Et In Arcadia Ego

As a child, or an adult, living in America, you seek salvation for the personal sins you have committed. The subject is the person who is the son of so and so, lives on such and such street, and does such things that are wrong. And surely, you have done many wrong things which require redemption. But, living in America, as you grow older and realize though your sins may be forgiven, your guilt still lingers, and you first encounter a mystery. From whence this guilt? You are urged to take a personal inventory. Do you lust? Do you covet? And you fall into a pattern of requiring forgiveness over and over again for the same sins that were driven out before. But even when your personal inventory is 'clear', there is a gnawing, and an everpresent guilt that will not pass, no matter how much prayer is given up that the cross will be laid aside and all will be made well.

As an adult, you can have a crisis that comes out of nowhere that causes a suffering in you, that in your wildest dreams, you never could have imagined. This, then, you can realize is the suffering common to mankind. This worst suffering is what unites you to your fellow man. In this uniting, the soul begins to remember. It remembers, slowly, painfully, that it is ancient, connected to all life, and for lack of a better word, is pagan. So now, through recognition of the soul's vastness and archaic-ness, you can realize there are many sins for which you have not asked fogiveness, by virtue of being human and most, one of an ancient society of men. The soul remembers. It has sacrificed innocent victims, human and animal for it's own perpetuation. It has harmed many. It has been prideful, arrogant, self centered, crushing anything, including prophets and messiahs, that has stood in the way of it's own expression.

Suddenly, historical personages can come to mind. Nero. Mussolini. The Borgias. Hitler. Hussein. And you can realize, not only am I no better than these, but I, by virtue of being human, and connected to these through suffering, am these people. The weight of guilt, sociological guilt, communal guilt, comes to bear and you realize those sins for which you have not asked forgiveness.

The spirit has thrown light on the soul, this vast, oceanic, connected soul that participates in the experience of all mankind, being blessed and cursed with good deeds and deep sins. This then, is the old testament notion of 'sins of the fathers'. We enjoy the benefits of being born to nuclear families and being a member of the families of humanity at large, but suffer the sins of said families by virtue of our birth.

When this last vestige of the soul has been come to light, that sociological self that participates in history, and through memory is brought to bear in need of forgiveness, the light pours in and a weight is lifted for sins that were committed by virtue of proximity. This last darkness, brought to light, and remembered, is redeemed along with the internal pagan, christian landscape it inhabits.

This redeemed inner wilderness then becomes paradise. From darkness to light, the sun once again takes it's place in the interior landscape, and you can operate once again except now from a new, integrated, wholly redeemed self.

This is the garden of Eden. Paradise. Arcadia, though it be but a shadow world of that former and future kingdom we eventually will reach once again and then.

The Harmonious Balance of Opposites

Just one advantage to having a child is the realization that he is his mother and his father in the flesh, and that the mother and father can see their respective natures in him, and reflect on what they can improve on and what they can be proud in. Mary and I, being the prototypical 'opposites attract' couple, are balanced out by Dylan who in preschool always drew himself with red hair (like his father) yet always exhibited his mother's ability in perceiving trouble in others and offering to help. Somehow, Mary and I did not 'see' qualities of ourselves until they were made apparent in Dylan, and through him, we have become more appreciative of each other as a result of his being born. Mary and I both know, that we neither one truly completed each other in the highest sense, and that Dylan is that third cord in the rope, that now intertwined, now even opposing one another at some points, yet joining one another at other crucial points, form a new rope that when in tension is much stronger now than the three constituent elements were before and alone. Symbolically, our is the trefoil, the three cord rope, and the triangle, all traditionally used to signify the spiritual in ourselves. Thus a balance has been realized, a fullness made complete, in both Mary and I in our son Dylan.

Masses

You can take the most beautiful philosophy, the most cogent argument, the loftiest religion, and share them with just a few people, and even though the congress of ideas, the words spoken, the phrases repeated, are the exact ones you started out with personally, they turn into something, by virtue of being shared with masses of people, completely different and manifest completely different ends than what the philosophy, the most cogent argument, the loftiest religion, meant to do personally and before.

It's like, when as a child, you took a stick and stuck the stick in water and watched it bend, yet you knew the stick was the exact one you held in your hand when it was dry, and that physically, it really had not changed. Yet it was bent. Somehow, when ideas are shared and espoused, they become bent. Though they're not, really.

This slight criticism is now popularly used against politically right wing christians who take the personal message of Jesus' sermon on the mount as holy writ, yet will vote for presidents who will lead us into wars and rumors of wars. The best example of this I can think of, that has stuck in my craw, is the bumper sticker I spy more and more often that simply says 'Who Would Jesus Bomb?'

But don't think this sort of criticism is limited to the 'right.' There are plenty of people who believe that Marx was reading Plato's Republic when he crafted his communist manifesto, and we see the dystopian destruction of the individual and freedom that resulted when masses of people bought into such a beautiful philosophy.

There is still some hidden dynamic we have not tamed that is found in taking one person's ideas and projecting them into the minds of tens. Or hundreds. You see where I'm going with this.

Experience

You can spend years developing logic skills, exercising your noggin through mathematics, and studying history, reading literature, philosophy and so on. The teachers do a great job in inculcating you with the basic knowledge you need for day to day life. Parents raise us, imprinting us with their ideas for success and what it takes to make it in the world. But then there are those things that happen that you've not read about in any textbook. They don't follow the rules of logic, don't have a familiar ethos, or develop any pathos that is congruent to what you've been taught heretofore. But get ready, baby, cause yer about to learn something Plato didn't teach at the Academy, or Aristotle at the Lyceum, or Seneca at the Stoa. That's right. You're about to be hit with the big unkinown, a crisis you could never have imagined or dreamed of in yer wildest dreams. It starts out with an abrupt perturbation, continues on to a lack of all hope and all resources, and culminates in the most terrible and powerful thoughts, feelings, worries and illuminations you've never heard of. Much oscillation is involved in the mind, as it swings wildly back and forth from one extreme to another, where a happy medium is not to be found. And then comes utter failure. Complete devastation. Worse, isolation. And really, a death. But don't fret, my brother, or sister, this is where you find out just how powerful the human body is to withstand suffering, where you find out how resilient, though it is slow in coming, the mind is , finally, how elastic the emotions are, in that they have the power to eventually snap back to a normal mode and yer able to get back off yer hindquaters and start to live again.

It's all relative. You may not be the smartes puppy in the litter when it's all said and done, but you will have made much progress, and will be personally amazed at the wisdom gained, once ya make it to the other shore.

When ya look back, you'll personify the opposition and think of it as follows:

'You didn't pull no punches, but you sure didn't push the river.'

Magic

Magic, or what we would call magic, from what I have read, predates dogma and institutionalized religion. Magic even was practiced in Rome at the zenith of it's glory. Eliphas Levi defines religion as 'magic approved by the authorities'. And certainly, magic pervades creation where Nature only imparts her secrets in parts and parcels, when we are prepared to receive her truths and understand her ways. I think the history of magic, and it's falling out of fashion is the move society has taken from the provincial to the urban. As large populaces flocked to the cities, (while saints left to the wilderness), a new organizing and rational principle was needed to 'tame' magic to the point it could be consumed by masses of people. In the city, the miraculous is heightened by the fact it is occurring in the city, while in the desert, burning bushes, visitations of Lucifer and attendance of angels are more congruous because they are occurring in the pastoral yet wild countryside. In the city, once removed from Natre's undercurrents and underpinnings, man becomes separated from the magical and philosophy and religion take over where the countryfolk have left off. In philosophy, especially the stoic philosophy, Fortune is personified as a fickle mistress and we are taught to train ourselves for the worst, and to accept the uglier side of existence with equanimity and inner grace. In religion, Thomas a' Kempis, in his Imitation of Christ, encourages us to take up the cross and bear our sufferings with all due patience and even fortitude. So in both secular philosphy and religious spirituality, we are encouraged to develop a patience that perhaps provincial magic would allow us to short-circuit and even circumvent. Certainly, one would think a better man is made who has stood the test of trials through time and with as much patience as possible, tempered by the constant stress and struggles of life, finding himself weighted down over a course of time and most important, having survived.

But if one's aim is to simply harmonize with the Natural more readily, and have a deeper understanding of Nature, a happy medium can be struck between heresy and dogma. This happy medium, both informed by magic and yet guided by dogma and philosphy is spirituality, where a deep sense of awe for Nature, and a respect for the organizing principle of religion is bound up all in one.

This, then, is the path I have chosen and clumsily follow, learning as I go.

It Takes Effort

The truth of it is, it takes a lot of hard work. To realize at forty-one how illiterate I really was. That I avoided, while growing up, learning about western culture, ideas and civilization. It takes quite a bit of effort to play catch up on what has transipired in the past, that has led us to where we are today. Also to become aware of virtue, and what it means for virtue to operate in my life. The tempering of the Hebrew and Greek scriptures with a good dose of Stoic philosophy to help develop a proper attitude toward the situation I am in right now. The proper combination of theology, philosophy and literature can aid me in knowing when to be sensitive to others and when to ignore them, when to show compassion and when to give out some tough love, when to let my actions speak or to speak outright. When to be quiet. Most, to realize the truly free things such as Beauty and Art and Nature that are so profuse and so accessable at any moment. But all this is not freely given, especially when taken for granted. At least I surely didn't perceive it as such and before.

Secrets

There is the manifest, that which is detected through the senses, and is judged by Immanuel Kant to be synthetic, aposteriori and empirical. And then there is the hidden. The unintelligible realm. That which can only be hinted at, intuited. Western philosophers treat of two subjects. The seen (or felt or heard or smelled or tasted) and the unseen, or that nebulous realm that can only be represented symbolically by such things as numbers. But my, what a business goes on inside the veil, or beneath it all, or behind the curtain, or any number of things! We always love a good mystery, don't we? And in the realm of the fantastic, it's always the goblins, fairies, undines, sylphs, gnomes and dragons that are lurking just around the corner, only hinted at and never fully realized that can provide the most horror, amazement, or longing. Once a thing is made manifest, conscious and is concrete, we can begin to deal with it and even change it. But beware the hidden! These are the hobgoblins that never come to the light, that are always lurking in the shadows, and never change! Uncharted territory, still, and indeed.

Right Brainers

They make me so jealous. They know the solution to a problem immediately and as it arises, and can't explain how they know. Whle I'm busy consulting manuals and looking up databases, they're already on the move solving the problem. And what they do is correct. Maddeningly, I ask 'how did you do that?' Ha! They can never answer, and are just as mystified by the whole process as I am. And that's just the thing. There is no process! To me, it appears to be chaos, a guessing game, a complete lack of logic, where there is no precedent. Where as I, being a classic left-brainer, thrive on rule and precedent. I don't introduce originality into my work. I'm always plowing through the ancient ruts that so many who have gone before me have already plowed. And right brainers seem to have such control over the moment and the future. They know exactly where they'll be and when. I'm constantly whacking my head into something cause I'm looking backwards. Cause backwards is now familiar terrain to me. I've lived it. So I understand it. It's not new and uncreated. Staid, and on the good side, possibly solid in my ways, I stick to the tried and true method of things, not veering too far off the well trodden path. Some of my best relationships with people are with those folks who have the right brained creative orientation toward life. I think this definitely has been, and is, and always shall be, a case of 'opposites attract.' Perhaps because I crave their creativity and appreciate it though I can never do what they do, and perhaps they look to me as providing balance and a little solidity to the chaotic world they enjoy so much. I think one reason I appreciate the humanities and the arts so much is because I will never truly be able to create something original. I will always know the order of the planets in which they proceed from the sun, the speed of light, sound, the acceleration of gravity in newtons and ft.lbs., and the law of cosines and sines and the pythagorean theorem. But what good does any of this do me other than assure me that some things carry on in an ordered, predictable manner? Most importantly, when I encounter such things that don't have any seeming rhyme or reason, how am I to react?

Right Brainers!

So I Guess I'm Irish?

Well, I don't know. I've only been able to study the maternal side of my family, which is Prussian. But the other day at work I took some gibing from the guys because I didn't realize I might have Irish blood in me. 'My goodness, just look at ya' one of them said. Red hair. Pale skin. Yada Yada Yada. So I did a little research and found out that red hair does originate in northern tribes from the ancient Picts (the modern Scotts) who peopled Ireland. This tribe of people, pagan of course, lived north of Hadrian's wall and were constant harrrassers of the empire. They shared their women, stormed into war naked, and lived in tribes. Believe me, this does not sound like me in the slightest. I use lip balm and hand lotion in the winter for moisturizers for heaven's sakes. I'm completely domesticated to the point I'd rather sit home and read a good book than go out and party with the local savages. The closest I'll ever get to marauding is when I mow down weeds this summer with my weedeater. But I'm going to have to research this a little further. Perhaps my dad's side of the family will turn something up.

Creature Comforts

Forty one is a nice age. I've just gotten used to being myself. Having lived my life concerned with others, I've been afforded a little time to gain some (a little) self wisdom. What I've learned is that I'm more spiritual than religious, more philosophical than dogmatic, and happier when I'm at home with Mary and Dylan than at any other time. I enjoy being a husband and a dad, perhaps taking the two a little too seriously at times. I enjoy reading. Non fiction mostly. History, philosophy, religion, spirituality, esoteric subjects all are quite enjoyable to me. I don't like meanness. In myself or others, and believe that human dignity is something that at best can be grasped at times, but is very difficult to hang onto. In the winters, I enjoy wearing sweaters, ones with snowflakes on them. Or turtlenecks. Corduroys are definitely my favorite trousers to wear and I like my brown oxfords I've worn for at least the past eight years which have been with me through thick and thin. I don't smoke too much, but enjoy the occassional one out on the porch, gazing at the moon and the stars, the same ones everyone sees when they look into the night skies. I like a fair wind blowing. Not a mighty rush of wind, unless I'm on a cliff, but a nice breeze bordering on the brisk. Thick cotton socks are important too. They keep the chill off my toes and are comfortable to walk in. A seat with padding is good. Easy on the hindquarters. These are just a few of the things I've added to my repertoire that I enjoy and appreciate. Little things that make life a little less colder and me a little more friendly.

The Great Unknown - Or Otherwise To Be Known As A Slight Seque Into Rumination

In the eighteenth century, after Mr. Isaac Newton had set down the model for classical physics; when planets, satellites such as the moon and asteroids could be predicted in their courses through the infinity of space, the universe seemed to carry on in a most predictable manner. Perhaps most interestingly, the universe did carry on in a very predictable manner, at least on the large scale scheme of things. But western human development, continuing on it's most peculiar unfoldment in which we understand what is outside of us more than ourselves, was just beginning to offer new topics such as 'why do I fear?' or 'why do I do the exact opposite of what I should?' And true, the problem had been at least identified in the western tradition earlier, in Paul who for example said in one of his letters something to the effect that 'I do what I don't want to do.' But only after centuries of studying the stars, then the sun, then the moon, then the natural cornucopia of the periodic, animal and vegetable kingdoms, did man look to himself and declare 'I know not who I am!' 'I am less predictable to myself than a comet's path that is thousands of miles away!' At this point, Auguste' Comte the social philosopher summed the situation up nicely when he proposed that 'man poses endless need, yet endless danger.' The keyword being 'endless.' As we look out onto a field plain, and then to the horizon, and then to the moon, the sun, the stars, the virtual infinity of space, we take it all in and know we are just as vast. Inside ourselves. There is an endless flow of thought, an endless range of emotion, an endless array of drives rooted in the animal that seem to issue forth from our selves. Whence comes all this activity? The eastern sages had a leg up on western man concerning the psychological and the spiritual. In the Taoist classic the Tao Te Ching, man's predicament is shown to be akin to a person standing in a field who spies another galloping at full thrust on a horse past him. The bystander shouts 'where are you going?' To which the rider exclaims 'I don't know!' The rider is us. We are driven hither and thither by we know not what. The hindu, with his Atman, also made a contribution to the spiritual condition of man, in that there is an element in us that sits atop of it all and says 'I am.' One can dispassionately look upon onesself and say 'I am thinking' or 'I am feeling' or so forth. This deepest ground of being, the Atman, is as ancient truly as anything we can know and something humanity shares in common. Here, the tripartite soul of man comes in handy, as found in Plato's Republic. Man has an animal nature, consisting of drives to survive existentially in the material world, a spirit that sits atop and is the faculty of reason, and a soul, the house of emotions and thoughts that acts as a bridge between the two. In the western tradition, if light is not shed upon the animal nature, if it is not tamed and ruled by first proper emotions, then thoughts, and then dispassionate reason, disaster can strike. And looking upon the twentieth century consisting of wars and rumours of wars, we can surely see these drives and emotions when in one man, are united with another, and then another, only make the irrational fears and uncertainties grow exponentially when found in crowds and masses. In western man, we tend to objectify the nastiness of ourselves in others or in the environment, and consequently act violently to both. If I had to choose, I would say it's the soul, which is represented in the esoteric tradition as water, where the emotions and thoughts are housed, that has caused us so much endless need and endless danger. Water, as we all know, can be deep, still, crystal clear, or on the other hand can be shallow, stagnant, polluted, troubled and foul. Water, essential to life, can destroy life in tidal waves, in undercurrents, in storms, in rivers bursting levees. Water, if not mastered, will just as easily destroy life as give life. In one manifestation, it is a unique and beautiful snowflake and in another, a common and threatening sheet of black ice.

So one can go out in search of the great unknown. Climb mountains. Kayak through untamed rivers. Explore hidden forests. But it is the inner that matches the outer that can be such a blessing and such a curse.