts, decisions and actions. Let me share a few anyway:
St Monica's parents were Christian yet they gave their daughter to a non-Christian man. Mom's mom ... Rose ... must have been staunchly Catholic because we're told she didn't approve of mom's marriage to dad ... simply because dad was non-Catholic. We're told Rose came to accept dad after the twins were born. St Monica's marriage to a non-Christian resulted in the birth of St Augustine ... considered by most as one of the greatest "Doctors of the Church". Mom's marriage to dad resulted in 10 children being born and while none will have the stature of St Augustine ... who knows what the future holds.
St Monica's faith was a simple faith ... mom's faith is a simple faith centered on the rosary.
August 28, 2016
St Monica loved to visit the Martyr's Shrines ... apparently she visited them every day. Reminds me of mom's unusual devotion to the Martyr's Shrine in Midland. I wonder when it started ... when her and dad lived in Midland? Mom has a cousin in Penatanguishene ... not far from Midland and the Martyr's Shrine ... the statue of the Virgin Mary I bought in Italy spent a few years in the church in Victoria Harbor. Did mom have a special "religious experience" in Midland? Not important ... just a bit curious about it this morning.
Today is the Feast Day of St Augustine ... St Monica's eldest son. St Augustine is a giant in the landscape of humanity ... an intellectual genius ... one of history's most successful seekers of TRUTH ... he wanted to see God's face ... he wrote in his book Confessions "Lord ... show me your face" and "Lord ... late have I loved you". The book 'Confessions' was written about 1,600 years ago and is still in print today ... not old copies sitting on someone's shelf ... new copies coming off the printing press. This fact alone speaks for the "eternal nature" of much of St Augustine's thoughts.
I just spent several minutes trying to find my notes on St Augustine ... my notes describing how St Augustine first appeared on my spiritual journey and how influential he has been. I can't find any ... so surprising given that I feel St Augustine has long been my guide and teacher in the intellectual and philosophical dimensions of spirituality and human nature/behaviour. I'm a bit sad ... I must try to recall from memory how I met St Augustine.
- Father Bourque in Stratford may have mentioned him in one of our conversations 1993-94. He may have pointed out the similarities between my Waterloo restaurant experience and St Augustine's conversion experience.
- I think it was in 1995-96 .. car problems lead to some discussion about religion with the proprietor of a car shop in Bracebridge. Michelle suggested I buy a book authored by St Augustine on the subject of the Trinity. I never found the book but I did find St Augustine's book "City of God".
- Later in Guelph, Elizabeth ... my neighbour at the Maples Inn pulled St Augustine's book "Confessions" off the shelf at a local bookstore and suggested I read it. I have read the book many times since and often recall and quote several sentences/passages.
While looking for the notes I referred to above I read a sentence in some old notes ... circa May 2004. "Perhaps St Augustine is powering my pen ... who knows eh!"
Yesterday I wrote about several parallels I see between the life of St Monica and the lives of my mom and dad. Today I will suggest there is at least one parallel between the life of St Augustine and myself. Arrogant?? I hope not ... in today's (Sunday) readings I was reminded again about the importance of humility.
The details of St Augustine's conversion are described in his book "Confessions". In a nutshell ... he was sitting in the garden and he heard a voice telling him to pick up his Bible ... that was sitting on the table in front of him, open it ... and read the page where it opened. He claims the voice sounded like the voice of a child yet there was no child in the area at the time.
My conversion experienced also involved an inner voice telling me to get a copy of a large eloquent white book with the title "The Message" on the cover. The book was sitting on a table across from me in a restaurant in Waterloo. Two men were sitting at this particular table. For more details click here
One of the men sitting at the table was reciting the Beatitudes. While I recognized the words of the Beatitudes I had no idea that this elegant white book might be the Bible ... I discovered this fact several years later when I found a book titled "The Message" in North Carolina. The Waterloo restaurant experience remains a mystery to me to this day.
When reflecting on St Augustine my mind juxtaposed some of my earlier impressions from St Augustine's writings with my current world view.The following came to mind:
1) The first beatitude "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven" ... I have come to see the same instruction to humanity in ancient Chinese philosophy/spirituality.
2) St Augustine's Milan experience with the beggar ... "Eventually Conscience will Trump Money" thoughts.
3) St Augustine's paragraph on the profundity of memory ... today's noosphere theory(s).
4) St Augustine's sentence on torrent of human custom ... today's collective consciousness theory(s)
5) St Augustine's intimate community of friends ... today's collective wisdom theory(s)
1) "Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven".
What is spirit? St Augustine whose critical judgement is very well respected in both theological and philosophical disciplines started to embrace Biblical text after he come to understand/accept that "spirit" is a 'substance' ... non material, invisible, indescribable indefinable etc ... yet ... a 'substance' nonetheless. I subscribe to St Augustine's views. Seems a logical extension of this argument would make the "Kingdom of Heaven" the domain of "spirit" ... not restricted to time and space as our material world seems to be.
August 29, 2016
What is spirit? As I mentioned yesterday ... I believe spirit is substance. Matter is substance as well. Empirical evidence certainly points to the fact that the 'substances' spirit and matter are not compatible ... like oil and water they don't mix. Yet they do coexist ... in the same way you can fill a jar half with oil and half with water. Turn the jar upside down ... shake it all around and the oil and water will still separate. This metaphor seems to validate the well trodden expression that the flesh wars against the spirit and vise versa ... The War Within: Flesh Vs. Spirit
An ancient Chinese Sage ... Lao Tzu ... introduced a philosophical notion whose underlying intention seems similar to the expression poor in spirit ... "Wu Wei". Literal translation of the Chinese characters ' 无为' is "take no action" ... which suggests do nothing ... go with the flow ... like water, take the path of least resistance, like water don't attempt to flow uphill (ambition). A more eloquent and more visual interpretation is ... "Rather than making something happen, you find yourself in the back seat observing yourself doing things without struggle, force or motivation."
Let me share my understanding of this visual interpretation. First the words "Rather than make something happen" are talking about ambition, goal(s) driven, where there's a will there's a way and so on. The words "rather than" negate any personal, individual conscious inclination towards ambition et al. Moving on, the words "you find yourself" ... almost sounds like a surprise ... no road map ... no destination ... simply open your eyes and find yourself somewhere. The words "in the back seat" are powerful ... you are not driving this vehicle or flying this airplane ... you are in the back seat ... just along for the ride. Next, you are observing yourself doing things ... you are an observer ... not a doer. Finally, no struggle ... force ... or motivation. Sounds kind of surreal ... since you're in the back seat of something ... suggests a moving vehicle ... something is taking you from Point A to Point B without any stress or frustration. Where can I buy a ticket to get on this bus? :-)
The above paragraph sounds a lot like determinism, predestination, the notion that life is scripted ... as in Shakespeare's poem All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
To be "poor in spirit" is to embrace the fact that we have no free will ... something almost all people have serious difficulty accepting. I believe we exercised our free will before we came ... before conception ... we accepted our life's mission knowing all that it would entail.
August 30, 2016
Seems I want to revisit yesterdays visual interpretation of Wu Wei ... "Rather than making something happen, you find yourself in the back seat observing yourself doing things without struggle, force or motivation."
Another way of trying to understand Wu Wei would be to imagine yourself getting into the back seat of a taxi and when the taxi driver asks you where you want to go ... you answer ... take me where I should go. A kind and sane taxi driver would drop you off at the closest psychiatric hospital :-)
Humour aside ... isn't this what faith asks of us ... to each morning get into the back seat of a taxi and ask the driver ... who is now God or His surrogate ... take me where I should go today, show me what I should see today, let me feel what I should feel today, teach me what I should learn today and so on. You just sit back ... enjoy the ride ... and respond spontaneously to what happens during the day. (without struggle, force or motivation). As you 'travel' through your day watch for opportunities to exercise the recommendations of St Francis.
Icing on the cake would be to take a few minutes in the evening ... in silence and solitude ... to reflect on the days events and your responses (thoughts, decisions, actions, feelings and so on) with an intention to discern the invisible hand of God during your day. This daily reflection is known as Examen of Conscious introduced by St Ignatius. In my opinion, living like this is being true to the expression "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven".
The words in the image below are attributed to the ancient sage Lao Tzu ... they also seem to say "Blessed are the poor in spirit , for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
The words in the image below are attributed to the ancient sage Lao Tzu ... they also seem to say "Blessed are the poor in spirit , for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Seems to me the teachings of Christ as reflected in the first beatitude are also found in the teachings of the ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu ... 500 years before the birth of Christ. A contentious thought!
August 31, 2016
St Augustine shared many of his personal experiences in his book "Confessions" to support his theology/philosophy ... perhaps the main resaon his book continues to be read 1,600 years later. His message(s) about the nature of humanity are eternal. He clearly illustrates, over and over again, that experience is a superior form of knowledge. On first reading ... confirmed by numerous subsequent readings ... I found the following paragraph enormously profound. I believe almost all people have had a similar experience ... but we have not taken the time, as St Augustine has, to understand the intention of the experience ... i.e. to awaken our 'conscience' ... to awaken our 'consciousness' ... to "TRUTH". On the eve of the Feast Day of St Augustine my inner voice told me St Augustine's Milano experience speaks of the same thought(s) as my writings under the topic "Eventually Conscience will Trump Money". For more details click here. Today I want t explore the validity of my thoughts the other day.
Here is the paragraph(s) from St Augustine's book "Confessions" ...
"How unhappy I was and how conscious you made me of my misery, on that day when I was preparing to deliver a panegyric on the emperor. In the course of it I would tell numerous lies and for my mendacity would win the good opinion of people who knew it to be untrue.
The anxiety of the occasion was making my heart palpitate and perspire with the destructive fever of the worry, when I passed through a Milan street and noticed a destitute beggar. Already drunk, I think, he was joking and laughing. I groaned and spoke with the friends accompanying me about the many sufferings that result from our follies. In all our striving such as those efforts that were than worrying me, the goads of ambition impelled me to drag the burden of my unhappiness with me, and in dragging it to make it even worse; yet we had no goal other than to reach a carefree cheerfulness.
That beggar was already there before us, and perhaps we would never achieve it. For what he had gained with a few coins, obtained by begging, that is the cheerfulness of temporal felicity, I was going about to reach by painfully twisted and roundabout ways.
True joy he had not. But my quest to fulfill my ambitions was much falser. There was no question that he was happy and I racked with anxiety. He had no worries; I was frenetic, and if anyone had asked me if I would prefer to be merry or to be racked with fear, I would have answered 'to be merry'.
Yet if he asked whether I would prefer to be a beggar like that man or the kind of person I then was, I would have chosen to be myself, a bundle of anxieties and fears.
What an absurd choice! Surely it could not be the right one. For I ought not to have put myself above him on the ground of being better educated, a matter from which I was deriving no pleasure. My education enabled me to seek to please men, not to impart to them any instructions, but merely to purvey pleasure. For that reason you 'broke my bones' (Ps. 41: 11;50: 10) with the rod of your discipline(Ps. 22: 4)."
I highlighted the particular words or phrases that spoke loudest to me ... interest is in the eyes of the beholder ... other words ... or none at all may appeal to you the reader.
Let me share my thoughts this morning vis a vis why the words I highlighted appeal to me.
1) how conscious you made me ... the word conscious once again strikes me as being of paramount importance to the whole experience. For me, the word conscious and consciousness are synonyms talking about some part of our brain ... a part of our brain that has always been a controversial topic which has yet to be adequately explained by science.
For example, the increasingly popular notion of a ‘beginners mind’. The idea behind this notion of "beginners' mind" is that we take all of the things we know--all of our brilliant opinions, all of our reason and logic, even our cherished beliefs--and we put all this stuff on the shelf for awhile. Beginner's mind is simply recognizing that this wonderful intellectual thinking mind that we all have may, at certain times, block things off from our view.
Block things off from our view ... has this ever happened to you? I think we have all experienced this phenomenon many times. For example, you are in the supermarket, in an aisle looking for a particular product, your frustration at not being able to find it prompts you to ask someone for help ... something you are normally loathe to do ... ask for help that is. The person you asked informs you that the product you are looking for is right in front of you, right under your nose and you didn't see it. Sound familiar?
So our conscience ... our consciousness ... blocks our view of 'stuff' from time to time. This 'stuff' includes the meaning or understanding of things we see, the meaning or understanding of things we hear, the meaning or understanding of things we feel or should feel and so on. Perhaps we have had the personal experience of the beggar in St Augustine's story ... i.e. we got drunk and the next day we remember our happy feelings when we were drunk ... even though the happy feelings evaporated after we sobered up. Certainly, we have all seen a happy drunkard ... yet we didn't draw the same conclusions from the experience as St Augustine did in Milan 1,600 years ago. Why not?
Because there was a 'veil' over our conscience ... a 'veil' over our consciousness.
St Augustine opens his story with "how conscious you made me ... on that day". He doesn't write "how conscious I was ... on that day." A huge difference! St Augustine is attributing the power of lifting the 'veil from our eyes, ears, feelings and so on ... lifting the 'veil' from our 'conscience' ... lifting the 'veil' from our 'consciousness' is the prerogative of God!
Hopefully, some day God will lift the veil that hides ... makes foggy ... makes unclear ... masks ... the fact that "selfless love should trump money" i.e. "Eventually Conscience will Trump Money."
2) win the good opinion of people who knew it to be untrue ... how profoundly True! One must only follow the current American presidential campaign or any other 'hot' topic in the news. Seems the most effective tool for influencing people is media "propaganda" ... defined as ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.
In the past most people thought only the uneducated ... the peasant the farmer and so on ... were gullible. i.e. ... would fall for unadulterated bullshit. Today's propaganda is so sophisticated and pervasive resulting in even the educated and intelligent classes being gullible. Why?
A difficult question to answer but perhaps we are approaching the point of time I referred to in my article as "Eventually". Let's hope so.
3) the goads of ambition impelled me to drag the burden of my unhappiness with me ... another example of the use of the word "goad" is ... "drive or urge (an animal) on with a goad" ... a definition of the word being ... "a stick with a pointed or electrically charged end, for driving cattle, oxen, etc.; prod." Perhaps St Augustine's use of the word "goad" was intentional ... he wanted to point to us humans as "animals" ... a fact but not very flattering and a fact denied by very many people. Some animals live almost entirely on instinct. Instinct or innate behavior is a very complex subject for all animals including humans. For example ... "Any behavior is instinctive if it is performed without being based upon prior experience (that is, in the absence of learning), and is therefore an expression of innate biological factors. Sea turtles, newly hatched on a beach, will automatically move toward the ocean. A kangaroo climbs into its mother's pouch upon being born." For more information on the notion of instinct click here.
Begs the question ... is ambition an instinct ... i.e. it's not something we learn ... it is something we are born with. I'm inclined to believe it is innate ... we are born with ambition hard wired somewhere in our brain. So who/what carries the pointed stick or the stick with an electrical charge that goads us on? A very good question ... seems to me the same answer as in 1) above ... it is the prerogative of God! A contentious thought? Suggests God also prods the people we consider "evil" to continue their "evil" behavior.
Writing this reminds me of a metaphor I used recently when trying to help some Chinese adults in Jia Xing improve their English. Something to the effect ...
Suppose you are playing cards and the game you are playing requires 54 cards ... includes the 2 jokers. For example the game of Canasta requires 2 decks of cards ... 104 cards. Now suppose 4 people sit down to play the game ... 2 teams of 2 ... 2 married couples who play the game regularly. On this particular occasion they count the cards and find that 7 cards are missing.
Can they still play the game with these 97 cards?
Of course not ... at least not according to the standard rules of the game ... although they might continue by altering the rules somehow.
Life is much the same.
We are playing ... living ... the game of "life" without a full deck of cards. i.e. some knowledge is missing ... some knowledge is incomplete. We make judgements ... good vs evil ... right vs wrong ... despite the fact that much knowledge about our universe ... about our 'human nature' ... biological as well as spiritual ... is missing or incomplete. Religion is all about altering a core set of rules too. ha ha
Humor and metaphor aside ... this is a very important consideration when trying to understand why a lot of what we consider "bad" stuff happens.
I digress ... back to the issue under consideration.
Summarizing ... ambition is innate and the energy derived from ambition can be directed to socially acceptable goals or otherwise ... and we really don't understand why some people direct the energy inherent in their ambition to what we call "social ills" or "evil" ... some cards are missing.
St Augustine goes on to say "drag the burden of unhappiness with me". He's telling us that to be unhappy is to carry a burden ... the weight of the burden being proportionate to the degree of our unhappiness. He's telling us that not only is the absence of "happiness" in our lives a frustration ... a disappointment ... something we want to change and so on ... it is also a burden. Which comes first? ... the frustration et al or the burden ... perhaps the frustration et al is the essence of the burden. Who knows eh!
Reminds me of something else St Augustine tells us about the notion of "happiness". He argues that to want something we must have a memory of it first. A simple example ... in the heat of summer we often have a craving for some ice cream or something cold to drink ... this craving ... wanting ... is rooted in our memory ... the memory of the pleasure derived when we ate ice cream or drank something cold in past summers.
St Augustine is arguing that since almost all people want to be happy ... almost all people must have a memory of "happiness" somewhere in their memory.
Seems we can't even agree on what is meant by the word 'happiness' ... how can we identify the memories? My niece Heather recently posted the following quote from Kenny Rogers on Facebook ... "Happiness is figuring out what really matters". At first glance the suggestion sounds noble enough.
My reaction was ... "doesn't Roger's suggestion obscure reality? What really matters is a moving target and most of us are incapable of keeping up with the constant changes ... resulting in (un)happiness only because we cling to an outdated script of "What really matters".
I was discussing this notion of "happiness" in an email exchange with someone I met at the local supermarket about a month ago ... someone who speaks English ... a rare treat ... even though we had no face to face conversation at the supermarket beyond simple introductions! Here's some of what I wrote in an email I sent to him July 27th ... with a little extra ... beyond the topic of happiness. ha ha
"Perhaps the memory of such happiness faded into the shadows of our memories ... beyond our power of recall ... the instant of our conception in our mother's womb. The instant our spirit clothed itself with matter.
If our memory of true 'happiness' drifted beyond our power of recall at the instant of conception ... it seems logical and intuitive that we would passionately and persistently search for some substitute for this true 'happiness' during our physical life journey ... no?
I vacillate on the utility of suffering during our physical life journey ... from blessing/gift to something that should be avoided at all cost.
Perhaps the notion of 'suffering' was born at the same instant our memory of 'happiness' drifted beyond our power of recall ... the instant our spirit was trapped/imprisoned in matter ... seems logical/intuitive ... no?
For 'suffering' as a blessing/gift ... I like St Augustine's belief ... "Lord, you provide the pricks that move us in the direction you want us to go." There are countless testimonials from people who claim their life changed/improved substantially following some personal traumatic experience(suffering).
While I have no personal recollection of previous lives, empirical evidence points to an ever expanding human consciousness ... since time immemorial. At some point in time, it would seem prudent to step beyond the scope of humanity's greatest thinkers, philosophers, spiritualists etc ... no?"
Am I suggesting the pursuit of true happiness is an illusion? In fact ... we are searching for a suitable substitute for the happiness we once had but can't recall from memory ... and as happens so often ... a suitable substitute is so temporary ... eg the Milan beggar who was drunk. As I suggested to Heather ... figuring out what really matters is a moving target. Who knows eh!
St Augustine refers to a suitable substitute for true happiness as "temporal felicity" in his paragraph(s) above.
4) no goal other than to reach a carefree cheerfulness ... observing young children ... especially at play ... is probably the best way to view ... experience ... carefree cheerfulness. How does one measure carefree cheerfulness? Perhaps a meaningful indicator is laughter. There is a claim ... myth ... that children laugh 300 to 400 times a day, and adults only 17.5. nobody seems to know the source of this claim ... yet laughter seems to be associated with what is meant by carefree cheerfulness ... and it is certainly temporal. For more information on this subject click here.
Absence of worry may be another indicator of carefree cheerfulness ... almost all people want to avoid unproductive worry ... under some circumstances worry is productive ... useful ... necessary. Yet it seems (un)necessary ... unproductive ... useless worry prevails with almost all people. The popularity of the Serenity Prayer supports this phenomenon.
St Augustine shared many of his personal experiences in his book "Confessions" to support his theology/philosophy ... perhaps the main resaon his book continues to be read 1,600 years later. His message(s) about the nature of humanity are eternal. He clearly illustrates, over and over again, that experience is a superior form of knowledge. On first reading ... confirmed by numerous subsequent readings ... I found the following paragraph enormously profound. I believe almost all people have had a similar experience ... but we have not taken the time, as St Augustine has, to understand the intention of the experience ... i.e. to awaken our 'conscience' ... to awaken our 'consciousness' ... to "TRUTH". On the eve of the Feast Day of St Augustine my inner voice told me St Augustine's Milano experience speaks of the same thought(s) as my writings under the topic "Eventually Conscience will Trump Money". For more details click here. Today I want t explore the validity of my thoughts the other day.
Here is the paragraph(s) from St Augustine's book "Confessions" ...
"How unhappy I was and how conscious you made me of my misery, on that day when I was preparing to deliver a panegyric on the emperor. In the course of it I would tell numerous lies and for my mendacity would win the good opinion of people who knew it to be untrue.
The anxiety of the occasion was making my heart palpitate and perspire with the destructive fever of the worry, when I passed through a Milan street and noticed a destitute beggar. Already drunk, I think, he was joking and laughing. I groaned and spoke with the friends accompanying me about the many sufferings that result from our follies. In all our striving such as those efforts that were than worrying me, the goads of ambition impelled me to drag the burden of my unhappiness with me, and in dragging it to make it even worse; yet we had no goal other than to reach a carefree cheerfulness.
That beggar was already there before us, and perhaps we would never achieve it. For what he had gained with a few coins, obtained by begging, that is the cheerfulness of temporal felicity, I was going about to reach by painfully twisted and roundabout ways.
True joy he had not. But my quest to fulfill my ambitions was much falser. There was no question that he was happy and I racked with anxiety. He had no worries; I was frenetic, and if anyone had asked me if I would prefer to be merry or to be racked with fear, I would have answered 'to be merry'.
Yet if he asked whether I would prefer to be a beggar like that man or the kind of person I then was, I would have chosen to be myself, a bundle of anxieties and fears.
What an absurd choice! Surely it could not be the right one. For I ought not to have put myself above him on the ground of being better educated, a matter from which I was deriving no pleasure. My education enabled me to seek to please men, not to impart to them any instructions, but merely to purvey pleasure. For that reason you 'broke my bones' (Ps. 41: 11;50: 10) with the rod of your discipline(Ps. 22: 4)."
I highlighted the particular words or phrases that spoke loudest to me ... interest is in the eyes of the beholder ... other words ... or none at all may appeal to you the reader.
Let me share my thoughts this morning vis a vis why the words I highlighted appeal to me.
1) how conscious you made me ... the word conscious once again strikes me as being of paramount importance to the whole experience. For me, the word conscious and consciousness are synonyms talking about some part of our brain ... a part of our brain that has always been a controversial topic which has yet to be adequately explained by science.
For example, the increasingly popular notion of a ‘beginners mind’. The idea behind this notion of "beginners' mind" is that we take all of the things we know--all of our brilliant opinions, all of our reason and logic, even our cherished beliefs--and we put all this stuff on the shelf for awhile. Beginner's mind is simply recognizing that this wonderful intellectual thinking mind that we all have may, at certain times, block things off from our view.
Block things off from our view ... has this ever happened to you? I think we have all experienced this phenomenon many times. For example, you are in the supermarket, in an aisle looking for a particular product, your frustration at not being able to find it prompts you to ask someone for help ... something you are normally loathe to do ... ask for help that is. The person you asked informs you that the product you are looking for is right in front of you, right under your nose and you didn't see it. Sound familiar?
So our conscience ... our consciousness ... blocks our view of 'stuff' from time to time. This 'stuff' includes the meaning or understanding of things we see, the meaning or understanding of things we hear, the meaning or understanding of things we feel or should feel and so on. Perhaps we have had the personal experience of the beggar in St Augustine's story ... i.e. we got drunk and the next day we remember our happy feelings when we were drunk ... even though the happy feelings evaporated after we sobered up. Certainly, we have all seen a happy drunkard ... yet we didn't draw the same conclusions from the experience as St Augustine did in Milan 1,600 years ago. Why not?
Because there was a 'veil' over our conscience ... a 'veil' over our consciousness.
St Augustine opens his story with "how conscious you made me ... on that day". He doesn't write "how conscious I was ... on that day." A huge difference! St Augustine is attributing the power of lifting the 'veil from our eyes, ears, feelings and so on ... lifting the 'veil' from our 'conscience' ... lifting the 'veil' from our 'consciousness' is the prerogative of God!
Hopefully, some day God will lift the veil that hides ... makes foggy ... makes unclear ... masks ... the fact that "selfless love should trump money" i.e. "Eventually Conscience will Trump Money."
2) win the good opinion of people who knew it to be untrue ... how profoundly True! One must only follow the current American presidential campaign or any other 'hot' topic in the news. Seems the most effective tool for influencing people is media "propaganda" ... defined as ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.
In the past most people thought only the uneducated ... the peasant the farmer and so on ... were gullible. i.e. ... would fall for unadulterated bullshit. Today's propaganda is so sophisticated and pervasive resulting in even the educated and intelligent classes being gullible. Why?
A difficult question to answer but perhaps we are approaching the point of time I referred to in my article as "Eventually". Let's hope so.
3) the goads of ambition impelled me to drag the burden of my unhappiness with me ... another example of the use of the word "goad" is ... "drive or urge (an animal) on with a goad" ... a definition of the word being ... "a stick with a pointed or electrically charged end, for driving cattle, oxen, etc.; prod." Perhaps St Augustine's use of the word "goad" was intentional ... he wanted to point to us humans as "animals" ... a fact but not very flattering and a fact denied by very many people. Some animals live almost entirely on instinct. Instinct or innate behavior is a very complex subject for all animals including humans. For example ... "Any behavior is instinctive if it is performed without being based upon prior experience (that is, in the absence of learning), and is therefore an expression of innate biological factors. Sea turtles, newly hatched on a beach, will automatically move toward the ocean. A kangaroo climbs into its mother's pouch upon being born." For more information on the notion of instinct click here.
Begs the question ... is ambition an instinct ... i.e. it's not something we learn ... it is something we are born with. I'm inclined to believe it is innate ... we are born with ambition hard wired somewhere in our brain. So who/what carries the pointed stick or the stick with an electrical charge that goads us on? A very good question ... seems to me the same answer as in 1) above ... it is the prerogative of God! A contentious thought? Suggests God also prods the people we consider "evil" to continue their "evil" behavior.
Writing this reminds me of a metaphor I used recently when trying to help some Chinese adults in Jia Xing improve their English. Something to the effect ...
Suppose you are playing cards and the game you are playing requires 54 cards ... includes the 2 jokers. For example the game of Canasta requires 2 decks of cards ... 104 cards. Now suppose 4 people sit down to play the game ... 2 teams of 2 ... 2 married couples who play the game regularly. On this particular occasion they count the cards and find that 7 cards are missing.
Can they still play the game with these 97 cards?
Of course not ... at least not according to the standard rules of the game ... although they might continue by altering the rules somehow.
Life is much the same.
We are playing ... living ... the game of "life" without a full deck of cards. i.e. some knowledge is missing ... some knowledge is incomplete. We make judgements ... good vs evil ... right vs wrong ... despite the fact that much knowledge about our universe ... about our 'human nature' ... biological as well as spiritual ... is missing or incomplete. Religion is all about altering a core set of rules too. ha ha
Humor and metaphor aside ... this is a very important consideration when trying to understand why a lot of what we consider "bad" stuff happens.
I digress ... back to the issue under consideration.
Summarizing ... ambition is innate and the energy derived from ambition can be directed to socially acceptable goals or otherwise ... and we really don't understand why some people direct the energy inherent in their ambition to what we call "social ills" or "evil" ... some cards are missing.
St Augustine goes on to say "drag the burden of unhappiness with me". He's telling us that to be unhappy is to carry a burden ... the weight of the burden being proportionate to the degree of our unhappiness. He's telling us that not only is the absence of "happiness" in our lives a frustration ... a disappointment ... something we want to change and so on ... it is also a burden. Which comes first? ... the frustration et al or the burden ... perhaps the frustration et al is the essence of the burden. Who knows eh!
Reminds me of something else St Augustine tells us about the notion of "happiness". He argues that to want something we must have a memory of it first. A simple example ... in the heat of summer we often have a craving for some ice cream or something cold to drink ... this craving ... wanting ... is rooted in our memory ... the memory of the pleasure derived when we ate ice cream or drank something cold in past summers.
St Augustine is arguing that since almost all people want to be happy ... almost all people must have a memory of "happiness" somewhere in their memory.
Seems we can't even agree on what is meant by the word 'happiness' ... how can we identify the memories? My niece Heather recently posted the following quote from Kenny Rogers on Facebook ... "Happiness is figuring out what really matters". At first glance the suggestion sounds noble enough.
My reaction was ... "doesn't Roger's suggestion obscure reality? What really matters is a moving target and most of us are incapable of keeping up with the constant changes ... resulting in (un)happiness only because we cling to an outdated script of "What really matters".
I was discussing this notion of "happiness" in an email exchange with someone I met at the local supermarket about a month ago ... someone who speaks English ... a rare treat ... even though we had no face to face conversation at the supermarket beyond simple introductions! Here's some of what I wrote in an email I sent to him July 27th ... with a little extra ... beyond the topic of happiness. ha ha
"Perhaps the memory of such happiness faded into the shadows of our memories ... beyond our power of recall ... the instant of our conception in our mother's womb. The instant our spirit clothed itself with matter.
If our memory of true 'happiness' drifted beyond our power of recall at the instant of conception ... it seems logical and intuitive that we would passionately and persistently search for some substitute for this true 'happiness' during our physical life journey ... no?
I vacillate on the utility of suffering during our physical life journey ... from blessing/gift to something that should be avoided at all cost.
Perhaps the notion of 'suffering' was born at the same instant our memory of 'happiness' drifted beyond our power of recall ... the instant our spirit was trapped/imprisoned in matter ... seems logical/intuitive ... no?
For 'suffering' as a blessing/gift ... I like St Augustine's belief ... "Lord, you provide the pricks that move us in the direction you want us to go." There are countless testimonials from people who claim their life changed/improved substantially following some personal traumatic experience(suffering).
While I have no personal recollection of previous lives, empirical evidence points to an ever expanding human consciousness ... since time immemorial. At some point in time, it would seem prudent to step beyond the scope of humanity's greatest thinkers, philosophers, spiritualists etc ... no?"
Am I suggesting the pursuit of true happiness is an illusion? In fact ... we are searching for a suitable substitute for the happiness we once had but can't recall from memory ... and as happens so often ... a suitable substitute is so temporary ... eg the Milan beggar who was drunk. As I suggested to Heather ... figuring out what really matters is a moving target. Who knows eh!
St Augustine refers to a suitable substitute for true happiness as "temporal felicity" in his paragraph(s) above.
4) no goal other than to reach a carefree cheerfulness ... observing young children ... especially at play ... is probably the best way to view ... experience ... carefree cheerfulness. How does one measure carefree cheerfulness? Perhaps a meaningful indicator is laughter. There is a claim ... myth ... that children laugh 300 to 400 times a day, and adults only 17.5. nobody seems to know the source of this claim ... yet laughter seems to be associated with what is meant by carefree cheerfulness ... and it is certainly temporal. For more information on this subject click here.
Absence of worry may be another indicator of carefree cheerfulness ... almost all people want to avoid unproductive worry ... under some circumstances worry is productive ... useful ... necessary. Yet it seems (un)necessary ... unproductive ... useless worry prevails with almost all people. The popularity of the Serenity Prayer supports this phenomenon.
Ataraxia (ἀταραξία, "tranquility") is a Greek term used by Pyrrho and Epicurus for a lucid state of robust tranquillity, characterized by ongoing freedom from distress and worry.
5) temporal felicity
"Temporal" ... adjective
"Felicity" ... noun
1. intense happiness.
synonyms:happiness, joy, joyfulness, joyousness, bliss, delight, cheerfulness;
September 3 2016
Been a few days ... lost the appetite for writing ... thought about the expression "temporal felicity" a lot ... have nothing to say about it. :-)
6) There was no question that he was happy and I racked with anxiety ...
September 9 2016
Been more than a week ... hmmm! ... not a particularly happy week ... a week where feelings of lethargy prevailed ... why? ... I have no idea!
This morning I woke up feeling I had something to write about today ... beyond the topics in my last writing sprint ... seems it's time to move on. I spent the entire day ... so frustrating ... trying to get my old laptop to work ... its 10+ years old. It's almost bedtime and I just got it working! ... not much time to write today ... maybe the impetus to write will survive the night.
While nobody drives a car looking out the rear view mirror ... an occasional glance in the rear view mirror is prudent and maybe even necessary. Today I tripped over some writing I did almost three years ago ... the opening sentence struck me ... "Seems today is a day to huddle with my thoughts of the past 6 months or so ...". I scanned my notes and ... modesty aside ... I was pleasantly surprised with the content. Here are the notes I wrote almost 3 years ago ... here is what I saw when I looked in my rear view mirror this morning.
5) temporal felicity
"Temporal" ... adjective
- relating to worldly as opposed to spiritual affairs; secular.
synonyms:secular, nonspiritual, worldly, profane, material, mundane, earthly,terrestrial; More - of or relating to time.
synonyms:secular, nonspiritual, worldly, profane, material, mundane, earthly, terrestrial
"Felicity" ... noun
1. intense happiness.
synonyms:happiness, joy, joyfulness, joyousness, bliss, delight, cheerfulness;
September 3 2016
Been a few days ... lost the appetite for writing ... thought about the expression "temporal felicity" a lot ... have nothing to say about it. :-)
6) There was no question that he was happy and I racked with anxiety ...
September 9 2016
Been more than a week ... hmmm! ... not a particularly happy week ... a week where feelings of lethargy prevailed ... why? ... I have no idea!
This morning I woke up feeling I had something to write about today ... beyond the topics in my last writing sprint ... seems it's time to move on. I spent the entire day ... so frustrating ... trying to get my old laptop to work ... its 10+ years old. It's almost bedtime and I just got it working! ... not much time to write today ... maybe the impetus to write will survive the night.
While nobody drives a car looking out the rear view mirror ... an occasional glance in the rear view mirror is prudent and maybe even necessary. Today I tripped over some writing I did almost three years ago ... the opening sentence struck me ... "Seems today is a day to huddle with my thoughts of the past 6 months or so ...". I scanned my notes and ... modesty aside ... I was pleasantly surprised with the content. Here are the notes I wrote almost 3 years ago ... here is what I saw when I looked in my rear view mirror this morning.
November 3, 2013
Seems today is a day to ‘huddle’ with my thoughts of the past six months or so … since my writing on July 13th ... particularly those thoughts I deemed significant enough to document. A day to regroup and rethink … for me to look for a cohesive theme in my writings of the past six months. What is it that connects these seemingly disparate ramblings? I say this because I have no master plan … no premeditated hypothesis or story to unfold.
I don’t like thinking of myself as a ‘scatter brain’ … constantly going off in diametrically opposite directions. Nor do I fancy myself the scholastic type … using an organized and methodical approach to gathering information and presenting my conclusions.
I prefer to think of myself as a ‘leaf carried about by the wind’ … being hopelessly subject to the vagaries and turbulence of the ‘wind’. However, in this metaphor the ‘wind’ has a design or purpose underlying the where, how and when it propels me from one experience to another.
My attitude towards life has only one requirement … surrender.
Here’s an interesting description of this particular notion of surrender, written by Ruth Barrows, the British Carmelite, in her “Guidelines for Mystical Prayer”:
“Surrender and abandonment are like a deep, inviting, frightening ocean into which we are drawn. We make excursions into it to test it, to see whether it’s safe, to enjoy the sensation of it. But for all kinds of reasons, we always go back to dry land, to solid ground, to where we are safe. But the ocean beckons us out anew and we risk again being afloat in something bigger than ourselves. And we keep doing that, wading in and then going back to safety, until one day, when we are ready, we just let the waters carry us away.”
Father Ron Rolheiser writes: “And yet, deep down, vulnerability and surrender are what we most deeply want. At every level, we need and want surrender. Morally and religiously, the entire Gospels can be put into one word: Surrender.”
Like Ruth Barrow I have found that it’s impossible to ‘surrender’ once and for all at any point in time. Rather we need to ‘surrender’ over and over again throughout our lives. I was reminded several times in the past few days of my twenty year old commitment to the notion of ‘surrender’. Perhaps I was slipping away with my recent attempts to find a job … trying to force open a door that is not part of my spiritual journey Hmmm!
Yesterday in my post titled “Decision Deferred … Bundle of Firewood” … I suggested that I am a procrastinator. Today it seems more logical that I’m simply still not ready … I don’t have the picture in focus yet. Hmmm!
On the other hand, I just remembered something attributed to Kipling … heard this more than 25 years ago. According to Kipling people can rationalize anything if they try hard enough. See … I’m sober enough to admit that whatever connections I come up with … whatever ‘unity’ … ‘homogeneity’ … ‘oneness’ … cohesiveness … that I concoct in the next few hours, concerning my writings of the past six months, is very likely simply an exercise in intellectual vanity … an attempt to rationalize whatever I wrote. So be it!
I’m comforted somewhat by one of the thoughts that came to me yesterday … intellectual vanity is not only innate … it is vital for the evolution of mankind.
Let me start by providing today’s thoughts about each post:
1)The post titled “July 13th”. The word ‘Exodus” … I used this word to describe the change in my life’s circumstances occurring at that time … from the stressful job situation in Qingdao to the tranquil life in Haiyang. Hence an ‘exodus’ … a journey from slavery to freedom. Hmmm! The number ‘13’ … my comments attempted to illustrate the ‘East versus West’ conundrum by writing about their diametrically opposing views concerning the number thirteen. The hidden dialectics in these comments … opposite views culturally on the number thirteen yet ‘unity’ in their use of the number in mathematics, calendars etc.The word ‘secret’ … infers a Divine Secret by associating the notion of ‘secret’ with the Fatima events of 1917 … which involved the Blessed Virgin Mary. Perhaps subconsciously postulating that my significant and lengthy attachment to the 1917 events in Fatima foreshadows a future involvement in some Divine Secret or Divine Revelation. Yikes … this sounds so arrogant. My changing world view relative to my ‘judgments’ of human events … good versus evil … right versus wrong … progress versus regress. Moving away from ‘judgment’ to simple acceptance of everything that has happened … looking at the evolution of mankind as a ‘work in progress’. The metaphor of a caterpillar and a butterfly … difficult to imagine the beauty of the butterfly when all you can see is the rather ugly caterpillar
2)“Eventually conscience will trump money” … a lot of ‘mental meandering’ concluding that eventually love will triumph over everything ... everywhere. St Augustine expresses it as mankind’s journey from the ‘City of Man’ to the ‘City of God’.
3)“Spiritual Awakening” … like ‘surrender’ the notion of spiritual awakening is by invitation only … it’s a ‘cosmic’ event. The ‘awakening’ is a long process and usually gestation is well underway before we are conscious of anything happening. Seems worth repeating the quote from St Augustine:
The burden of the world weighed me down with a sweet drowsiness such as commonly occurs during sleep. The thoughts with which I meditated about you were like the efforts of those who would like to get up but are overcome by deep sleep and sink back again. No one wants to be asleep all the time, and the same judgment of everyone judges it better to be awake. Yet often a man defers shaking off his sleep when his limbs are heavy with slumber. Although displeased with himself he is glad to take a bit longer, even when the time to get up has arrived. In this kind of way I was sure it was better for me to render myself up to your love than to surrender to my own cupidity. But while the former course was pleasant to think about and had my notional consent, the latter was more pleasant and overcame me. I had no answer to make to you when you said to me “Arise, you who are asleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ shall give you light” (Eph. 5:14) Though at every point you showed that what you were saying was true, yet I, convinced by that truth, had no answer to give you except merely slow and sleepy words: “At once, at once – but presently – Just a little longer, please”. But ‘At once, at once’ never came to the point of decision, and ‘Just a little longer, please’ went on and on for a long while.
The quote opens with the words … the burden of the world weighed me down with a sweet drowsiness such as commonly occurs during sleep. The ‘awakening’ process competes with the ‘trance’ we live in every day. What do I mean by ‘trance’? It’s the result of a lifetime of psychological conditioning … starts at birth … perhaps at conception. We are immersed in the culture/society we are born into … our conscious mind being bombarded every day with the values, beliefs, habits etc to the point that we accept them as sacred and immutable … thus the ‘trance’. Weighed me down with a sweet drowsiness … we internalize our social and psychological conditioning so deeply that it becomes our ‘comfort zone’ … a sweet drowsiness. One of Krishnamurti’s well known quotes refers to this condition and indirectly supports the notion of ‘trance’. “It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” How can so many people all over the world find themselves ‘well adjusted’ to something they know deep down to be ‘profoundly sick’ … only by creating a self induced trance … putting themselves in a ‘dream’ state or ‘sleepy’ state. … or being the victim of a culturally imposed trance Hmmm.
I also remember two other quotes from Krishnamurti:
1)“the revolution in the consciousness of every human being cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political or social.”
Seems to me “the revolution in the consciousness “ Krishnamurti is talking about is the breaking of the ‘trance’ I mentioned above ... the spiritual awakening. Krishnamurti seems to confirm my suggestion that this change in consciousness is a ‘cosmic’ event a spiritual awakening initiated by the ‘cosmos’ … the Divine. “cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political or social.”
2) On his deathbed Krishnamurti said “Nobody understands me”. A profound statement given that Krishnamurti lived to be 90 years old and during his long life conversed with so many of the world’s most eminent scholars. Hmmm
David Korten writes:
“Empire’s power depends on its ability to control the cultural stories and language that shape our collective understanding of our world and our choices as a species. Empire stories induce a kind of cultural trance that conditions us to accept the dominator relations of Empire as just and righteous and to dismiss talk of alternatives as naïve, dangerous, or even sinful.”
Back to St Augustine’s comments mentioned above … “At once, at once – but presently – Just a little longer, please”. But ‘At once, at once’ never came to the point of decision, and ‘Just a little longer, please’ went on and on for a long while”.
We can easily relate to this sleepy human condition … for most of us it happens every morning. It seems perfect as a metaphor for the process of spiritual awakening. Anyone who has experienced spiritual awakening … in any culture … in any religion … will attest to the competition … to the struggle experienced when crossing the bridge between the two realities … the two dramatically different states of consciousness. St Augustine uses the metaphor of crossing a bridge …. the individual’s journey from the ‘City of Man’ to the ‘City of God’ … the City of Love.
Many years ago I used the metaphor of a rope bridge … that flimsy and most often unsafe contraption connecting two points … with a large chasm in between. I had my personal ‘rope bridge’ experience during my first ‘Camino’ in June 2000.
At the time I didn’t write anything about the experience but two years later … on my second ‘Camino’ … I wrote the following notes:
Rope bridge’ ... remember today my experience with the rope bridge. I walked across a dried up river bed on a rope bridge ... it had all the characteristics necessary to construct my theory ... planks missing ... hideous skeleton of a cow or something similar hangingion the other side ... dilapidated ... I walked across nonetheless. Fortunately whoever lived in the shack on the other side was not at home that day.
When you get out near the middle of the 'rope bridge' and it starts to sway back and forth and the wind picks up and you stare at the bottomless black pit … thechasm beneath you ... it's scary and all you want to do is get on your hands and knees for more security and crawl back ... seems even when you do this ... start to crawl back and feel a bit more secure about the world you know vs. the world you know nothing about.
So I am crawling back to safe ground ... the city of man ... after some time ...never the same lapse of time ... something happens inside and I abruptly get back on my feet and start making my way across the bridge again. Somehow being able to handle the fear and the loneliness ... yup! This 'bridge' is a single lane rope bridge ... one way traffic only! I remember sharing this story with several people … spend a little time with those who seem interested in climbing onto the rope bridge and having a 'go' at crossing the chasm. In all cases they either went back or 'froze' still at some point.
Isaiah uses the metaphor of a veil or shroud to describe the notion of spiritual awakening:
Isaiah 25:7 …
And he will destroy on this mountain
The shroud that is cast over all peoples,
The sheet that is spread over all nations;
He will swallow up death forever.
Recall Ruth Burrows metaphor mentioned above …
“Surrender and abandonment are like a deep, inviting, frightening ocean into which we are drawn. We make excursions into it to test it, to see whether it’s safe, to enjoy the sensation of it. But for all kinds of reasons, we always go back to dry land, to solid ground, to where we are safe. But the ocean beckons us out anew and we risk again being afloat in something bigger than ourselves. And we keep doing that, wading in and then going back to safety, until one day, when we are ready, we just let the waters carry us away.”
Given the spiritual awakening is by invitation only and is triggered by the cosmos … the ‘struggle’ individuals experience to complete the process infers a cosmic struggle for control of our consciousness. The God … Satan struggle.
I subscribed to this God/Satan battle most of my life. Seems today I want to break free of this ‘story’. I have recently been deeply influenced by my frequent visits to the local beach … watching the ocean … in particular the ebb and flow of the tide. Seems to me that ‘nature’ has so much to teach us.
The magnitude of change involved in a spiritual awakening is enormous … if this change in consciousness was to happen suddenly … be completed within hours or days … it would be like a ‘tsunami’ hitting our consciousness. We all know a ‘tsunami’ is a destructive force. If the metaphor is appropriate we couldn’t survive the impact. The change in consciousness must be gradual giving us time to adapt to the new reality … and equally important to heal the many scars from the old reality.
With the changing of the tides as a metaphor for this notion of spiritual awakening the need for a ‘struggle’ or ‘competition’ disappears. We are left with a slow persistent … sometimes stormy … sometimes tranquil … process.
In watching the tides change on several different occasions I was amazed when I saw it happened with ‘ripples’ rather than waves. Hmmm
Try to imagine the conscious part of our mind as a pie chart with ten percent of the ‘spiritual awakening’ process complete. Most of our thoughts, decisions and actions would still be influenced by the ninety percent that remains in the ‘old reality’. Let’s assume the ‘awakening’ continues and now occupies thirty percent of our conscious mind … likely enough to recognize the ‘tug of war’ … ‘the struggle’ … in our consciousness between the two ‘realities’. Yet it’s not a ‘battle’ at all … simply a misunderstood condition of the process.
No more Satan … Hmmm
4)Balm of Repentance and Reconciliation … the notion of a change in individual ‘world view’ with new knowledge and personal experience … of God … postulated as a potential consequence of ‘Spiritual Awakening’.
5)Decision Deferred and Bundle of Firewood … St Augustine and Confucius. I have something significant … in my opinion … I want to write yet I seem to be procrastinating.
Summary
1)The look back … the past
2)The look ahead … the future
3)The triggering event between the past and the future … the demarcation point between the ‘old life’ and the ‘new life’
4)The consequence of the ‘triggering event’.
5)The struggle to keep going forward … “ultreya”
The imagery associated with the ebb and flow of tides came back to me this morning. Seems nature has a way of educating us even when we ignore the ‘science’ of nature. Living near the ocean seems to have opened up new vistas in my imagination or at least has provided additional fodder for some of the ideas floating around in my mind.
Perhaps tides are one of the few examples of perpetual motion … the tide is always in motion. If the tide isn’t going out … it’s coming in … and it must be difficult to determine the ‘turning point’ exactly … at least for a layman it would seem impossible.
Setting aside any knowledge of local tides … when the tide is halfway in or halfway out … presumably this occurs at the same place every day … the layman … the ordinary person … can’t tell if the tide is coming in or going out.
Metaphorically, the same applies to the evolution of mankind … for rather long periods of time … we don’t know if mankind is progressing or regressing
November 2, 2013
Why did some abstruse quotation from Confucius enter my consciousness? Why has this quotation excited my inner being enough to get me writing again?
Since writing a few notes yesterday my mind has been asking itself … what’s this all about? My memory dragged out a few recollections that may or may not be relevant.
St Augustine interrupted my meditations a few times yesterday. Seems he was reminding me about the risk and danger of flirting with Chinese philosophy/religion. Writing this reminds me of St Augustine’s nine year entanglement with Manichean theology. Hmmm!
I regularly test my commitment to the Roman Catholic Faith … it remains rock solid. I tend to look for ways to reconcile ‘stuff’ I find interesting that is not part of the Roman Catholic Faith ... like some Confucian philosophy.
Having said this I subscribe to Krishnamurti’s popular quote “Truth is a pathless land” which I interpret as … there is no single path … philosophical, theological, scientific etc to Truth. As in the axiom “all roads lead to Rome” … all human endeavor … regardless how the endeavor gets expressed … leads to Truth.
Specifically, yesterday St Augustine referred me to his writing on ‘Decision Deferred’ page 141 in ‘Confessions’. Hmmm!
I am quoting here for my own benefit as well as the readers:
By now I was indeed quite sure about it. Yet I was still bound down to the earth. I was refusing to become your soldier, and I was afraid of being rid of all my burdens as I ought to have been at the prospect of carrying them.
The burden of the world weighed me down with a sweet drowsiness such as commonly occurs during sleep. The thoughts with which I meditated about you were like the efforts of those who would like to get up but are overcome by deep sleep and sink back again. No one wants to be asleep all the time, and the same judgment of everyone judges it better to be awake. Yet often a man defers shaking off his sleep when his limbs are heavy with slumber. Although displeased with himself he is glad to take a bit longer, even when the time to get up has arrived. In this kind of way I was sure it was better for me to render myself up to your love than to surrender to my own cupidity. But while the former course was pleasant to think about and had my notional consent, the latter was more pleasant and overcame me. I had no answer to make to you when you said to me “Arise, you who are asleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ shall give you light” (Eph. 5:14) Though at every point you showed that what you were saying was true, yet I, convinced by that truth, had no answer to give you except merely slow and sleepy words: “At once, at once – but presently – Just a little longer, please”. But ‘At once, at once’ never came to the point of decision, and ‘Just a little longer, please’ went on and on for a long while.
While St Augustine uses colorful and vivid imagery to express the procrastination of his conversion … his eloquent language describes all procrastinators. We all procrastinate from time to time.
So what am I procrastinating on … why is Confucius goading me forward?
There is something … earlier this year I talked about it briefly … introduced it as a topic at one of my English Corner classes at the school last year. I have thought about it off and on for the past several months … but have not been willing to write about it. I have been just as St Augustine describes above … slow and sleepy.
Of course not without reason:
As I mentioned a few times … I am happy to have had the past four months to rest. Yet it seems my ‘rest period’ is over. From about the middle of September I have been looking for a job … not vigorously … yet persistently. Why?
Seems today is a day to ‘huddle’ with my thoughts of the past six months or so … since my writing on July 13th ... particularly those thoughts I deemed significant enough to document. A day to regroup and rethink … for me to look for a cohesive theme in my writings of the past six months. What is it that connects these seemingly disparate ramblings? I say this because I have no master plan … no premeditated hypothesis or story to unfold.
I don’t like thinking of myself as a ‘scatter brain’ … constantly going off in diametrically opposite directions. Nor do I fancy myself the scholastic type … using an organized and methodical approach to gathering information and presenting my conclusions.
I prefer to think of myself as a ‘leaf carried about by the wind’ … being hopelessly subject to the vagaries and turbulence of the ‘wind’. However, in this metaphor the ‘wind’ has a design or purpose underlying the where, how and when it propels me from one experience to another.
My attitude towards life has only one requirement … surrender.
Here’s an interesting description of this particular notion of surrender, written by Ruth Barrows, the British Carmelite, in her “Guidelines for Mystical Prayer”:
“Surrender and abandonment are like a deep, inviting, frightening ocean into which we are drawn. We make excursions into it to test it, to see whether it’s safe, to enjoy the sensation of it. But for all kinds of reasons, we always go back to dry land, to solid ground, to where we are safe. But the ocean beckons us out anew and we risk again being afloat in something bigger than ourselves. And we keep doing that, wading in and then going back to safety, until one day, when we are ready, we just let the waters carry us away.”
Father Ron Rolheiser writes: “And yet, deep down, vulnerability and surrender are what we most deeply want. At every level, we need and want surrender. Morally and religiously, the entire Gospels can be put into one word: Surrender.”
Like Ruth Barrow I have found that it’s impossible to ‘surrender’ once and for all at any point in time. Rather we need to ‘surrender’ over and over again throughout our lives. I was reminded several times in the past few days of my twenty year old commitment to the notion of ‘surrender’. Perhaps I was slipping away with my recent attempts to find a job … trying to force open a door that is not part of my spiritual journey Hmmm!
Yesterday in my post titled “Decision Deferred … Bundle of Firewood” … I suggested that I am a procrastinator. Today it seems more logical that I’m simply still not ready … I don’t have the picture in focus yet. Hmmm!
On the other hand, I just remembered something attributed to Kipling … heard this more than 25 years ago. According to Kipling people can rationalize anything if they try hard enough. See … I’m sober enough to admit that whatever connections I come up with … whatever ‘unity’ … ‘homogeneity’ … ‘oneness’ … cohesiveness … that I concoct in the next few hours, concerning my writings of the past six months, is very likely simply an exercise in intellectual vanity … an attempt to rationalize whatever I wrote. So be it!
I’m comforted somewhat by one of the thoughts that came to me yesterday … intellectual vanity is not only innate … it is vital for the evolution of mankind.
Let me start by providing today’s thoughts about each post:
1)The post titled “July 13th”. The word ‘Exodus” … I used this word to describe the change in my life’s circumstances occurring at that time … from the stressful job situation in Qingdao to the tranquil life in Haiyang. Hence an ‘exodus’ … a journey from slavery to freedom. Hmmm! The number ‘13’ … my comments attempted to illustrate the ‘East versus West’ conundrum by writing about their diametrically opposing views concerning the number thirteen. The hidden dialectics in these comments … opposite views culturally on the number thirteen yet ‘unity’ in their use of the number in mathematics, calendars etc.The word ‘secret’ … infers a Divine Secret by associating the notion of ‘secret’ with the Fatima events of 1917 … which involved the Blessed Virgin Mary. Perhaps subconsciously postulating that my significant and lengthy attachment to the 1917 events in Fatima foreshadows a future involvement in some Divine Secret or Divine Revelation. Yikes … this sounds so arrogant. My changing world view relative to my ‘judgments’ of human events … good versus evil … right versus wrong … progress versus regress. Moving away from ‘judgment’ to simple acceptance of everything that has happened … looking at the evolution of mankind as a ‘work in progress’. The metaphor of a caterpillar and a butterfly … difficult to imagine the beauty of the butterfly when all you can see is the rather ugly caterpillar
2)“Eventually conscience will trump money” … a lot of ‘mental meandering’ concluding that eventually love will triumph over everything ... everywhere. St Augustine expresses it as mankind’s journey from the ‘City of Man’ to the ‘City of God’.
3)“Spiritual Awakening” … like ‘surrender’ the notion of spiritual awakening is by invitation only … it’s a ‘cosmic’ event. The ‘awakening’ is a long process and usually gestation is well underway before we are conscious of anything happening. Seems worth repeating the quote from St Augustine:
The burden of the world weighed me down with a sweet drowsiness such as commonly occurs during sleep. The thoughts with which I meditated about you were like the efforts of those who would like to get up but are overcome by deep sleep and sink back again. No one wants to be asleep all the time, and the same judgment of everyone judges it better to be awake. Yet often a man defers shaking off his sleep when his limbs are heavy with slumber. Although displeased with himself he is glad to take a bit longer, even when the time to get up has arrived. In this kind of way I was sure it was better for me to render myself up to your love than to surrender to my own cupidity. But while the former course was pleasant to think about and had my notional consent, the latter was more pleasant and overcame me. I had no answer to make to you when you said to me “Arise, you who are asleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ shall give you light” (Eph. 5:14) Though at every point you showed that what you were saying was true, yet I, convinced by that truth, had no answer to give you except merely slow and sleepy words: “At once, at once – but presently – Just a little longer, please”. But ‘At once, at once’ never came to the point of decision, and ‘Just a little longer, please’ went on and on for a long while.
The quote opens with the words … the burden of the world weighed me down with a sweet drowsiness such as commonly occurs during sleep. The ‘awakening’ process competes with the ‘trance’ we live in every day. What do I mean by ‘trance’? It’s the result of a lifetime of psychological conditioning … starts at birth … perhaps at conception. We are immersed in the culture/society we are born into … our conscious mind being bombarded every day with the values, beliefs, habits etc to the point that we accept them as sacred and immutable … thus the ‘trance’. Weighed me down with a sweet drowsiness … we internalize our social and psychological conditioning so deeply that it becomes our ‘comfort zone’ … a sweet drowsiness. One of Krishnamurti’s well known quotes refers to this condition and indirectly supports the notion of ‘trance’. “It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” How can so many people all over the world find themselves ‘well adjusted’ to something they know deep down to be ‘profoundly sick’ … only by creating a self induced trance … putting themselves in a ‘dream’ state or ‘sleepy’ state. … or being the victim of a culturally imposed trance Hmmm.
I also remember two other quotes from Krishnamurti:
1)“the revolution in the consciousness of every human being cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political or social.”
Seems to me “the revolution in the consciousness “ Krishnamurti is talking about is the breaking of the ‘trance’ I mentioned above ... the spiritual awakening. Krishnamurti seems to confirm my suggestion that this change in consciousness is a ‘cosmic’ event a spiritual awakening initiated by the ‘cosmos’ … the Divine. “cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political or social.”
2) On his deathbed Krishnamurti said “Nobody understands me”. A profound statement given that Krishnamurti lived to be 90 years old and during his long life conversed with so many of the world’s most eminent scholars. Hmmm
David Korten writes:
“Empire’s power depends on its ability to control the cultural stories and language that shape our collective understanding of our world and our choices as a species. Empire stories induce a kind of cultural trance that conditions us to accept the dominator relations of Empire as just and righteous and to dismiss talk of alternatives as naïve, dangerous, or even sinful.”
Back to St Augustine’s comments mentioned above … “At once, at once – but presently – Just a little longer, please”. But ‘At once, at once’ never came to the point of decision, and ‘Just a little longer, please’ went on and on for a long while”.
We can easily relate to this sleepy human condition … for most of us it happens every morning. It seems perfect as a metaphor for the process of spiritual awakening. Anyone who has experienced spiritual awakening … in any culture … in any religion … will attest to the competition … to the struggle experienced when crossing the bridge between the two realities … the two dramatically different states of consciousness. St Augustine uses the metaphor of crossing a bridge …. the individual’s journey from the ‘City of Man’ to the ‘City of God’ … the City of Love.
Many years ago I used the metaphor of a rope bridge … that flimsy and most often unsafe contraption connecting two points … with a large chasm in between. I had my personal ‘rope bridge’ experience during my first ‘Camino’ in June 2000.
At the time I didn’t write anything about the experience but two years later … on my second ‘Camino’ … I wrote the following notes:
Rope bridge’ ... remember today my experience with the rope bridge. I walked across a dried up river bed on a rope bridge ... it had all the characteristics necessary to construct my theory ... planks missing ... hideous skeleton of a cow or something similar hangingion the other side ... dilapidated ... I walked across nonetheless. Fortunately whoever lived in the shack on the other side was not at home that day.
When you get out near the middle of the 'rope bridge' and it starts to sway back and forth and the wind picks up and you stare at the bottomless black pit … thechasm beneath you ... it's scary and all you want to do is get on your hands and knees for more security and crawl back ... seems even when you do this ... start to crawl back and feel a bit more secure about the world you know vs. the world you know nothing about.
So I am crawling back to safe ground ... the city of man ... after some time ...never the same lapse of time ... something happens inside and I abruptly get back on my feet and start making my way across the bridge again. Somehow being able to handle the fear and the loneliness ... yup! This 'bridge' is a single lane rope bridge ... one way traffic only! I remember sharing this story with several people … spend a little time with those who seem interested in climbing onto the rope bridge and having a 'go' at crossing the chasm. In all cases they either went back or 'froze' still at some point.
Isaiah uses the metaphor of a veil or shroud to describe the notion of spiritual awakening:
Isaiah 25:7 …
And he will destroy on this mountain
The shroud that is cast over all peoples,
The sheet that is spread over all nations;
He will swallow up death forever.
Recall Ruth Burrows metaphor mentioned above …
“Surrender and abandonment are like a deep, inviting, frightening ocean into which we are drawn. We make excursions into it to test it, to see whether it’s safe, to enjoy the sensation of it. But for all kinds of reasons, we always go back to dry land, to solid ground, to where we are safe. But the ocean beckons us out anew and we risk again being afloat in something bigger than ourselves. And we keep doing that, wading in and then going back to safety, until one day, when we are ready, we just let the waters carry us away.”
Given the spiritual awakening is by invitation only and is triggered by the cosmos … the ‘struggle’ individuals experience to complete the process infers a cosmic struggle for control of our consciousness. The God … Satan struggle.
I subscribed to this God/Satan battle most of my life. Seems today I want to break free of this ‘story’. I have recently been deeply influenced by my frequent visits to the local beach … watching the ocean … in particular the ebb and flow of the tide. Seems to me that ‘nature’ has so much to teach us.
The magnitude of change involved in a spiritual awakening is enormous … if this change in consciousness was to happen suddenly … be completed within hours or days … it would be like a ‘tsunami’ hitting our consciousness. We all know a ‘tsunami’ is a destructive force. If the metaphor is appropriate we couldn’t survive the impact. The change in consciousness must be gradual giving us time to adapt to the new reality … and equally important to heal the many scars from the old reality.
With the changing of the tides as a metaphor for this notion of spiritual awakening the need for a ‘struggle’ or ‘competition’ disappears. We are left with a slow persistent … sometimes stormy … sometimes tranquil … process.
In watching the tides change on several different occasions I was amazed when I saw it happened with ‘ripples’ rather than waves. Hmmm
Try to imagine the conscious part of our mind as a pie chart with ten percent of the ‘spiritual awakening’ process complete. Most of our thoughts, decisions and actions would still be influenced by the ninety percent that remains in the ‘old reality’. Let’s assume the ‘awakening’ continues and now occupies thirty percent of our conscious mind … likely enough to recognize the ‘tug of war’ … ‘the struggle’ … in our consciousness between the two ‘realities’. Yet it’s not a ‘battle’ at all … simply a misunderstood condition of the process.
No more Satan … Hmmm
4)Balm of Repentance and Reconciliation … the notion of a change in individual ‘world view’ with new knowledge and personal experience … of God … postulated as a potential consequence of ‘Spiritual Awakening’.
5)Decision Deferred and Bundle of Firewood … St Augustine and Confucius. I have something significant … in my opinion … I want to write yet I seem to be procrastinating.
Summary
1)The look back … the past
2)The look ahead … the future
3)The triggering event between the past and the future … the demarcation point between the ‘old life’ and the ‘new life’
4)The consequence of the ‘triggering event’.
5)The struggle to keep going forward … “ultreya”
The imagery associated with the ebb and flow of tides came back to me this morning. Seems nature has a way of educating us even when we ignore the ‘science’ of nature. Living near the ocean seems to have opened up new vistas in my imagination or at least has provided additional fodder for some of the ideas floating around in my mind.
Perhaps tides are one of the few examples of perpetual motion … the tide is always in motion. If the tide isn’t going out … it’s coming in … and it must be difficult to determine the ‘turning point’ exactly … at least for a layman it would seem impossible.
Setting aside any knowledge of local tides … when the tide is halfway in or halfway out … presumably this occurs at the same place every day … the layman … the ordinary person … can’t tell if the tide is coming in or going out.
Metaphorically, the same applies to the evolution of mankind … for rather long periods of time … we don’t know if mankind is progressing or regressing
November 2, 2013
Why did some abstruse quotation from Confucius enter my consciousness? Why has this quotation excited my inner being enough to get me writing again?
Since writing a few notes yesterday my mind has been asking itself … what’s this all about? My memory dragged out a few recollections that may or may not be relevant.
- It’s almost a year to the day since I climbed half way up Mount Tai … one of the most sacred mountains in China … linked to the first Chinese emperors “Huang Di” … who united China perhaps as much as 5,000 years ago.
- At the time the achievement seemed almost miraculous. After a sleepless night both Huang Hui and I managed to climb more than 3,000 steps … yet felt more exhilarated than tired when we arrived at the half way mark.
- While the climb halfway up the mountain seemed unusually easy we both felt that the second half had to wait for another day. I had the feeling … that day and ever since … that I am not ready ‘spiritually’ for the second half.
- How did we come to climb Mount Tai that day? One thing for sure … it was not at all premeditated. In June 2012 … after being in China for seven years … I had no knowledge of Mount Tai or it’s history. Huang Hui had never mentioned any interest in the mountain. Mysteriously we were brought to Qingdao which eventually lead to the knowledge of Mount Tai and Qufu … the birthplace of Confucius. Hmmm!
- Even after learning about Mount Tai and Qufu … from Chinese students at the school … I felt a bit interested in visiting both places … but certainly not driven. The time to climb the mountain arrived unexpectedly. Because I had volunteered to fill in for one of the teachers who was sick one day … several weeks later the education supervisor gave me an extra day off which combined with my regular two days off gave us a three day holiday.
- At the time … three days without work was a big deal … especially arriving unexpectedly as it did. Synchronicity?? I managed to talk Huang Hui into visiting Mount Tai and Qufu. I say “talked her into it” because Huang Hui hates Confucius. Hmmm!
- A bit more background. In Qingdao we lived near the Cathedral … another story I’ve documented somewhere. Very near the Cathedral is a vey large statue of Confucius. I would often walk past this statue and from time to time would exchange a few words with the sage … needless to say one way conversations.
- I seem to recall having several of these “one way” conversations with the sage just before and just after the trip to Mount Tai. Hmmm!
- The question I ask myself this morning … Is the sage reminding me of our conversations of a year ago and goading me into writing about what he seemed to reveal to me in the past year?
St Augustine interrupted my meditations a few times yesterday. Seems he was reminding me about the risk and danger of flirting with Chinese philosophy/religion. Writing this reminds me of St Augustine’s nine year entanglement with Manichean theology. Hmmm!
I regularly test my commitment to the Roman Catholic Faith … it remains rock solid. I tend to look for ways to reconcile ‘stuff’ I find interesting that is not part of the Roman Catholic Faith ... like some Confucian philosophy.
Having said this I subscribe to Krishnamurti’s popular quote “Truth is a pathless land” which I interpret as … there is no single path … philosophical, theological, scientific etc to Truth. As in the axiom “all roads lead to Rome” … all human endeavor … regardless how the endeavor gets expressed … leads to Truth.
Specifically, yesterday St Augustine referred me to his writing on ‘Decision Deferred’ page 141 in ‘Confessions’. Hmmm!
I am quoting here for my own benefit as well as the readers:
By now I was indeed quite sure about it. Yet I was still bound down to the earth. I was refusing to become your soldier, and I was afraid of being rid of all my burdens as I ought to have been at the prospect of carrying them.
The burden of the world weighed me down with a sweet drowsiness such as commonly occurs during sleep. The thoughts with which I meditated about you were like the efforts of those who would like to get up but are overcome by deep sleep and sink back again. No one wants to be asleep all the time, and the same judgment of everyone judges it better to be awake. Yet often a man defers shaking off his sleep when his limbs are heavy with slumber. Although displeased with himself he is glad to take a bit longer, even when the time to get up has arrived. In this kind of way I was sure it was better for me to render myself up to your love than to surrender to my own cupidity. But while the former course was pleasant to think about and had my notional consent, the latter was more pleasant and overcame me. I had no answer to make to you when you said to me “Arise, you who are asleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ shall give you light” (Eph. 5:14) Though at every point you showed that what you were saying was true, yet I, convinced by that truth, had no answer to give you except merely slow and sleepy words: “At once, at once – but presently – Just a little longer, please”. But ‘At once, at once’ never came to the point of decision, and ‘Just a little longer, please’ went on and on for a long while.
While St Augustine uses colorful and vivid imagery to express the procrastination of his conversion … his eloquent language describes all procrastinators. We all procrastinate from time to time.
So what am I procrastinating on … why is Confucius goading me forward?
There is something … earlier this year I talked about it briefly … introduced it as a topic at one of my English Corner classes at the school last year. I have thought about it off and on for the past several months … but have not been willing to write about it. I have been just as St Augustine describes above … slow and sleepy.
Of course not without reason:
- The ‘package’ … the ‘bundle of firewood’ … does not conform to Roman Catholic dogma and doctrine.
- The hypothesis is ‘way out there’ with no solid foundation
- The risk of further persecution or worse ... oh! What a coward eh!
As I mentioned a few times … I am happy to have had the past four months to rest. Yet it seems my ‘rest period’ is over. From about the middle of September I have been looking for a job … not vigorously … yet persistently. Why?
- We have no heat in the apartment here in Haiyang and the winter is cold! A job would provide the impetus to leave Haiyang for the winter.
- Money is tight … not terribly … but much more than before we bought this apartment.
- I’m bored.
September 10, 2016
It's late again ... almost bed time ... today passed so quickly. While I didn't do any writing I did have time to think about the events of yesterday ... in particular, where did this feeling I should be writing come from? Seems connected to my writing three years ago ... prompted in part at least by Snowden. ... who was a catalyst for the thoughts I expressed in my article "Eventually Conscience will Trump Money".
Perhaps the universe is nudging me again ... ringing a bell ... ding ding ... Bruce get back to the keyboard. ha ha ... what arrogance eh!
Nonetheless, here are some things that happened yesterday:
Here is what happened today:
It's late again ... almost bed time ... today passed so quickly. While I didn't do any writing I did have time to think about the events of yesterday ... in particular, where did this feeling I should be writing come from? Seems connected to my writing three years ago ... prompted in part at least by Snowden. ... who was a catalyst for the thoughts I expressed in my article "Eventually Conscience will Trump Money".
Perhaps the universe is nudging me again ... ringing a bell ... ding ding ... Bruce get back to the keyboard. ha ha ... what arrogance eh!
Nonetheless, here are some things that happened yesterday:
- I woke up with the feeling I should write.
- Before starting I virtually tripped over my writing of November 3, 2013 ... it seemed to be relevant.
- I tripped over this article while trying to get this laptop working ...
- I find it intriguing that Snowden seems to be part of the common denominator between three years ago and now. I have not followed the Snowden story ... Snowden's comment in the above article resonates very powerfully at the moment ... he said ... "The biggest change (in the past three years) has been awareness."
Here is what happened today:
- I realized the question I posed to myself three years ago was not answered in my scribbling ... "How are my experiences, thoughts and writings connected?"
- Snowden gave me the answer today ... the common denominator ... the common thread ... that connects all the dots ... all my thoughts, all my experiences and all my writing is my "Awareness" ... my "Consciousness".
- IMO ... the scope of our 'awareness' expands as our 'consciousness' grows ... and our 'consciousness' is nurtured by our thoughts and experiences.
What do I mean by "Awareness" and "Consciousness"? Probably best illustrated with an example ... the Magpie.
I saw Magpies for the first time here in China ... they are everywhere. I learned yesterday that magpies, the black and white Eurasian magpie, is considered one of the most intelligent animals in the world, and the only non-mammal species able to recognize itself in a mirror test.
Recognizing oneself in a mirror is an example of awareness ... an example of consciousness. I was amazed to learn that Eurasian magpies are so intelligent ... what is the source of their intelligence? Howis it that they are able to recognize themselves in a mirror?
If recognizing oneself in a mirror is a basic illustration of "awareness", it's not hard to imagine how much larger human awareness is versus the magpie. Within the human species the magnitude of awareness ... the magnitude of consciousness varies immensely from the lowest to the highest within the human species. How can it be measured? How can we be certain that we born with a limited amount of awareness and as we mature and gain knowledge and experience our awareness expands. Perhaps we are born with complete awareness ... or at least direct access to complete awareness and the "doors and windows" to this awareness are opened at the appropriate moment as we journey through life. St Augustine argued that we don't learn anything in our lifetime ... we only open the doors in our memory that contain what we think we are learning. .
Recognizing oneself in a mirror is an example of awareness ... an example of consciousness. I was amazed to learn that Eurasian magpies are so intelligent ... what is the source of their intelligence? Howis it that they are able to recognize themselves in a mirror?
If recognizing oneself in a mirror is a basic illustration of "awareness", it's not hard to imagine how much larger human awareness is versus the magpie. Within the human species the magnitude of awareness ... the magnitude of consciousness varies immensely from the lowest to the highest within the human species. How can it be measured? How can we be certain that we born with a limited amount of awareness and as we mature and gain knowledge and experience our awareness expands. Perhaps we are born with complete awareness ... or at least direct access to complete awareness and the "doors and windows" to this awareness are opened at the appropriate moment as we journey through life. St Augustine argued that we don't learn anything in our lifetime ... we only open the doors in our memory that contain what we think we are learning. .
September 12, 2016
I look in the mirror and I recognize myself. Really? Let's examine what I see when looking in the mirror and how the image comes to represent what I am.
The above comments speak of form ... my physical attributes ... they have nothing to say about the question ... "Who am I?" ... perhaps a more significant question that "What am I?"
In his book Confessions St Augustine wrote ... " but I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am." Here is his quote in context ...
"This power of memory is great, very great, my God. It is a vast and infinite profundity. Who has plumbed its bottom? This power is that of my mind and is a natural endowment, but I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am. Is the mind, then, too restricted to compass itself, so that we have to ask what is that element of itself which it fails to grasp? Surely that cannot be external to itself; it must be within the mind. How than can it fail to grasp it? This question moves me to great astonishment. Amazement grips me. People are moved to wonder by mountain peaks, by vast waves of the sea, by broad waterfalls on rivers, by the all-embracing extent of the ocean, by the revolutions of the stars. But in themselves they are uninterested.”
I have been fascinated by this paragraph since first reading it almost 20 years ago. Perhaps I am finally coming to realize why I find it so fascinating. I believe St Augustine is wrestling with a question that is only being answered today. How so? "Surely that cannot be external to itself; it must be within the mind. How than can it fail to grasp it?"
Some of today's theories associated with St Augustine's dilemma ... click on any of the following for more details.
Noetic Science
Noosphere
Collective Wisdom
Collective Consciousness
Collective Consciousness Project - Princeton University
Stream of Consciousness
Sixteen hundred years ago St Augustine could not grasp the totality of what he was ... and it really really bothered him. Today we are the same ... unable to grasp the totality of what we are ... although not so bothered by it. Why not? When I first read David Korten's comments ...
“Empire’s power depends on its ability to control the cultural stories and language that shape our collective understanding of our world and our choices as a species. Empire stories induce a kind of cultural trance that conditions us to accept the dominator relations of Empire as just and righteous and to dismiss talk of alternatives as naïve, dangerous, or even sinful.”
... I thought of them as pejorative ... critical of the "empire" ... the 1%. Today I think of the existence of an Empire as compassionate ... can you imagine the anxiety we would be compelled to live with if we didn't live in a trance like state.
This brings me to another milestone in my spiritual journey that perhaps has relevance at this point. This happened on my last long walk ... from Vezelay in France to Los Arcos in Spain in the summer of 2004. Somewhere in France I found myself staring at fresh mounds of cow poop on the remote country road I was walking on. For some strange reason I found these mounds of poop interesting ... intriguing ... I looked for their source. It seems a bunch of cattle had just left the pasture they were grazing in and were heading to a new one. Seems that some of them had a very nervous stomach as a result of the unexpected change ... their nervous stomach manifested itself in the the piles of poop. Seems cattle have a poop when they get nervous ... I think people do the same. When are comfort zone is seriously disrupted ... unexpectedly ... we get anxious, scared, nervous and our plumbing system often erupts.
Around this time ... hours, days, weeks ... I can't remember ... I had a really exciting personal revelation. I felt a very strong conviction that mankind was exiting the epoch of being under the influence of the collective unconscious(Carl Jung) ... entering a new epoch of "collective consciousness" ... leading to a "collective will". I distinctly remember thinking and writing ... "this is a biggy ... a real biggy!! At the time I had no knowledge of the above mentioned theories ... noetic science et al.
Seems to me as more and more ppeople become aware of this transformation ... more and more piles of poop will appear on the road. ha ha
Awareness .. a simple and yet a complex concept. A few weeks ago ... in an email exchange with my sister I wrote the following:
"I strongly support the adage "a picture is worth 1,000 words" ... so let me try drawing a picture with words and maybe keep this message a lot shorter than would otherwise be necessary.Question: How do you eat an elephant?
Answer: One bite at a time! :-)
In this picture the elephant symbolizes life and eating the elephant symbolizes us nut cases trying to understand life.
While my appetite has waxed and waned over the years I have been chewing away at this 'elephant' every day for more than 22 years. You can barely see where I have been chewing at the bottom of his right ear.:-)
i.e. it is absurd to think that an individual can achieve even an inkling of understanding in one life time. It is easier to believe that those who seem to grasp the meaning/purpose of life better than others have had several lifetimes to work away at it.
Let me try to add another dimension to this picture ... before one can even start chewing away at the 'elephant' ... there is a sometimes long or very long period of catharsis/purgation ... like the newborn infant who can only digest milk for the first few months of life ... at birth she/he can not eat solid foods.
I found the following picture very interesting ... from the collective consciousness webpage. While the picture has obviously been photo shopped ... it is thought provoking. Most people would pooh pooh the picture ... yet what's the difference between this picture and a picture of a crowd of people , each with a smart phone in their ear ... the result is the same??
Without us noticing, our DNA communicates constantly with everything around us and with our collective consciousness
I look in the mirror and I recognize myself. Really? Let's examine what I see when looking in the mirror and how the image comes to represent what I am.
- I am an older man. How do I know this? Because I have seen women and they don't look like the image in the mirror. Likewise I have seen younger men and they don't look like the image in the mirror. Finally, I have seen old men and they don't look like the image in the mirror. Thus the image in the mirror tells me I am an older man ... not because of what I am ... more because of what I am not.
- I am a middle class older man. How do I know this? Because I have seen older peasant men and they don't look like the image in the mirror. I have also seen aristocratic men and they don't look like the image in the mirror.
- I am a Western man. How do I know this? Because I have seen oriental older men and they don't look like the image in the mirror. I have also seen African older men and they don't look like the image in the mirror.
- I am of average height. How do I know this? I have seen tall older men and they don't look like the image in the mirror. I have also seen short older men and they don't look like the image in the mirror.
- I am a handsome older man. How do I know this? I have seen ugly older men and they don't look like the image in the mirror.
The above comments speak of form ... my physical attributes ... they have nothing to say about the question ... "Who am I?" ... perhaps a more significant question that "What am I?"
In his book Confessions St Augustine wrote ... " but I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am." Here is his quote in context ...
"This power of memory is great, very great, my God. It is a vast and infinite profundity. Who has plumbed its bottom? This power is that of my mind and is a natural endowment, but I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am. Is the mind, then, too restricted to compass itself, so that we have to ask what is that element of itself which it fails to grasp? Surely that cannot be external to itself; it must be within the mind. How than can it fail to grasp it? This question moves me to great astonishment. Amazement grips me. People are moved to wonder by mountain peaks, by vast waves of the sea, by broad waterfalls on rivers, by the all-embracing extent of the ocean, by the revolutions of the stars. But in themselves they are uninterested.”
I have been fascinated by this paragraph since first reading it almost 20 years ago. Perhaps I am finally coming to realize why I find it so fascinating. I believe St Augustine is wrestling with a question that is only being answered today. How so? "Surely that cannot be external to itself; it must be within the mind. How than can it fail to grasp it?"
Some of today's theories associated with St Augustine's dilemma ... click on any of the following for more details.
Noetic Science
Noosphere
Collective Wisdom
Collective Consciousness
Collective Consciousness Project - Princeton University
Stream of Consciousness
Sixteen hundred years ago St Augustine could not grasp the totality of what he was ... and it really really bothered him. Today we are the same ... unable to grasp the totality of what we are ... although not so bothered by it. Why not? When I first read David Korten's comments ...
“Empire’s power depends on its ability to control the cultural stories and language that shape our collective understanding of our world and our choices as a species. Empire stories induce a kind of cultural trance that conditions us to accept the dominator relations of Empire as just and righteous and to dismiss talk of alternatives as naïve, dangerous, or even sinful.”
... I thought of them as pejorative ... critical of the "empire" ... the 1%. Today I think of the existence of an Empire as compassionate ... can you imagine the anxiety we would be compelled to live with if we didn't live in a trance like state.
This brings me to another milestone in my spiritual journey that perhaps has relevance at this point. This happened on my last long walk ... from Vezelay in France to Los Arcos in Spain in the summer of 2004. Somewhere in France I found myself staring at fresh mounds of cow poop on the remote country road I was walking on. For some strange reason I found these mounds of poop interesting ... intriguing ... I looked for their source. It seems a bunch of cattle had just left the pasture they were grazing in and were heading to a new one. Seems that some of them had a very nervous stomach as a result of the unexpected change ... their nervous stomach manifested itself in the the piles of poop. Seems cattle have a poop when they get nervous ... I think people do the same. When are comfort zone is seriously disrupted ... unexpectedly ... we get anxious, scared, nervous and our plumbing system often erupts.
Around this time ... hours, days, weeks ... I can't remember ... I had a really exciting personal revelation. I felt a very strong conviction that mankind was exiting the epoch of being under the influence of the collective unconscious(Carl Jung) ... entering a new epoch of "collective consciousness" ... leading to a "collective will". I distinctly remember thinking and writing ... "this is a biggy ... a real biggy!! At the time I had no knowledge of the above mentioned theories ... noetic science et al.
Seems to me as more and more ppeople become aware of this transformation ... more and more piles of poop will appear on the road. ha ha
Awareness .. a simple and yet a complex concept. A few weeks ago ... in an email exchange with my sister I wrote the following:
"I strongly support the adage "a picture is worth 1,000 words" ... so let me try drawing a picture with words and maybe keep this message a lot shorter than would otherwise be necessary.Question: How do you eat an elephant?
Answer: One bite at a time! :-)
In this picture the elephant symbolizes life and eating the elephant symbolizes us nut cases trying to understand life.
While my appetite has waxed and waned over the years I have been chewing away at this 'elephant' every day for more than 22 years. You can barely see where I have been chewing at the bottom of his right ear.:-)
i.e. it is absurd to think that an individual can achieve even an inkling of understanding in one life time. It is easier to believe that those who seem to grasp the meaning/purpose of life better than others have had several lifetimes to work away at it.
Let me try to add another dimension to this picture ... before one can even start chewing away at the 'elephant' ... there is a sometimes long or very long period of catharsis/purgation ... like the newborn infant who can only digest milk for the first few months of life ... at birth she/he can not eat solid foods.
I found the following picture very interesting ... from the collective consciousness webpage. While the picture has obviously been photo shopped ... it is thought provoking. Most people would pooh pooh the picture ... yet what's the difference between this picture and a picture of a crowd of people , each with a smart phone in their ear ... the result is the same??
Without us noticing, our DNA communicates constantly with everything around us and with our collective consciousness
This image is an actual photo of myself ... taken at the Catholic church in Nanning China (the picture above ... which incidentally was also taken in 2006 ... not by me ... by a local Chinese man whose English name is also Bruce ... Synchronicity ??) Click here for details.
I am standing in front of a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. Much of the detail that should be included in the picture is not there. I have always found this picture intriguing ... perhaps it is simply a temporary malfunction of our digital camera ... and perhaps not.Today I'm thinking this picture may be the Virgin Mary telling me she brought me to China and not to worry that China is known as an atheist country in the West.Certainly my knowledge and understanding of China has grown substantially since arriving here 11 years ago ... today I believe the ancient Chinese knew of the Western God before Western people learned of Him ... apparently the Chinese people knew the Western God before the Tower of Babel.
I am standing in front of a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. Much of the detail that should be included in the picture is not there. I have always found this picture intriguing ... perhaps it is simply a temporary malfunction of our digital camera ... and perhaps not.Today I'm thinking this picture may be the Virgin Mary telling me she brought me to China and not to worry that China is known as an atheist country in the West.Certainly my knowledge and understanding of China has grown substantially since arriving here 11 years ago ... today I believe the ancient Chinese knew of the Western God before Western people learned of Him ... apparently the Chinese people knew the Western God before the Tower of Babel.
"Woe to you, torrent of human custom! Who can stand against you?"
St Augustine
“We always feel more secure when the majority of those around us agree with the direction in which we're moving.”
Author Unknown
“It’s not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness”
Karl Marx
I have always found this picture helpful when trying to understand the intention underlying the above three quotes. Perhaps in my case, it is much easier after observing so many flocks of sheep ... small and large ... in France and Spain during my long walks. This morning I'm attempting to reconcile the three quotes with my comment "Collective Unconscious to Collective Conscious to Collective Will" ... with Noosphere, Noetic Science et al in the background.
St Augustine, Karl Marx and the Unknown Author are all referring to the same phenomenon ... human behavior in our physical world. I remember as a child my mother often made the same comment ... "Monkey see ... Monkey do". What about the other dimension of being human ... the "spirit" dimension? Until this morning I thought none of the four authors (I am including my mom now) made any reference to the influence/impact of the spiritual component of being human.
Noosphere, Noetic Science Collective Consciousness and so on speak only of the non physical dimension of being human ... the spiritual dimension. How can we reconcile the two?
Yesterday, I found my book "Confessions" by St Augustine. For many years even though I knew where the book was I couldn't read it ... not sure why ... was afraid to read it ... it had such a profound effect on me. When I found it yesterday I had no trouble picking it up and started flipping the pages. After a few minutes I decided I wanted to find the quote I use so often ... the one mentioned above ... "Woe to you, torrent of human custom! Who can stand against you?" I remembered that it was in the early part of the book ... I wanted to review the context of the quote ... what was St Augustine thinking/writing about when he wrote those words.
I found the quote on page 18 ... the context didn't help a lot but St Augustine included a reference to Psalm 76:8 at the end of the quote. I checked the Psalm reference didn't seem to make sense ... it had nothing to say about "Woe to you, torrent of human custom!" ... only included the comment "Who can stand against you?" This really puzzled me ... St Augustine is considered such a literary genius ... surely it cannot be an oversight on his part.
Nope ... this morning I checked the book again and I finally saw something I never saw before ... and I have read these words so many times in the past 20+ years. Reminds me of the statement ... our mind blocks stuff from our view from time to time. Hmmm!
Here is a more accurate rendition of the quote ... notice the single quote marks in red ... even highlighted in red they are so easy to miss.Woe to you, torrent of human custom! ' Who can stand against you?' (Ps 76:8)
This morning I can see the words "Woe to you, torrent of human custom!" are St Augustine's words. The second part of the quote St Augustine is quoting from the Bible ... i.e. the words 'Who can stand against you?' are not St Augustine's words. Two tiny single quotation marks that I only noticed today ... after reading this sentence numerous times in the past 20 years. This changes my understanding a lot.
How so?
I've had a few days to contemplate the above mentioned change in my thinking. It's a massive shift ... a tectonic shift ... and it dovetails perfectly with my "biggy" of 12 years ago ... Collective Unconscious to Collective Conscious to Collective Will. And to make it even more exciting it corresponds perfectly with the emerging theories of Noosphere, Noetic Science et al. I hope I can convert my feelings into appropriate words ... to convey the exciting picture in my mind.
September 22, 2016
Today is a special day in our universe ... one of four annual special days. Today marks the Fall Equinox ... the other 3 annual special days are the Spring Equinox and the two Solstices ... Summer and Winter. It seems people in all cultures for ions recognized the significance of these four days. The Western world has used these four days to identify and demarcate the four seasons. Is this the only thing special about them? I think not! While I'm (un)educated on the subject I believe these four days have a significant and dramatic effect on our planet ... on humanity and so on. We simply don't know the "What" ..."Why" ... "How" and so on. Sure we know that flowers bloom in spring and vegetables mature in late summer ... early fall ... just in time for winter storage. We also have the astrologers who study the movement of the stars and the planets in our galaxy ... we have always had people with powerful intuitions and psyche (prophets)... but no one knows the whole picture so to speak.
Today also marks 11 years since my first visit to China ... 11 years ago today I left Pond Inlet in Nunavut for Beijing China ... and I have spent most of the past 11 years in China. In hindsight I could claim the 2005 Fall Equinox marked a very significant change in my life. I didn't see it coming and I still have no idea where it will lead. So many significant events in my life ... especially in the past 23 years ... happened on or very near one of these annual special four days. So what eh!
Nonetheless, I find it exciting to attempt an explanation of the tectonic shift in my thinking mentioned in my scribbling on September 12, 2016.
Karl Marx, Unknown Author, my mom and St Augustine ... in his first few words "Woe to you, torrent of human custom!" ... spoke of the same observable character of human behavior. The operative word being "Observable" . All of the authors were simple expressing what they could see all around them and this abundant empirical evidence clearly points to the generalization they expressed in words.
St Augustine didn't stop with observation ... intentional or otherwise ... it is not very clear. The second part of St Augustine's expression is a quote from the Bible ... Psalm 76:8. St Augustine's books are peppered with quotes from the Bible. The context of this particular quote is God's anger ... the author ... the Psalmist poses the question ... "Who can stand against God's anger?" ... inferring that God is so much more powerful than us mere humans no one could stand His wrath or anger.
So what was St Augustine thinking when he coupled this Biblical quote with his own thoughts ... "Woe to you, torrent of human custom!".
I don't know.
My feeling today is St Augustine coupled/linked God to "Torrent of human custom". We must remember that St Augustine's understanding of God is that of "Spirit" ... with "Spirit" being a substance ... not matter ... not physical ... yet substance nonetheless. Some people refer to this substance as energy ... for example the Chinese notion of Yin Yang ... two types of energy that inextricably linked to form a "whole" ... with Yin energy being feminine and Yang energy being masculine.
We need to transcend the all too common attitude that God somehow condones or supports the darker elements of "torrent of human custom".
From time to time I engage in digital discussions on a forum called "I Love Philosophy" In the past ten years my participation in this forum has helped me a lot. One such occasion was a rather vulgar comment posted in reply to something I wrote ... we were discussing Yang(masculine) energy as being aggressive and dominant. He wrote something to the effect "If Yang(masculine) energy wasn't the dominant form of energy throughout human history we would still be shittin in the dirt in Africa!"
At the time ... and still today ... I don't think there is a more colorful way to express a valid generalization.
So what?
If one can accept that:
1) the notion of God as being a form of energy.
2) masculine aggressive dominant energy was absolutely necessary to bring humanity where it is today.
than Karl Jung's notion of Collective Unconscious makes sense ... the evolution of humanity followed a path with unconscious influence ... bringing us to where we are today.
Where are we today?
Human nature hasn't changed ... human consciousness ... individual and collective ... has expanded exponentially. Current and recent past ... 70 years or so ... clearly points to a threshold humanity is being forced to cross ... self annihilation or substantial transformation. We remain a masculine aggressive/ dominating species ... look at the events in the Middle East. We have the technology to destroy our planet and our species ... the technology has been seriously refined since the first experiments in Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945.
I digress ... back to my attempt to explain my mental picture.
Let me use the picture of the flock of sheep I posted 10 days ago ... the shepherd of this flock is God ... God as energy ... God as love.
The emerging theories ... Noosphere et al ... indicate that we are moving out of a very long epoch of individual and collective unconscious human behavior into an epoch of individual and collective conscious human behavior. We are slowly learning that each individual is responsible for his/her thoughts ... actions ... inaction!
How long will it take to break the inertia? The inertia being conscious but not acting on it ... we have moved from Collective Unconscious to Collective Conscious and we are awaiting the move to Collective Will.
Perhaps we are already seeing indications of the Collective Will at work. I read a couple of articles in the past few days that might point to such a conclusion.
1) Father Ron's article on "Daily Resurrection". intriguing that I only read this article a few days ago ... he wrote the article at the beginning of the new millennium.
The article challenges St Augustine's "Woe to you, torrent of human custom!" The article promotes leaving our comfort zones ... our spheres of familiarity ... abandon the FLOCK ... yikes!!
2) Martin Armstrong's "The Coming Dark Age". I particularly like this quote ... "The Romans knew that the way to power was to promise everything but give them bread and circuses (sport games) and they could maintain power. It was Decimus I?nius Iuven?lis, commonly known as Juvenal, who was a Roman poet active in the late 1st and early 2nd century AD that wrote that phrase:
… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses
[…] iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli / uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim / imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se / continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, / panem et circenses. […]
(Juvenal, Satire 10.77–81)
Nothing has changed."
St Augustine lived in the 4th and fifth century AD ... shortly after the above poet and St Augustine commented at length on the influence of the circus.
It's worth repeating here the words of 19th century French writer George Sand ... the most colourful description of the same subject ... the rich and the wannabe rich ...
" ... there is a lack of hands to work the land but every profession has a host of aspirants; where human beings, hideously massed together around palaces, crawl and lick the footprints of the rich; where enormous capital, accumulated in accordance with the laws of social wealth ... in a few men's hands, is the prize in a never ending lottery of avarice, immorality, and ineptness ... in this country of lewdness and misery, of vice and desolation, in this civilization, rotten to its very roots, you want me to be a loyal citizen? You want me sacrifice my will, desires, imagination to its needs, being either its dupe or its victim, so the penny I might toss to a beggar will end up in a millionaire's coffers?"
... and here are some of my thoughts written several years ago ...
Feudalism is not dead! … it has simply ‘morphed’ into capitalism. Feudalism in its’ day was transparent … feudalism today exists as an ‘illusion of freedom’ … a grand deception indeed! The essence of capitalism is ‘winners and losers’ … the pinnacle of capitalism is ‘one winner’! Globalization and modern technology has set the stage for the ‘winner’ to percolate to the top and emerge. The rich and powerful will likely never surrender their grip on power and control … who will clean their toilets?
The sad reality … really sad reality … is the the only way the rich and powerful can maintain their grip on power and control is through the willing cooperation and support of the masses. Today this is achieved primarily through … “the iron law of wages” … author unknown. The rich and powerful give the masses the ‘crumbs’ from their table and a false hope that some day they may be able to sit at the table themselves.
Karl Marx expressed this phenomenon eloquently … “The "free" labourer, thanks to the development of capitalistic production, agrees, i.e., is compelled by social conditions, to sell the whole of his active life, his very capacity for work, for the price of the necessaries of life, his birthright for a mess of pottage.”
So what can we do? …
Thanks to people like John Lennon, Fidel Castro and more recently Chavez … there is a growing awareness of this reality … a growing ‘awakening’. A growing realization that another ‘way forward’ for mankind may exist. Some refer to this phenomenon as a “collective consciousness” and in my view, when this ‘collective consciousness’ grows to a ‘critical mass’ it will transform itself into a ‘collective will’ … and watch the sparks fly!!
I am also reminded of the well respected Russian writer Dostoevsky ... in particular a quote from his book "Brother Karamazov" ... Chapter 5 "The Grand Inquisition". He used the metaphor of "bread" in a similar fashion.
"And now do You see those stones in this parched and barren desert? Turn them into loaves of bread and men will follow You like cattle, grateful and docile. Although constantly fearful lest You withdraw Your hand and they lose Your loaves."
Dostoevsky is also referring to the Biblical narrative ... Jesus's 40 days in the desert.
Reading this quote ... and each time I read it my conviction grows stronger ... Dostoevsky is defining what we know as "Economy"!! Reminds me of Bill Clinton's now famous expression "It's the economy, stupid." circa 1992"Not only did he insult every American citizen (calling them stupid for thinking anything but the economy was important) but he made a point that the only political issue worth discussing was the economy.
I too believe the economy is terribly important. How else can I feed and clothe my family except I am given the means to do so? And what other means is there than the economy?"
Paraphrasing the above quote ... turn those stones into bread and I will follow you. Yikes!!
The above two articles leave me even more convinced that the vast majority of people are as 'dumb' and as 'insecure' as sheep ... in an unavoidable way ... the influence of Collective Unconscious. Equally I'm increasingly convinced that this 'dumb' and 'insecure' mass of people are becoming more and more 'conscious' ... emerging from their slumber (unconsciousness) ... awakening ... and looking at current world events ... none too soon!
Two pillars of Lao Tzu philosophy:
1) Take no action … live spontaneously
2) Never try to get ahead of the world