I do not always want to write and certainly not always in the same way or at the same time. Routine does indeed make a very poor master. I seek the freedom to reinvent myself in each new day and moment. I need to know that I am not tied to the past but rather empowered and liberated by its lessons. Any practice, whether creative, personal or spiritual, must be open to reinvention and renegotiation. In each day there must be the possibility of enquiry: curiosity about how else the world might be lived and understood. Towards what horizons do I choose to venture today?
What happens if we can release the need for the internal scripts we create to keep our fragile sense of safety and "okay-ness" intact? What happens if we can learn to truly see and accept ourselves, clear-sighted and unafraid?
Much of my life, I have discovered, is an elaborate narrative created and woven together in order to preserve my sense of self and prevent my self-image from collapsing under the weight of a less-than-perfect perception of reality. Of what am I afraid? Who am I if I am not the person I have written myself to be? Whenever I am tempted to criticise or blame, I am in fact carefully applying a filter between myself and reality so that I can avoid facing the deep-seated fear that I am not who I should or want to be. I am attempting to place discomfort and censure outside myself. Strangely, the more I seek to focus on others, the more I fortify the walls of self-preservation, desperate to create an image of myself in the world that fits the "me" I am attempting to become. How much of the world do I in fact see, and how much is merely the smoke and mirror creations of my ego? If I wish to have compassion for others, if I wish to truly honour all that is sacred in life, it seems that I must first look compassionately and dispassionately upon myself, fully embracing the difficult concept of a radical acceptance of being. Image courtesy Pixabay.com I tend to a pantheistic world view in which we are each a unique and yet interconnected expression of the evolving universe. We each bear the responsibility for Life. Thus, to the extent that we conform to an homogenous external standard, we limit and stunt the growth of Life itself.
"There is a hole in your mind," Jeffrey Sinclair is told in the science fiction series, *Babylon 5*. Unsurprisingly, these words are the precursor to a quest, one on which he does not plan to embark, and one which, once engaged with, will have consequences not only for him as an individual but for the galaxy.
And so it is for all of us. Gloria Steinem argues that our gendered socialisation leads us to see ourselves as incomplete and teaches us to search for the missing parts of ourselves "out there". If we write a list of the ideal qualities we seek in a romantic partner, she suggests, we will find what we are seeking of our lost selves. We look outside for what needs to be found within. This idea of course, clearly extends beyond the romantic: everywhere we look the evidence of our missing selves surrounds us. If I look around my room, for example, almost everything on which my eye alights has a story to tell of desire. Desire for the intangible and numinous, impossibly translated into a desire for possession. Objects of beauty and fascination, symbols of dreams and qualities I ask the world to represent for me. But the more I look and make peace with what feels lacking from who I demand myself to be, or what I demand the world to be, the less need I feel for these objects within my life. More importantly, desire becomes an incredibly powerful learning tool. If I watch its shifting shapes and forms, I can map the path of my growth and learning. The things I wish for today teach me about who I am in the process of becoming and why I want to shape the world according to my image. What do I desire today? And who can I become through owning that desire, looking it in the eye? Who can we all become? We are generally familiar with some version of the maxim that "virtue is its own reward." In other words, if we are good, we will be happy. Bertrand Russell takes exception to this, arguing that the opposite is true: if we are happy, then we will be good.
It was thus with a degree of eager anticipation that I picked up his essay, "In praise of idleness." However, I find myself frustrated and looking for more. Despite his moral and philosophical position on the subject of happiness, he couches his argument in largely economic terms. As I read it, his case largely boils down to something like the following:
Russell's contemporary, Albert Einstein, has stated that "It is the theory which decides what can be observed". In pursuing a largely socio-economic line, Russell fails to address the deeper questions of transformative purpose. As we change, so may our beliefs change, and thus our fundamental observations of relationship within the universe. The science we create through leisure may yield not just greater, but qualitatively different results from those driven by a "work" oriented society. If we recognise the idea that "virtue is its own reward", then we are probably equally familiar with the belief that "the devil makes work for idle hands". What is to be feared in redefining our work ethic? It is left to people like Thoreau to explore the nature and purpose of human experience and to challenge our beliefs about the pursuit of both virtue and happiness. What does it mean to be idle, and how does it change who we become? Image courtesy Pixabay |
Introduction
"Only that day dawns to which we are awake," wrote Thoreau. This blog, in words and pictures, is my attempt to be awake: to be alive to the mystery of life. It is an exercise in gratitude and wonder, and an open invitation to beauty. Archives
May 2019
Categories |