The voices can be overwhelming. They come from various directions and origins, wishing to erect the tower of babel at their own behest and design. They speak many tongues. Their words are lucid in different ways, relentless noise and sanctimonious clamoring. Each one of them claims to have a purpose, despite their incestuous contradictions and conflating ideals.
Nothing makes sense, but they yell with the confidence of a golden scaled dragon. If I ignore them, I perish, bereft of meaning, without direction, thirsting in the endless desert sea of nothingness. if I follow them, I perish myself, consumed in ravenous hunger, the unsatiated desire of the ego's vanity destroying the true self. What then does one do with these voices? You listen and do not judge. Meet them beyond right doing and wrong doing, on a field, meet them at the narrow ridge, be congenial with the dissonance and perhaps you'll discern a melody, perhaps a tune...before you know it, you may find yourself in the midst of an orchestra. The panhandling cacophony becomes a full-fledged symphony.
0 Comments
Many of our ideas die as soon as they are conceived. They are given no time to gestate, no place in the womb. Other ideas are miscarried, after but a brief stint of possibility. There are aborted ideas, that are disallowed full inception, and there are the stillborns, whose bodies lack the psyche of life. Many of us carry these stillborns with us, shapes and figures of what could have been, many of us take them to our grave. They haunt us in life and they haunt is in death.
Animate them or incinerate them! If you do not, they will weigh your spirit down and create a festering wound within you; or you may come to face a forlorn and vengeful twin, birthed by another, that resents the lifeless, neglected, body you chose to keep. In both instances, you end a victim of hateful reprimand lead by self-pity. There is light within this macabre image. To animate is to breathe new life, a necrogenesis, that rebirths what never had a chance anew. Transform the body into a nascent essence and give it a vessel, a metempsychosis and transmutation. Crystalize this learning and present it to the world. This is the true gift of life. If you are not to be the one to bring it to fruition, then willingly give that privilege to another, surrender your vision and rejoice in its fulfillment nonetheless---creations are meant to be free. If animation is not an option, then incinerate the remains. Purge yourself of the cursed burden, and focus your vis viva on future spawn and enlightenment. Writing is hard. Sitting in my chair, clean desk, right tools, staring at a blank page. All of a sudden all those inspiring thoughts that brought me here fade away, the ineffable feelings dissipate, as if they're afraid of being caught. The little fireflies that moments ago saturated my brain, all gone, nothing but a vacuous head left, with bulging eyes. What does an artist do, if bereft of spirit? Blink. Then blink again. Bask in the emptiness, stop trying to do and listen. Breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. Don't judge, don't think, don't write. Just be...There it is. The sweet sounds of the elusive muses, whispering. They've been there all along. All we need to do is tune ourselves to them. Let our consciousness guide the way, not our ever persisting ego. By surrendering our will, we are empowered. By staying still, we move. To be gifted, we must give ourselves entirely. In humility, we come to find our confidence.
There is great strength in vulnerability. We conquer only when we are willing to lose it all, to be touched, transformed, metamorphosized. The message is what we receive, the oration in our very hearing ears, and our vision, the wholly human engagement of the eye and mind, is seen when we dare to close our eyes. We find sense in the non-sensical, we find truth in crevices, what makes us laugh makes us weep, discovery is in creation and creation in discovery, and the good is always there especially in what we deem evil. Writing is hard when we are trying to write. Writing is easy, when we start to read instead. What is sobriety? I don't think it merely the exercise of disallowing intoxication. It is not enough not to be impaired. Sobriety is an act of presence, it is allowing oneself to experience fully. When looking at a sunset, do you see a mix of color dispersed amongst the clouds, an effect of haze and dust as reflected by light waves? Do you perhaps see yourself reflected in it, bringing an awareness to whatever it is you feel or think in that very moment, the moment you and the sunset share? Or do you immerse yourself into the sunset, as if it were a window through which to access something greater than your self? Do you see the rarified image of one single consciousness, do you see in the sunset a semblance of Truth, as the facsimile of a greater entity, a copy of a copy of a copy, that we are graced with? This line of questioning, I find to depict one's appreciation as it grows from physicality to intellectualization, to emotional liberation, and finally to spiritual comprehension. The same can be had with virtually any experience. This, I believe, is what sobriety is, a moderation with which to partake on the ever changing stillness of the universe. It is an act of meditation, upon which we can build what we are meant to build. Only in sobriety do we make choices, the real choices that conform to the real self.
And for a moment, for moments are all there is, I could see it all. I could see all that was, is, and will be. I saw my past tethered to my future, I saw my future braided with my past. I saw myself seeing myself in the present. For a moment, for a moment is all we ever have, I was. אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (I am that I am) Who I become is whom I be, eternally I will have been in timeless resolutions. This endless and boundless peace is forever accessible to us, but we fear it, we fear the nothingness in everything that is. We fear the light because we think of it an empty vessel, but everything and anything resides in its permanence and possibility---an infinitude of will, trial, and completion. Don't just do something, stand there, admire the vastness of presence, the autotelic absolute serenity of love, embrace the grace of God and dare to listen. *Original Designs by L.F.M.A
A philosopher is a lover. To be more precise, a philosopher is a lover of wisdom. A philosopher does not merely "care for knowledge", it is not solely, much less exclusively, an "academic discipline" of the intellect. Such language presents a bastardization of philosophy that stymies its practice. A philosopher's soul dances aflame at the observance of the true, beautiful, and good. Socrates knew this, his fortitude of imagery in speech shines through in both "The Symposium" and "Phaedrus." His layout is one with Love as foundation. The question of love turns to a question of the philosophical enterprise altogether, as if---and it is---carefully intertwined. A philosopher is naught if not a lover. While the gallantry of the white steed, as depicted in "Phaedrus", is certainly an important aspect of the intellectual pursuit, presumably lead by the charioteer, it is futile without the writhing passion of the black horse. Its obsession is what initiates the motions of the soul, and is willing to die for it, pain is but a minor nuisance when compared to the promise of what gift the beloved may offer. The philosopher engages on an inquiry, an eternal questioning, and learns to ask the right questions. Its guiding principle is wisdom, armed with a relentless and passionate love towards said principle. Without love we end with the banality of intelligentsia, those who presuppose to possess and depict great feats of knowledge to an ignorant, naive, and innocent audience. Their self-righteous posture and self-gratifying destination (a perverse circle), contributes to the very opposite of what a philosopher intends to do, that is embarking on the honest adventure of human self-understanding. Instead, they become sophists, pompous, in all ways pedantic, pretenders that are more interested in themselves and their followers than in high ideals. Conversely, those who love but are misguided, that lack the stern, sharp, and elegant sights of reason, are bound to self-destruct. Their unabashed pursuit leads nowhere, and the loss of what was never meant to last tears one apart, imploding said love and corrupting their goals to ignoble ones. They too are dangerous, but in more obvious ways. The insidiousness of the banal intelligentsia may fool many, in fact they do, for they rely on the obedience of their subjects, though they express and celebrate their free will. Many sophists have blindly fallen to the portrayal of themselves and are enslaved to their egos. *Original Designs by L.F.M.A "As I said at the beginning of this tale, I divided each soul into three—two horses and a charioteer; and one of the horses was good and the other bad: the division may remain, but I have not yet explained in what the goodness or badness of either consists, and to that I will now proceed. The right-hand horse is upright and cleanly made; he has a lofty neck and an aquiline nose; his colour is white, and his eyes dark; he is a lover of honour and modesty and temperance, and the follower of true glory; he needs no touch of the whip, but is guided by word and admonition only. The other is a crooked lumbering animal, put together anyhow; he has a short thick neck; he is flat-faced and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion (Or with grey and blood-shot eyes.); the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip and spur. Now when the charioteer beholds the vision of love, and has his whole soul warmed through sense, and is full of the prickings and ticklings of desire, the obedient steed, then as always under the government of shame, refrains from leaping on the beloved; but the other, heedless of the pricks and of the blows of the whip, plunges and runs away, giving all manner of trouble to his companion and the charioteer, whom he forces to approach the beloved and to remember the joys of love. They at first indignantly oppose him and will not be urged on to do terrible and unlawful deeds; but at last, when he persists in plaguing them, they yield and agree to do as he bids them. And now they are at the spot and behold the flashing beauty of the beloved; which when the charioteer sees, his memory is carried to the true beauty, whom he beholds in company with Modesty like an image placed upon a holy pedestal. He sees her, but he is afraid and falls backwards in adoration, and by his fall is compelled to pull back the reins with such violence as to bring both the steeds on their haunches, the one willing and unresisting, the unruly one very unwilling; and when they have gone back a little, the one is overcome with shame and wonder, and his whole soul is bathed in perspiration; the other, when the pain is over which the bridle and the fall had given him, having with difficulty taken breath, is full of wrath and reproaches, which he heaps upon the charioteer and his fellow-steed, for want of courage and manhood, declaring that they have been false to their agreement and guilty of desertion. Again they refuse, and again he urges them on, and will scarce yield to their prayer that he would wait until another time. When the appointed hour comes, they make as if they had forgotten, and he reminds them, fighting and neighing and dragging them on, until at length he on the same thoughts intent, forces them to draw near again. And when they are near he stoops his head and puts up his tail, and takes the bit in his teeth and pulls shamelessly. Then the charioteer is worse off than ever; he falls back like a racer at the barrier, and with a still more violent wrench drags the bit out of the teeth of the wild steed and covers his abusive tongue and jaws with blood, and forces his legs and haunches to the ground and punishes him sorely. And when this has happened several times and the villain has ceased from his wanton way, he is tamed and humbled, and follows the will of the charioteer, and when he sees the beautiful one he is ready to die of fear. And from that time forward the soul of the lover follows the beloved in modesty and holy fear."
We may never find the book-man, let alone the book. It may not exist, it certainly cannot exist in any tangible way---no object can account for the immateriality of being, can it? If it did, how foolish our consciousness, and how conscious the fool? Living is paradoxical. We seek treasure that cannot be found, we are most alive in its pursuit, and this quest drives our growth and flourishing, in palpable, purposeful palpitations. What's more, attaining said treasure means the end of who we are. Getting to the absolute marks the end of an inquiry, the very inquiry that keeps us alive. To question is ubiquitous being, everywhere all at once for all eternity. Take that away from us, give us the answers, and we won't know what to do. This may, however, mean a step towards greater intelligence, a superintelligence, a kind we cannot fathom, like dogs are said unable to fathom the breadth of our sentient minds. This end then would be a new beginning, but one we cannot comprehend in any valuable way so long as we remain mere members of the library. *M.C. Escher, Horses and Birds, 1949 — Verbum, 1942
|