Just Thinking

If the energy of our mind as we share our thoughts, ideas, etc., is simply to persuade others to share our view, then we are already seeing ourselves as “different.” We can be set up and set off by the ingrained pattern of “mutual hostility” or competition (hidden or overt belief).  This is a way that our male mind has seen itself throughout time, in many lives, as our ego has formed, developed, and strengthened as we have created beliefs to define or support our perception of life (the meaning of life).  This is one image that shows our belief in what survival means, rather than evolution. This is a dual image and as we learn and grow as a consciousness we enlighten ourselves with the loving image of who we are  – of us as male and female, rather than simply male or female, in the positive light of our creation as evolving consciousness. We come to know ourselves not as the Lone Warrior battling all forces which may obstruct us from obtaining our Holy Grail, but as the Pilgrim seeking to know himself as one within the world but sent and created of the Spirit – to be in AND of the world in its highest expression as evolving consciousness.

The “lone adventurer” ready to set off into the big, wide world, the Great Unknown that is full of danger, adventure, possibility. It is the same image of when we choose to enter another physical life – with all of the chemical poetry in motion as energy beings, reviewing, sharing, communicating in all sensory ways, then choosing the portal of entry, with consent, and “taking the plunge,” with full excitement as a soul to Begin Again – to learn, grow, to Be. This is the same image parents must have, and children must have, as babies are conceived, born, and nurtured until the day a child sets off for the first day of school – the new adventure, the precipice of a new life in a big world of other children, peers, beyond what we have experienced before. First day of school, first moment of awakening to a new spark of knowing, of knowledge, the first tying of a shoe, the first taste of… whatever awakens that love within us, the first moment of pedaling the tricycle faster and faster into a speed where we feel the independence of movement in a new way; jumping off of a high dive, diving into a pool for the first time, having a first haircut, a first kiss, singing a first song, or hearing one we instantly love, that sings to our cells in a way not like the others. All are part of this amazing Universal language of love within us and which we share through our interaction as physical beings on this Earth with its own expressions that we share and honor as we learn to love.

Stoner - I like Gatsby AND this "Anti-Gatsby"

University of Denver photograph

I just finished John Williams’ 1965 novel, Stoner, a novel John McGahern describes in his introduction as “this classic novel of university life, and the life of the heart and the mind.” It’s a powerhouse of a book – I imagine even for those who have less affection and affinity for “university life” or the pull toward both the flashy polish of Gatsby and the austere precision of Stoner than I have.  Williams’ precise use of words to convey so much so simply is a true gift and a rare one.  He captures the truth of personalities and the energy of their expression in wonderful and thoughtful ways, and by doing so offers an endless palate of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to think about, appreciate, explore, and to learn from.  It is very sad in its seemingly relentless sense of isolation, yet reading Stoner is like an excursion into a certain kind of art gallery – old masters, the musty sense of reverence for “pure knowledge,” the life of the mind and of learning, and a persistent quiet reverie as the reader absorbs all that is happening in this intense microcosm which expands into a whole world and reverberates beyond. Love, lust, and learning all make an appearance, each given life in particular ways.  The “meaning of life,” of a particular life and lives, is laid bare for inquiring minds and hearts to know themselves. To read this is an honor – is to honor Williams for his creation, and to honor the gift of life itself, which we all share.  Without honor and the Values of the Spirit which begin with love and are expressed with a quiet but firm and growing dignity (which comes from learning and experience), we are left with sadness and the pettiness of confusion and the false power that the ego wields.  There is much poetic beauty in Williams’ language of “love becoming,” even as he describes the way the softness of snow, the whiteness of the sky suffused with snow, the permeating silence which invites the mind into a state beyond the nature it has known and experienced before.

The saddest thing to me may be what Tim Kreider wrote in his October 2013 New Yorker review - that wisdom is "perennially out of style." The popularity of the novel in Europe makes sense to me. Older sensibilities learn that loss does not necessarily lead to "failure."

“In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.” (195)

Something I wrote a few nights ago fit into the influence of his book more than I realized, until I read the last few pages.

Nautilus.

                Spiralling into me.

The book between worlds

The pages

Walking the pages

As if struck by chords

Harmony falling

Sounding and falling

We are holding on

Thin wisps of light

Gleaming, powerful

Beaming like strings

Moonlight

                Into morning

A new day, hope

And words illuminated.