Guru in the Woods
We met the Guru on an evening that I had wanted to sleep, but the moon was far too bright, almost like the sun I could feel its heat. We should have been hiking in the night with that much light, and the afternoon thunderstorms that kept us in the valley half the day lit hours, but we had been stubborn; there was no excuse but stubborn- finding the pass between peaks or the path of least resistance straight up and over during the night, really? It is fine, it is fine to do that at night, with this much moonshine it is fine. But we did not. We were stubborn, we would hike up and descend again before noon, hurrying back into the valley to watch the majesty of the clouds that roll and crash. And it is not for these excuses or any other that you may think up that we would waste the day, or the nights, we had been stubborn, but as it seems now, for good reason.
You can see so much of the storm here, so much sky, the storm from miles away- or before, when the storm is less than a thought, just the random collisions and bonding and tearing apart, the moisture, the heat and cold, some making. And when they collect and roll along an invisible loft and pushing down, the first from below, the second from above. From below, we can see the unseen shield over the mountains. It is from this pushing against and the volume of seen forms that we begin to imagine what we could not perceive (see). Then! Then they (the clouds) might roll into massive anvils that would crash down with so little pity and with all the intention to make animals run and hide and for us to laugh out and point and jump- this giddy is fear.
Other clouds climb upon themselves, hoisted up by this unseen shield, pushed up faster by the wind, and we run with even more giddy down and away. And sometimes we can not tell for sure, we are hurried into the valley amongst even stands of trees or rolling hills only to watch a beautiful day unfold; the wind may have torn through an imposter and made a tall (but weak) cloud fold over on itself and dissipate.
Only rarely the sky will boil, rolling over, the same as in a cook pot. It is deciding it seems, waiting to spit into something; an alchemy that makes it more than floating water, but angry and biting. I saw this once as a teenager. I had thought, or thought little at all (more than thoughts?); I had felt something when I was a teenager, and I would shout up- with my body I suppose because I did not say much with my mouth, I didn’t make an audible sound but I think it may have been deafening- the gesture was imposing or the presence; I stood taller than I was, upon the manure wagon that I was spreading in the fields- and this as the sky boiled. Just as we giggle now, I stood taller and cried up and hoisted a pitch fork high to invite all that I feared. I was never struck. Now on this trip I’ll pass on the effort, I did pass on the effort. We have stayed to the valleys, and as it seems now, for good reason.
After all this searching- yes, searching, that is what we are doing. You are surprised by this? That I am self aware? Of course I am, who else but a semi-conscious human being could author such a rambling journal?
We are self-aware.
Searching.
After all this searching we have come across a Guru in the woods. He is every bit as legitimate and authentic as… well in practice as in speech, that is a start. Though he is white, he has been trained by many indigenous healers. Though he lives in the city, he knows the animals by name and the plants too. “It is better,” he says, he can bring those from the city here to forest, if even for a weekend, some sampling, any touching of a spiritual practice. He knows many helpers and has his ancestors and his own trials that have allowed him to find a truth and enlightment. He lives the boundary between worlds, which is much needed when one world seems so sick.
We have stopped for a week to sit and learn from him, and from his disciples- some who speak and others who are silent because of their efforts. He has allowed us to participate in certain lectures and meditations though we cannot compensate the learning by financial means. We have given him some meat and skin, and I think he is humored enough by our journey that he is letting us stay. He says that payment is necessary, otherwise we would not value the learning. I wondered then about other things I value and if they all come with some compensation or cost? The forest? Friendship? Even love? An economist might think so, and I don’t disagree, he speaks truth and has authenticity for proof.
The Guru chose a small mountain with several deep caves amongst the forest to stage his workshop. He says that here we can better feel that we are complete, away from the distractions. I remember some of the distractions I think he is referring to. But I don’t see how these caves are any different than any other place.
“Complete.”
“Complete!”
…Complete?
How can I talk about the Guru? I do not know him or his thoughts, I only know my own; I can tell you those; they are muddied, sometimes in total agreement and at other times completely overcome with conflict, sometimes humble and sometimes arrogant and all knowing. If I begin to preach I am sorry. You could skip over this entire passage of journal if it does not suit you. I write in here to make light of the stronger feelings. It is not that I will not face them in the day, or take on the ugliest of myself- more than most (arrogant). It is only that by keeping this document I might remember. And sometimes I write these things down and read later to my friends when they are down trodden or when they have had too many days of lightning or strong winds in a row and need to laugh about the thing more. I am no master of documentation, but I have found that stepping out from this moment to reflect or observe the very thing you are experiencing cuts the edge- like a shot of whiskey or the holding on to your arm of a sweet heart, dear friend, child, aging parent, or feeble dog. The whisky, the doing for others, and the documenting of the thing makes it something entirely different.
“Complete.” I don’t feel complete without friends or people to love or the world to give to or even things to simply observe. When I close my eyes I still feel and even see. I may be complete only when I think that nothing is also complete, or that we are complete in nothingness. Some void- take comfort in the unknown. Must we be comfortable at all?
“The world is passing by so quickly, rushing to its own destruction.”
Must we then inoculate as much people with as much spirituality as possible? Make it quick?
“and assessable, and comfortable, digestible… don’t worry this is safe, your helpers will never harm you.”
They will never harm me? The bear killed Brandon. Or Brandon killed the bear. Yes, yes, we will still argue about that, it is both then. Maybe.
“Hurry the process for the masses that are all in a hurry.” “It may not be complete, but it is better than nothing, no?” “The world is sick and needs some healing.”
Yes but is something lost in that? Is a little worse than none at all?
☐ Meditate
☐ Stretch
☐ Act of kindness
☐ Run
☐ Eat vegetables
Checked off, then it is done for the day. It is the same. It is a product, bought and sold. It has become this sensual- sensational experience- which is not inherently bad. No, no, do not misunderstand me. I am not saying this is wrong. It feels thin; I might pat myself on the back and think I have done well or arrived… What was gained? Gained! What is my compensation for work well done? Maybe a lot, I have collected the most in so doing because I have worked hard. But are we any further from the very spot we started? It seems like the same path.
The world hurries by, then should I slow down instead?
“This is a world of pain, the suffering will end when you let it go.”
I think I might perform the unpleasant and slow, even the boring along with the theatrical or obviously powerful.
“That empowering moment of recognition becomes the center of all. We realize that we are all in pain, and from where the pain has come. It is a beautiful moment, the clarity it brings, the purification, the cathartic release simply in knowing and admitting to ourselves.”
“Remembering that just as we recognize that this is the ‘world of pain’ so must we experience pain, but neither should we indulge in pain and be lost there also, trauma is necessary but being stuck there is not growth either. When will you continue on with living? Why do you give this one moment so much attention? Now you look for any insignificant pain that you might indulge the revelation again. Do not idolize the struggle, or idolize the wounded. You’ll find that you accuse the strong, that they are actually weak or liars.”
We are taught to seek with humility and with empty pallets, yes of course. We are taught to listen and learn for the age old, yes this is true. Do not answer a question that is posed so quickly, listen. See with awe and reverence, yes. And then I watch the storm, or the dog, or the elk that was opened by the racing car. And I think, or I do not and I simply allow the process to unfold. And yes, all you are saying is true, but I wonder why it stops? Why is it limited? Why is the dullard child wrong? Why are the thoughts I have brought called distractions? Should we dump the noise that is ringing? Must we ignore the world of suffering? “Everything is love, and we are complete.” Yes it is! This is true. But why then is jealousy not true? Or why is anger and possessive feelings not true love either? Why is violence not love also? Today I ate the leg of a deer. And then we grew it back and I grew moss on my back so he could eat too and be nourished. Both of us soaked the heat from the sun and drank the water that melted from the snow capped mountains. And the snow capped mountains called a storm to frighten us, but it was laughing the whole time. Yes, yes, and the reasons for doing are neither power, status, or money. And we needn’t even be good at doing what we do.
I have to admit to that I am suspicious of those who hold positions of power, authority, mastery, or great esteem. I once knew a guru of sorts who said to “how can you teach if you are unwilling to learn?” I am willing to learn! “How can you learn when your cup already overflows?” Let it overflow, let it overflow and the new will push the old out and I will always be full!
Let me start again, it seems that many people search for those who seem to know or claim to know something, this confidence is built upon a rigid sense of self and an even stronger faith in an ultimate order. Again I can only speak for myself, but I am not interested in these types of people, maybe I am, but not always. I’d rather keep the company of those who do not know, or the company of those who would consider this a companionship (a friendship), rather than the following of someone who claims to know.
I wonder if it is my ego, facing challenge that makes me suspicious? Or is it the idea of having “arrived” that worries me. I am suspicious not only of the figure who has arrived, a terminal degree, unsurpassable position, definitive expertise, I am also suspicious of the ‘truth’ they wield like a sword or suit of armor, rigid, unyielding, these “answers,” the “right way.” I wonder: how is he perceived? How does he perceive himself? How does he perceive his answers? How are those answers projected? I worry for the people who journey their own way, writhing in the mud, or at a maddening mundane pace, that the men and women who know might tell them they must live this other way. It is the urge of every parent to impart their knowledge upon a child; the child had soaked it up eagerly for so many years, and when older and resistant the parent thinks “I will be feeble” and “I need to know that my child will be safe and secure before I die and can no longer care for these things.”
It is not your fault parents, it is the whole of our world- that I know at least. It is of course the missionaries who impart religion, it is of course socially ingrained in finances and standards of living (cost and compensation), it is of course in how we define extremes and middle roads, it is of course in who we consider sane or mad, it is of course in the space we permit “education” to reside. It is in religion, it is in spirituality, it is in math, it is in science. Yes! Yes! In math and science! I won’t write of them to prove them wrong or contradictory; I am inspired by them, they show something very beautiful.
The clouds, look at the clouds again. The sky is mad, it is unpredictable, it will never move as you might think. But the ends, that we can know. We can make large generalizations about its cycle, how a storm may end or how another may begin. There is something we know about the storm that we know as well as the force a rock will hit the ground if dropped from that ledge. So even this chaotic tumbling can be known, if only for a moment, or at a labeled ‘end’ like the other forces of the world that we have arrogantly mastered generations ago. Relationships are like weather, given points within them, general deterministic predictions are spot on, but in the midst they are chaotic and beautifully non-linear. So it is as ridiculous as saying that a pendulum will swing this way at some point, for the course to that point is unknown, as is the time in which that point will be reached or how long it will remain. Why do we bother with the knowing or predicting? It is no different than the man with the two boys, then the horse, then the broken leg, then the war, and other “fortunes” and “misfortunes” that he thought little of. Perhaps relationships are more random, with infinite possibilities that spill in and bond and tear apart again, and the relationship itself, and the relationships around the one and the world over is a self-repeating tree or river or hologram, hosting the whole within the one. That is neat, and makes me feel complete, but it is only the end again and the means by which are going on again with no regard for the initial conditions, or with such terrific dependence on them that one small sigh would send ripples that cause catastrophe or absolute boredom.
*
This is incomprehensible, let me write for a bit:
Despite the limiting urge to cling onto a fundamental truth that unlocks the secrets to our known universe, science and math have identified numerous approaches that not only lend understanding to natural systems in academic abstractions but host very applicable philosophies for how we seem to engage daily life. In this passage aptly entitled ‘Guru in the Woods’ you are attempting to incorporate the inspired musings unveiled by superficial research in Chaos mathematics, Complex systems, Random systems, classic deterministic and Euclidean mathematics, Quantum Mechanics, Linear, Non-Linear, and Infinite models. You end up criticizing the search for a singular approach or universal truth but this is not intended to come at the detriment of your enthusiasm towards the methods developed in physics and mathematics. Furthermore, your working knowledge of these theories is infantile at best, just as I am an infant in the wilderness, but others are worse, they are maybe fish out of water?
Naturally you should look at Newtonian, Euclidean, linear and deterministic systems, their self-assured predictions and mastery over the physical world and pose this against the inconsistencies found in chaotic, random, and complex systems. Of course you also make reference to how the rules of the objective observer is corrupted by the discoveries in Quantum Mechanics- that the bouncing of light against a photon such that you can see it, moves the very thing you are looking at. Although Chaos is deterministic the process is non-linear- each set of circumstances feeding into numerous other dependent circumstances such that the smallest change launches a exponential distortion of results. And although random systems are linear their origins are infinite in potential- with no influence from the initial conditions. Complex system are best charted by method and almost unfathomable in results. Considering these numerous systems one might assume that the natural world can be contained, if not by dividing occurrences and phenomenon into their logical method; practical daily functions like construction, and auto-mechanics into Newtonian and Euclidean methods, weather and wildlife populations in Chaotic systems, the emergence of river deltas and stream bed formation into Random and Complex systems, as well as the flight patterns of flocking birds into the latter (Complex systems). This is tidy, but you think it is guilty of the same offense that science has taken in averaging out the “noise” in equations which in non-linear systems results in terrifically off target or unpredictable patterns. So instead of looking at these methods in pursuit of answers, look instead at where things are challenging- this inspires you.
What you’ve found inspiring in the research of these methods has been the moments where things are unknown and insane: in Random systems the origins, in Complex systems the final product, in Chaotic systems the path, in the Quantum the very small or the very large.
| A chart outlining the | wonderful | oddities | found w/ | in | methods |
| Classic (Euclidean/Newtonian) | All is well in this boring land, | save that you actively ignore | what is Interesting in pursuit of | of the whole | and seemingly complete |
| Chaotic | Process
(unpredictable) |
||||
| Random | “origins” (infinite) | ||||
| Complex | “ends” | ||||
| Quantum | the very small | the very large |
The known moments are only sought because we demand a moment of knowledge, because ‘knowledge is power’ or better yet, it creates the illusion of security. But the known moments are subject to a “critical time scale” as well as a “relaxation time scale”, in other words, a measure of predictability and unpredictability. Weather for example can be predicted some what accurately in a time scale of about 2 days, and the chaotic oscillating of a two hinged pendulum will relax given an amount of time (the known ‘ends’ is that the thing will come to rest). Outside our self-regulated parameters we know little to nothing.
Math and science have revealed that our ability to measure is dreadfully limited, and that the closer we look the more we impact the observed. To speak to this notion of measurement and the averaging out of “noise” you naturally thought of our societal fixation on convenience. You thought of the Amish who, on the other hand, intentionally engage hardship as a method of retaining communal dependence. You thought of Ancient spiritual practices that have been commoditized to meet our pace of living and in the averaging out of the “noise”/friction we may have impacted drastic variance from the original outcome, like the butterfly that flaps its wings and makes a hurricane. Is an hour of yoga really a spiritual practice? And is that hour “better than nothing” or covering a wound (out of mind out of sight) that is in need of proper treatment? Will we really have robots walk our dogs and wash our windows? This search for comfort, convenience, and frictionless living comes at the decline of strength, growth, change, and anything interesting at all. Is our species so terrible boring? Is this why we have been walking up and over the mountains than around? Is this frivolous summiting of peaks and playing with storms and engagement of hardship to make up for years of cable television and microwaved dinners?
How does this apply? It is simple and I will say something without trying to give some answer, because that would be the problem itself again. Masanobu Fukuoka developed a method of farming and wrote about it, and when others tried to recreate it and found it a failure he buried his face in his hands that they missed the entire point, for naturally it would not work, they did not live on his farm and it was not for them the same season in which he was growing when he wrote his thoughts. Have you looked at a persons face? A person you have known for years and suddenly they look completely different? And you realize (or do not realize) that you have ignored how they look entirely for so long and now you are finally paying attention? Always this averaging out of noise, always this avoiding friction, looking always for less hardship more convenience, and for our assumptions made for laziness we do not see anything interesting at all, it is a boring world instead that we repeat the same toils for they are better to know that not know how things may turn out. A fear of death? Really? What idol and mundane concerns. I have experienced tortures far worse than death, I doubt that is very bad at all. And how bad is suffering really? Discomfort is only discomfort.
I am done with answers! Bring on the mysteries! This self-assured tone demanded of writers and philosophers have made them dull and unhelpful. Do not think for a second that you or I know a thing either. I would say that belief is form, and that a church of thought makes the thing more material than before, and there is plenty of evidence to support this and it is tidy and works for any situation, but what use is another dogma? Feyerabend in his writings against method uses the course of conflict and reductive logic to deconstruct the assumed. I find myself doing this too, and I could be celebrated if I were any good at it. But I am not interested in long boughts where I break down the other and prove myself so brilliant. There are places, there are people who listen to their children and learn something from them, just as they listen to the madman or to the old man who mumbles or the young woman who appears old because her teeth are falling out and her mind is gone from the drugs. Maybe I would not be able to tell you where this place is exactly, but what does it matter?
*
Why try to predict? The gestation period may change, one equation may feed into another, then another, then another and the origin will come out entirely different this second time around, if even appearing much the same, or randomly it is exactly the same somehow. Don’t be so taken back that such ‘coincidences’ might occur, we are of the same mind no less. But we are so certain that things are right or there is a way, and we fight between our set thoughts. Between medicine and science and holistic practices and spirituality and religion. But all of it discounts some other, and nothing hopes to include everything that is. For there is too much to contain. And there is no answer that will speak to it all, for as true as what you say is to me, to another there is some other answer. And there is no reason for the other to be wrong save to make you feel secure. It is terrifying to live in a world without proof, without certainty. We seek truth to be safe. But no one is safe, there is no truth that can protect you. Even abandoning all of it, and calling it suffering and hoping to transcend. Escape, escape, but what will you find elsewhere? Is there a place we will end?
Context and perspective: “This is how the spirit world works because the results are consistent, repeatable and found within multiple ‘non-connected’ sources.” Perhaps the results are consistent because we want them to be. Or it is wanted to be. So also the things that believe they are things also want them to be. What I mean is the table or the wall. These things want to be a table or a wall. Or the Brandon or the Guru. If perspective influences form we must recognize that we are not the center of all that happens (per say); all things and ideas and non-things have a will as well.
So we come to terms that all creatures, from spirit worlds, or this one, or in our thoughts, or our friends can be helpers. And we needn’t eat flesh, or we eat flesh but the animal still lives.
How is there only one way when I have experienced another? My life is illusion? Yes, but then so is the rest. Is there really truth? Brandon killed the bear. We know this because he is wearing the bear’s skin. But we all know that the bear killed Brandon and we are traveling now with a bear. It is better than the Wildman that Brandon was. Anyhow, Brandon has become the bear’s power animal and this is better for the thing, because it has made him quite a bit smarter, see Brandon was quite smart.
What of the pain then? The death of a friend? Of yourself? Of the lives we left behind? The feelings of loss and physical pain that we endure too? Should I ignore it for it is illusion, this world of shadows? Don’t try to feel anything different; it is ok to be honest, to hurt, but when you do, do not act from how you feel but from how you feel you should act. Will comes before emotion, leading this flock of birds.
“Nothing comes easy.”
That is right, we’ve set out and know that we won’t reach the destination.
I suppose you would think, that because I named this passage in my journal Guru in the Woods that there would be profound teachings, or a struggle between minds, some disenchantment, or magickal revelation. I could make an effort to describe an incredible man; he is surely that. But in the passing what could I say? What he preaches, where he has gone, who has followed him, what he has accomplished, this feeling of transcendence that surround him, or better yet this feeling of significance and importance that is built up around him? I have never valued much in these things- and not because they are wrong or bad. I have learned not to dismiss things so readily simply because they do not speak to me. I’d rather say what I am inspired by and realize when I am past a feeling. We stayed for a while with him, and were awe struck like children in a suddenly materialized fantasy, but then we went on our way. And now in this writing I don’t see what I could say about him other than to share what resonated in me. I suppose I am not interested in the telling of a man, of figures or characters, though I am very pleased to meet a person especially those who “click”. But the writings about men never grabbed me, though the writing by them did, or sometimes the telling of a story of a person such that this could be any person or such a person with certain preexisting conditions that set him up so perfectly for the story, but still the story is wide and so the telling is for everyone rather than a glorification of the figure- or at least that is how I have taken it.
So I am not interested in describing the Guru, though he was fantastic, I would rather speak of the things that happened while we were with him and how it has impacted my friends and myself.
What if I convince the rock that falls to fall like a feather? What if I tell the weather to conduct itself predictably and linearly?
Tell me the whole truth, break it down and define each part, give specialization, thorough experimentation, critical review and revision and ultimate mastery and I am asleep, entirely bored and thing has been dead to me hours ago. Perhaps it is symptomatic of my age though in body I am not a child. Give me a chunk, a small bit of the enthusiastic flavor and I am then inspired. I may then take it somewhere completely different than you have. Come out with new conclusions and means to apply the notion to my world. And we may diverge or think along similar lines- either way I am inspired and for me this is critical. You may have sparked something completely new- and is that not beautiful? Is that not mirroring the natural course? Not exactly of course. But would you have your son be a complete replica of yourself? Some would and they ignore the variance, the intuitive efforts to disturb balance. For them a field of uniform crop is all they would look at; or for order, for stability, for truth- and it is sought in stagnation- but in such a pool disease is abundant- and even here there can be no real pause, if things were to actually stand still there would be no life. And these ambitions replicate this.
I should not judge, it is more important for me to emphasize what does inspire me. As I have said, I can only speak for me. And I’ll only speak so much or there will be nothing left for you to be inspired by, to take off into the world and make for your own. I hope you have left this reading numerous times already to cultivate your own thinking. And when you return you might scream at the pages ‘enough already! There is so much else and you go on and on with this!’
Incidentally, we (you the potential reader and I) are having a conversation. Because earlier I had stated that I am not interested in reading about people unless it is in a way a conversation. So you may say “yes yes!” as you read, or yell at me for how idiotic I am or at my monstrous ego. I may listen. I will try my best.
Review of Universalism:
- Fundamentalism divides into dualisms: good and evil
- Spirituality sees elements they like and ignores the rest, like:
- Buddhism, escape life, life is suffering
- Everything is love, jealousy is not love, hate is not love
- God is everything, we are all god (or you are not god), this life is illusion
- Science looks for one answer and finds many
- Classic Newtonian or Euclidian Deterministic
- Ignores or averages out the noise
- Classic Newtonian or Euclidian Deterministic
- Chaotic determinism and unpredictability in process
- Only applicable to certain types of systems
- Fractals
- In hopes to find universalism researches have realized instead that the answer found in the ends does not reveal unique origins
- Quantum
- Limits itself to a finite infinity (infinity within only a few dimensions, rather than infinite infinity)
- Belief is form?
- A tidy theory, but another limited dogma isn’t it?
Review of Key words:
- Friction
- Noise
- Hardship
- Community
- Significance
- Versus Comfort/convenience
- Threshold to sensitivity
- Limits of averaging out error
- Time scale for non-linear movement
- Linear, affects of averaging out are negligible
- Non-linear, affects of eliminating noise are catastrophic and funny
- Deterministic, predictable within a set scale of time, limited to the finite
- Chaotic, non-linear but deterministic, how we measure chaotic systems is also limited to a set scale of time that we determine
- Complex, resulting in brilliantly confounding patterns from simple rules
- ‘A dependence on initial conditions’ just a wonderfully inspiring phrase
- Random
- no influence from initial conditions
- infinite origin potential
- results magickally appear much the same (tree of life, a river delta, branching forms…)
We stare at the quantum molecule, it moves, we cannot be objective, nor can we be unconditional. Even the sun imparts influence over us… oh so much! I can think of no one more culpable. What is the suns intention over our reality? It surely expects something of us.
“What will count as knowledge? And who will count as expert or as innovator?” [Dei, Hall, and Goldin Rosenberg] Colonialism is an act of demanding reality. Within their respective realities they are not wrong, but then they demand that view upon others in hopes to make the two close to identical. As evidence I’ll state another truth saying that from diversity comes health and vibrance (gene pools); but to shadow my own statement it is also true that from uniformity comes strength (brick wall). It is not that we can prevent our influence over another, or that this is even wrong, again think of the sun, that terrific offender! But what of meandering thoughts? Are they really constructs of our cultural standpoint? Seriously? There must be something also to those who drilled holes in their skulls to speak with the heavens.
Pushing perspective, discounting what the individual experiences, the child’s musings, this is also colonizing. In some places, each new dream, vision, or perspective is honored and impacts the entire community, is accepted as a truth. In this way they are always learning intergenerationally.
We are all guilty of this colonialism, some imposition of our assumed reality, or understandings of truth. It is why so many of us try to give advice to another. It is what we know so can we be blamed? It is not about blame. Even if you took these words I write and suggested them to a friend, you too would be such an offender, as would I then too.
Proving authenticity. Buying a true experience. Authority trumps cultural identity trumps personal practice. Why not simply: a valuable experience? Why are we seeking to prove ours as more valid? The very action of defining a valid or authentic experience is to stereotype or limit the culture by which we are experiencing something. It is this action that promotes colonial imperialism. It is by this action that we create a Disney World experience and locals cater to our expectations.
We don’t own ideas. We do not possess ideas. And there is no authentic way of doing, with exception maybe to the Japanese.
There is no such thing as objective or neutral. This I emplore you the victim to find for yourself despite what I or any other arrogant asshole might tell you. Also you are not a victim.
I had a dream about two competing masters. One was the master, the other was a student. The master taught about the sacred circle (which was an angle) using a distilled indigenous knowledge he had gained in his travels and perfected in a lesson plan. The student knew a method that began and ended in the same way but defined the angle by a random turning of the hand influenced by in-the-moment intuition and “feel”. They argued in front of the class, then enters the headmaster, who seeing this conflict interjects not offering mediation, but challenging them both and demanding credentials to prove the validity of either notion.
- No truth, no method, no absolute or only
- What I am inspired by
- The Infinite and Non-linear
Should I attempt to accept everything as a manner of truth, perhaps with nothing being an ultimate truth? Should I attempt to gravitate to what inspires me as subject to pursue and grow? In so doing, remain mindful that everything else is also true. For me, I will also recognize that in this course of logic: belief is form, there is no absolute (or that it should not come by dismissing other thoughts) and there is no such thing as secure, or there is (but stagnation does not inspire me).
I don’t look to be dismissive, but I am simple:
* Love * Friendship * Adventure * Animals * Emotion * Movement * Music * Care * With effort * The unconventional * That which bends presumed reality or corrupts methods and fact (or the holes in the generally perceived truth) * That which appears magickal * Physical and Mental strength and conditioning, pushing of boundaries * Exposure * Meandering or inspired thoughts that might inspire others * Acts of “beauty” and kindness * A seamless meeting of hearts and minds *
I am not inspired by this process of proving some other as false or something as true; I am too preoccupied with other things of perceived meaning. Then to dismiss I am not interested in rationalism, logic, or critical thinking. Too much emphasis has been placed on conflictive method. Someone dreams up a brilliant new perspective or truth and ruins the thing by trying to make it absolute, or to use it as proof that something else is false. To challenge needn’t mean a posing of one thing against another. The mindset can change, things needn’t come at a loss, or we mustn’t stake something to gain another, goals are not for want, desire needn’t be coupled with expectation, nor passion be accompanied by desire. To climb a mountain is not to conquer the thing, to win the heart of a woman is not to play a game (though the words suggest as much).
This idea that we are ourselves complete. Are our senses of self not an amalgamation of others? Thus the missing or extraction of another fairly felt as if a part of us is missing? We must be willing for the sense of self to always change for the company of others and self is always subject to change. “Self” itself is not so tangible or solid as we think.
Write this all again, without the absolutes, without the ‘we’ or the definitive, and without the posing one against the other so in proving yourself.
With the self in context to environment and others- we become or think of ourselves as such a person and when change is imparted so must we change else it be an incomplete version of what we had fixed ourselves to be. We can like who we were but need to be flexible in becoming something entirely different.
“It is not to be unafraid, it is to engage your fears despite the fear.”
You are right Guru.
“Stop looking for answers.”
I will once I figure things out.
“Stop twisting the thoughts to reconcile bad feelings.”
I am indulging a bit.
“Peace in the watching, even in being in it.”
My emotions are lagging behind my willfulness.
“For the sake of action, not for results: method over outcome.”
Write this all again.
“How can you learn if your cup already overflows?”
I have been so fixated on my frustrations that I could not focus on letting something brilliant and wondrous new in.
With long days in the wild, especially on these short summer nights, I rarely rise from my shelter until day breaks again. Perhaps in this unfamiliar company I was met with a certain excitement and I woke in the deepest hour. I not only woke but was filled with the energy, the drive, to go for a walk and to write these ramblings down. I crawled from my debris hut meeting the crisp clear night and the uncountable stars set up against the dusting of even more distant stars and galaxies that I have grown familiar, however never without amazement, in seeing. I looked a while though it had grown cold, maybe even a semblance of frost would appear, and found something strange about the sky. Patches of pink or purple- to name the color would not do it justice, nor would leading you to believe that I saw cartoonish flashes of light (not to discredit the northern lights, but this is not what I saw); what I saw was infinitely more subtle, and I wondered if it was only an anomaly for my eyes, these almost unnoticeable movements of the subtlest color dancing about as I slowly moved my gaze. I would have been convinced that it was for me alone had I not noticed one of the Guru’s disciples; a mousy girl, one of the silent ones for her efforts. She was clearly seeing the same thing or something equally brilliant in the sky for her smile, evident despite the darkness and distance. And with an equally communicative glance, despite the pitch black, the trees and mountain shadows, and the stretch of field between us I understood what she said:
“The stone, the arrowhead, (the friends, the girlfriend,) the self, meant to come and go; you cannot hold onto anything forever, neither should you try.”