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I just found this on craigslist. Painful, and moving, and touches me in so many ways.
I graduated from college in May, and this summer seemed like a good time to go through the box of papers and assignments I had been saving since the start, both to reminisce and to do a little cleanup.
Tucked in a folder of an old notebook at the very bottom of the box was the essay that follows. Written in longhand, it was the first assignment from the first class in my first semester.
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As I ponder language and communication, I begin to recognize that there are different objects to which I wish to relate, and they require different approaches.
The first two are experiences that, for better or for worse, are more introspective and mystical endeavors for me, requiring the exclusion of outside relationships. They are a turning inward and upward of soul and spirit.
The latter two are in some ways the opposite; they are the turning outward and downward of soul and spirit. Of course, this is very rough; others might experience God as being more fully alive and immanent in this world than in any place “higher.” But I’m just explaining what I currently experience, for whatever reason.
I feel that I’ve made my path one that’s weighted more fully towards the first two. It’s the latter two that I have troubles with. I’ve made inroads but in fits and starts, and as much backtracking as advancement. Read the full post
The way that can be spoken
Is not the enduring way.
The name that can be named
Is not the enduring name.
Nameless is the origin of the ten thousand things.
Named is the ten thousand things’ mother.- Dao de jing, chapter 1
It’s like this.
In the beginning there was God, beyond all possible comprehension, simply the One.
But in the Creation of the cosmos, the One became Many.
It’s here in this world of the interaction among the Many that we live.
Since we’re separate beings, unaware or unable to reconnect to the One that binds all of us, we have to find secondary means of interaction.
This is language.
My definition of language, therefore, is the interaction between one thing and another. Read the full post
A book I’ve been reading based on Neurolinguistic Programming, Communication Magic, describes more clearly what I was trying to say in my last post, from a different angle.
“The map is not the territory” succinctly highlights that we do not operate upon the world directly, but indirectly through our maps (or models) of the world.
Herein lies the magic. The magic lies in the very structure and syntax of our words, pictures, sounds, sensations, smells, etc. … Precisely because our maps or models of the world powerfully influence and govern all of our experiences, if we change the map, our experiences change. What we call transformation of personality, awareness, emotion, and the emergence of new skills and abilities, arise from our mental frames.
Pretty consistent with, say, Seth’s dictum that “you create your own reality” through the structure of your beliefs. Where it gets interesting is in the how.
Our maps differ from the territory in that we have deleted lots of information. We do that to prevent ourselves from getting overwhelmed. Further, to cope with things, we have created generalizations to summarize and synthesize patterns. And in deleting and generalizing data, we thereby distort things according to our neurological, cultural, and individual constraints.
… The richer our map, the more accurate, adequate, and useful our menu, the more choices. The more impoverished our model, the fewer choices. The richer and fuller our linguistic maps, the richer our mind.
And, conversely, the more inaccurate, inadequate, or distorted the map, the more this is reflect in experience.
This feels like a succinct way of describing my problem. My map of the world is too heavily weighted in the realm of the printed word. I have an underlying need to participate in stories, but the only tool I have to do so is reading. To pursue alternative stories, I need to expand my map, by developing other modes of perception (the senses) and participation (skills and abilities). This will take an input of energy and grunt work or dirt time.
The whole world seems to be made of stories.
I’ve written in recent posts that I’ve been trying to engage in the challenge of redefining this world as something other than hostile, dangerous, and unknown. As I turn my mind in that direction, I’ve begun to notice how prevalent stories are; and how blind I’ve been to their pervasive influence.
What do I mean? Well, stories are about something. They create a process of relationship between one thing and others; they have a beginning, middle, and end. They help situate a person in time and place, and relate to other beings or forces or objects who are also situated in time and place.
I used to wish that I could transcend culture and context, and experience things with pure perception, to be in a world of universal truth. This is in fact the path of the mystic, to unify with the One that is beyond time and space. By definition, that One is eternal, nonlinear, without story but encompassing all stories. And this is the goal and the heart of many internally-oriented meditation techniques: to quiet the mind, to step beyond the ego-self that binds us to this time and this place, in order to access that which is transcendent.
But the instant you descend into a world of time and space, something must occur to mediate between that which has descended and that which is still eternal. This is language.
The instant you inhabit this world, language spins out and becomes story. Read the full post
My recent post, “Emulating Evil,” touched on violence as a metaphor, or an extension, of the constant need to negotiate with something outside oneself in order to survive and thrive in this dark world. Lately, then, I’ve been thinking about martial arts. I’ve been thinking about my experience a few years ago with Chen tai chi master Gianfranco Pace, and how seeing his awesome ability made me quit tai chi. I’ve been thinking about observing Shaolin master Wong Kiew Kit a couple of years ago, and how his ability made me drop out of kung fu class for awhile. I’ve been thinking about how I didn’t think I had the heart to learn how to fight.
But I’m beginning to realize that there might be a bit more complexity in my response than I gave myself credit for.
Let’s take a step back for a moment. Martial arts these days are practiced by many as a hobby. Even the masters of the art, what do they use it for? Do they do anything with it other than teach students and compete among themselves? Most of them don’t. Their hand-to-hand combat skills aren’t relevant in war these days, or even in private self-defense. A punk with a gun could shoot a famous xingyi master. So martial arts tend to devolve into their traditions and competitions. Are these things what it’s all about? Read the full post
Trying to engage the immanent, the Divine in the mundane things of this world, means running headlong into that which is petty, dark, impure, and even evil. Spirit shines freely where things are already pure, but that’s not the way most of the world is. And maybe that’s not even the way the world is supposed to be.
In the Jewish mystical text called the Zohar, there’s a little parable that talks about evil. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan paraphrased it thus, in his book Jewish Meditation:
A king once wanted to test his son to see if he would be a worthy heir to the throne. He told his son to keep away from loose women and to remain virtuous. Then he hired a woman to entice his son, instructing her to use all her wiles with him. The Zohar then asks the rhetorical question: Is the woman not also a loyal servant of the king?
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My approach to mystical experience has, of late, evolved from a general opening to the Great Mystery to a more specific posture in relation to the Divine, almost of prayer. That sounds esoteric and almost Christian, but it stems directly from the discovery that the sensitivity and lopsided energetic accumulation that I’ve been experiencing in my body only feel properly distributed and balanced when I’m in communion with God. That is to say, I seem to have discovered a psychophysiological need to be in contact with the holy. Not unlike a healthy craving for good vegetables.
I’ve found that I seem to be less lonely and more harmonious in my soul when I take the time to contact something that’s higher than me and beyond me, and when I read things and perform practices that are based in that contact. The holy seems to provoke more holiness and that’s a good thing.
But then I run into what seems to be an age-old religious problem: the conflict between the transcendent and the immanent. The variety of mystical experience I describe is weighted toward the transcendent end of the spectrum, i.e. God as something that is beyond this world, or if He is in the world, then He is obscured by it as much as expressed in it. It feels positive to have that kind of relationship, in some ways — it simplifies everything into a single thing, an almost visible white thread connecting me with the heavens.
Life isn’t limited to that though. The other end of the spectrum of opinions on the matter of what is Divine is the immanent, which emphasizes that Spirit is in everything that’s manifest, and therefore it is those things that need to be worshipped. Think animism, think druids, think shamanism.
Both are true, although some people will emphasize one or the other and perhaps even take it to extremes. I prefer the measured approach.
Where I run into problems is on a practical scale. Read the full post
I recently wrote to a leading primitive skills instructor in the Southwest, who had this to say:
There is no sustainability in the southwest just from current populations alone. Most everything is trucked in, and “development” has replaced using water for farming … The surrounding communities have plans to pump the main aquifer that supports the [local] river with a 30 plus mile long pipeline, etc. etc. etc.
That said, it depends on what you want, how much you know, what you’re willing to put up with, and so on.
Water is a critical concern for us all around this area, so it is not the land of milk and honey, which is one of the reasons I like it. If you’re a Fremen, as in Dune, consider it, if not, consider your options carefully. This is not an easy place to be “sustainable.”
I tried the wilderness warrior route and I can’t hack it. If I don’t get three square meals a day, my blood sugar starts going haywire. My body wasn’t born with the best constitution. So I think I have to really carefully consider going to a place where I know I’ll have to work hard physically to survive in the long run.
The Pacific Northwest is looking increasingly attractive.
After I graduate in December, Abigail and I are planning to move. We haven’t known where, but we had tentatively narrowed it down to a town in the Southwest and a town in Oregon.
Just a few days ago we kind of playfully decided that we would move to the Southwest. It was a light decision from a brief, casual conversation, but felt like a step toward making that final commitment.
Then Abigail was browsing on some real estate websites and found the house of a guy we had met when we visited. It was for sale.
It was kind of a shock. He wasn’t the only factor in our attraction to the town, but he was a significant presence in that town, because he was one of the main figures at the center of a progressive community of ecologically sustainably minded people.
That whole area — Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, southern California — tends to be pretty dry, containing a lot of desert, to one extent or another. And that had been my main concern in moving to the area: It didn’t seem like there was the water to sustain the region, especially with such burgeoning populations in that triangle of Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Knowing that there was an ecologically-focused community in that high-desert town made me feel better about it.
I e-mailed the guy after we found his house online, and he confirmed that he was in fact moving, and not just out of his house, not just out of town, but out of the entire region, for precisely the reason I feared: He was concerned about long-term sustainability in the area. Specifically, rising oil prices combined with the lack of a local agricultural economy made it likely that transportation of essential resources such as food would become critical.
And guess where he was moving to?
The exact town we were considering in Oregon. Read the full post
