Thursday, April 16, 2015

Anchors

Visible within the window of the Magic 8 ball of daily infinity - the word defensive. My own defensiveness and that of everyone else. I know my defensiveness is at the root of so much of my mood in relation to the world, clamped down clammed up. When I go to the store and the clerk sells me something at a price that is shameful, I can feel the defensiveness and how it abuses the soul, cutting it off from me and all of creation. The expectations of a broken system fracture humanity.

To my amazement, the war of religions continues - each one being defensive about treating something subjective as if it were objective and needing to prove the other wrong. Heads rolling. Recently someone complained about people who find their spiritual communion in nature instead of in churches, as if Christ himself hadn't done so for 40 days. Someone else I know is sarcastic about Jesus as if he never saw through fundamentalist distortions. Such an offensive is natural for one who makes the claim that spiritual communion can only happen within the 4 walls of a specific church or temple and disenfranchises all other spiritual claims. How often this happens, even now, with people believing that they alone have the true spiritual key.  Many have the need for the spiritual support of a community and others may need to be alone so as to absorb reality for itself instead of the promoted representations always created within groups.

We also at times run into the war of therapeutic alliances, cognitive behavioral therapists against analysts, depth therapists, humanists and others, all claiming to have the best way. The equivalent to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle came in the form of a study that showed that all approaches helped equally. Certainly there's a lot going on in the sentience of a therapeutic interchange besides the prescribed techniques associated with a specific discipline.

If we could stop trying to justify our subjective views and choices to realize that we are all subjective all the time we'd be kinder and more humble I think. It doesn't mean we have to stop believing what we believe, it simply means we allow others their specific views. Subjective is how we are supposed to be, because it is our birthright to seek different expressions of experience. There are many right answers. We don't have to justify what we need and what we are attracted to.

The intensity behind conflicts driven by defensiveness seem to go back to early life when we felt that we couldn't have what we needed without betraying or disappointing ones we loved and depended on. As if one were ever wrong for wanting...more food, more love, more of a sense of specialness, more of a sense of importance, more safety, more empowerment. What is that part of us that wants to be right about things that have no right answer? The part that wants to be beyond criticism, the part that was perhaps violated by negation, dismissal and abuse.

We've only ever been lovely fools happy for no reason or injured fools pretending to be righteous. Only you know what makes sense to you, what you need and it's up to you to be honest and surrender up all the taints seeping in through hairline fractures caused when you were resented for needing what you needed, for being who you are, for seeing things how you see them, for having your own agency or perhaps for having made the mistakes you needed to make. There are only fools in this world, fools building hadron colliders so as to taste their own blood instead of living their own human lives. This is one ancvery expensive flavor of folly.

Another way to look at it is that every human being needs some kind of anchor from moment to moment - anchors take the form of food, rituals, obsessions, practices, goals. If those 4 walls are your personal anchor go there but don't make claim that others should as well. They are walking their own path anchoring by the directives of their own inborn elegance and wisdom which will take them towards a different expression of experience, perhaps through thickets of what appear to you as mistakes and misfortunes. When anchors aren't grasped so tightly we naturally understand a more vast array of meanings.

Grimm 23 The Mouse, The Bird and The Sausage explores the way in which delicate systemic balances can be undone by peering analytical eyes that cause a fracture of confidence, that rush in to tell someone how it is  and what they ought to do. It illustrates Blake's innocence to experience progression, and hopes to leave us with the benefit of the informed innocence, in which we know we are fools, know that any other answer is more or less fraught. Knowing that things remain equal (ly foolish), we are able to revel in the particular psychic structure that leaves life tasty and savory.

2 comments:

Sextant said...

I love your writing and your thoughts. We share many similar views although I suspect that yours are driven by a lot more IQ than mine are.

Regarding the wars of religions, it puts me into mind when I was in high school in the mid 60s, there were Ford men and Chevy men (boys actually but you couldn't tell them that). Everything devolved down to Fords suck and Chevies rule, or vice versa, depending on which camp you were in. Objectively, I liked both, but when in Rome do as the Romans do, so I was somewhat variable to the needs of the mob about me. Anyhow religions sort of strike me like car brands. They do a lot to push the brand recognition, even to the degree of having hood ornaments...crosses of various designs, star of David, crescent moons, Buddha's, many armed Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Like a Chevy, Ford or Mercedes, they want instant recognition of the brand. Then they all have their little beliefs and rules and regulations in an attempt to have exclusivity. You can only get this feature here! I think of the many ways in which I am going to hell:

Wasn't fully immersed when baptized
Wasn't baptized as an infant.
Wan't baptized as an adult.
Mixed meat and dairy.
Had premarital sex.
Used contraception.
Maintained false beliefs regarding bread and wine.
Touched my wife when she was unclean.
On and on it goes. I have racked up an impressive list of technical sins as well as the very real ones...unkindness, hatred, gossip. The technical sins you have to read about, the real ones you know when you do them because your conscience puts you on notice.

If you can't please them all, please none of them. That said though, I am something of an Everythingest. An atheist told me, that humanity has a God shaped hole in their hearts. If there is no God then we will invent one to fill the hole. How can I say the hole in my heart is better, more righteous, than the hole in yours? Is any one piece of a jigsaw puzzle better than another piece? It only fits in one place in the puzzle, and without the puzzle is not complete.

I have come to think here lately that maybe God derives from a principle known as emergence...complexity emerges out of simplicity. Take any one ant and you have a pretty stupid thing, yet the ant hill has an amazing "intelligence" about it. Using the scalpel of reductionism try to find a thought in a human brain. Keep cutting and you end up with a myriad of synapses and a bunch of chemicals. Try to fabricate the image of your daughters face with that. Yet slap a bunch of neurons together feed it oxygen, glucose, and give it some squirts of hormones and neurotransmitters and you can have a fond memory of your first kiss while looking at a landscape by Bierstadt and listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. How can all that be happening with nothing more than a bunch of synapses? Our minds emerge from our synapses, and I hope our Souls emerge from our minds, and just maybe when you get enough Souls, God emerges from them. I hope we are not mere electrochemical goo bags the walked out of a swamp.

Great post and blog. I have booked marked it and hope to read more of your thoughts in the future.

amarilla said...

"Our minds emerge from our synapses, and I hope our Souls emerge from our minds, and just maybe when you get enough Souls, God emerges from them." From one goo bag to another, that feels true. Often it seems like the people I meet in the day are in an unconscious way trying to bring me back to Life.