Monthly Archives: May 2020

2013 Reflections on Blake and Troward

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“Our more immediate personal recognition of the all-originating love and beauty will thus flow out as peace of mind, health of body, discretion in the management of our affairs, and power in the carrying out of our undertakings; and as we advance to a wider conception of our concept of the spirit of love and beauty in its infinite possibilities, so our intuition will fine a wider scope and our field of activity will expand along with it- in a word we shall discover that our individuality is growing and that we are becoming more truly ourselves than we ever were before.” p110 Troward

William Blake discusses the process of going from a state of innocence then experiencing betrayal, loss, grief. This is where most adults stand. It is the burned out land of shadow structures.

The dark removes the confidence of ground
edging us with sharpness
we are blind to balance
stumbling darkly,
we know only that we are out of place.

This valley of despair results in a deep alienation from other people and even more hurtfully from ourselves. An imminent psychologist who spent over 40 years running psychiatric hospitals said that there was only one source for all the manifestations of pain which he observed. Self loathing. Self loathing is the result of lack of compassion. It is this state of experience that is applauded by society.

Cynicism is an armour forged on the fire of fear.

Cynicism is Forged in Fear

We are taught to defend ourselves. We are rewarded for being suspicious for finding arguments for finding faults and weakness. We wear the badge of “sophisticated intelligence” proudly. The statement “I don’t believe that,” is automatic when one is in the shadow land of experience.

Alienated from self. Standing sentinel in the fortress of isolation hardens a soul. We are told that this is what experience must inevitably teach us.

But mystics such as Blake know and understand that there is a world beyond experience. There is a place that resides beyond the fortress walls. And this new dimension is of a richer innocence. It is an opening up that often comes to people in deep, blinding grief when it feels as if another breath will break the heart, the chest, the throat open. It is a death beyond death because of the confused sense of numbness and chaos at once.

It is after the lightening strike that individuals find themselves sitting on a step next to flowers and being so exhausted they cannot remember to separate themselves. And so in that moment, they open. The flower becomes the most ecstatic, explosively beautiful single living thing they have ever seen. Because they see it.

And they are delivered to a new place. With the numbing of mind, of cynicism, the destruction of all defenses, the individual is left with only here. Here and this beauty. Here and this miracle of color and life. It is to be as an infant. It is to be as a child who is deeply relating to both an outside living thing and to themselves.

One way to stop the endless comparisons and judgments in our minds is through grief. Another is through creativity.
When we open we are like a choir. When we open we are like members in an orchestra. When we open we are like actors in the same play or dancers in a choreography. Each goes down deeply into the experience of separate self. Each listens closely to his or her own voice. Each learns the range, tone, warmth, passing of air that is coming from their singular body. And in the fullness of the individual, in the power and release of the single individual all voices, all instruments, all bodies form a unity that is an aesthetic statement of innocence. It is brave, unafraid of individual expression, uninterested in territory or boundaries or walls. It is the greatest freedom that an individual ever experiences as many all separately functioning together form intensity of expression.
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It is in the state of innocence that a person can truly connect to self. With no history of the past mistakes, bad decisions, egregious losses the person is free to be enthusiastic. A person who feels whole and protected in the world, like a child should, is now capable of exploring. Who am I? What can I do? What can I learn? How can I love? These questions are formed from a place of trust. It is easier to take care of a body that is loved. It is easier to be excited about the sound of one’s own voice if one is loved. It is easier to recognize skillful daily living and applaud it. To see oneself as a magnificent flower blooming through grief, through cynicism, through dark nights is to connect to the wonder of God in each of us. It is like a child moving its hand in the slanted light coming in a window. Wow. Look at that! Aren’t I clever?

And like all nourished flowers, it becomes more radiantly what it is meant to be. Like all children who are deeply loved, he or she becomes more exactly what the pattern of their spirit was meant to be.

How do we escape a state of experience, of isolation, of turning away from others and eventually turning away from ourselves? It is through realizing that each of us is a gift. Each of us holds the ability to express fully what it is to be alive. We can then move forward in a way that is not hampered by defences, moats, walls, imprisoned by our own army of reactive thoughts. We can be as children running full tilt into the next experience because we are fully in love with ourselves, with the spirit within and with one another. We are free to grow big.

Grand daughter on the lawn

Wild one
lip synch coincidence dance
drama queen
flying hair
alight in sun’s stroking the air
fenced crib lines cannot hold.
And she moves over rock and hole ground
bare toes wide turning long strands of music
into spun gold
making her seven year old free now.
All Now.
Heart pulse, music pulse being
beyond constraints wrapping unwrapping
her form, music’s form to accelerate beyond
this edge of what is named
to merge.
Original primitive soul
getting her freak on.

Wind Talking

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Today, I could feel the urge to slide down emotionally coming on again. It reminded me of the coal cellar chute we had under my house when I was young. It was dark down there and I was admonished in the ten commandment chiseled tone my mother could use when laying down the law to NEVER slide into that unseen space.

As I woke up, I remembered the visions from my viewing of the various streaming services I use to numb out before sleep. I had jumped from one documentary to another finding people who had set a goal, worked unflinchingly toward it and stood a healthy, tough, accomplished monument depiction of what a heroically dedicated senior looks like.

“Yes”, I thought to myself, “You will stop doing just enough, good enough, running along the tracks of the usual habits. Today you will dig your shovel into the coal pile of fuel and throw it into the furnace of ambition. Today will be a flame.”

After I took my pills and made coffee, my skin blossomed out like an aggressive tea rose with petals of hives. I couldn’t tell but it felt so pervasive, I imagined even the back of my eyeballs were swollen. My agenda made out so carefully by my personal assistant self was now out of the question.

“First, we cope.”

I took a Benadryl, slurped cups of water and lay down on my left side which is my poor- me baby curled position when I am sick. Just as I was about to fall into a drugged sleep my mind chirped at me, “You had a nap yesterday.” I ignored the nagging.

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So the urge to dig deep, make something happen, speak those words that would cast a spell so powerful it could lift a tsunami of curved lace waves to hit the shore had abated.

I heard the wind outside as I made my whatever the time it was now meal. The wind yowled at me to come outside.

I let the mind sit there in my skull under my twisting hair and walked barefoot to a garden bed. First from one direction, and then from another the wind confused the branches. Acid yellow pollen rained down onto the lawn. The sky shut gray and close to the earth when day began but now it was flickering from one picture projection of itself to another. Silver clouds opened up and the sideways sun took a stab at the earth.

There is something ineffable about a strong wind: It is primitive and savage. We have so little common understanding for the causes, the motivations of violent wind. We do not discuss in our lexicon of weather stories the first mover of the still air that makes it wild suddenly in our own backyards. We are so amazed that we cannot dismiss the force with a label of words. We stand amazed.

And lately the wind has been quixotic, unpredictable, blowing first hot and then cold. But always I feel a call to go stand in it especially when it is ferocious, multi-pronged, hysterical. I stood in the wind changing its mind surrounding me, my hair wrapping across my face and thought, “I want to be like that! I want to be so passionate that there are no words to describe me. I want to speak to the wind.”

I must ask my personal assistant for a new schedule.