Bleeding out our Reflections

So I’ve been on a Nietzsche kick, maybe I’ll share some of his quotes and aphorisms up here sometime. But you might find these thoughts interesting…

Much of Nietzsche’s writings are on the cultivation of aesthetic taste. His commentary his aphorisms are instructive and illustrative opinions designed to point the way to an authentic and depthful experience of art. And, much of the time they are designed to point out the pitfalls and stupidities of those who have not yet grasped art with the highest subtlety (in his point of view).

They are not merely advice, however. Nietzsche would not have his readers clumsily depend upon them in substitution for their own tastes and experiences. They are written as if they were posted on a wall anonymously by a thinker who has put long hours of serious consideration into his labors and is confident in their integrity. Expecting nothing less from himself, he is sure that they will be carried into the minds of those who are deserving enough. Nietzsche definitely walks his talk: in his view, a piece of art should not attempt to bowl one over right away but gradually and surely compel the reader in its depth and authenticity. In my mind, this book was laying a graduated foundation of astonishment and trust in me. In love as artifice, he writes of an initial period where a reader rejoices as the philosopher as covers all the points of that reader’s psyche. This initial enthusiasm, while valuable, will eventually round out its depth with some critiques and a more balanced perspective. I feel the same way.

(I gained a sense of how a book can be like a living teacher. It made me glad that there are books that can still change me, and I might later look at some of these writings as mirrors that added their portion to the image of who I was at age twenty-one. Perhaps if I re-read them I will see a little bit of that image of me within them, and it will appear in context of my knowledge of it as step in the formation of who I would eventually be as a person.)

Nietzsche is very interested in how certain spiritual and artistic forms have developed and continued throughout cultures and histories. He is not interested in figuring out which religion or culture was right: he thinks a history of spiritual perceptions is more valuable. He wants to know the history of art’s role in the psyche of the human being, both modern and pre modern.

Pursuing this project, at one moment he explains how periods of low culture often are followed by artistic Renaissances, and that the sense of movement and contrast created provides rich soil for art, poetry and the like. These periods: œpossess the charm of an agreeable recollection, a yearning desire for what has almost been lost. While he notices the beauty in this development, he is also skeptical of the harkening back towards old forms. For him, the pleasure is fleeting.

This balance between discerning equanimity and passion are central in his discussion around aesthetic appreciation. Nietzsche recognizes the act of remembering as a sensual, aesthetic experience. It’s a key ingredient in the texture and depth of a human life, but he is weary when it is not used with the utmost taste and discretion.

In his discussions on music, he notes its ability to bring us to states of mind reminiscent of childhood. Listening to music is often a œlooking backward for him. He says, œalmost all music, moreover, produces a magical effect only when we hear the language of our own past speaking out of it. I’ve listened to certain music that takes makes me nostalgic for the past, or that seems to transport me to places like the ancient world. It’s the same pleasure that would satisfy my sometimes yearning to travel to exotic places.

Perhaps music can also elicit nostalgia for the future as well, in that it can make the present moment feel as if a œyou in the future were looking back on it. These moments give me a sense of compassion and self-acceptance for myself that often is only found when looking back (without judgment) on who we were at a stage in life. Though being only 21, life in these moments flowers into a small, poignant summation who I am thus far in life. It’s the sense being captured in a œpicture that defines the age. It’s the sensation of making a mark, maybe not on pop culture exactly, but a mark on and about my life that is really only something that I can wholly see, something that’s for me.

Sometimes looking back on a beautiful moment can make another beautiful moment. Vincent Van Gogh wrote that if a man were locked in a room with a good enough memory and a subtle sensibility, he could emotionally survive on his past experiences alone. Experiences like the one above I put into a kind of mental scrapbook of my thoughts and life. If it’s the right time to open up the scrapbook, I am taken back to a few periods in my life, and am again made to feel a surge of warmth, innocence, excitement and possibility. And, as I touched on above, during story telling or say, music making, I can reminisce about experiences I’ve not even had myself. Bards, even in the ancient days, have always sung about those days that are even more ancient. Nietzsche calls this kind of remembering œepic poetry. This throwback to the experiences of old is a process of leaving the forms of our age and time. N. thinks is valuable for gaining better perspectives on the modern age. It is amazing how satisfied emotionally we are by storytelling. This phenomenon calls us to reevaluate our need to possess people and things in world and our fear of losing them. I believe we are only really satisfied when we are satisfied on the level of the psyche. The language of our psyche is symbols, and when we are connected to life when our psyche is filled with images of beauty, love, power, and all the other (positive) multitudes of states of consciousness. (Nietzsche would add that these arise not as a black or white form but always as a shade in between.)

The images that our minds contain determine our current emotional state and outlook. The aesthete recognizes this and fills his world with beautiful images. The religious man goes to his symbol of God for spiritual qualities. A meditator one said that the mind at its fundamental level operates on images. If you’ve ever bowled over with laughter, you’ve probably noticed that it’s because the humorous image reenters your head again and again even without you willing it. If you’re depressed, what image keeps reentering your mind? Once this process is understood, the reason behind contemplation or meditation becomes clear. The purpose of any type of contemplation is the willful act of holding live giving images (or qualities) of power, love, etc in the forefront of our minds. It is not just conceptualizing or imagining, but allowing the qualities of the image to transform your state of mind as one might do in looking at a beautiful scene or picture. The ability to contemplate is developed and made stronger through its continued maintenance through and despite any negativities or distractions that might arise in the meantime. Nietzsche has come to his own method of contemplation. He finds no need for metaphysical or transcendent ideas, but he harkens back to the idea of Renaissance, or awakening, through the study of history, of art, culture or the natural world.

I really want to communicate to you how jazzed I am about the opportunity to write this to you. I want you to know that I’m putting everything I have into this communication, and though I have no plans for it, here goes my heart and soul. It’s pretty scary to put it all in one place. I can’t see where this shit is going, but I have no where else to turn… I’m putting all my shit into this, and I want to cry. Ok so it’s emotional, but really I’m more in love than ever because to have any reluctance in that is to be not living but slowly dying. If I want to live and just die slowly, then love is my only option. Believe me, I’ve tried everything else. Love is the only way to ease my conscience, it’s the only way I can live and know that even if it’s all a waste I did the best I could, and knew how. I will only be satisfied when I can love to the point of exhaustion, and life will only be worth it when I can pick myself up and go through it all again. I just want to wake up tommorow morning feeling once again worthy of being alive on this planet, satisfied in knowing that the previous night I wasn’t living for tommorow but for the day at hand. I will not allow sadness in the morning, I will only allow a renewal of effort. Do you live most days knowing tommorow is coming? I mean tommorow is always waiting: you’ll wake up and perhaps be a little more refreshed. You could live day after day like this. I want to destroy tommorow! I don’t have any big ambitions, I’m not throwing any events, no big plans, so please take this as my small way to make shit happen! It’s a good time to be in love.. springtime right? Or is it winter… no, I don’t have a girl, but why wait to be in love? We’ve got a society full of people who’re waiting (for the right conditions) to feel anything. IF YOU HAVE YOU WAIT TO FEEL ANYTHING THEN YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD.

Everything’s raw material. Childhood: the kingdom of heaven. Adulthood: there’s no one telling you what to do. There’s no one telling you how to live. Try throwing away your life, try not practicing dharma, but I wouldn’t recommend it. What do you want, what do you think. Sit in a room alone and ask yourself, “What is MY perception?” Walk down the street and ask yourself “What is MY perception?”.

Because if you’ve seen anything you’ve also seen that not much makes sense in this world. Adolescent formulations don’t fill the big bad world. Life’s big and incomprehensible, but small in a way because you’ve got some new tricks, some naiive confidence, and new soleson your feet. You don’t have a lot pinned down besides a handy wit. Don’t expect a comprehensive view from any one person, because there is no such thing. Don’t worry what you don’t know, no one is asking anyways.

All I’ve got right now is this way I feel. Can I just tell you that? How can I show you that? I’ve got no lover to embrace, I’ve got no one around but you know what ironically it’s these moments where I really embrace the world. I want to embrace it because I’ve come to no other solution. So I love what you go through and I’m relieved and willing to share about what I’m going through… like you I’m searching for satisfaction, and now the flood gates have released and I don’t know if I’ve abandoned the search or what, but it’s that moment of satisfaction when the frustration builds and builds and you get up and want to lash out and you start to tear at the world and yourself and suddenly ….it just all falls away, and you start to cry tears of relief for your situation but no more come so you just breath heavily.

Preface:

Spirituality does not seek pain or struggle explicitly. But when the moment of pain comes, it is accepted along with the person desire to acknowledge the totality of existence. Pain is not to be run away from, nor is it to be endured but not learned from. There should be no goal in struggle, expect no gain from struggle. Explore it as a fact of your aliveness. Approach it only with the will to confront all of life and to investigate its nature. Extreme hardship is not necessary for the development of wisdom, but among the wise you will find none who have not penetrated into it.

Self Image and the Buddhist stance:

As we move about the world and conduct action in it, there is the fact of our first person, subjective perspective about the world, our private world of feeling and sensation. This is a more basic mode of consciousness, similar to perhaps that of animals, whose awareness is a movie like ours, yet with simpler storylines, plots, and motivations.

Humans are endowed, however, with third person image, a “bird’s eye view” of who we are and what we are doing in the world. We use this “self image” to simulate for ourselves the outside perspective on ourselves, to give ourselves an objective view in an attempt to better modulate our actions and responses. It provides us our judgment, our problem solving abilities, our ability to assess the effects our actions have on others. Zen Buddhism calls this the “rational mind”. If you misread Zen, you might think it is telling us to do away with the rational mind altogether. But to be happy requires knowing how to use the rational mind and in what situations.

If you think spiritual practice is just about doing away with rationality and getting to some “pure experience” or “no mind” and feeling emotions purely, you have it only half right. Our ability to step back from ourselves and to see ourselves objectively and our ability to think and rationalize our emotions are crucial for not letting negative emotions take control of our lives in that they allow us an understanding of the situation surrounding our emotion, of how that emotion might be a by product of a perspective about the world that doesn’t serve us. If you just let go of a negative emotion without applying any analysis to it, if you cannot identify the unfulfilled need that led to that emotion, then your perspective might not change and it is bound to come up again. For example, I lied to someone to make myself look good or protect myself and it made me feel badly. If I just let go of that bad feeling, but did not analyze the self cherishing, or the desire to look good in front of others, then what has my meditation accomplished? On the other hand, in meditation, we are taught to observe emotions and let them pass without analyzing or judging them, perhaps by watching the breath. Even still, this practice requires seeing into the nature of the emotion, and not just letting it pass intact. Of course this is ideal, but sometimes you won’t be prepared to see into it’s nature, and the negative emotion will grab of you and spin you around a little bit, or a lot. In that case, all you can do is come back to the breath when you can and hopefully you can do some analysis, and be more prepared next time.

So we recognize that Buddhism is not just about destroying any sense of self or self-image, and it recognizes that there is a reason for the self, that the self can be useful. If you never have any sense of “self” as a Buddhist, you’ve mistaken samadhi for stupidity. Of course much of Buddhism deals with our clinging toward our self-image. We may see ourselves in the mirror and become happy or sad, depending on our judgments towards the image of self we see. We may have just been praised or had an accomplishment and this has given us a glowing, positive image of ourselves. Ideally this feeling will encourage to greater excellence, or it could make us become self satisfied and complacent. We may have been through a failure and this has tainted our image of ourselves. This could either make us want to change and do better, or give up on ourselves.

Its in our habits to play with our self image. We like to dress it up with different looks, clothes, or careers. We like to project it into exotic places and give it exceptional talents. All of this gives us pleasure, and a person new to Buddhism might want to label this as “bad” and “selfish”. The real issue is when thinking like this serves us. When it serves us, it gives us a feeling of possibility, of connection and inspiration. When it doesn’t it is because we cling to these visions and become disappointed and lost without them.

Being truly free is understanding how the notion of “self” is tied to our emotions and using this understanding to best serve our lives. If we tend waver between happy, sad, or neutral in approaching ourselves, it might might adopt an attitude of doubt or questioning towards it. Is my self image really me? I might think I look like this, but am I so convinced that this is what the world sees? What meaning or weight does the image you project carry for the world anyways, and who is out there that really sees it? What control do you really have over your self image? You are a person, you are alive, but is that “you” contained in this self image or are you something larger, and more inexpressible than that?

If we stop identifying ourselves so much, living can flow freely without the hang up of judgments all the time. Certainly, at times things will be unclear and you will need to exercise your judgment. But without the burden of this self-identifaction all the time, our living process can flow naturally and freely, as if there is no possessor.

Poetry, in describing powerful moments, induces the reader into powerful states of being. Hold a book in your hands and become part of a ritual that allows for the mind to still. Don’t dissect the meaning of the words. It is from the stillness of the mind that and the depths of the psyche that the image of meaning and beauty you are looking for will emerge. So let the boundary between readership and authorship dissolve, and you and the poetry will be thrown into a dance, complementing each other perfectly, though complete in yourselves.

Poetry makes the mind more fluid, changeable, and open to possibility. There’s a sense of movement, as if one could float away from the body. Typical experience: colors become brighter, edges become fuzzier. The world of appearances grows sharper, poised as if it is ready to fall away in the next moment. This gives my meditation a kind of velocity. Layers of reality are being peeled off like an onion. What’s at the core? Perhaps a world consciousness that is completely unconstrained and flowingly free, defying all rationality? Could it give way to a state like a dream that is open to anything and everything happening at once, a dream containing infinite interpretability and symbolism? I’m not there, yet.

Poetry speaks of, and is written from, a reality that is utterly subjective and beyond containment or order as we know it. We usually think of our imagination as being contained within the world. But poetry thinks of the world contained within the imagination.

What is this realm of imagination? According to religion, the life and death truths of our world remain unseen without special contemplation. To constantly be in the midst of these truths requires one to go œbeyond. Into the realm of the imagination? Many religious teachings are often moral and ethical instructions based in the human realm, though in their essence they can deliver one towards higher realms.

Poetry and art, however, both in and out of religion, is the direct language of these higher realms. It invokes the spiritual world as an immaterial world that, instead of grounded in substance and rationality, is composed out metaphor and dressed with illustrations invoking perhaps not only one god, but many pure truths or essences of life.

One seer of these essences was Rainer Maria Rilke. Last night I read Rilke’s poetry out loud in an attempt to make what he sees what I see. This allowed me to experience his poetry as a sound and image flow over time. It was cinematic in that I saw images moving across the theatre in my mind, musical in that there was an unbroken rhythm and sound to my voice and the words that contained its own emotional content. Though his images and arrangement are complex, I never had to stop, unpack, or decipher his images. Each image transformed into the next in a perfected flowing orchestration, even when it defied conventional imagination or rationality (which is most of his poems).

This first reading impacted and moved me in a way that defied analysis. Afterwards I reflected on an appreciation for his craft. Was there a science behind the magic? Perhaps it is in his command of a wide variety of poetic devices. Perhaps in his vast experience with the craft revealed through his ability to consistently and effectively organize subtle and pregnant artistic statements (which I found indicative of an inspired and unencumbered imagination capable of gleaning the most subtle feelings and perceptions out of life). His images and contemplations, drawn from the deepest chambers of the intuition, astounded and deeply affected me. I now know that: the subjective and unknown place within us can actually tell us something about how the world really is. I sensed those moments Rilke described as real and subtle existing. My intuition told me that these unseen moments dwelt within and without the world as beautiful, hidden realities.

Beauty became available to me all at once when hiking in a mountain creek bed this last winter, after a rainstorm. All the rocks were covered in moss. The rushing water was an iridescent blue. The green, browns, and reds of the trees were deeply rich, as if they were caked upon each other. I didn’t know where to look, or how to take it in. My senses could only inadequately acknowledge the depth they were confronting. I felt awed that nature could sometimes be so shamelessly gorgeous, but I’m used to appreciating a more muted kind of beauty in the mountains of my hometown. Why was it at this moment that beauty decided to stand so naked and so revealed?

The world is always magical when you’re clear enough, but sometimes the world just sparkles with it and there becomes no denying it. Have you ever seen that kind of colored iridescence (I’ve found it in mushrooms and flowers) that shimmers as if it is not grounded in material substance? Tokens of the unreality. I admit: my awe at the creek had a touch of greed in it as I clumsily tried to gather myself to decipher the message t this virgin scene could have been telling me. Walking back up the trail, I felt amazed and a little unsure I knew my blessing was good even if I didn’t completely understand it.

Moral lesson: I’m just a beginning devotee learning how to handle his awe.

THERE IS NO ONE TO WATCH ME IN MY UGLY ECSTASY. MY TEARS DISTORT MY FACE BUT SOMEWHERE MY HEART REVELS. NO OTHER EYES BUT MY INNER VISION SEE MY GRIMACE HEAL THE WORLD. WHEN I FEEL THIS PAIN OF THE WORLD, I KNOW I AM STRONG. But I cry for those times I cannot take on others. I cry for those times when I cannot look at others. And myself. I cry for my thoughts. I cry when I want to hurt people who are tender. Anger cannot face beauty, it does not even know how to begin, but knows it is less powerful and so it wants to destroy it. I cry for the power I can wield, I cry too for my ineptitude, my impotency, my apathy, my forgetfulness.

THUS: LET ME not confuse anger with resolve. LET ME pray my art will add to life and not separate me from it. LET MY meditation add to life and not separate me from it. I pray my solitude will add to life and not separate me from it. I am oneof those who years to bury himself. But when I do, let it be cultivating the soil and not mere starvation. I am one of those who yearns to reach inside to that place where consciousness is a fountain bubble, one moment away from death, but with all the potential of eternity. It will require a glimpse into the infinite multitudinous chaos of unconsciousness and death (spend more than a glance and you will be consumed). How can simple life live in the face of this rotten complexity? But I shall be an old God, placing my faith in the child of life, the precarious, precious, glorious, newborn.

My body will disentegrate, will transform, will ooze… but my inner vision must be unwavering, always fixated upon its goal. When I am under that coma, I need you to hold my hand at my bedside. What is heroism without a lover’s touch? Death will touche me and will all but kill me. I can’t be with you right now, but please understand this is only so I can LOVE YOU MORE. Life is insane I know, life brings us to the hardest of places. Sometimes I hate the choices I have to make, but they are only so I can love you more. I have so much to get rid of, this cleansing is painful, but it is so I can love with you more. Pain is death lest I take it on as the pain of all beings. I feel so much pain, but my salvation is that I have somewhere to put it.

When I embrace winter please understand it is only to allow the spring her dawning. When I embrace spring let me not be creating winter in other places. Please do not let my beauty become a caged bird.

Ahhhh…… humanity. LOVE.

Evolution left us with an unsurpassed emotional spiritual sense that we don’t always know what to do with. Humans are spiritual beings who share practically the same consciousness, though we live as individuals, each with our own subjectivity. We are higher beings with real struggles. It is through this that we are trying to understand each other, trying to find peace within ourselves and with each other. We are so complex, and we sit with others as we try to figure out our mutual complexity. What makes you tick I ask, while I’m trying to figure out what makes I tick. We live all of us planted on this same Earth, going through what we go through, checking with others, comparing notes on the experience of consciousness. Maybe the two of us can make some since of it, perhaps there’s the hope that there’s something or somebody who understands and who will help us understand ourselves. We size up each other we position each other we check each other out, we make love to each other, and we realize share the same wishes to live, laugh, and love. We face each one another at the forefront of the unknown….. we don’t know much else, but we know that we need each other.

Philosophical Disclaimer:

Do not ask me to describe the things of this world. To mention them would to access the world of knowledge, labels, and words, and these are less crucial to my experience than That Thing Which I Could Not Live Without. These details are not where the real work is done, they are not what insight confronts when it is realized. When the marrow of experience is grasped, labels and concepts in space and time retreat to the margin, only tools hanging on the workshop wall.

A poet’s poetry is the explanation of, the evocation of, the description of, spiritual perception. It is a physical token of, a by product of, a residue of, a spiritual perception. But do not get the impression that his words just passively describe the world; they are his tools he uses to pry open and unleash the manifold meanings. The poet is a mystic armed with a palette of words which form and give shape to perceptions that could be otherwise mysterious or obscured. His process is his feeling, his undefined, momentary undercurrent of inspiration, that he guides into an appropriate vessel which can serve as an even more potent presentation of nature’s original beauty. Nature is a perfect art form because it has had millions of years to practice. Man has had less time, but has as much potential. The poet’s words aspire to be nature their interpretation of it. Yet they are a tribute, not a developer’s improvement or an addition. Man is still the young apprentice. The intended beauty of his words are his humble attempt to be worthy of communion with Nature’s divine completion.So, spend time in nature and you will begin to recognize nature’s language. You will come to learn what it means. Nature speaks soul through the patterns of leaves, the cry of the birds, and the textures of bark. Man can learn to read nature’s language, and when he comes to understand it, he and nature will be able to talk. But man does not speak in leaves and bark, he speaks soul in hands and feet, poetry and words. His words are not just words, as a hand is not just a hand, or a foot is not just a foot. In other words, take away a person’s eyes and he will not be able to see. Take a way a poet’s words and he will not be able to see.

Remember, you don’t look out onto the world and touch it with your eyes, you touch it with your soul. Sometimes it happens that you look at a person and your two souls touch. Yet love is blind because you cannot see farther than your own act of giving. Who is your lover anyhow but the golden face of the One before you? You can’t understand what this face means, you cannot see what it sees or understand how it perceives you. All you are capable of is gazing upon the One’s veil and accepting the light and goodness that trickles through . Prayers are always a lone faithfulness. We can only pose them with a sincere heart and trust that it is received in the right place.

The impure, the coarse, the confused, the fatigued, the senseless, the ragged: I keep these things close to me. They are the wet clay I shape my strong hands around. They are coarse grains from which compassion sprouts. They are what the redeemed stand upon: a history transformed, but never forgotten.Yet among these tangles, love is a smiling, innocent flower- unmistakably radiant.

And what brought about this flower? Sadness.

Sadness is a winter that sheds the layers of fruit and paunch. For a short while, it takes away all the fruit on the tree, both ripe and rotten, and allows life a chance to live on its bare root system, leaving it to extend its roots downward in a search for a purer and truer form of sustenance.

Near the network of currents in the valley of karma, the winds of joy turn into the winds of sadness at a slight gesture. They blow through you and swirl above you, moving faster or slower, throwing icy pellets at your face. The storm can’t soften its blow for you, and you may at first not see its compassion, but each blow is a hidden pleading for you to stay…

And if something in you decides to stay, perhaps that old wisdom sense lodged in us by life to support life, you will be taken over by a profoundly sober, searching sense that is hard to trust at first because it appears to be pairing down all the beautiful joys and desires in life and turning them back into the soil. Their loss leaves you stranded with empty hands and no face. Those masks have served you before, and though they are not gone forever, this moment’s confrontation must be done nakedly.

How does one know he is in the midst of a test, since tests take so many forms? Certainly life cradles us much and does not test us. (Though there is a constant violence to the world. There are cosmic battles that we are affected by, but we are not meant to fight and only meant to find our peace in. I believe we are only meant to wage the battles that we can win, that have symbolic meaning for us, and that’s something we create in our minds.) In the Buddhist teaching, to become fearful or satisfied, to rest on anything but the most fundamental of ground of being would mean a fall to death.

As such, sadness, as with deep love and compassion, is an extremely honest emotion.  It is when life itself is at stake in the question of the fundamental worthiness and value of the individual. What keeps life worthy of living through the highest joys and lowest sorrows? What is there that can be lastingly achieved in this life? Is there anything unique in a man that cannot be replaced by another man? Is there any kind of intelligence that is not an imperfect copy of something or someone else? If a man is unworthy in the eyes of every category and judgment, what authenticates him as human being? The monk and the deviant are those who have rejected the conventional joys.  Society is not able to stretch to see their worth. What then gives them rights? Is there any value in their obstinance or in their silence?  And though we are priveleged participants, how long can we enjoy society’s favors? At least until death, some say.

I long to make my communications with people as powerful as my silences with myself. I’ve wanted to express myself to people, but at some point I realized there is no kind of self expression that continues after death apart for the small shimmer of self-existing wakefulness that lies in each and every person.  I seek nothing more out of people than to see the (not my or their) self nature twinkle inwardly.

I hope at some point my sadness can nurture other people as it has myself. To face sadness is to tap into a deeper reserve, gaining the deeply humble hope that is found upon heading towards a place of rest, a place though initially frightening in its lack anything we love, know and commonly cherish, is in its ultimate nature boundless freedom.