Inner Experience

May 17, 2020 3 Comments

inner experience

“Artwork by Daniel B. Holeman ” http://www.AwakenVisions.com

“The inner self is not part of our being, like a motor in a car. It is our entire substantial reality itself, on its highest and most personal and most existential level. It is like life, and it is life: it is our spiritual life when it is most alive. It is the life by which everything else in us lives and moves. It is in and through and beyond everything that we are.” –Thomas Merton from his book, “The Inner Experience.”

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“We are not capable of union with one another on the deepest level until the inner self in each one of us is sufficiently awakened to confront the inmost spirit of the other.” — Thomas Merton from his book, “The Inner Experience.”

Confronting the inmost spirit of another requires a very particular set of circumstances. According to Merton, unless we are reasonably awakened to our own inner self, we cannot hope to unite with that same inner self in others, at least in any sort of deeply meaningful way. He also suggests that our inner self is not just one part of our being, but rather “our entire substantial reality,” while still existing “beyond everything that we are,” as temporal human beings. What an intriguing thought it is to suppose that our entire substantial reality might transcend all that we are as human beings.

The idea of our inner life being the source of “the life by which everything else in us lives and moves,” seems to suggest the existence of a clear connection between our inner spiritual lives and our temporal lives. If we consider this to be valid as a way of accurately describing the phenomenon within us, then surely the connections we feel to others, whose inmost spirits are equally transcendent of our human nature, must also represent a connection to that same nature.

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http://absolutefractals.com/?page_id=709

Connecting to our own inner life, awakening to the inmost spirit within us, is not a simple matter for many of us. Life in our century has accelerated in so many ways, and the demands of daily life, combined with the deluge of stimuli from every form of media and communication in our day, leaves precious little time for contemplation and the work of awakening to what is both essential and insubstantial within us. As anyone who has been reading along here can see, my own process of awakening has been tumultuous and burdensome, many times requiring what felt like Herculean efforts to sustain my momentum, and there have been many periods when I was desperate to climb up and out of a feeling of despair which nearly drained me of any hope for success and forward movement.

Equally evident, though, appearing often at precisely the moment when I needed it most, throughout many of the years in which this struggle took place, was the almost miraculous presence of other vital spirits. The more I searched and struggled to awaken to my entire substantial reality, the more profoundly the arrival of such spirits seem to affect me, often becoming a lifeline or a saving grace that helped me to hold on, to push forward, or to reclaim lost hope.

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Upon my return to Massachusetts in the spring of 1975, shortly after my experience in the forest, (Deep Forest Vision, 4-11-2014), I encountered another vital spirit, whose arrival in this period of my life sparked the beginning of a flame of awakening, propelling me forward toward an awareness that I still carry within me as I write. As can be true with many such encounters in our lives, I didn’t fully grasp the significance of the connection right away, nor did I have any sense of how it might impact my process of awakening at first. It was clear, though, that this was a compelling spirit, and I became swiftly entangled in a web of emotion and desire that was impossible to ignore. We spent much of the early time together in long, penetrating conversations, exploring the worlds within us, imagining the possible futures that might lay ahead, and, as time progressed, in close personal proximity which became increasingly difficult to conclude when the time came to part.

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The intensity of the training assignment at the military base made for a formidable obstacle to distractions outside of the school. Engaged in the principles of cryptography and decipherment of encoded transmissions, the daily grind of regimented and focused learning took all of my energies to maintain and absorb. The numerous technical details and methodologies employed in this training were designed specifically to engage the students as analysts of complex information, and there were no computers or digital devices to assist us. The tools of the training were pencil and paper, statistical analysis, and hard-won experience from years of development and intense efforts of operators in the field before us. The image above is the door to the high security areas, that I stood in front of every morning before entering the hallways to the secret classrooms. It was a sight I would never be able to forget.

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Each morning, we would pass through the security checkpoints, being smartly reminded by the officer in charge to keep our viewpoint looking forward and not to stray from the designated path to our classroom. This was not open for discussion. “Eyes front and keep moving,” was the standing order. The covers on the windows have long since been removed in this image, but the memory of standing at my station at attention until directed to “take seats,” in the cramped and musty rooms of the training areas is still vivid in my memory. This was serious business and you had better keep your focus on the task ahead.

When the class was dismissed at the end of the week, so long as you weren’t required to report for other duties, the local area had many points of interest and options for a young soldier to explore, but for me, the first order of business was to fly to nearby Clinton, Massachusetts to visit the vital spirit who lived there. These encounters seem to break through every barrier placed in the way, and even though they sometimes ran in opposition to virtually every practical and temporal circumstance outside of that “oasis in the forest,” they frequently contained some of the most powerful intuitive experiences of my life up to that point. I was occasionally overwhelmed by their intensity, and very quickly identified and was drawn toward this kindred spirit. There was almost a hypnotic effect to being in her presence. It felt as if I was only truly alive in her presence, and in some sort of suspended animation in between visits.

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One afternoon driving back from a week of especially intense training, I was overcome by a keen sense of her presence spiritually. It seemed so unlikely to my rational mind that there could have been such a connection between us, and I supposed my reluctance to accept that it was even possible was part of my unconscious doubts, but there I was nearly gasping with a sense that she was in some sort of distress. I had always been fiercely empathetic and sensitive to distress in others, but generally those experiences took place in their presence. This was something altogether different. The pain in my heart on this night was unlike any other I had known. Intellectually I had to acknowledge that I was experiencing it, and emotionally it felt as though there might be some purpose to it, but spiritually where the effect was most severe, I was totally without even a shred of a hint as to how to proceed.

I attempted to call the house, but there was no answer. We had arranged to meet the following day, and I hadn’t expected her to be home that night, but didn’t know what else to do. By this time, I had begun to record my thoughts and feelings in a notebook when compelled by circumstances to do so, and on this night, I wrote the following:

“How shall I begin to describe such immense feelings as those which fill my soul this evening. How indeed, can one put into words, the images and sensations which flow across the chasm of thoughts and emotions? Truly, how could my words do anything but fall short of precise expression? So many times I have struggled to free myself from the grasp of this journey. How many hours have I passed between knowledge and ignorance, retention and loss, comprehension and failing to understand? My heart swirls in a sea of indecision. My heart seems to beg for fulfillment and yet my consciousness warns with each step forward. Never before have I felt such complete hesitance to make a move. The path that beckons is my very life force, yearning to rise and follow.”

That evening, as I reluctantly closed my eyes to sleep, I felt a lessening of this sensation, but awoke during the night from a powerful and disturbing dream. Exhausted and worried, I drifted between wakefulness and sleep for the remaining hours until dawn.

….next time….the dream and the movement forward….

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Preparing for the Unknown

May 9, 2020 8 Comments

In a recent review of my writings from my time in Europe as a young soldier, I was prompted to reflect upon how the events prior to my departure from America set the stage for my experiences in that time frame, which sparked additional reflection on what has been a lifelong concern–taking the initial steps on a journey toward the unknown.

 

 

As a young boy, without fully understanding the cause or having any clear explanation for certain personal experiences, or being able to associate those events with any sort of sophisticated theory or philosophy, I still somehow seemed to know that what I had experienced at certain times contained elements or aspects outside of normal temporal boundaries. I could not yet describe them as such when they occurred, and was profoundly naïve about the world in a number of ways, but I accepted that the nature of these happenings were true and real, even though they did not fit well into the narratives I was being taught during a strict religious upbringing.

I can vividly recall moments in my youth when I felt, what seemed to me at the time to be, the presence of another life-force or energy that was somehow influencing my responses to the unexplained events, and thought of them as either some kind of guidance or warning. As a five year old child, coming home from school, I once narrowly missed being struck by a car as I was about to run out from between two other cars. For some reason, I suddenly stopped myself and hesitated just long enough to witness the fenders and side panels of a passing car go whooshing by me. There were other moments too, just as vivid in their own way, when I recall expecting to see particular individuals who suddenly appeared, and when anticipated events inexplicably unfolded right in front of me.

 

 

In several other especially troubling moments, I felt as though I was outside of myself, witnessing events from a short distance away from my body, alternately experiencing moments of dread, as well as moments of incredible lightness of being or delight, for no apparent reason. Even though I did not yet have the vocabulary to express these events in those terms, in retrospect, I now understand that many of them were simply moments of synchronicity with the environment I occupied at that time, without truly understanding how it was possible.

All of these indications slowly began to make more sense as I struggled to come to terms with my experiences during my military training in Massachusetts. Whatever the explanation actually might have been, it was clear that I needed to attend to exploring these matters with some urgency, since they seemed to be accelerating in frequency, and increasing in intensity.

 

 

For a time, they would occur almost daily, and it took me by surprise on a number of occasions to find myself “zoning out,” during Morse code training, typing the dots and dashes on a manual typewriter, when I noticed that the coded groups of random characters suddenly dropped off the page to become words and sentences. Had I not been most often in voluntary sessions of practice, it might have become more noticeable to my instructors. There were times when I had to take off my headset and walk away briefly in order to clear my mind so that I could return to copying the required code.

Sadly, I was not always able to retrieve these sheets in a timely manner, and was only occasionally able to hide them in my pocket and take them with me. Classroom protocol prohibited such actions, and papers from practice sessions were routinely burned afterwards. Often I would simply have to memorize as much as I could of key phrases or of particular passages in order to write them down afterwards.

 

 

Once I had completed that phase of my training, I knew that I was on a path leading me somewhere important to my well-being, and I discovered that once I began to be more accepting of these “eruptions,” I seemed to have more control over them. Resisting them had only led to an increased difficulty in managing them, so I decided instead to embrace the process and not to resist the flow of this energy through me. That decision, in turn, facilitated a more balanced response when I encountered these events and increased my ability to retain the spirit of those episodes until a more advantageous opportunity came to record them.

By the time I had completed my training in Massachusetts, I was in the running to graduate at the top of my class. There was an intense competition for that top slot and on the day of the final exam, I was in a head-to-head battle with my associate, Marilyn, who had matched me grade-for-grade through most of the course. As the test progressed, the senior instructors were all standing around our positions at the mock equipment stations, meticulously recording our every response to the preplanned scenarios that had been fed into the machines, mimicking a live mission in the field. Others who had already been disqualified eventually joined in the intense monitoring of the two remaining operators—myself and Marilyn.

 

 

When the exercise was completed, we had both obtained the correct result, and the report which printed out matched the requirements precisely. The instructors began conferring like referees trying to decide on a controversial call on a close play. Much to my dismay, one of the instructors had noticed that I had not set one of the standard controls for ensuring a clear signal, which required the operator to set a knob on the control panel to boost the RF gain to maximum. In this case, that boost wasn’t necessary to get the correct result, but it was the only difference between the two competitors, and since it was a standard part of the procedure, the win went to Marilyn.

I protested briefly that the goal of the test exercise was to capture the signal precisely, which I had accomplished, but the senior instructor insisted that under different conditions it might not have been sufficient, and that the standard was set for that reason. Our fellow students applauded as I shook Marilyn’s hand and congratulated her on her victory. She smiled widely at me and thanked me for being so gracious in defeat.

 

 

It was an exceptional moment at the apex of my military training in Massachusetts, and even as I watched her receive her reward, a promotion and a bonus weekend of leave added to her record, circumstances were already swirling around a sudden change in the trajectory of my journey, which would have a profound effect beyond anything I could have anticipated.

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The Silence In My Room

April 26, 2020 5 Comments

 

The silence in my room hangs over me
Like a wet towel draped across my legs.
It feels heavier than it should since
The song about you that used to play
Repeatedly in my head finally stopped.

 

I don’t remember exactly when it stopped.
Distracted so long by chaos and confusion,
I had to pretend not to notice
When my heart would prod me to remember
What it felt like to clasp your hand in mine.

 

So many years have passed now that even
My brain seems not to mind anymore.
Nothing feels the same even when
I glance backwards over my shoulder,
Still somehow looking for you.

 

Forced by circumstance to abandon the dream,
Or at least to let go of its rounded edges,
It still persisted to float in front of me
When the house was quiet enough
To listen to the thumping in my chest.

 

Even now, I sometimes attempt to conjure once again,
That moment of superbly fashioned bliss,
When my heart would fill effortlessly at
The mere sight of your face as you approached
With that silly sensual grin beaming toward me.

 

The dream hasn’t ended completely just yet,
But the song seems to have fallen away;
I can’t seem to overcome its reluctance
Or to prod it to resume the dreamy tune
That once serenely filled the silence in my room.

 

© April 2020 by JJHIII24

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Time Passes Away, But Slowly

April 25, 2020 2 Comments

 

“Quartering the topmost branches of one of the tall trees, an invisible bird was striving to make the day seem shorter, exploring with a long-drawn note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility, that one felt it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.” ― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

 

As I wrote in a previous post, the time will soon arrive when the tree out front of the house will have to be removed, but with the pandemic slowing everything down, it has been postponed for the time being, and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to photograph both the tree out front and the larger one out in the backyard. Reviewing the images, I was struck by the sense of how much larger they seemed to be these days, and decided to see if I could find some earlier pictures to compare. Much to my surprise, I was able to locate several from the day we moved in back in 1990, almost exactly thirty years ago. It seemed like a natural development to then place them side-by-side and the resulting images showed a degree of growth and expansion that is eye-catching.

Aside from the notable differences in the appearance of the house from the various improvements and replacement windows, the girth and height of the limbs is clearly visible, and several of the limbs from years of storms and wind are clearly missing in the recent images. Periodically, the power company trims the branches near the power lines as a matter of course also, but it’s usually just a few of the higher branches, and now the necessity of having to lop off so many of the larger branches has sealed the fate of our arboreal friend. We’ve accepted this necessity and understand that all lifespans are finite throughout the life cycles of every organism, but all life forms have their own unique value in the ecosystem and should be preserved and protected as far as possible. In this instance, we have acknowledged that there is sufficient cause for clearing the area, and will honor the importance of the tree by storing the wood for future use.

 

 

Digging a little deeper through the family archive, I was able to locate several images I took of the tree in the backyard, and again was quite surprised by the huge difference in the width and growth upwards that took place over the last thirty years. The backyard tree was one of the key selling points when we were first considering several of the homes in the area, not only because it would obviously be an asset as far as providing shade in the summer months, but also because it seemed to dominate the landscape in the yard in a way that gave me confidence that it would provide much more as a backdrop for all the future events that would take place in the years to come. We were going to be raising our children in whatever home we chose, and it felt like this tree represented a solid foundation for taking on that important task. Shortly after moving in, in the first Spring, I photographed our gang standing by the old girl.

 

 

They are all grown up now, but the backyard tree was a constant presence during every outdoor family event at our home in their young lives, and it has been a constant companion for us all. It’s especially interesting to look at the early image now, side-by-side with the recent one, to see the other changes that took place all around the tree. Even to my attentive eye, the tree never actually seemed to change at all as the years passed, but in fact, as the time slowly passed, enormous changes were taking place inside the tree, hidden from our eyes by the nature of such gradual exponential growth on such a small scale that it was virtually invisible. Every year the branches would come alive in the Spring, dropping the seed packs all over the yard and the deck, and every Summer the lush greenery would sprout predictably turning the view into a jungle of green and shade, and every Autumn, the leaves faithfully burst into vivid colors that could reliably astound.

 

 

Even in Winter, the tree became a vital part of the backyard landscape, and provided the same steady, constant, reliable presence, all throughout the blizzards and bitter cold.

 

 

 

 

 

There are many changes that take place in a lifetime, some are fleeting and some lasting, which can alter us in ways we did not expect or want, but which, nonetheless, result in forward movement toward the person we WILL be. We cannot always predict the consequences of change, regardless of whether we initiate the change deliberately or it is thrust upon us by circumstance. Ultimately, change will come, one way or another, and the only sensible role we can play in the process, once it takes hold, is in shaping our response to the change. The degree to which it can be said that we might actually be able to participate in directing the course of change when it comes, depends largely on the person we are when it occurs, and our level of experience in dealing with the changes we encountered in the past.

The very nature of life, as demonstrated over hundreds of millions of years of evolution on our planet, is to adapt to changing circumstances. We rarely consider this background of change over many epochs of time as relevant to our cosmically brief existence as sentient beings, but it seems clear that our lives today, even down to the changes that occur within our own sphere of influence over a single, human lifetime, are one of the many consequences of the countless changes that have manifested over the millennia, and by that reckoning, we must then suppose that our adaptive responses to the changes occurring in our own lives, in some way, affect the continuum of which we are all an essential component.

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Reading in a Quiet House

April 15, 2020 3 Comments

 

The simple pleasures are often the ones that fall to the side when life gets complicated or hectic in its pace and most often, out of necessity, we are compelled to engage in the more immediate tasks and responsibilities that such circumstances require of us.  When we all recently had to confront the consequences of a global pandemic, again out of necessity, those of us in “non-essential” roles and occupations found ourselves isolated from most of our normal daily routines and social associations. The resulting conditions suddenly presented us with a much greater amount of time alone or at least with very few options with regard to activities and opportunities beyond the boundaries of our immediate locations at home.

 

 

Depending on the personal resources each of us can bring to bear on such circumstances, and the degree of wellness we experience during this time, the “social distancing” mandated by “an invisible enemy” created an environment where the constant stimulation of our modern existence dropped off precipitously, leaving many of us to our own devices as far as how to fill the time normally consumed by the routines of work and social interactions of every sort. Those who depended heavily on such interactions and work obligations for deciding which activity would take priority, suddenly find themselves in a kind of middle ground between the two worlds of routine activity and the strangeness of unexpected isolation.

 

We can certainly appreciate the challenges for parents with small and school-age children at home, as well as caretakers of those who require daily assistance under these conditions, and must acknowledge the difficulty for those whose dependents may be geographically distant. My own familial circumstances, as the parent of six grown children widely dispersed across the Northeast corridor and several southern states, at least has a familiar amount of social distancing experience taking place as a matter of course, but the social limitations and travel restrictions imposed by the current crisis affects even these routines, as visitations which were planned and might have taken place must now be postponed in the interest of reducing the spread of a highly contagious virus wreaking havoc now throughout all fifty states.

 

 

No one would wish to characterize these circumstances as advantageous in any broad sense of the word, and the toll it is taking is nothing short of tragic for thousands of families across the globe.  The pain of loss and the terrible suffering of tens of thousands of individuals across our world now could only be described as completely awful by any measure we might apply to such circumstances. Our own hearts must surely empathize with those inflicted during this time, and the stories of loved ones lost or suffering inflict us all with their potent emotional and psychological effects. We must continue to take every precaution to avoid exposure and maintain vigilance until the threat subsides sufficiently to allow a gradual return to resuming any semblance of our previous daily lives.

 

In the meantime, assuming that our mandatory isolation is taking place in a safe and illness-free environment with our immediate family or normally present occupants, or perhaps even with only ourselves, the task then becomes how to occupy our time and to maintain some degree of equanimity while we endure the crisis.

 

Even a brief review of the online offerings, which show a variety of choices for dealing with the challenge of isolation, and the innovative methods people are employing to encourage and inspire others, have demonstrated a preponderance of creativity and an unexpected level of empathy for our fellow humans that only this kind of seriously difficult circumstance might bring about. We have to decide how we are going to deal with the challenge, and looking for any positive choice possible regarding how to fill this time seems to me to be the only sensible approach, since the alternative would only make our situation worse.

 

 

Whatever method we decide to use, and whatever avenue each of us is inclined to pursue, isolation is now providing us with an opportunity to consider what matters to us personally, and giving serious attention to pursuits that may have been put on hold, as well as returning to simple pleasures that may have fallen to the wayside previously, now assume even greater urgency, given that we are compelled to occupy ourselves in ways that may not have been available before this.

 

For me, this represents a more robust return to quiet contemplation, to long and productive hours of writing, and to actually holding a physical book in my hands, turning pages, and mulling over the worlds represented in those pages, as well as having to step up my game a bit more in order to cover a greater variety of selections.  One such selection came as a suggestion from a fellow writer to review a poem by Wallace Stevens.

 

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Isolation Contemplation

April 11, 2020 7 Comments

With much more time being spent at home these days, I’ve had more time than usual for actually sitting at my desk and have been reading and writing a bit more often, and taking the opportunity to consider more carefully the events in the world-at-large, as well as those closer to home. The photo above was taken of a tree branch right outside the window in my upstairs office, and got me to thinking about an upcoming event in my life that has been the source of some anxiety, and writing about it seemed like a good idea in order to help me prepare for it.

This week I started writing in a brand new writer’s journal presented to me as a gift over the holidays last year. On the cover of the book itself is an ancient map of the world, and as I began to record my thoughts on the first pages, I began to wonder about the origin of the map and launched an investigation to see if I could locate it. It took a fair amount of searching on the internet, but I was able to find it and it is a visually rich and intellectually appealing image, which harkens back to an age of exploration and discovery, no longer possible on the same scale except perhaps in the depths of the oceans, or out into the vastness of space.

Very rare double hemisphere map of the World, engraved by Henri Le Roy in Paris and published by Michael Van Lochum. The map is based on Hondius’ World map of 1617. The map was the first to show Le Maire’s Straits and the islands in the Pacific discovered by Le Maire and his explorations in New Guines.

When it was published in 1636, we were only just beginning to understand and fully appreciate the enormity of our planet, and much of what appears on the map is only suggestive of the actual dimensions and shapes of the land masses so familiar to us now, since we have the perspective of viewing the Earth from space.

Even though the world has been constantly changing since the beginning of time, in ancient times, they believed that most of what we could observe and know was fixed and immutable, and that the Earth was the center of the Universe. Since life was profoundly more difficult to endure and life expectancy much shorter typically, surviving past what we now call “midlife” was rare, and with the world nearly always in a state of war or at the mercy of conquering armies, there wasn’t much an average person could do to affect the outcome of events.

It has taken tens of thousands of years for humans to make sufficient progress in order to make the necessary changes that have brought us to modern life in our century. Yes, times like those we are experiencing currently may cause some to wonder aloud if we’ve actually made much progress at all, but with even a brief investigation of ancient history, we can see that life in ancient times was often “brutish and short,” and the concerns which we all feel so worried about today are, by just about any standard, far less worrisome by comparison.

Still, our lives these days do contain urgent matters with varying degrees of difficulty, given whatever kind of circumstances and limitations we encounter, and when we are pressed to make certain choices these days, it isn’t always clear which one is most or least advantageous. Due to a number of different circumstances where I live, I’ve had to make a choice to cut down the large tree out in front of my house where I have lived for nearly thirty years. She’s a grand old lady, this one, and after months of wrangling with the authorities and pondering the fate of the tree, it became clear that it has to be done.

Without getting too deep into the whys and the wherefores, the decision to take it down brought me to consider several other similar relationships with other trees, specifically, the even grander and older tree in my backyard, and one that recently came to my attention in the news. Current events have a lot of us thinking more about what is important to us generally, and while contemplating a story about a tree might not seem to fit logically into the narrative of what’s taking place now in the world, it got me to thinking about what meaning might be found in these events, and it felt right to explore it in the context of our connection to the natural world.

The story of the death of a very famous tree in California caught my eye recently and the response of people familiar with the iconic “Witness Tree,” in Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills, California touched me deeply, especially in view of my own impending loss of a familiar arboreal friend out front. The story goes that the “Witness Tree,” was probably more than 100 years old, and had been the site of numerous events for locals during that time, but also served as a location for a number of Hollywood films and television shows, including “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” and HBO’s “Westworld.” In 2018, the now infamous “Woolsey Fire,” destroyed the entire set surrounding the tree, and so badly burned the iconic symbol that it wasn’t able to come back to life. One particular couple, who had their wedding underneath its canopy, posted a couple of photos typical of the many stories surrounding the tree.

 

My own reflections of my thirty-year relationship with the enormously appealing Silent Friend growing still in my backyard, give me a much greater appreciation of how these living arboreal beings could have so much importance to generations of people who interacted with them for decades. Contemplating the loss of any tree that has a familiar place in the events of our lives over a lifetime or more gives us a glimpse of what matters to us in other ways as well.

During this global crisis, with millions of individuals at risk from the virus circulating through the entire population of the Earth, it seems our best defense against it is to hunker down in our own homes, and remain isolated from everyone we know, at least physically, providing us not only with a challenging endurance run of being out of circulation, but also providing an extended period of time to reflect on the importance of all our relationships, including those we acquired right in our own backyard.

There are many thoughts bubbling up from within me as I write these days that beg for expression, and since there is ample time to attend to the need to release them, I have taken to recording them by hand in the beautiful journal that’s been sitting on my desk since the holidays, and reminiscing with my “silent friend,” out in the backyard, contemplating the impending loss of the tree out front, and how the unfortunate need for isolation from the rest of the world-at-large has provided this time for us all.

Filed under Ancient Culture, Computers and Internet, human nature, Nature, Personal, Philosophy Tagged with , , ,

April Come She Will

April 2, 2020 Leave a comment

A much needed perspective on our current circumstances…

Denny's America

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In the America of today, it may be difficult to remember to do this, but I still celebrate the arrival of Spring and the month of April. It has always been that intensely anticipated pivotal turning point in the seasons where Winter is finally vanquished, and the green shoots of the tulips and early petals of the forsythia plants alert our souls to the renewal of creation.

There is no question that, this time around, the arrival of April comes with some bitter medicine to swallow. Our nation and our world have been turned upside down with fear and dread at the outbreak of a vicious viral crisis. As April arrives, every human being on Earth is affected in one way or another. Yet, the lure of warm weather and the sweet scent of flowers and new-mown grass has, at the very least, reminded us that all things, both pleasant…

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Isolation Intuition

March 26, 2020 2 Comments

During this time of social isolation, as we join in the efforts to support each other and to slow the progress of the recent proliferation of the virus spreading across the globe, it is important to keep in mind that even as we must sacrifice our routines and leave our normal social activities unattended for now, there are also a number of opportunities that this situation presents to us, which may have been set aside or pushed off to “another time.”

Wherever you happen to be in the world, the time has come to take stock of what is truly important in our lives, and there could hardly be a more advantageous circumstance than this one for accomplishing that, as we are compelled to spend much more time with ourselves and our loved ones. There are many hopeful stories and reports of heroic efforts in this fight to battle “the invisible enemy,” many of which involve our front line health care professionals, and all of those designated as “essential people,” who are tasked with keeping us safe, and providing basic services under extraordinary circumstances.

As there are many different people and cultures and worldviews to consider, the specific activity that may provide each of us with a degree of solace and offer us opportunities for gaining an appreciation of what is truly important can take a variety of forms, and there is no right or wrong way to deal with the social isolation we now must endure. For me, as someone who is already fairly isolated generally as a writer, and now as a semi-retired person, solitude is available much more often than in previous years as the parent of six children, now all grown up.

In a previous post about the libraries of the world, I placed myself in several scenes using digital photography magic, and a recent review of those images inspired me to place myself digitally in a few additional photos, only this time, as a way of expanding a little on the benefits of both isolation and intuition.

The background photos in these altered images are from the website of the Jefferson Hotel in Washington, D.C., and while it should be fairly obvious to those who visit here on a regular basis, my interest in Thomas Jefferson’s life and times has been ongoing since I was a small boy in grammar school.

Way back in 2001, in the Spring of that year, I had the privilege of participating in what was the Annual Spring Garden Tour sponsored by the White House, which permitted participants to roam the grounds of the White House freely, including the various gardens established by prior occupants of that fabled structure, like Jackie Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as the famous “Rose Garden.” Walking past the beautiful flowers and plants was a real treat, but standing on the sidewalk leading up to the “Oval Office,” was especially impressive.

On the website for the Jefferson Hotel was an invitation to stay there and take advantage of the Cherry Blossom display which normally takes place around this time of year. Sadly, this will not be available due to the current situation in the world, but I couldn’t help but reflect on how fabulous it was to be in that place that year. The events which took place in September of that year put an end to people walking freely through the lawns and gardens of the White House.

The quote at the top of the page by Thomas Jefferson struck me as being a very important reminder about what is truly important for everyone to consider, and while many of us are unable to go to our everyday work locations, it seems like a good time to give some serious thought to what would increase our tranquility, and perhaps also to what we might do occupationally going forward. Not everyone is working in the occupation best suited to their talents, out of necessity or other urgent causes, but time away can be advantageous to seeking alternatives and to pondering other important matters.

Tranquility is achievable in many different ways, but being socially isolated at length gives us a rare opportunity to explore the many options available without the usual interruptions, as well as precious time that normally isn’t available.

Our intuitive sensibilities can be enhanced in circumstances such as these, by allowing us an extended opportunity to seek out information regarding methods of developing and exploring our natural endowment as cognitive creatures, and also to practice techniques for tuning in to our own inner strengths and capacities. There are a number of resources available that do not require physical social interaction, which can be a starting point for the uninitiated, and a launching point for a deeper understanding for those already engaged in seeking to improve or enhance their intuitive senses.

One of the most interesting and commonly available areas to explore in this effort is the intuitive response many of us take for granted, when we encounter others in our travels, who immediately strike a familiar chord within us, one way or another, and we somehow know deep down that our response is warranted. This awareness of familiarity or a keen sense of a positive or negative response is often the result of a deeper level of awareness within us, of which we may or may not be fully or consciously aware. A certain degree of intuition seems to be inherent in our basic cognitive capacities, and depending on our upbringing and educational environment, there may be some additional enhancement, especially if we are encouraged by our caretakers to heed this instinctive inclination.

 

As we navigate through these difficult days of social isolation, it will be very important for all of us to keep in mind, that adversity and struggles, while challenging to endure, are vital to the well-being of all of us now, and since we are already required to stay home and to be socially responsible to our fellow humans, we might as well use the opportunity to attend to those important matters we normally try to defer to “another time.”

This is the time. The present moment now is where all possibilities exist, and we can think ahead, ponder the important questions, and imagine a world where sitting in the Jefferson Hotel library and staying there during the future Spring Cherry Blossom displays might just be what the doctor ordered.

Filed under Books, Computers and Internet, Consciousness, human nature, Personal, Philosophy Tagged with , , , , , ,

Our Inner Evolution is Essential

March 22, 2020 Leave a comment

“My life as I lived it had often seemed to me like a story that had no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was a historical fragment, an excerpt from which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. My life seemed to have been snipped out of a long chain of events, and many questions had remained unanswered.”

“Man cannot compare himself with any other creature; he is not a monkey, not a cow, not a tree…Like every other being, I am a splinter of the infinite deity…The life of a man is dubious experiment…Individually, it is so fleeting, so insufficient, that it is literally a miracle that anything can exist and develop at all.”

“Recollection of the outward events of my life has largely faded or disappeared. But my encounters with the ‘other’ reality, my bouts with the unconscious, are indelibly engraved upon my memory. In that realm there has always been wealth in abundance and everything else has lost importance by comparison…Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience.”

–Carl Gustav Jung, from his autobiography, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections.”

Had these quotations not been excerpted from Jung’s autobiography, they might easily have been included in my own accounting of my life. If you are unfamiliar with the many fascinating and illuminating writings of the famous Swiss psychiatrist, I highly recommend that you review them as well as the many scholarly analyses of his work. There are many volumes of his writings and they are often scientifically intense and technical generally, but I have found much within them that helps to clarify the importance of examining and exploring our inner life.

Jung’s emphasis on his own inner experience in his autobiography was unsurprising to me once I began to absorb the context in which he described his outer experiences. Reading back in his collected works after I finished “Memories, Dreams, Reflections,” I found a passage about “the eruption of unconscious content,” that struck a familiar chord with me:

“Way back in 1973, as a young man embarking on the journey of a lifetime, I experienced what Carl Jung described as ‘the eruption of unconscious content,’ which compelled me to seek the path I continue to pursue to this day.”

It also “…led to the creation of a document entitled, ‘The Beginning, The Foundation, The Entrance.’ Although I did not recognize it as such at the time, I gradually came to view the experience as a pivotal event in my life, and I have spent much of the time since it occurred attempting to decipher its message…I recognized at this point that all I had endured, suffered, and learned prior to that day, had created the foundation for all that was to come.”

We are experiencing a particularly stressful time now across the globe, and many of us are starting to question the circumstances of our lives and to re-evaluate our emphasis on what is truly important. It’s unfortunate that we are experiencing such a serious situation right now, and the losses that families and individuals are enduring as a result are tragically taking a toll on our well-being everywhere you look. There are also stories of recovery and of the heroic efforts of many individuals and groups to help others during this time, and unless you place your focus on the broad range of events taking place around the world, you might suppose that there is little cause for much optimism going forward. It’s important to seek balance in our view of all this and to take whatever steps are possible to mitigate the harm, and to promote the safety and well-being of our fellow travelers whenever possible.

Reflecting as I often do on the responses I receive from those who visit and read here, it seems that, in some small way at least, the sharing of ideas and the expression of both the tangible events of my outer life and the movement of the spirit within me, can encourage others to be introspective as well, and in that sense, the entire path of my own recognition of an “inner evolution,” which began so long ago, has led to this moment in time, and to much of what has been posted here on John’s Consciousness. Especially during this time, I would encourage everyone to use the time in distancing from each other physically and maintaining vigilance in isolation when that occurs, to give serious consideration to giving additional attention to contemplation and what we used to call “soul searching.”

“Without the darkness of the storm, the sun can call nothing to life…Since day and night contain the seeds of one another, there is no darkness unrelieved by the coming dawn, and no stark, sun-ridden day without her stash of mystery.” –M. Holden

Jung quite often addressed the contrasts of light and darkness in his writings, and as M. Holden pointed out, he agreed that “…we subdue the chaotic, uncontrollable elements of the natural world at the price of its fertility, just as we cast out the darkness in ourselves at the price of our own wholeness.” Jung found his interests in psychiatry and noted in his autobiography that among his friends, he encountered only resistance to the subject–a curious, hard resistance that amazed him, and wrote, “I had the feeling that I had pushed to the brink of the world; what was of burning interest to me was null and void for others, and even a cause of dread.” My own inclinations align more closely with philosophy, while being passionately interested in the cognitive science of consciousness. At the heart of the challenges in bringing these ideas together, is not so much the resistance that Jung spoke of, as it is the element of uncertainty, which is only truly possible to dispel and experience subjectively. There are certain aspects of human consciousness that can only be verified “experientially,” but not tested “empirically,” and there are also empirical studies being undertaken which can cast “light” on the subject of consciousness, that are not experienced directly. It is my belief, that when combined, these sometimes disparate elements could very well produce a more encompassing view.

Filed under Consciousness, human nature, Personal, Philosophy, The Human Spirit Tagged with , , , , ,

Reason and Intuition

March 14, 2020 5 Comments

 

“It has certainly been true in the past that what we call intelligence and scientific discovery has conveyed a survival advantage…provided the universe has evolved in a regular way, we might expect the reasoning abilities that natural selection has given us would be valid also in our search…and so would not lead us to the wrong conclusions.

– Stephen Hawking quoted in “A Brief History of Time.”

 

“Intuition is the indubitable conception of a clear and attentive mind which proceeds solely from the light of reason…By ‘intuition’ I do not mean the fluctuating testimony of the senses or the deceptive judgement of the imagination as it botches things together, but the conception of a clear and attentive mind, which is so easy and so distinct that there can be no room for doubt about what we are understanding…another mode of knowing in addition to intuition (is) deduction, by which we mean the inference of something as following necessarily from some other propositions which are known with certainty…because immediate self-evidence is not required for deduction, as it is for intuition…but the first principles themselves are known only through intuition, and the remote conclusions only through deduction.

– Rene Descartes from “Rules for the Direction of the Mind,” written circa 1628, first Latin edition published in 1701.

“Language is entwined with human life…it reflects the way we grasp reality…It is…a window into human nature…Human intelligence, with its capacity to think an unlimited number of abstract thoughts, evolved out of primate circuitry for coping with the physical and social world, augmented by a capacity to extend these circuits to new domains by metaphorical abstraction…some metaphors can express truths about the world…So even if language and thought use metaphors, that doesn’t imply that knowledge and truth are obsolete. It may imply that metaphors can objectively and truthfully capture aspects of reality.”

– Steven Pinker, from his book, “The Stuff of Thought.”

 

There is something in the air, out in the world, something inside of me, that is pervasive. It’s always there, relentlessly seeking me. It feels like an embrace, and yet it does not always bring me peace. Sometimes, I cannot easily face it. In my life, I have known there is the possibility of pain–the other side of joy–and also of fear, as there has always been. Early in my life, I did not understand–did not see why I had to feel certain things. It didn’t make any sense to me. Why can’t everything just be okay? When you’re young, there’s no way to process or fully understand thoughts like that. There is a keener sense of the unknown; a resistance to potent emotions, inexplicable or mysterious energies, anything that suggests aspects of our reality which may be beyond our normal understanding.

 

Logically, of course, science and reason can provide us with a methodical and considered approach when it comes to investigating the unknown, and can often point to reasonable scientific principles which are clearly at work in certain situations; we can observe them, we experience them and assume because we know WHY these things happen, that we understand them. In my experience, truly apprehending the nature of things requires something more. Naturally, we see what we see, we hear what we hear; we consider information we bring in from the objective world; we interpret what comes through our senses and process the information utilizing the various talents of specific brain regions. We come to conclusions which often can be affirmed by comparing them to our experiences and memories, and by testing them through our subsequent actions, and we may even make choices regarding potential future actions.

 

As we observe what happens out there, we say, “So that’s why the planets are all traveling in loops around the sun,” or “no wonder it seems that light suddenly appears since it travels so reliably and predictably at the same speed.” All of these aspects of our reality that we can observe and affirm, tell us why things work the way they do, because the laws of physics require them to conform in this way. When all of our observations confirm the laws, we feel confident in establishing those principles as true. I haven’t always been convinced by what I see or hear or observe, not because I supposed that my senses weren’t working properly, but rather because those aspects did not conform precisely with my personal recollections of previous experiences. It’s possible for us to be mistaken about what our senses tell us, as in the case of optical illusions, and we can occasionally be easily misled by the clever application of deliberate or manipulative deception, but it can be much more difficult to persuade us of any suggested explanation of events which does not match up with the way we intuitively feel as we process that input.

 

Experience has taught me to trust the way I feel, especially when it comes to connections to other individuals, places, and ideas which resonate so strongly within me in particular circumstances, but our modern chaotic world doesn’t always encourage us to trust our intuition or to have the confidence always to listen to our genuine “gut” feelings. Throughout my life, there have been innumerable examples of instances where my inner urgings and startling responses to unexpected provocations have been right on the mark. There have been times when it seemed to me that I was virtually “standing on a precipice,” dangerously close to and looking over an edge, either about to fall, or maybe even getting ready to “take a leap of faith.” Conventional wisdom might suggest that if you’re near some sort of a virtual edge and you fall, it’s not necessarily your fault, and yet, at the same time, somehow you got yourself out on that ledge. That same wisdom might suggest that if you find yourself on that proverbial ledge and you decide to jump, for whatever reason, that is a choice for which you alone are responsible.

 

 

We can’t always control what happens TO us, and sometimes we may even feel compelled to make choices that we don’t necessarily agree with completely, and why we feel that way is not always crystal clear. All sorts of influences and pressures from even trusted sources can weigh on us as we contemplate our next steps, distorting or mitigating our normal process of reasoning or, if we are fortunate, clarifying it. Our reasoning can be faulty and we can occasionally even refuse to consider outside influences which are meant to be helpful, but ultimately we must choose, one way or another.

The struggle between reason and intuition has become something of an epic battle these days, and considered and informed opinions may seem less prevalent in our modern social interactions, and so giving attention to sorting it all out is even more important now.

 

 

Filed under Books, Brains, Nature, Neuroscience, Personal, Philosophy Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

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