Growing up in suburban Rochester, NY, I had a couple of very good English teachers at Irondequoit High School in the mid-seventies. Donna Byers and Marianne Letro turned me on to a handful of great authors, especially Kurt Vonnegut. I worked my way through all of Vonnegut's work which had been written and published by that time.
When novels were discussed in English class, the teacher invariably asked the class for the meaning of a particular work of literature. She wasn't asking for your interpretation of the artwork, or how the artwork made you feel. She was looking for the single meaning consciously intended by the author.
The underlying a priori assumption was that any work of art derives meaning from the conscious intent of its creator and that your job, as perceiver of that artwork, is to ascertain and comprehend the creator's intended meaning.
Around ten years later during my law school tenure, the late, lamented Musician magazine ran a contest for unsigned singer/songwriters and bands. Submit your cassette and hope for the best, as notable musicians and producers listened to the entries. I recorded my song Foreign Script with the help of a keyboard-and-guitar-playing classmate with a home studio.
I submitted a cassette entry, but, alas, never heard back from Musician regarding my entry.
I hadn't heard of any of the contest's top finishers, but recognized a name from that list while checking out the listings for Harvard Square's legendary folk venue Club Passim a few years later after moving to Boston.
Having wanted to check out the coffeehouse where Bob Dylan and Jackson Browne cut their teeth in their younger days, and curious about who or what actually impressed contest judges, I checked out the contest winner's gig there. His music didn't do a whole lot for me, but I hung around to hear the headliner.
The headliner's songs displayed a bit more talent and gravitas than those of the contest winning opener, but his set was dampened for me a bit by his annoying habit of describing each song before its performance. He'd tell the audience what the song is about, so that his consciously intended meaning would inform the experience of listening to the song during his set.
My high school English teachers and this unnamed folk singer couldn't have been more wrong, however.
The creative process through which any artwork is created encompasses more than the conscious intent of the artist or artists whose names are credited with the work.
Actually, all art is created through a collaborative process which models, in miniature, the way in which we collectively create our reality and everything in it.
Sometime between the first sentient thought and next Tuesday, God/Goddess/All That Is/Fill In The Blank dropped needle on spinning vinyl and this thing of ours began.
Inherent in the design are a thousand flavors of pain. We needed something to get us to the next mile marker. "Reason to live, reason to continue," sang the Beach Boys.
The powers that be gave us art. Something which can provide a powerful catharsis (as Jeff Tweedy put it, "a sonic shoulder for you to cry on"), a wonderful distraction, and, most importantly, a finely-tuned resonance through which you see yourself and your place in creation with intense clarity.
That song or movie or novel or painting strikes a responsive chord within you and you think to yourself, "That's exactly how I feel." The work of art aligns perfectly with the very core of your being and it all makes sense.
That center may or may not hold, but at least you know where you can get that feeling, that insight, again later when it's needed.
Whether they recognize it or not, all artists are psychics, of a sort. They've got satellite dishes, you might say, picking up on the needs, wishes, fears, and desires of people who need that resonance with an artwork. The signals which end up in their dishes inform and influence their own creative process by creating a paradigm through which a single visual image or turn of phrase can carry multiple meanings...meanings which meet the needs of all those who cry out for them on ethereal levels.
No single meaning, whether consciously intended by the artist or picked up like some radio frequency and then absorbed by the artist, is the sole true meaning carried by the artwork or reason for the creation of the artwork. Every possible and perceived meaning within an artwork existed from the moment of that work's conception, as the souls or higher selves of artist and audience exchange notes, so that everyone gets exactly what they need.
A single line within a song lyric may have popped into the songwriter's head because exactly, say, 54 people needed to hear that line. Those needs were subconsciously projected into the Mighty Mighty Whatever by all 54 people and the songwriter picked up on it, likely without conscious realization of that fact.
In a moment's inspiration, the exact words which would take on precisely 54 different intended meanings found themselves voiced by the songwriter, committed to paper, tape, or digital chip.
If, as quantum physicists have theorized, linear time is an illusion and all moments in time exist simultaneously, perhaps some of the 54 haven't yet been born (within the linear time construct) and someone will first hear that song and find that needed resonance with the artwork a hundred years from now.
Those same quantum physicists have also theorized that an infinite number of parallel realities exist, in which every possible turn of events which could conceivably take place does occur in one reality or another. (Now known as the Many Worlds Theory, advanced physicist Hugh Everett articulated the theory in the late 1950's. The theory has since worked its way into popular culture within the Star Trek canon and FOX's Sliders and Fringe, to name a few examples). Perhaps the artist's own parallel selves inform the creative process and provide the raw data which winds up in the satellite dish every bit as much as the artist receives information from others.
Reincarnational lineage may play a role in this paradigm, as well. Perhaps certain people become muses or transmitters of information to artists because the roles were reversed between artist and audience member in a past or parallel reality.
The nature of the artistic process, as described above, also serves as a model for the creation of all reality. If thought, will, emotion, and conscious intention can influence others for the purpose of creating art, the same dynamic may very well apply to the creation of physical reality as we know it. For example, author Masaru Emoto has written a series of published books detailing experiments involving the impact which words, music, and images can have upon water crystals. Experiments conducted by Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR), conducted under traditional empirical methodology, have demonstrated the effect of thought and consciousness upon mechanical, electronic, optical, acoustical, and fluid devices to a degree which their website labels "highly significant statistical deviations from chance expectations."
Former PEAR Coordinator of Research, Roger Nelson, Ph.D., has also directed Princeton's Global Consciousness Project since 1997. Their work provides empirical evidence of the ability of thought and emotion to have an effect upon someone or something other than the thinker. Random number generators placed in 65 locations worldwide have displayed results deviating from expected norms immediately before, during, and after significant world events, such as the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. http://noosphere.princeton.edu/papers/pdf/GCP.Events.Mar08.prepress.pdf
"Thought Creates Reality" is more than just a New Age homily. Viewing this law at work within the artistic process shines a light upon how this concept works within systems larger than the creation of a painting, poem, or song.
I first began to gain insight into this process from events surrounding the writing of one of my songs in the early 1980's. As detailed in my blog post here, The other internet, I awoke from a vivid dream one morning, having seen myself floating above an operating table where I viewed an operation. Soon after awakening, I wrote a song filled with references to transcending the human form. Within a week, I found out that my best friend from college had been in a serious car accident during the same night that I had that dream.
Clearly, a psychic event occurred during which my consciousness and/or the consciousness of my injured friend connected in some manner and influenced my own artistic output.
Over the course of the following three decades, I have witnessed countless examples of synchronicity between my own life (and my own art) and the creative output of other artists whose work holds special significance for me.
Even when anything which I've said, done, or written in any remotely public forum is excluded -- after all, anything put on the internet is freely available to anyone in the world with internet connectivity -- I've seen many examples of synchronicity beyond coincidence in and around the work of artists to whom I pay attention.
Here's one example: During the mid-90's, I struck up a platonic friendship with a young woman for a couple of years which crashed and burned a few years later in fairly messy fashion. I wrote a very nasty song about her in 1997 called Turpentine.
Our friendship briefly resumed a few years later in the early 2000's. During that time, I gave her a copy of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. She quickly became a devoted Wilco and Jeff Tweedy fan; she even traveled to NYC to see one of the few performances ever of Loose Fur, a side project involving two members of Wilco.
She and I soon drifted apart again, albeit in a more tranquil way this time around. (I never did tell her about the song).
Anyway, in June of 2004, Wilco released A Ghost Is Born, which contains a song titled "The Late Greats," which contains this line:
"The greatest lost track of all time: The Late Greats' Turpentine.
Coincidence? The more skeptical among you will certainly say so. Then again, the more skeptical among you probably stopped reading a dozen or so paragraphs ago. (For what it's worth, my song Turpentine was not recorded or performed in public.)
I've been an avid Elvis Costello fan since I heard the import single Alison in late Spring/early Summer 1977.
I've seen Elvis perform 33 times since 1978, as of this writing, and I traveled from Syracuse to Boston to catch his three shows at the Orpheum Theatre in October 1986.
I had a seat in the front row of the mezzanine for the final night of the engagement, which turned out to be one of the best concerts I've ever seen anyone perform.
The whole of Costello's album King Of America had been performed at the Orpheum earlier in the engagement, except for Jack Of All Parades. I was disappointed that he omitted the song, since I found a lot of personal significance in that song.
Well, even though the song had been recorded with the Confederates, with whom Elvis Costello performed earlier at the Orpheum, I was pleasantly surprised to hear Elvis and the Attractions perform Jack Of All Parades at the third Orpheum concert.
During the song, Elvis sang the lines "But from my chequered past/To this shattered terrace."
As he sang the lines, I looked to my left. The illumination spilling from the stage lighting into the house was just bright enough for me to notice that a huge chunk of plaster was missing from the exterior of the mezzanine's overhang. It looked as if it had been damaged by a grenade or some other armament. It looked like...a shattered terrace.
Don't take my word for it, though. Look at your own personal history as a patron of the arts and you just might find similar examples of synchronicity which evidence a guiding hand and master plan greater than mere chance or coincidence.
As I wrote in my song A Tennis Match some years ago...
Faced with numerous impending wishes
There are satellite dishes in a few backyards
One becomes a transmitter when life shatters to shards
Inspiration to the painter and a balm to the bard
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Sunday, November 25, 2012
The other internet...
In the early 1980's, I had a tremendously vivid dream immediately before awakening one Monday morning. I was floating above an operating table, watching a surgical staff operate upon a patient.
Not long after I woke up that morning, inspiration hit and I wrote a song, Doctor Moses, the lyrics of which I present for your consideration:
I got this thing about modern art
When I grow up, I want to be a part of the process
I'm gonna travel to a sandy beach
And read each grain of sand like it was a page in a guidebook
Or be a line in a TV screen
A single colored line that becomes part of an image
That's a privilege
Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast
I might just grow up to be a peach
Sitting in a tin can on a shelf out of reach of the children
I want to live to be a ballpoint pen
A hand will pick me up and then set ideas on paper
Or merchandise on a showroom floor
A single giftwrapped item which can be purchased and taken
Or forsaken
Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast
I got a yearning for the conga drums
That will be played as part of a movie's soundtrack
I might evolve into a pane of glass
Flags at half-mast, I'll be peered through on a day of mourning
Or turn myself into the planet Earth
Spending twenty-four hours giving birth and knowledge to everyone
That would sure be fun
Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast
Anyway, the following weekend I called my best friend from college and his girlfriend picked up the phone. She told me that he had been seriously injured in an automobile accident the previous Sunday night and had been operated upon early Monday morning...which was the same morning that I had the surgery dream.
I was taken aback, not only by the synchronous timing of that dream, but also by the fact that I wrote a song that morning in which nearly every line refers to some sort of transition from the human form into something else. The line, "Flags at half-mast, I'll be peered through on a day of mourning," felt particularly poignant months later when my friend died after being in a coma or near-coma since the accident.
The seeming communication between myself and my friend during the morning of the accident and operation was the first hint I received that mind, soul, or consciousness can transcend the physical world and touch something else entirely. The lyrics written that morning took a highlighter pen to that concept, so to speak, as well as providing me with an unexpected glimpse into the workings of the artistic process.
Marshall McLuhan was right. The medium is the message.
Not long after I woke up that morning, inspiration hit and I wrote a song, Doctor Moses, the lyrics of which I present for your consideration:
I got this thing about modern art
When I grow up, I want to be a part of the process
I'm gonna travel to a sandy beach
And read each grain of sand like it was a page in a guidebook
Or be a line in a TV screen
A single colored line that becomes part of an image
That's a privilege
Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast
I might just grow up to be a peach
Sitting in a tin can on a shelf out of reach of the children
I want to live to be a ballpoint pen
A hand will pick me up and then set ideas on paper
Or merchandise on a showroom floor
A single giftwrapped item which can be purchased and taken
Or forsaken
Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast
I got a yearning for the conga drums
That will be played as part of a movie's soundtrack
I might evolve into a pane of glass
Flags at half-mast, I'll be peered through on a day of mourning
Or turn myself into the planet Earth
Spending twenty-four hours giving birth and knowledge to everyone
That would sure be fun
Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast
Anyway, the following weekend I called my best friend from college and his girlfriend picked up the phone. She told me that he had been seriously injured in an automobile accident the previous Sunday night and had been operated upon early Monday morning...which was the same morning that I had the surgery dream.
I was taken aback, not only by the synchronous timing of that dream, but also by the fact that I wrote a song that morning in which nearly every line refers to some sort of transition from the human form into something else. The line, "Flags at half-mast, I'll be peered through on a day of mourning," felt particularly poignant months later when my friend died after being in a coma or near-coma since the accident.
The seeming communication between myself and my friend during the morning of the accident and operation was the first hint I received that mind, soul, or consciousness can transcend the physical world and touch something else entirely. The lyrics written that morning took a highlighter pen to that concept, so to speak, as well as providing me with an unexpected glimpse into the workings of the artistic process.
Marshall McLuhan was right. The medium is the message.
Monday, November 19, 2012
An altruist's lament...
It's been said that there are no atheists in foxholes. I suppose that it's also true that there are no altruists in churches.
Most spiritual and religious teachings and traditions place a high value upon doing good for your fellow man, woman, and child. The believer is given something between a hint and an assurance that the good one does eventually benefits the giver is some way, shape, or form.
This paradigm raises an interesting question. Once someone believes that the good they do will improve their own lot in this life, the afterlife, or their next life (or some combination of the above), can any act truly be considered selfless, if the actor benefits from the act?
Are we being intrinsically good if we do good for others, or are we only consciously or subconsciously looking to put brownie points up on some karmic scoreboard?
I suppose that the only true test of one's intrinsic goodness could be determined if God/Goddess/All That Is/Fill In The Blank paid someone a visit one day and told that person that nothing they did for the rest of their life, for better or for worse, would have any effect whatsoever upon the course of their current life or any future existence. Good deeds would be unrewarded by man or angel, and bad deeds would go unpunished. Your possibilities from this moment onward could not be shaped by your action or inaction. Only under these circumstances could one's true nature be revealed. Would you murder your most hated enemy, knowing that you would never face arrest, trial, and incarceration in this life or die at the hand of another in a future incarnation? Or, knowing that there was nothing you could do to change your own fate in any particular direction, would you help others in a sort of nihilistic altruism?
We need to embrace the fact that our best, most noble actions and intentions may be chiefly motivated by the selfish desire to have a pleasant life, afterlife, or future incarnation, whether we admit it to ourselves or not.
Of course, the motivation behind good deeds is more or less irrelevant so long as the good deed is performed. Imagine a world in which every person, consciously motivated by the idea that doing as much good as possible for others would being some kind of karmic payoff, began to do as much good as possible. Despite less than noble intentions, this world would soon be rid of violence, corruption, intolerance, injustice, and hatred, as each one of us, individually and collectively, sought to better our own lot in life and afterlife by doing as much good as possible. The result would be much the same as if we all really were that selfless and full of unconditional love for everyone and everything.
Embrace your inner selfish bastard. It's the right thing to do.
Most spiritual and religious teachings and traditions place a high value upon doing good for your fellow man, woman, and child. The believer is given something between a hint and an assurance that the good one does eventually benefits the giver is some way, shape, or form.
This paradigm raises an interesting question. Once someone believes that the good they do will improve their own lot in this life, the afterlife, or their next life (or some combination of the above), can any act truly be considered selfless, if the actor benefits from the act?
Are we being intrinsically good if we do good for others, or are we only consciously or subconsciously looking to put brownie points up on some karmic scoreboard?
I suppose that the only true test of one's intrinsic goodness could be determined if God/Goddess/All That Is/Fill In The Blank paid someone a visit one day and told that person that nothing they did for the rest of their life, for better or for worse, would have any effect whatsoever upon the course of their current life or any future existence. Good deeds would be unrewarded by man or angel, and bad deeds would go unpunished. Your possibilities from this moment onward could not be shaped by your action or inaction. Only under these circumstances could one's true nature be revealed. Would you murder your most hated enemy, knowing that you would never face arrest, trial, and incarceration in this life or die at the hand of another in a future incarnation? Or, knowing that there was nothing you could do to change your own fate in any particular direction, would you help others in a sort of nihilistic altruism?
We need to embrace the fact that our best, most noble actions and intentions may be chiefly motivated by the selfish desire to have a pleasant life, afterlife, or future incarnation, whether we admit it to ourselves or not.
Of course, the motivation behind good deeds is more or less irrelevant so long as the good deed is performed. Imagine a world in which every person, consciously motivated by the idea that doing as much good as possible for others would being some kind of karmic payoff, began to do as much good as possible. Despite less than noble intentions, this world would soon be rid of violence, corruption, intolerance, injustice, and hatred, as each one of us, individually and collectively, sought to better our own lot in life and afterlife by doing as much good as possible. The result would be much the same as if we all really were that selfless and full of unconditional love for everyone and everything.
Embrace your inner selfish bastard. It's the right thing to do.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Darwin in outer space...
Sentient lifeforms on other planets are usually portrayed in sci-fi movies & TV as being remarkably similar to human beings. While they may look very different than we do, they eat, sleep, procreate, work, fight, pray (and prey) much as we do.
I suspect, however, that sentient life on other worlds may be so different from our own that we could not begin to fathom the essential stuff of their daily lives, nor could they begin to imagine the human experience...and that's due to evolution.
Let's consider a hypothetical sentient species living on some planet orbiting one of those little lights in the starlit sky.
1) To begin with, let's say that this species receives all needed nutrients from the atmosphere, soil, and light of their own sun, much as plants do on Earth. All needed nutrients are plentiful and readily available to all regardless of location and circumstance.
2) The species adapted quite nicely to the climatic conditions on its home world, and the organism is comfortable outdoors in all weather conditions.
3) There are no predators which threaten our hypothetical species.
4) The species reproduces asexually, with sperm and egg residing in each individual and enabling reproduction without the joining of separate male and female partners in any fashion.
How might this life form differ from our own?
There is no scarcity for this species on their home world. Anything which is needed to survive is present and readily available, so the need to barter or trade one needed item for another doesn't exist here. The concept using of coin & currency as a symbol of value for use in commerce would probably be quite foreign to this species, as well, since there's no need to trade a bushel of hay or a metal coin which represents the worth of a bushel of hay.
Similarly, work (as we know it) wouldn't exist on our hypothetical world. There's no need to trade labor for currency, if there's no need to trade currency for food, clothing, and shelter. (Remember, with both a comfortable climate and a lack of predators, you really don't need a dwelling...or clothing).
Violence and aggression could very well be non-existent in this hypothetical species. Without the need to secure food, a desirable dwelling, or a desirable mate, the "fight or flight" response may have never evolved in this lifeform. The concept of competition, in any form, could be beyond the scope of the imaginable for our hypothetical alien race.
Scientific thought may be radically different on this world. If the need to quantify items for the purpose of trade and commerce never developed, it's quite possible that this species never developed the need for symbolic representation of quantity through the use of a numeric system.
Most human scientific fields rely upon mathematics to some degree. A species which never needed to rely upon numbers as a way of quantifying their world would not have developed mathematics. Would a different symbolic language or system, based upon something other than quantity, have developed as an aid to scientific thought and development, or could the sciences have progressed without one?
We can only wonder which aspects of their own lives are so foreign to the human experience that they could never be understood by the human mind, just as they may be unable to wrap their minds around the concepts of money, work, or mathematics.
It's interesting to consider how evolutionary differences between sentient lifeforms can lead to such vastly different outcomes that the essential stuff of life which one species takes for granted could be entirely beyond the conception of another species.
I suspect, however, that sentient life on other worlds may be so different from our own that we could not begin to fathom the essential stuff of their daily lives, nor could they begin to imagine the human experience...and that's due to evolution.
Let's consider a hypothetical sentient species living on some planet orbiting one of those little lights in the starlit sky.
1) To begin with, let's say that this species receives all needed nutrients from the atmosphere, soil, and light of their own sun, much as plants do on Earth. All needed nutrients are plentiful and readily available to all regardless of location and circumstance.
2) The species adapted quite nicely to the climatic conditions on its home world, and the organism is comfortable outdoors in all weather conditions.
3) There are no predators which threaten our hypothetical species.
4) The species reproduces asexually, with sperm and egg residing in each individual and enabling reproduction without the joining of separate male and female partners in any fashion.
How might this life form differ from our own?
There is no scarcity for this species on their home world. Anything which is needed to survive is present and readily available, so the need to barter or trade one needed item for another doesn't exist here. The concept using of coin & currency as a symbol of value for use in commerce would probably be quite foreign to this species, as well, since there's no need to trade a bushel of hay or a metal coin which represents the worth of a bushel of hay.
Similarly, work (as we know it) wouldn't exist on our hypothetical world. There's no need to trade labor for currency, if there's no need to trade currency for food, clothing, and shelter. (Remember, with both a comfortable climate and a lack of predators, you really don't need a dwelling...or clothing).
Violence and aggression could very well be non-existent in this hypothetical species. Without the need to secure food, a desirable dwelling, or a desirable mate, the "fight or flight" response may have never evolved in this lifeform. The concept of competition, in any form, could be beyond the scope of the imaginable for our hypothetical alien race.
Scientific thought may be radically different on this world. If the need to quantify items for the purpose of trade and commerce never developed, it's quite possible that this species never developed the need for symbolic representation of quantity through the use of a numeric system.
Most human scientific fields rely upon mathematics to some degree. A species which never needed to rely upon numbers as a way of quantifying their world would not have developed mathematics. Would a different symbolic language or system, based upon something other than quantity, have developed as an aid to scientific thought and development, or could the sciences have progressed without one?
We can only wonder which aspects of their own lives are so foreign to the human experience that they could never be understood by the human mind, just as they may be unable to wrap their minds around the concepts of money, work, or mathematics.
It's interesting to consider how evolutionary differences between sentient lifeforms can lead to such vastly different outcomes that the essential stuff of life which one species takes for granted could be entirely beyond the conception of another species.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Synchronicity at the laundramat...
I was discussing football with a woman at the laundramat one afternoon, and the conversation turned to Doug Flutie and the way in which his professional accomplishments never lived up to his reputation which arose from the legendary Hail Mary pass thrown for Boston College.
As soon as I uttered the phrase "Hail Mary pass," I turned around and saw a nun standing behind me. She was offering some sort of coin or token, bearing the likeness of a saint, to the people in the laundramat.
Occurrences like this, which strain the concept of random coincidence beyond all recognition, are little reminders of the greater forces at work in this and every other universe.
As soon as I uttered the phrase "Hail Mary pass," I turned around and saw a nun standing behind me. She was offering some sort of coin or token, bearing the likeness of a saint, to the people in the laundramat.
Occurrences like this, which strain the concept of random coincidence beyond all recognition, are little reminders of the greater forces at work in this and every other universe.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Proxy warriors...
Individually and collectively, we attach symbolic meaning to people, places, things, and behaviors for the purpose of fulfillment of otherwise unfulfilled needs and desires.
That's why sports fans so often refer to the accomplishments of their favorite teams with the word "We." Sports fans often say things like "We beat them" and "We won." You'll never see someone admiring a Monet in an art gallery exclaim "I painted a masterpiece!!"
That's because sports fandom carries with it more symbolic weight for most people than does an appreciation of impressionist art.
While it's not socially or morally acceptable to express the innate aggression which is hardwired into our DNA through acts of violence, it's perfectly acceptable to honor your aggressive tendencies by subconsciously setting up that designated hitter or running back as your proxy warrior. You don't have to unleash your fists of fury on the streets of Anytown, U.S.A. when your favorite teams can get the job done for you.
Deconstruct the symbols upon which you build your life, and you've gained a measure of wisdom and true knowledge.
That's why sports fans so often refer to the accomplishments of their favorite teams with the word "We." Sports fans often say things like "We beat them" and "We won." You'll never see someone admiring a Monet in an art gallery exclaim "I painted a masterpiece!!"
That's because sports fandom carries with it more symbolic weight for most people than does an appreciation of impressionist art.
While it's not socially or morally acceptable to express the innate aggression which is hardwired into our DNA through acts of violence, it's perfectly acceptable to honor your aggressive tendencies by subconsciously setting up that designated hitter or running back as your proxy warrior. You don't have to unleash your fists of fury on the streets of Anytown, U.S.A. when your favorite teams can get the job done for you.
Deconstruct the symbols upon which you build your life, and you've gained a measure of wisdom and true knowledge.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
You can't hold the river in a paper cup...
Devotees of various religious and spiritual paths will often consider the teachings of their savior or guru to be complete truth, the whole of spiritual knowledge worth knowing.
The problem with this aspect of faith is that it ignores the limitations of human consciousness.
A year or two after I moved to Boston in the late 80's, I met a woman at a small shop. When our eyes met, I flashed on something which I couldn't and still can't accurately describe. It was a bit like hieroglyphics, but it wasn't that. Maybe something like a mathematical formula dancing before my eyes, but it wasn't precisely that either.
In that moment, I had reached the outer boundary of what the human mind can perceive and peered beyond that hard limit...and I lacked the adequate tools to perceive what I had experienced. The five senses failed me in that moment, as did rational thought and emotional feeling.
We can never know the whole truth while in human form. We're bound by the limitations of language, visual representation, reason, and emotion. The mind of God doesn't fully fit into the vessel of humanity which we inhabit.
That also holds true for divine beings incarnate on earth.
Take the spiritual essence of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammad, or any other spiritual teacher and put that essence on earth in human form, and even that divine consciousness is limited by the bounds of human consciousness while on earth. You can't peer behind the veil completely when you've got to move through this plane in all of the traditional and necessary ways. If you could fully perceive the consciousness in every molecule of a coffee cup sitting on a nearby table, or see every parallel and alternate reality without regard to space, time, or frequency, you'd reach a point of consciousness overload where the sheer volume of information placed before you would make the act of picking up that coffee cup impossible.
That applied to Jesus Christ, just as surely as it applies to you or me.
Any enlightened being who walks the earth in human form has certain blinders on, blinders which make possible functioning in daily life. The words they speak and write are limited by the constraints of human language and symbology.
I don't claim to know the whole truth, but I do know that that truth is so much bigger than anything we can begin to imagine. The most that any teacher or teaching can communicate is but a mere whisper, a hint of something much greater.
The problem with this aspect of faith is that it ignores the limitations of human consciousness.
A year or two after I moved to Boston in the late 80's, I met a woman at a small shop. When our eyes met, I flashed on something which I couldn't and still can't accurately describe. It was a bit like hieroglyphics, but it wasn't that. Maybe something like a mathematical formula dancing before my eyes, but it wasn't precisely that either.
In that moment, I had reached the outer boundary of what the human mind can perceive and peered beyond that hard limit...and I lacked the adequate tools to perceive what I had experienced. The five senses failed me in that moment, as did rational thought and emotional feeling.
We can never know the whole truth while in human form. We're bound by the limitations of language, visual representation, reason, and emotion. The mind of God doesn't fully fit into the vessel of humanity which we inhabit.
That also holds true for divine beings incarnate on earth.
Take the spiritual essence of Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammad, or any other spiritual teacher and put that essence on earth in human form, and even that divine consciousness is limited by the bounds of human consciousness while on earth. You can't peer behind the veil completely when you've got to move through this plane in all of the traditional and necessary ways. If you could fully perceive the consciousness in every molecule of a coffee cup sitting on a nearby table, or see every parallel and alternate reality without regard to space, time, or frequency, you'd reach a point of consciousness overload where the sheer volume of information placed before you would make the act of picking up that coffee cup impossible.
That applied to Jesus Christ, just as surely as it applies to you or me.
Any enlightened being who walks the earth in human form has certain blinders on, blinders which make possible functioning in daily life. The words they speak and write are limited by the constraints of human language and symbology.
I don't claim to know the whole truth, but I do know that that truth is so much bigger than anything we can begin to imagine. The most that any teacher or teaching can communicate is but a mere whisper, a hint of something much greater.
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