Gabriel Raam
Essays
(c) All rights are reserved to the author and the publisher.
Contents
Introduction by Professor Shlomo Giora Shoham.
Part one: The approach
Preface: Observation from afar
Prolog: the mysterious life
Part two: The gate of knowledge
Preface to the gate of knowledge
The mysterious life of reality
To dream life
The important things
The antithesis as a friend
To be natural in the spirit level
Adjustment to life. (”Let it be”)
The princess of sweet fantasies
Self-deception
Romanticism
On spiritual mediocrity
The price of compromise
From historical perspective
3 Educational essaes:
1. The established education
2. The dominant education
3. The authentic (organic) education
3 social definitions:
1. The social animal and individuality:
1. The sick society
2. 8 social definitions
The one and only choice
Work and learning (or the pure learning)
The great power of the status quo
The pure value of the postmodern art
The priest and the prophet
To be up, to be down
From a dead past to an alive present
On riot, calamity and going wild
Vive Le Bourgeoisie
The art of prose and poetry – the truth in a lie
Interpersonal communication series:
Games people play
On the magnetic dynamic in communication
The circular nature of the authentic communication
The hidden worlds in interpersonal communication
Relations of body and soul:
The human in the dimensions of: body, space and time
Our body – a resonance bell
The body language of the soul
The existential change
The guide for tracking the soul in the foreign land of existence
The real nature of difficulties and hardship
On total questions
Part three: the gate of the soul
Preface to the soul’s gate
In the spirit kingdom
Transcendence
The dove-man
Spirit and matter
Me and God
Peace
In praise of the cry
The art of living
On real wisdom
Something is missing
Amphibians
And what is in between
The way of the warrior
In praise of the warrior’s stance
The bottom line
The secret of out brother the lonely ranger
The void
On outer & inner conflict
To dream reality – an eulogy
“Sad Lisa”
The art of finishing
The selling of the soul
What are they talking about?
From shock to shock
Part four: The existence gate
Forward to the existence gate
The transience of human existence
Life is passing
All passes
Life aren’t but a train
Inertia
Life and the missed opportunities
About the unbearable quivering of the soap bubble
Drunken youth
Determined old age
Life as a corridor
In praise of philosophy
The void a death ambassador
Madam History
The death
We who are about to die
Out and away
The three levels of time
The illusions and ups and downs, of age and time
The human and the issue of free time
To live life
Our life
The turning of a man into a wolf
Shell shock
Towards war
Let there be sadness
On worry and anxiety
Death and the meaning of life
Sayings
Bibliography
Introduction
It is an honor and a pleasure to open this important, interesting and deep composition of Gabriel Raam. This is a spiritual development biography of a thinker and feeler. Gabriel is presenting first to us the abyss gaping between the group, the other, the oppressive collective and the established systems and between the sensitivity, depth and pain of the individual that gets broken on the forceful walls of the establishment – is what is the essence of his suffering. This struggle could end in the despair of the individual, laying at the bottom of the achievement pyramid, when the Sisyphus stone is crashing him until his helplessness.
The hope gushing out of Gabriel’s important composition stems from the possible dialectic between the individual and the daily routine and the powerfulness of the systems which surround us.
The individual, in his desperate endeavor for authenticity, could experience a revelation of grace and turn it into a creative experience. As long as we are not anchoring on abstract goals, which recedes from us as a Fata Morgana, but are aspiring for authenticity in every moment of our existence, we can get out of the strangling grasp of the absurd. Gabriel shows us the possibility for the possibility of the existence of the authentic man even whiten the filth of the stonefly effect of the collective others.
The essays of Gabriel come together to a life teaching, that anyone who adopts it could find in it an escape route which is unique and special for him and for him only – from the corrupt forcefulness of the establishment. From this respect Gabriel’s wisdom is like the manna in the desert; each one finds in it flavors which are fit for his uniqueness.
Professor Shlomo Giora Shoham. Tel Aviv University.
First part: The approach
Preface: views from afar
“Give me but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.”
― Archimedes. The Works of Archimedes.
This firm spot would have allowed us a different, wide and realer look of reality. A look that is not possible as long as we are sunk in reality, involved and being part of it.
We are prevented physically from going out of the borders of our reality, but we have got the ability ‘to visit’ someplace without being in it physically, an ability to reach the Archimedes-firm spot which is located out of our reality.
With the power of thought, which is limitless, we can ‘visit’ our past districts, ‘to travel’ to far places, or place ourselves in in a view-point outside of ourselves, from which we can have a view of our self. The thought as an ambassador of the spirit – is the most experienced, efficient and unlimited tourist that we have, it doesn’t need visas, passenger permit, or flying tickets – only freedom.
On the book:
The book is made from essays, which are divided into three gates, and every gate constitutes a central position approach.
About two thirds of the book are viewpoints, trying to examine issues in our life from afar. The heart of the matter could only be seen from afar. Too often we get lost to and in, ourselves, being too close, too attached, too identified with what is happening to us. Without this firm external spot, we are likened to a spider that gets entangled in his own webs.
The position of the spot from which we view our life, determines the size of the cage in which our life is taking place in.
The beliefs positions and conditionings, we chose for ourselves, could be the bars (of this cage) or a launching platform aimed at a greater, bigger, and wider – reality. For the only cage is the way we see our life; from being lost in it, or from being far away.
The subjects of the essays are many and varied, and they deal in the different aspects of human life: communication, old age, education, history, learning and working, youth, wisdom, time, death, and the like.
All the essays are interwoven, and together they constitute a kind of drawing, which is the world view of the author, and this world-view constitutes together a map, or an arrow, of a spiritual world-view.
What is spirituality which is the spirit of the book?
A person being fired at night, can assume what is the source of the shooting just by its source and where the flash of light came from. So is the case about spirituality; all that could be said about her is the clues, that give a faint view of its direction.
Thich Nhat Hanh said: “A finger pointing at the moon is not
the moon. The finger is needed to know where to look for the moon, but if you mistake the finger for the moon itself, you will never know the real moon”.
In the same way, the essays here are a finger pointing towards spirituality, or the domain of high consciousness.
The book is made from essays, collected into three gates; the first two – knowledge and the soul are an attempt to look at our life from spiritual perspective.
In order to discover in them the sparks of holiness that got spread and swallowed by the kelipot, (in Kabala).
The third gate, is looking at life from life itself, as the naked existence is by itself.
The 3bgates of the book are:
- The knowledge gate: This is a position looking at our life through thinking and the mind, coming to lighten sides of our life by various philosophical approaches. The affinity of this gate is of research and learning.
- The soul’s gate: this another observation point, looking at our life through the heart and the inner life. The iffinity of the gate is poetic.
- The exisitential gate: this gate is located on the bottom line of our life and not from the high towers and hopes.
The view is existential, relating to the three lower stairs of human existence: Anxiety by: Kierkegaard. Martin Heidegger: Average Everydayness. And the Absurd, by: Abler Kami. To wrestle with them and suck out of them – meaning. The affinity here is existential.
Prolog: the mysterious life
An Axiom: to relate to something as a matter of fact, means, not to relate to him at all.
Hearing doesn’t internalize the content of what is being said, it mainly gets the tone of voice (whisper or shout). Looking doesn’t internalize the inner dimension of things, just takes a snapshot of the outside of things.
Only through listening and observation it is possible to internalize the content and the inner dimension of impressions from the world. In a similar way, in order to live it is not enough to exist, there is a need for intensification of the experience of inner perception.
Usually, we just look, we don’t observe. We hear but we don’t listen, we are alive and not alive.
So, we are looking for an explosion of experience, than we might feel, for a while, that we are alive.
When I was about 7 years old, I traveled with my father to Haifa harbor, to welcome my mother returning from overseas. In the evening before I ate, for the first time in a restaurant, and for the first time we entered our room in a hotel. From our window I saw the sea (also for the first time), something was rising in my throat, I turned to my father and asked him: “Daddy, are we having fun right now”?
In all of us lives this child and even at 40 the child could look through the adult eyes, looking for the magic that happens in the passing moment. As we remember it; the first kiss, the first time we saw a movie, and so on.
Would the magic happen in the next going out to a restaurant? In the next hug? In the next trip abroad? In entering a new apartment? In a romantic affair out of the marriage, in next morning?
At a certain stage in our life – the memory about the possibility of a life which is not taken for granted- gets foggy and our conviction that this possibility actually exists – gets weaker. The dull blurred hue of here and now becomes fixed and overshadows the initial magical experiences.
Experiences which are powerful, clear and exposing – are perceived now as threatening or scary, and our habits also distances us further from the magical experience. We just hear, just look, just to exist. And here we abandoned the 7 years old child in Haifa harbor, which is in all of us.
My claim in this book is, that life did not move away from us, it is us that moved away, and so we have to look for them under etiquettes and the routine dust, for real life is hidden from sight, looking at us, secretly, in silence in mystery.
*
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.”
― Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies
Part two: The gate of knowledge
Preface to the gate of knowledge
All the progress obtained by our cerebral effort consists in the ascertaining of material facts by ridiculously imperfect instruments, which make up in a certain degree however for the inefficiency of our organs. Every twenty years some unhappy enquirer, who generally dies in the attempt, discovers that the atmosphere contains a gas hitherto unknown, that an imponderable, inexplicable, unqualifiable force can be obtained by rubbing a piece of wax on cloth; that among the innumerable unknown stars, there is one that has not yet been noticed in the immediate vicinity of another which has … Well, what about it? Our diseases are due to microbes? Very well. But where do those microbes come from? And what about their diseases? And the suns, whence do they come? We know nothing, we understand nothing, we can do nothing, we guess nothing. We are shut up, imprisoned in ourselves…
GUY DE MAUPASSANT: NOTEBOOK, APRIL 7, l888
Reading those lines of Maupassat’ I remember what Gurdjieff had to say about human beings, and indeed their great achievements – sky scrapers, airplanes, satellites, autonomic cars, G.P.S. T.V. brain surgery, heart and lungs transplants, and more… – are achieved by sleeping people, and if all this was achieved by sleeping man, what achievements could be reached – if all this huge investments, were done by wakened human beings?
The mysterious life of reality
Part A
The commercials industry presents figures, pictures, sights and happenings – in such a way, that gives them a kind of artificial magic, false romanticize, idyllic relationship. Through the advertisement filter- an airport becomes a lively place, where people come and go to their magical life and destiny. In this commercials even a supermarket may seem to be a colorful heaven, to see all this tempting staff, and just to reach out for it and it is yours.
In this world, where an artificial glitter is surrounding all, nothing is itself, but his image in the eyes of his imagination (every product is a one way ticket towards happiness).
But not only in commercials, had all this begun in our mind, in the private commercials that we concoct from the raw materials of the daily routine. A concoct of a different reality, mysterious, magical, sending a provoking finger towards the ends of our longing, hoping, daydreaming. There we weave chapters of life in our emotional imagination the following: breakfast in bed, a good looking woman or man, a flourishing garden, city lights in the rain, music of Bach while traveling in a car, picture of the sky scrapers, a shelf full of books in a bookstore, a freshly squeezed orange juice at dawn in the country and so on.
All this is appearing for a moment in our imagination and plants a hop to implication of it sometime, somehow.
Usually, there is a huge gap between our ‘now life’ and what this pictures plant in our mind. A gap in which there is a longing.
What is this imagined reality? What is this Fata Morgana? And what creates them?
Part B
Life is not like this, it is what it is. Sky scrapers are tall building in a busy city. The other, without fantasies is just another human being. A breakfast in bed is the same meal, just horizontal… things around us has got their own being, which has got no relation to the hallucinatory way through which we see life.
The conditioning way in which we see life is a result of the raping of reality by non-actualized cravings and desires that are cruise as ghosts at the edges of our consciousness.
In order to absorb the real inner reality of things – there is a need to silence the subjective and dominant voices, and instead, to listen to the inner being of things.
Only in this way we can absorb the real, unconditioned magic; they as they are themselves. Truth inhabits the inner being of what there is, with no connection to our personal perceptions and conditioning. We can dance around the Golden Calf of our subjectivity, or allow our consciousness to magnetize itself around what is real, for itself and by itself.
In the end, how come we were convinced that our non actualized life can be the central axis of the world around it. Only the purest levels of reality itself can and should be such axis, an axis that our consciousness could turn around it and suck from it its mystery.
*
The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.
Carlos Castaneda
To dream life
An axiom: we don’t live life – we dream our version of it.
People get lost in life; dreaming about the past, the future, but are rarely present in the ‘here and now’. The daydreaming are a fantasy about a better realty.
The orange juice (from the previous essay) – in the eyes of the daydreamer, is a symbol for youth, freshness, health, correct lif – but is a fantasy.
When person thinks of a glass of orange juice (or anything else) – he is thinking about the fantasy representation of the orange juice glass. When a woman thinks about a man, she doesn’t think of someone suffering from hemorrhoids, or an unfaithful partner, she thinks of course on the fantasy. In fact a human being is a collection of fantasies, that reality act for them as a trigger.
To a person dreaming reality – there is no reality, only, or mainly, dreams that come and go according to his associative approach to reality itself.
A woman who is going out for a date – doesn’t meet him at all, she meets the fantasies that the man arises in her. And the same with a man dating a woman, and then they both get married… only to meet later the real reality of the partner – for they both thought that they met reality.
To wake up (in this context) is to see another as he is, and to be captivated by the potential in him, his inner being; to know that he has got fears, anxieties, ambitions and weaknesses, and to be fascinated by him being him.
To be enchanted by reality or to be enchanted by fantasy – are totally two different things. Daydreaming are subjective and are not connected to reality.
We got lost in the compensating fantasies that we invented in order to supply an alternative reality, imaginary, better than the real reality. In other words – to live in hallucinations about a reality we will never met as it is and most likely – we would never meet.
To wake up from the dream about life, meaning to become free from the subjective-conditioning chains and to be at all times in the: ‘here, now, with you and me’, in the reality as it is, which has got nothing to do with us. Without filters, without colorful lenses, or enlarging or minimizing lenses. When we were kids we still had the ability to experience something with all our senses, (colures, sounds, textures, smells, and feelings) – they took us to a trip into the being of that which we were dealing with at the time.
If it is a cup of tea – then you experience the smell, the color, it presence. You get lost in it’ it is your reality now, it is the whole world. (Like in a trip of L.S.D. or Mescaline).
As for the person who dreams his life, nothing is enough by itself, so we jump from one thing to another, from experience to an experience, from subject to subject and from item to item – in search of the greatest, most existing fantasy. And as we are being swept towards the sweet fantasy, we pass thorough life without really living them.
The real reason why we choose a particular way through which we see the world and our life – is to find a way that will cause us as little as possible emotional dissonance, pain and frustration. We believe that we see life in this specific way, because this is the way things are, but the truth is that we choose the view that will cause us as little emotional dissonance as possible.
*
We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
Chuang Tzu
The important things
The really important things – are always important’ or at least how they are supposed to be. The real important things cannot be important sometime, only when it is comfortable for us, when it fits to us.
In the beginning we swear on the importance of certain things. With time and as the years pass, something is depleting the importance we gave to things. What ever happened to the things that were so important to us once? What happens to them while the teeth of time is being munched at it? Well’ mostly, it is being pushed to the corners (so that it will not disturb), this repressions are usually followed by expressions such as: “It just didn’t work out”, “I didn’t have any time”‘ “it happened only by coincidence”, “it is only technical problem”, “it won’t happen again”, “I tried very hard, but…”, “next time…” and so on.
Sometimes we put the blame on other people: “you simply don’t understand me”, “life is not just black or white”, “you accept too much”, and “you don’t see it right”. This expressions serve very well the defense mechanisms of the pushing aside things we once believed were important. It could be a diet, work outs, clarifying conversation, a book you promised to yourself that you must read, the time you promised you will arrive, the task you promised to execute, what you promised you will never do. And mainly; the meaning you promised yourself that you will discover when you have the time. But at the end, what becomes eventually are the little daily hills of routine: how to get along, how to overcome a temporary difficulty, how to compile few more crumps of happiness and success (each one into his little pot). And in the meanwhile, under the routine little importance – the real neglected importances – gather and accumulate. And they are: the tears that were not shed, the deeds that were unexecuted, the needed conversations, love affaires that did not come to be and the emotions we did not allow ourselves to feel. We would never admit, of course, that those neglected importances might never come to be and in the meanwhile we acquire expertise in delaying technics: “I am not ready for this yet”, “it is not the right time yet”, “it’s never too late”, “one needs to wait for the right opportunity”. And from delay to delay – time runs and you are 60 and your life is full with banal trivia. And the real importance? It escaped us somehow…
But what was important once – is always important. Like the great creative works in the areas of art, music, prose, poetry or philosophy which do not lose from their importance with the passage of time, so it should be about the important values in our life.
The real importances actually, never left us, it is us who moved away from it into current, alternating, superficial importunacies of the celebrating moment. What is important is to return to the original importances, like a return into childhood home, to an adolescent love. To wake up to the again, to remind ourselves again and again, what is the core.
Time doesn’t do well to the original importances, it gets deserted, eventually in favor of the fashionable, the current, the passing: but only the real original importances are what gives to the pseudo importances the core importances that escaped us so far.
*
The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‘renouncing’ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’ in the usual meaning of the words.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The antithesis as a friend
The idea of inoculation is amazing idea, according to it the way to combat with an enemy is to enter a Trojan horse into the threatened kingdom… The inoculation is weakened form of the virus, which is entered into the body in order to evoke the immune system into action. Behind this phenomenon there is an explanation in two levels; the first level is coming from the holistic and bioenergetics – fields. The second level (the level above) is the consciousness level.
The holistic approach claims that the immune system must get a kind of ‘shock’ that will provoke it into action against an intruder. Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher and a mystic discovered Iscador, for cancer patients, it is an extract of European mistletoe (Viscum album). This medicine evokes the ‘soldiers’ of the immune system, which are the T cells, for them the Iscador effect is like an attack, and after they win the weakened version of the virus, they have got in their hand ‘the cod’ of the enemy and they are ready for war.
In the world there is a basic polarity, to everything its opposite:
The day has the night.
The winter has the summer.
Sleep has got wakefulness.
The sperm has the ovum.
The heat got the cold.
The positive has got the negative.
Man has got woman.
Life has got death.
Light has got darkness.
Failure has got success.
Rest has got activity.
The Ying has got the Yang.
In the process of fertilization, the sperm in united with its opposite; the ovum and so life is being created.
In the process of working on the atom bomb, an opposite process (to the fertilizing process) took place; scientists split the atom and so, separated between the two poles; the proton and the electron) and one pole attacked the other and a great explosion happened. In other words, Synergy’ or the unification of opposites, is a constructive process that leads to growth and life, whereas, dichotomy and separation between the poles is a distractive process, that leads to conflict and an explosion.
Divorce is the most typical example; the couple is split, and usually with split – explosions happens, they attack each other very often.
Rest and activity
In a distractive and dichotomic way of life – rest and activity ‘live’ separately, one comes on the account of the other, the one grows on the account of the other, and one attacks the other.
It begins usually when the activity side starts to be too dominant and then at the height of its power, the person falls into the ‘hands of the enemy’: exhaustion. And from it there is a leap into the opposite pole: ambition, competitiveness. And so on. The longer it goes on, so does the dichotomy grows, and the more it grows – so does grow the power of each side and his demand to be the only ‘boss’.
In a way of life which is synergetic and constructive – rest and activity are together, living one within the other. Like the symbol of Ying and Yang, when the center of one us living within the opposite pole.
In the heart of every activity rest should live and in the heart of every rest activity was supposed to be. Then, the person is acting from peace and relaxation, when rest is the inner soul of the activity. If a person would barricade himself in the activity pole (when he will separate between the poles) – he would tend to be: angry, tense, aggressive and competitive. And if he would barricade in the rest pole – he would have a tendency towards: melancholy, depressed, lacking confidence and initiative, surrender easily and is escaping from difficulty and a combat.
The correct rest does not reside outside activity and a correct activity does reside outside rest. They reside one within the other, like a sperm within the ovum, the eye of the storm within the storm, the neutron within the proton, like the soul within the body.
Sleep and wakefulness
When we are asleep, in the heart of our sleep floats the wakefulness (dream, processes in the mysterious subconscious). When we are awake. In the heart of our wakefulness sleep was supposed to reside: inner peace, the depth and clarity of the quite lake of our inner life. Therefore we should wake up quietly and slowly, not at once; gradually, so that some of the night can infiltrate into the potential day, before it will be conquered by the armies of: competitiveness, effort and pressure. And if we succeeded to ‘inculcate’ the day by the antithesis of the night – our day will be blessed, soft, quite as the bottom of a deep ocean, it will be tuned inside, to the intuition and inner voice.
Woman and man
I men women relationship we find today the same dichotomy as between rest and activity. It is a dichotomy that is expressed in a growing hostility between the two genders; men attack women forcefully, and women are expressing objection by protest (feminism) and the getting together in study and support groups.
But within the man, femininity was supposed to reside, the same as that within the woman – masculinity was supposed to reside. The famous psychologist: Carl Jung related to two terms: Animus and Anima, Jung claimed that in every masculinity – Animus, there is femininity – Anima and the other way around. But the situation today is that each gender is fortressed in what is different from the partner. This leads to misunderstandings and power struggles.
Strong and weak
Everyone aspires to be strong, everyone runs away from weakness and its typical signs, as it is an epidemic; weakness is being conceived as an invitation for maltreatment, as being a looser. People believe that to be strong means to renounce weakness and weak people, and to expel it out of bounds, and be based in control. But this is not the case, the ability to be strong for real stems out of becoming friends with what is perceived as weakness, but in truth, it is sensitivity. The strong for real admits weakness, allows himself to feel anxiety, and then, after he met himself in his weakness – he is ready to cope.
There is nothing stronger than the antithesis.
Temptation and abstinence
Those who abstain are running away from temptation like from wild fire, closing themselves in an isolated convent, Yeshiva or a mosque. But the thicker and taller would be the walls, so would the temptations (get stronger); and the more they would isolate themselves, so would the dark power will intensify outside the thick walls. Only making friends with temptations (in the emotions and thoughts), only living with it all the time – could block the external, flesh and blood – temptations. Because the power of the antithesis is great when it is outside the walls, especially when it meets the thesis through its weaknesses.
The solution is in the have one within the other (like the Animus and Anima and the Ying and Yang); the activity should host rest, the day should host the night, masculinity should host femininity, forcefulness should host weakness, peace should host war, life should host death, the thesis should host the antithesis and what there is should host what is not…
Through weakness we should open our gates and call loudly to the enemy’ to the opposite, the problematic, to the unknown, to the other, the outsider – to come into our home inside; let it come and enter into the thesis; let it come with its power’ let it come and be.
***
“To get everything you want is not a good thing. Disease makes health seem sweet. Hunger leads to the appreciation of being full-fed. Tiredness creates the enjoyment of resting”
― Heraclitus
The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.
To be natural in the spirit level
We, citizen of the western world in 2020 are used to coin phrases such as: “but it is not natural” or “I want to live in a natural way” or “this product is made only with natural ingredients” and so on. It seems the naturalness and being natural are conceived by us as a positive value. But is it really?
What do we mean by talking about the naturalness and the un naturalness of things? Does it mean that being natural is to behave and act within the area of what you already know and familiar with? If the answer is yes, then this approach is a sure recipe to stagnation and degeneration. But if it means that being natural means to do a conscious effort to return to an original and basic way of conduct – then the meaning is opposite (to the conventional believe).
Indeed, our way of life leads us (in many areas) either towards growth or decay. If we would allow the muscles to act ‘naturally’ (according to the first version), meaning: effortless, in our regular rang of activity – we would lead our bodily systems to a general decline and degeneration. However, putting a physical challenge to the muscles and bringing them to super-effort in a range which is beyond what is required from them in our daily routine (which could be conceived, from the ‘point of view’ of the muscles – as un natural) – would lead us to the way of growth and strengthening.
The first (and common) way is conceiving the concept of naturalness in a low level. The second way is conceiving it in a higher level. There is also a third way and it is of course the highest of all.
The first, physical level:
The level relates to the plans of the physical, material and the fixed – all which have reached a final stage of evolution, such as the skeleton, the bones and tendons. Natural on this level is to allow it to happen, to preserve the existing state. To be natural on this level is meaning not to hurt, not distort the Skelton and bones structure by adopting a wrong posture and gait.
The second physical level:
This is the level of the tissues, muscles, blood and fat (everything between the bones and the skin). Here, being natural means coping with the load of difficulty, with resistance. Being natural on this level means challenge and conformation with the difficulty, and the greater is the difficulty – so does the muscles become stronger, the fat decreases and the level of vitality in the blood – intensified.
The third, soul and spiritual level:
This is the hidden level. Being natural in this level is relating and coping with what did not happen yet, a meeting with what is missing. In the spirit level we relate to areas in which we have not been yet; examining values, ideas and understanding – we don’t have yet. To be natural in the level of the spirit is to ask (all the time): what is missing? What could happen but did not happen yet? How to act in a way we did not act before? How to think about what we did not think before?
So, the conventional understanding of being natural – is good for what has already ‘arrived’ in the human, all which has actualized its full potential, and it is, fully, as he was supposed to be; fully functional, like the heart, lungs, kidneys etc. But it is not good as far as what is still in a raw, potential state – is concerned. Everything that has not been fixed yet (reached its ultimate, final state) can either deteriorate or grow.
There is an essential difference between our body parts which are below the neck and those which are above it. The head is the most potential organ in our body, which far away from full actualization. (One example is that we use 90% of the left hemisphere and only 10% of the right hemisphere, and this is why 90% of people are right handed…). The brain is a pioneer, living in the seam between the seen and tangible and material worlds, and the unseen worlds of the spirit; trying to find its way in the spiritual darkness.
So, to natural on this level means to be all the time, dissatisfied, embraced, lost, more like a tracker that his senses are directed towards the ranges which are beyond what is seen and known.
It is natural for the mind and the spirit to relate to the unknown and to be enchanted by it, and therefore, to grow towards it, like the plant which is not growing towards what is familiar and know to it; the earth, but growing towards the unknown, where it hasn’t been yet (the sky).
Therefore, to be natural in the spirit level is to object to the comfortability that comes with the habit, to reject to the obvious, to object to dogmatic, conventional answers, that their object is to block any open ended question and to relieve any wonder, and instead, to insist on a mind that acknowledges what is undefined, the unknown, that which wasn’t charted yet; to get acquainted to the hidden – to what we don’t know yet.
And this is a definite sign of a person natural in the spirit level; he is based and anchored in what he doesn’t know, and let it guide what he knows.
Adjustment to life (”Let it be”)
In the adjustment to life (like in acquiring various skills) there are stages. In the first stages the task is greater than the experience and the training and the person is motivated by ambition and aspiration. For example; a baby trying to walk, or learning to drive, later on he starts to ‘forget himself’ and then the wonder happens: suddenly the walk or the drive are as happening by themselves, instinctively, at this progressive stage the difficulty and the effort of awareness are making room for the dynamic flow.
And so it is in the way we live our life; somewhere, during it was supposed to come the dynamic flow stage; not to make an effort – to walk or drive, we do the first move and the rest is happening without us being involved; not to be the operator and activator of our life but being activated and operated.
A person who succeeded in adjusting to life is nor striving to be the playwright of his life but the pen and paper upon which his would play of life happen. The person who managed to adjust to life is careful not to be the pusher of his life, for if he does, he would block his ability to be and of his life to happen.
The person that have adjusted to life knows that by himself he is weak and helpless, just like an electric wire which is not connected to an electrical outlet is not effective. Thus he is trying to wait for the moment when he will be moved, to the moment in which something (and not himself) will activate him. The danger for him is that each entering into a state of stress could transfer the center of gravity from the dynamic level to the self-effort (of the person trying to push himself). When a person is in a state of stress – his power gets weaker, it is as though an electrical equipment is being disconnected from the outlet and is working only on batteries.
An instrument has no choice, human has. The temptation to react to a stress by surrender to it – exists always. Mostly there is anxiety that stems out of uncertainty, that the worst would happen, and so we go back to push ourselves (batteries). Therefore one should object to self-pushing and self-activation and to be elevated above the anxiety that nothing would move. The world is full of people who suffer from high blood pressure, heart disease, a broken disc in the back – because they insist on forcing themselves to make as effort and this effort is breaking their back and damaging their heart. The heart and the back were not supposed to bare this violent effort which are motivated by hysterical will and performance anxiety – but to carry the lighter load, a load which is moved by the gentle forces of nature and life.
For the one who wishes to reach the higher levels of life and existence – he should be careful not rape, rape of the present moment, rape of the other and mainly, rape of our inner life.
We should allow the moment, the other and our inner life – appropriate space and the time in which they could happen. If and when we reach the level where all this could happen – the dynamic would also happen; dynamic in the affinity between us and another, us and the present moment, us and our inner being. It will be like an arrow that was shot from the bow’s strings – not because of the mind’s intention, the heart’s wish and the power of the hand, but exactly because the mind gave up its intention, the heart gave its wish and the hand loosened its grip on the string – then we succeeded to relax our obsessive control of everything, and then, instead of life collapsing – it takes off. The arrow have reached the target. It is not the effort that sent it straight into the center of the target, but its total absence.
The princess of sweet fantasies
We see quiet few people during our life, most of them could look to us as regular, daily, grey and even quiet ‘square’, but all are hiding within them an intimate secret; the first love. For all it is an internal experience, painful, wonderful (or both) – till an elevation. In every person, even the most flat and practical there is an underground layer, vulnerable and longing. Everyone deep in him is a lost soul, a child crying for warmth and love.
It could be indeed find expression in the sign and the pain (often) the first love (actualized or not) left in him. But the first love a symptom and a voice to for the desperate cry that the cruel teeth of time did not manage to ‘eat’ it altogether.
By itself, this vulnerability and longing – remains (despite the passage of time) pure and initial, looking from the eyes of the 80 years of age and above, untouched by the teeth of time. For the covers of the aging body are lying, for the reality of this passage of time is not acceptable in the realms of the heart and soul.
The easy available answer to this desperate living longing are the stories in Television and movies. To the cinema house entering: A tired orthopedic doctor, a successful barber of woman, a querulous head of a house committee, a busy secretary to CEO, a hard working truck driver, a greengrocer with an expensive store and a housewife with hemorrhoids. All are coming from their difficult or another mechanical day, in order to be saved temporarily from their difficulties and desolations, to release and set free their soul bird and to get lost again in the endless fields of love and longing. To be melted forever.
When they watch the movie, they are actually watching the Hollywoodian actualization of their longing of their panful and longing soul. It is unbelievable how a boy or a girl in the heart of all of us to swallow the sweet legends on the screen, while identifying with the heroes … and continue to dream.
Because in our hearts we did not give up on the sweet fantasy price/princess. She/he refused to die, wants to live, sleeping in the cold alienated daily routine, waking up from time to time, to the kiss from the imagined price/princess from the screen Romanic tales.
Self-deception
One of the most frequent ‘arts’ one should have in life, is the art concealment. From a young age we learned (and get ‘trained’) to put on a disguise, mainly in order not to hurt and be hurt. Then we adopt small ways of beatifying that increase the more our social interactions get perfected. To this beautifying ways there are nice names: “to know how to behave”, “to adjust yourself”, “not to step on another’s toes”, “using tact”, “to behave in a civilized manner”. Of course we wouldn’t call this idioms in the blunt name: deceit. It is considered as an ability to get along with people. We are used not to call this as manipulations, but as having good manners and an attitude of civilized person.
The English and the Germans brought the art of concealment to a level of sophistication and even, perfection. Especially good at it are English people from what is called: upper class, but the principle of: ‘behaving in a civilized manner’ – is quiet widespread in other cultures as well. In the influence of the dominant western cultural of the 21th century, instead of trying to lower the alienation wall in order to reach the other – it deals in hiding and covering of: disgust, antagonism, competition and dominance – and is cultivating: conformity, political attitude, cognitive dissonance, Groupthink, and generally, to talk and behave, like everyone else (and not like oneself).
The present culture is dealing in the indoctrination of the next generation and it teaches that the world we live in (not like ‘the dark’ Middle Ages, God forbid…) is an advanced world, for it seems that science is on the brink of solving most problems of humanity, dangerous diseases (with the exception the Corona virus), prolonging the short day (by the invention of electricity), communication is easier (emails, what’s up, Zoom, skype etc.), filling empty times (by: smartphones, television etc.).
This are fantasies about our so called: advancement of humanity.
Various religious beliefs join the dream industry, by promising improved fantasies: reincarnation, the second coming (of Christ). Also the advertising industry in which we are made to believe that with this drink or this yogurt, with this facial cream, this book – our life will be so much better…
Of course it is a deception, because no improvement of the conditions of the ‘prison’ –could cover the fact that the soul of man is in a trap situation in which she experiences very difficult issues: alienation, estrangement, loneliness, meaningless life, competition, power struggle, stress, burn out, disintegration of the family cell, increasing violence (in murder of wives, in schools and hospitals), governmental corruption and more. When people are trying to deceive others (by wearing a mask, and the sending of subliminal messages, while using a collectively accepted language), without taking responsibility on this subliminal signals.
But not about social violence I wish to write here, but on a kind of slippery and cunning deception which is difficult to trace and abolish, and I mean: self-deception. In our attempts to deceive ourselves it is not so easy, for the person knows, somewhere deep in him that he is deceiving himself, so here it is more complex and cunning. It is much more sophisticated and elaborate then the social deception (being civilized). There is nothing more sophisticated then auto-suggestion. The ability to deceive oneself and to believe in it, is an ‘art’ that without it – it is difficult to get along in our world.
Where this elaborate ‘art’ does comes to expression in the life of the individual? Well, first of all it is important for us to believe that our life is in a process of improvement (as people are used to say about themselves, always: “I am optimistic”. We indeed believe that: we know more, we live longer, and our psychological problems have professional help and more. And that tomorrow will be much better then yesterday. No one will take away from us the privilege of telling ourselves the stories we want to believe in.
We are telling ourselves that life did not happen to us yet, that this situation is temporary, that the next trip abroad, the next baby, the next meeting, next year, next day – would cause our life to happen, like Pinocchio, we are growing dinkies’ ears and still do not let go from the way of thinking that: it is our right to consume life, there are shares in life and out share would also be gratified.
But reality is different; it teaches us that what is – is, not our subjective ‘is’ but the real ‘what is’; meaning that we have basically one obligation/duty in life, and it is to struggle in order to be fit to actualize our human and personal, destiny, and this is a truth difficult to bare.
Romanticism
The motivational force of romanticism as an approach to life – is very powerful. Therefore it is important to look at it closely, to know it to understand its characteristics, on its dangers and of the elusive ways through which it enters into our life.
The romantic concept comes to expression in idyllic pictures that out brain manufactures on life and reality; pictures that do not reflect reality as it is, but trying to place it in a better, nicer – position. More than that; reality itself seems as a lie through the eyes of the ideal, and in its place appears another picture of reality, the romantic one. I want to point out the psychology which is behind the romantic conception and the dangers embodied in it and to challenge it.
The romantic approach claims that there is a section in life which is a better portion then the existing one and therefore: “if we only do the right thing (find a partner, have a child, win in the lottery, advance in career, plant grass, finish my studies, etc.) if I would only do that or that – my life would be good and pleasant”.
The romantic conception believes that it is good to wait and there is what to wait for, there is hope that life would happen for us, according to the idyllic picture that was created by our brain.
All of us experience such moments; almost everyone is sensitive to a combination of elements, that when they get together, they awaken in us this longed for – romanticism.
This romantic feeling could be seeing the rainbow, seeing a sunset, a corn field moving with the wind, a Cantata of Bach, a meal with a loved one to the candles light and so on. In reality, the sun indeed was set and in the radio a Cantata of Bach was played – but on the romantic feeling that they might cause – our mind is responsible. And it alone creates this state in which our emotions are playing in the romantic scene. They, cause us to believe that now, this is real life and it was worthwhile to arrive at this moment.
The truth of the matter is that this is not life. The difficulties and struggle are not as we imagen them, as shells that if we manage to peel them, we would find the sweet, soft fruit of life. No way.
Romantic approach is an intoxicating drug (manufactured by our brain), that conditions us to believe that there, few steps ahead, in the place we did not reach yet, we believe that there the magic is constant and permanent, there is real life for us.
But the truth of the matter is that life is what it is; functional, and their beauty and charm are mainly in our subjective perception. Between the being of life and the imagined drama and the telenovela that we create around them – there is no connection. We should restrain our romantic approach to life (and their ‘relatives’: sentimentality and nostalgia) – and get drafted to the struggle.
The romantic approach claims that the ‘now’ is an intermediate stage – on the way towards a reality of happiness. And it is not like this, there is no stage of happiness, a person must be obliged to the absence of perfect happiness and be committed to the finding of the way towards self-actualization. He should be awake, sober, planted deeply in the ‘here and now’; a soldier of life, so is the anti-romantic approach.
And back to the romantic approach; it claims that life is a bid supermarket, in which we are the consumers and we deserve the best that life can offer (‘so said to me – Mom’…). The anti-romantic approach sees life more as a battle field and us as soldiers in it. Life is not a playground, nor is it a school, a person should be anchored in the journey, in the struggle.
If we can remove from our life the veil of romanticism, our ‘here and now’ life will become a powerful experience, when each moment is charged with the vitality and power of the very essence of being alive.
The world moves and doesn’t stop, life continues to happen, whether we are with them or not (and it does not matter if we feel the center of the world and that we deserve everything and that life will supply for us the rainbow in the cloud, or that we take upon ourselves the responsibility for our existence and are going out to meet life, as it is (with no connection to us individually).
We do have the choice (as impossible as it may seem) to continue to sleep our life as sweet dream or wake up to the world as it is.
On spiritual mediocrity
Part one:
Violence (especially towards the weak, in families, schools and hospitals), superficiality, emptiness, alienation, the race after status, money and pleasures – reached in our time (after the middle of 2020) a new climax. From the examination of the various approaches of the educational system and the great religions – we find approaches, such in the Western Christian traditions, that relates to the 7 deadly sins, which is divided into 3 categories;
- Lustful appetite (gluttony, fornication, and avarice)
- irascibility (wrath)
- Mind corruption (vainglory, sorrow, pride, and discouragement).
It is believed (in the Western Christian traditions) ,– that the way to deal with it are the seven virtues which are identified as: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Practicing them is said to protect one against temptation from the seven deadly sins.
Generally there are two polarized and radical approaches towards the deteriorated state of humanity – One is the way of the fanatic religious believer, the hermit that eradicates the root of any bad quality he has. The other is the way of the civilized average citizen that behaves externally as though he doesn’t have any dark side, he pays his taxes on time and keeps a decent approved life, but bury his cravings, lust and sexual desires – dep inside.
Henrik Ibsen, towards the end of his play: peer Gynt described peer meeting with the Button Molder (the angel of death) with his ladle, he comes to fetch peer.
“The Button-Molder: Your grave is dug already, your coffin bespoke. The worms in your body will live at their ease. But I have orders, without delay. On Master behalf to fetch in your soul.
Peer: It can’t be like this, without any warning…
The Button-Molder: It’s an old tradition at burials and births. To appoint in secret the day of the feast. With no warning at all to the quest of honor”.
He then explains that those who has done something distinctive, either good or bad, will go either to hell or to heaven, and the vast majority – the average lot will be melted in the ladle, in order to make out from them new Buttons.
The average ‘normal’ people deny their ‘shadows’ from one hand but on the other – they don’t accomplish anything special, thus remain average.
It is easier to take one of the two extremes; repression of the dark side, or eradicating it.
An example could be found in the approaches of people to foods; the fanatics are either vegan or anorectic (like the Hermit), and the other way is of the average eaters, they eat, mostly, junk food.
The two extremes belong to the fanatic way, the average way of eating is the second way. But there is a third way; acquiring new and correct habits of eating; managing your eating habits in a moderate way, this is the neutral way, which offers indeed a coping with cravings, but in a controlled callowness, meaning : instead of ignoring the craving (by repression), from one hand, or ‘castrating’ it, from the other.
The mature, neutral way, acknowledges the craving, examine it, and becomes friends with it, for it is an important ingredient in keeping the selfhood and the authenticity of a person.
The repressing bourgeois, and the extreme castrator – are motivated by a fear from the cravings, while those who are coping with the cravings in a neutral way – is motivated by a friendly inquisition approach.
The approach, or idea, that in order to be spiritual or religious, one has to abstain from cravings – could lead to the loss of the connection with his selfhood, and by that, to become a spiritual or religious astronaut. The connection with one’s being and selfhood is passing through the body. “Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman–a rope over an abyss.”
Friedrich Nietzsche. Any disturbance of this balance between an animal and an angel (towards up or down) will create an unhealthy extreme; a violation towards up, will damage authenticity, a violation towards down – will damage spirituality.
The mature, neutral golden path – directs the person to make friends with the cravings, a friendliness that would lead to the acquiring of the ability to moderate the craving, the preserve it within the right proportions, which is much more difficult than repressing from one hand, or abstention, from the other hand.
Part two:
One of the questions about how to deal with the deadly sins is not how to do it, but from where from where would a person draw the power and motivation to cope with this cravings and lusts? The real problem is that often people lack this power and motivation to cope at all with the access weight? (a force that would allow the adoption of correct eating habits?
The solution for this is a deeper understanding of this third way, the golden path, this way offers real coping. The cliché says that in order to cope – you need power, I say that in order for a person to have power – he needs to cope.
The way to spirituality is passing through coping with the basic questions of existence. The friction with this basic questions supplies energy, with which it is possible to cope with the cravings, energy that gives the power to cope with mission of what is called in Kabala as: Tikkun HaMiddot, From a Kabbalistic point of view, this “refinement of character” called Tikkun HaMiddot (in Hebrew) is very much part and parcel of the Divine purpose in creation. Even small improvements are vastly appreciated by God.
It is like the friction of a match in a matchbox, the friction creates heat and the heat creates a spark. The spark draws to itself the flam, and with the flam it is possible to fix and upgrade one’s low characteristics (Tikun Hamidot in Hebrew).
A man cannot improve anything in him, without the fire of motivation. Real fire can only be created only by coping with basic questions: death, the existential void, life’s lack of meaning, alienation, getting old and loneliness. Without coping with this basic question there would be no inner pressure created. We should ask ourselves this basic questions, and by not having a readymade answers, the friction would build the inner pressure.
In fact we draw power from the frustration, from the desperation, a person who is content, often he is empty spirituality, for being average is often corresponds with being flat. The more a person would ’embrace’ the existential frustration – the more he would be charged with spiritual pressure that, in turn, would charge him with the motivation to do something about his existence.
The existential approach is the only one that leads to having power and motivation, an example are people who coped, and are coping, with terminal disease, mourning and lose had and suddenly began to create.
Perhaps most commonly, for artists, poets, writers, musicians and journalists, terminal illness can provide one last opportunity for creativity.
Faced with terminal cancer, renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote, if possible, more prolifically than before.
Research shows what artists suffering from terminal illness have told us for centuries – creative self-expression is core to their recovery sense of self.
Creativity may give voice to our experiences and provide some resilience as we face disintegration. It may also provide agency (an ability to act independently and make our own choices), and a sense of normality.
A paradox: the limitation of timespan can lead to creative freedom, and the admission about the approaching death can lead a person to a kind of revival. The admission about the temporary state of matter, can give birth to the force that comes from the spirit.
The coping with terminal illness and the forthcoming of death – can charge the person with the force that will allow him to elevate about the level of the living-dead. Awakening will come by coping with one’s antithesis. A real mending of impediments can only come after coping with spiritual void, and this is done by rubbing with difficult and confusing existential questions, because only after that can we relate to the mending of impediments or barriers. Personal barriers are obstructions put in place by individuals that negatively affect their achievement in specific areas or their lives in general. For example, some people have personal barriers that hamper their ability to communicate. Such barriers include poor listening skills, limited vocabulary, misinterpretations based on prior experiences, inattention to feedback and narrow thinking.
Only after coping with difficult existential questions and the spiritual charge that might follows can we begin to talk about fixing impediments. Only the coping with the existential absurd and the being toward death – can bring about the thirst for spiritual meaning, that without it life is a terrible desert.
The price of compromise
We are required often to compromise and do concessions; to restrain and ‘swallow’; from the man in charge at work, from the complaining neighbor, form short tempered bank official, and from our family members. We give up and compromise on less then what we deserve.
And so, our life seem apparently to be simpler and pleasant. Slowly we learn to treat this small compromises as a necessary tax we have to pay in our relationship with others, in order to be able to sleep quietly… and during time the compromise becomes a way of life and becomes a kind of our second nature.
The road to the compromise passes through various gates, and the greatest two are: the gate of guilt and the gate of inferiority feelings. This gates has got a long corridor called: apology and excuse, both are making us satisfied with less then what we deserve. This is done with various justified and logical reasons, like: The wish not to appear petty, the aspiration ‘to be ok’, considering the time schedule of others, the wish to eliminate from conformation and the like.
Relationships are never really equal. Almost in any relationship there is the one who leans more towards concessions (he retreats too quickly, and expresses very seldom disagreement or objection), and there is the side that would give up less. It is like two cars driving next to each other in a road that is getting more and narrower. One car would remain on the road, while the other will have to be pushed to the margins. The division between who gives up and who doesn’t is never coincidental, as it might seem. The driver who won’t give up would stay on the road, while the one who is leaning towards giving up- will be pushed to the margins.
Relationships are based on variety of hidden messages, through them one side learns that the other is more determined, with a better chance of winning, less considerate, hungrier for success, or more dangerous. The registration of this subliminal signals is what moves the weaker to give up, restrain and be content to stay on the margins.
Any relationship, be it the most loving, beautiful and Nobel, will be tested always by the degree of freedom it allow both sides to get experienced in both roles; the strong and the week, alternately. The strength of every relationship will be tested at the moment when the one who compromised so far will refuse to continue with his role so far and will try to demand for himself what he deserves, not less.
Our society is based on competition and forcefulness – is proud in its shop window of preaching of values such as patience, consideration and other compromising approaches. But this ‘values’ should be adopted by the strong, but the ones who adopt it eventually- are the weak…
The weak, who are usually highly sensitive persons – are the ones who eventually give up, restrain, reseeding from any confrontation, they are quick to fulfill the expectations of others, and take upon themselves tasks that were influenced by others.
More difficult is the position of the one who compromised for years and decided that ‘no more’. Poor is the one that made others get used to him being weak and suddenly he dared to get out of his role. Then all friendliness and intimacy- disappear, and instead of them a rhinoceros of the strong is out to destroy everything. But sometimes it is enough for the strong to send a hint, and the one who sated to step out of his passive role – to return to his role so far.
If they say to the weak: “you are not ok”, even if he is totally ok, never the less, he will examine himself, and even might admit to his failure, while the dominant one will deny everything, even if he is totally out of line.
What makes us: restrain, to swallow, to dwarf oneself, ‘to be nice, not to confront – is the fear from abandonment, rejection, loneliness, social isolation and the stigma. As long as the sword of fear (from what might happen) is above out head – we are destined to be weak in our relations with others.
The possibility of passing from the position of compromising for less – to the position of the one that stands on his own – involves two obstacles, the one is recognizing your own worth, to feel that ‘I deserve’, without guilt feelings or feelings of inferiority. The other is moving from ‘being nice’ – into being not so nice sometimes. This passage entails overcoming the fear of not being acceptable.
And so, being in the double lock of wanting to belong and the fear of rejection – we continue to be content with less, to turn a blind eye, not to complain, not to confront, to lower one’s profile. We tell ourselves that in this way we will be surrounded by friends, protected and safe in our relationships.
But our trampled rights, our lost respect and our silenced principles – are crying out from the internal prison in a cry of protest.
From historical perspective
Often we are mistaken about evaluation and the correct judgment of a happening or someone. We find it difficult to evaluate its real value. At this point will come to us the historical perspective. For she alone is the only loyal judge of the nature and being of happenings and personalities. This perspective needs time for its formation and crystallization. The people who lived in the generation of Bach, did not perceive him as creative genius, one of a kind, contrary to him there those who were very important, but a generation passed and no one remembers them. Only when the cheers of the public dies down and world fame passes away – what is left is the nucleus, that fickle effects of time did not affect its nature, what is left is: truth: crystalized and undisputable. Time needs to pass for inner structure (with fixed and steady values) to be exposed. Popularity comes and goes, but truth remains (being hidden by the temporary and fashionable), neutral, royal, and glowing, whether we know about it or whether we don’t.
The passage of time is only doing justice to Shakespeare plays, but who remembers the most prominent politician of his time?
And despite the justice being done by the historical perspective, it is hard and uncompromising. Therefore, people who live their lives from a historical perspective are considered in their generation to be: fanatics, full of rage, non-communicative, swimming against the stream just for the fun of it. Mostly they are not being understood, they don’t fit to the existing structures, but in the end all is registered in historical bookkeeping…
All that a person has to ask himself in order to be able to evaluate correctly a figure or a work of art is to ask himself what importance or validity would this works have in a few hundred years, and the subjective fog will disappear, and like the Genie from the bottle – she will stand in front of him: awesome and majestic: the historical perspective.
Education: 3 essays on
1. The established education
The subject of education is in dispute; how to educate? When and for how long? Whom to educate? And in what methods?
Education is almost a synonym to design, for in his early years the child is still unshaped, therefore any intervention is his growth is to do with education.
Education almost always means well, the results (as was written) are quiet in contravention.
The education of the child is taking place mainly in two places: one is kindergarten and school, the other is within the family.
There are two levels of education: formal and informal (hidden). Education at school intends to be objective, factual, rational and informative, but in fact, it is fashioning an image of the pupil that will be in accordance with a society which is: consumptive, materialistic, commercial, industrious, technological and competitive (all this is passed informally, undercover).
Education within the family frame was supposed to give emotional support, moral values, emotional security, but apparently (and through informal means) they inherent to them their insecurity and fears about the possibility, then when he grows up he will not be able to integrate within the existing way of things.
The formal education is but a fig leaf covering inborn individualistic traits.
The informal means (which are the one that really influence the child’s orientation towards life) is using guilt feelings, if the kid doesn’t want to learn then he gets directed to him undercover messages that cause him to feel guilty. In order to decrease his guilt he finds the way to conform. The guilt feelings also cause him to become obedient, running to answer the establishment informal demands, in order, again, to calm down his guilt feelings. After internalizing the informal establishment demands he feels less the stigma: “I am not ok”, and instead to feel at last: “I am ok”.
And when the mechanism of: “I am not ok” is being activated in the pupil he will not interfere with accepted establishment criteria, such as: to gain your own interests (called: negotiation), calculation of gain and loss (called: commerce), the prospering of Capitalism (called: economic growth). In the end, in most cases, the undercover messages will erase the endemic individualistic traits of thinking for oneself.
Society has its needs, and the school is training, undercover, the pupil to be fit for those needs, when he grows up. Therefore the emphasis is on practical, technical traits, rather than humanistic one. This process is called by: Proffersor Shlomo Giora Shoham: “the decline of the spirit”. And if the kid will not adjust, then in his adulthood he could become a marginal person, an outsider and rejected, which will cause in him a big: “I am not ok”.
Real education should impose less structures for being one of the many, and instead to awaken in him the urge for self-fulfillment.
*
In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
2. The dominant education
In the reciprocal maintenance between the teacher and his student and between a parent and his child – it seems that education, in its present state is more for the teacher and the parent – then the need of the pupil-child.
Teachers don’t teach according to the need of the pupil to: search, to ask difficult questions, to find out – but according to the teacher’s need to gratify the establishment that qualified him.
Noe about education at home: each child has got his own wishes and wants from his life, but the parent sees in the kid his own reflection and extension. He sees the kid as a second chance for him, a kind of companion for what he did not achieve in his own life.
And then the child has to carry on his back foreign expectations, a load from the previous generation. This overload strangles his cry for self-actualization, and he becomes (in most cases) to be a tool for his parent self-actualization and not an autonomy for himself.
Together with this expectations from the child, there is also fear, fear of the possibility that the child might be spoiling their immaculate image and future.
If he does fulfill their expectation, it will be no more than a fig leaf covering his parent’s shortfalls.
Maybe what the child needs is wonder in the deserts of life, so they could listen, through the spiritual void to their inner voice from the burning bush of their spirit. An inner voice crying for meaningful and authentic life. A voice that will navigate them to the promised land (of their self-actualization).
But this cries are not for total freedom, but are for the right not to get stuffed with readymade answers, but of freedom to look for, to ask the right questions:
- Where am I heading?
- Why am I alive?
- What to do with my life?
- What now?
- What is the main axis of my life?
- What is the meaning of my life?
- What am I living for?
- What is my goal in life?
- How was my life so far?
- Am I satisfied with my life?
- What am I hoping for?
- How far away am I from where I want to be?
*
“He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”
Victor Hugo
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
Mark Twain
. The authentic, organic – education3
The original term: education, is close to concepts such as: initiation and to initiate. This is a process of training that was in ancient Egypt and in the Indian and African tribes, in which the elders of the tribe prepared the young person to be ready for the real thing: life itself.
Is that what is being done at school?
The answer is no! Education in our days is directed towards the imposing of norms. It is a conformist education being used as an executing arm of the dominant consensus.
The story we tell ourselves on education is that without it we would remain backward, in a raw state and primitive. Really? No, a person would grow only if will actualize his original potential. And for that to happen he needs to grow into a free and non-dominant world, lacking orders and dogmas, a world with a creative freedom, a world that would allow a growing space to what is deep within him.
The education of today qualifies a person to get along with existing society. It is an education that presents to the child an arbitrary systems of regulations and commands, to whom he has to obey and of areas of knowledge which he has to learn and study.
It is like a young wine plant that aspires to grow freely into the space around and above it, but has to adjust itself to the particular restrictions being imposed by the winegrower (by wire and pruning) the twigs are being tied to pillars, on which the wine would climb and get a hold on, during the next year.
And which one is the successful wine? It is the one that managed to adjust itself to the restrictions of the winegrower.
So it is in education; it ties and ‘prunes’ the pupil in order to adjust and fit him to a social reality. And this is to guarantee that there would be no one that will try to shake the existing order.
But in the child there are already all the necessary codes for growth, so there is no need for limiting intervention from the outside. The intervention will not change the child’s being and essence, but it would limit and disfigure the way and form of its growth.
With-it, it is not possible without guidness, for complete freedom might lead to complete anarchy, therefore the child needs directing.
And here we arrive at the ‘organic education’, the one which takes care about actualization his personal potential (contrary to the common social education).
The ‘organic education’ is supposed to restrain the ego, so it won’t go wild, will not interfere with the child’s growing potential. The urges and cravings of the child are like a bottomless pit, as was described in William Golding’s: “lord of the flies”‘: In a place in which the boundaries to the ego’s urges are absent – the Pandora box is wide open, and the dark ghosts are rushing out.
But, there is a great difference between putting boundaries and repression of those limitless ego urges. The repression preserves them by hiding them deep within (where they would intensify). Whereas putting boundaries will confine the borders of its territory (to minimize their space of activity). But how is this being done? Well, by training (which is very different essentially from conditioning and social conformity). This traing is described in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “the little prince” in the conversation between the fox and the little prince, where the fox praises training as a tool in building a friendship:
“It was then that the fox appeared.
“Good morning,” said the fox.
“Good morning,” the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.
“I am right here,” the voice said, “under the apple tree.”
“Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added, “You are very pretty to look at.”
“I am a fox,” the fox said.
“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”
“I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”
“Ah! Please excuse me,” said the little prince.
But, after some thought, he added:
“What does that mean–‘tame’?”
“You do not live here,” said the fox. “What is it that you are looking for?”
“I am looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does that mean–‘tame’?”
“Men,” said the fox. “They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?”
“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean–‘tame’?”
“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. It means to establish ties.”
“‘To establish ties’?”
“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . .”
“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . .”
…”My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .”
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.
“Please–tame me!” he said.
“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”
“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . .”
“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.
“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me–like that–in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . .”
The next day the little prince came back.
“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. “If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . .”
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near–
“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”
“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . .”
“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.
“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“Then it has done you no good at all!”
“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.” And then he added:
“Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”
…And he went back to meet the fox.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”
“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember”.
Yes, to train, like training a dog, ‘organic education’ should bring the child to the highest level in which he can actualize his potential.
כן. לאמן. כפי שמאמנים כלב, כך החינוך האורגני צריך להביא את הילד אל הרמה הגבוהה ביותר שם יוכל ליישם את הפוטנציאל שלו.
*
3 essyes on society:
- The social animal and individuality
Often we hear relations to the human as a ‘social animal’, this terminology is not exact from two reasons: first, the human is not an animal and second: he wasn’t meant to be completely social, at his roots.
It is more fitting to exchange the word: animal with a word that has got in it a greater possibility for consciousness, for example the word: entity. And to exchange the word: social with a word that relates to the individual and autonomic dimension of the human, and not only to the collective herd like – dimension. And so to exchange it with word: ‘individual’. And from a combination of both, we get: ‘individual ‘entity’
The huge gap between the: ‘social animal’ and ‘individual entity’ – is a steep slope, when at its bottom is the ‘animal’ and at the top: ‘entity’. The way up, from the bottom to the top, is actuality opposite to the flow of the historical current, which flows downwards, towards seeing the human from the mechanistic-material point of view, as a political, national and economic citizen.
The social roles and professions we fulfil, are in fact an antithesis to all which is unique, special and authentic in a person. The 21st century is full with communication technologies (Facebook, Instagram, what sup, emails, Zoom and smartphones) – this makes the world to become a global village; where all are wearing and investing in their social masks, but there is almost no knowing or connection to their inner-life, or the inner life of another mask wearer.
This is an extrovert, showoff, flat (one dimensional), that creates human models which are: lacking uniqueness and authenticity. Here the rule is: ‘everyone is like everybody’, we all are trapped in a collective predation line that manufactures ‘social animals’, carrying the flags of: consumption, productivity, urbanization, industrialization, efficiency, biocracy, Capitalism, competitiveness and social comparison (‘I measure myself according to others, they might have been ahead of me in the rat race).
The approach to human life is technical, mechanistic and materialistic.
The spiritual dimension leave in the exile of established religions, galleries, museums. The humanistic studies are not considered, for the ambitious and the hard working – are occupying the technical studies departments.
A person who is considered to become successful will not go to study philosophy. But what about psychology? Isn’t it a part of humanistic studies? Well, no, it tries very hard to be scientific, on the expense of real penetration into the psychic and the unknown in the client.
There is a deep gap between the common conception of the world through what is exposed and measurable, and rarest conception of the approach to the life through what is hidden, unknown and undercover.
And despite the flourishing of new age groups and Gurus, actually, many of them carry and use even more powerful means to address the participants as a ‘social animal’ and the collective rules are not less strict then what is practiced in general society.
And so, the ‘individual entity’ is shrinks from day to day, from year to year.
*
Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.
2. The sick society
The term ‘Social Deviance‘ intended generally to describe the attitude of individuals deviating from the consensus- Norma. But there is an opposite phenomenon that also could be could: ‘Social Deviance‘.
In the first case the individual is deviating from social reference in the opposite case society deviates from the human reference.
The second phenomenon attacks small groups and sects, as much as whole nations, such as the German nation in Second World War, but mostly, it could poison a society that looks and behaves as sane but has deviated- from corrected human codes.
How such society does behave? How do we know that it got sick? Here are such possible symptoms: the existence of informal norms of the laws (taxes, smuggling, white color felonies, traffic violations, violence in the family etc.), the intensifying of depression, tensions, anxieties, burnout , aggression, alienation, avoidance from the humanistic aspect in relationships. Intensification of the mechanical, technical relation to statistics, numbers, and facts, and not to personal uniqness and inner truth. Increasing the gap between rich and poor, strong and weak, crushing of the weak, sensitive and the venerable, the mutual attack between rival parties in politics, the breakdown of the family unite, instead of heart to heart dialogue – and meaningless chatter. All in all it could be divided into 7 Extentened sections:
1. Segregation of the Sacred: A sick society no longer understands anything as sacred. There is nothing considered Holy. It is held accountable to nothing and no one because because those things that are sacred are segregated to “private” and “personal” areas of life. Morality in pubic life is self-determined, often by those in power and legitimized by might, not rights.
2. Legitimization of lovelessness: A sick society legitimizes the careless and inhumane treatment of others. The recent applause of the audience at a poltical debate where one of the politicians suggested that a sick person be allowed to die rather than have the government pay for health insurance shows the legitimization of being loveless. A sick society does not care for neighbor, but objectifies and blames the neighbor for being in need.
3. Normalization of Nasty: (Phrase taken from a sermon series of Pastor Jeff Harrold in Ann Arbor MI). A sick society legitimizes and normalizes immoral practices. Practices that should cause shame and embarassment are now considered normal. The lewdness and crudeness of what constitutes as entertainment should shock us, but instead numbs us to the cruelty and perversity that is real and all around us. We have no idea of modesty and no convictions of decency. Our children have seen over 1000 pages of pornography by the time they are 16. Nasty is the new normal.
4. Violence as a Vice: Violence is the preferred manner of activity in a sick society. It is the way of solving problems. It objectifies its enemies and wipes out the problem by annihilating its opposition. This is seen in our penchant to go to war, the incredible amounts of violence in our streets, and the bullying violence on our playgrounds. Peace is considered naive and unrealistic, so we amp up our violence as a response to violence. It’s like thinking we can cure our bacterial infection by fighting it with another infection.
5. Competition as a Core Characteristic: A sick society continually understands itself at odds with itself. It sees a zero-sum game, where some elements must win and other must lose. Competition is cherished, while cooperation is shunned and seen as weak. Political philosophies are framed based upon who wins and losses, but rarely in terms of win-win.
6. Refusal of racism as continued reality: A sick society not only refuses to understand its own history of systematically exploiting others who are racially and culturally different, but often expresses the same racism in different ways. These ways are often systemic barriers that keep minorities from having the same opportunities for economic, educational, civic, and relational success. It’s not a coincidence that African-Americans, as an example, are over represented in poverty, incarcerations, chronic disease, under-education, unemployment, etc. Our society refuses to see that we have developed systems that many are benefiting from, yet create barriers for others.
7. Success is not civic: A sick society does not understand that it prospers when the entire society prospers. Success in a sick society is based upon individual achievements and accumulation of wealth, as opposed to the flourishing of the entire community. We allow CEO’s to make over 250 times what the average worker receives (by the way, it was only 17 times greater in 1950) in times of incredible unemployment. A sick society cannot make the connection that its overall health involves the entirety of its body.
In this situation the society must take care that its deviation will not be discovered, so it adopts the deviation as a norm, and it does it by a mechanism called conformity or groupthink
The more deviant a society is – the more it increases and intensifies its control by the agents of groupthink and conformity. In their power to cause someone to believe that a short line is in fact long (the experiment of Solomon Asch on conformity), that the naked king is in fact fully dressed, and that the Nazis is only a local phenomenon (this was disputed by the movie: ‘the wave”). The greater is the deviation of a society the more elaborate become conformity and groupthink.
In order to impose conformity there are three (secret) agents: ignorance, fear and competition.
- Ignorance: actually it is governed by those who are considered to be educated, but their informal role is to keep the general public in their ignorance by distribution and making accessible – knowledge which is common and fit for all. And what’s more’ – its availability and easiness of reach – are downgrading its value and importance. It is knowledge which is hardly relevant to the existential and personal issues of the life of the individual (and the possibility of its actualization), but it is highly relevant to a superficial and mechanical (not dynamic and casual) society; this wide spread knowledge is connected to any knowledge which falls within the realm of the known, the exposed and the measurable, rather than issues which is to do with the actual existential aspect of one’s existence – which are usually deep in the unknown.
The available knowledge is easy to reach. Instead of making it difficult for those who long for knowledge and wisdom. But the available knowledge is tempting, mainly in two ways:
One in the conventional and formal way of a degree or a diploma (that its rewards is acceptance and advancement in the crier ladder). The other is the informal way of courses and popular ‘how to’ books, for the general public. (That its reward is the self-conviction about becoming learned and better equipped to deal with life).
And as the greatest enemy of an air of sexual tension is availability and the cancelation of mystery – so it is with knowledge, we know so much that we know nothing, the easy to reach, common knowledge is ‘hiding’ the rare and real knowledge.
Schools are advancing ignorance, because they don’t teach you to think for yourself, to analyze a raw text, to understand meaning through metaphors and analogies, to deduce one thing from another.
What they do teach is to swallow large quantities of useless knowledge for knowing how to live), this is a fig leaf on basic ignorance about life, and mostly about how absurd they are… and so we learn; to disguise the basic lack of knowing about the real meaning of life by flooding it with answers no one is asking for.
- Fear: Everyone is afraid from everyone, and mainly afraid rom failure, afraid from being hurt, from rejection, from not being loved, afraid from abandonment, from emptiness and from loneliness.
Fear is only one pole in the bipolar swing, when one pole is the pole of security: a diploma, a title, permanency, your own house, family, ordered times and routine. We run around between the pole of fear and the pole of security, and the greater is the fear (being inflames by societies’ messengers) – so does the pole of security becomes scared, it is a pole of a fortress wall of bourgeoisie mentality that exists between the individual and his freedom to cope with the unexpected.
- Competition: the sick society intensifies and emphasizes competition, the race after: popularity, crier, property, status and success, success and more success (the one who fails, like a singer with unsuccessful last albums, will be thrown to the sides and forgotten).
Competition crowns the winners and despise the losers.
Between this three agents (ignorance, fear and competition) – there is a cyclical interaction: The competition is governed by fear and fear is controlled be by ignorance (in the fashion of: ‘what would happen if someone will pass me over and will be above me? And therefore, what do I have to do, or do more in order for that not to happen?’
Ignorance is at the base of it all, in that that the normal human being has no idea about real life and reality – that exists beyond the official life picture, it is the one which dictates banal clichés which are frequent on everyone’s tongue.
We never has more: food, drinks, culture, entertainment, lodging, secure work place and generally, many possibilities to be contentment in his share, and still the competition gets more wild and extreme.
We never had more popular science books, courses, workshops, and free knowledge in the internet, open universities – and still ignorance intensified.
We never had better social conditions, more psychological and social work – help – and still under the general make believe there are: fears, ignorance and competition.
To finalize:
If the illness came from society and polluted the individual, then the cure should come from the individual and filter into society, for example:
- To be always in tuned with your inner voice.
- To try to know at any given time, who you are, what is your mental state? Where are you heading to? What do you want from your life?
- To walk on the path of inner work which is based by majority on self-knowing and the full acceptance of our weaknesses
- To love the struggle and fight, as a way of life.
- To breathe deeply from what is higher than you.
*
It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Conformity to a sick society is to be sick.
I contend that most emotional distress is best understood as a rational response to sick societies.
I could never trust anyone who’s well-adjusted to a sick society.
- 7 social definitions
- Civilization
Civilization is a phenomena happening on the face of society, it is a refinement of the outer layer of social behavior and its improvement by polishing and beautifying the shop window of the accepted behavior on the account of a neglect of the inner, personal – layers.
- Culture
Contrary to the shining Aura that surrounds the word: culture, it is in fact an external and collective replacement that comes on the account of individual creativity deepening, authenticity and dialogue, in the life of the individual.
- Society
The collective coming together of individuals that has got no common permanent center of gravity, and they get together in order that the noise of togetherness will cover and overshadow the loneliness and emptiness inside them.
- Conformity
The way in which the individual is straightening a line with a dogma or social convention, because of fear from public opinion.
- A citizen
The one that has civil rights for fulfilling his duties o the state of an organization that organization his life and the life of others.
- Territorial dominance
It is the power drunk individual that contributed to society (or organization) in doing that he becomes useful and effective for them, and in return the organization gives him power and governing space on others who are left behind in the rat race.
- The public
A monster that its opinion and judgment are determining the fate of the individual, whereas its values and principles are in continuous inflation. The public is faceless and lacking unfitness, but is divided to many heads, all arguing with each other on what could be perceived as ideological differences and a different world views, but in fact, they are only a thin cover through which the territorial dominance is ruling, meaning that one head wants to overcome the other heads and thus to be the only leading head.
The one and only choice
From time to time, life puts a dilemma in front of us, there are few options and we should choose one of them (the one which seems to us to be the best). The act of choice is problematic (would it be a successful choice? Could I have known ahead if a choice would be good?) And unaffordable on most of us, and most likely that we would like to eliminate from it.
Erich Fromm in his book: “Escape from freedom” is dealing with this issue of the freedom to choose, in it he claims that human history was influenced wrongly, more by eliminating from making a choice rather than by making the wrong choice. The freedom to choose, according to Fromm, puts a too heavy load of responsibility on the individual. Fromm also explains the rise of Hitler and the Nazism in that that the Germans hated so much the need to evaluate and decide democratically – that they preferred Hitler on the facing the need to choose.
So are we, in our little lives, run away from the freedom to choose, and leave the choice to circumstance, to happenings and forces more powerful than us.
And then we are forced, blackmailed – to take a certain route, do a certain action – not from a free choice but from an external constraint. And so, people don’t choose to study this profession this or another, merry this person or another or with another – it is mostly a result of circumstance.
The difficulty to choose is motivated by fear. And in order to understand it we must see that the human is not free in the first place.
But who is free? For in our daily life we are already ‘drafted’, biased, polarized, and leaning to one side or another, weak or strong, fearful or daring, rational or emotional, extrovertist or introvert, conservative or liberal. Al of us are already cataloged and carry tags we put on ourselves or that we allow others to put on us. All of us are already framed and locked in different departments (in which we either locked ourselves or allowed others to lock us). And when the time comes to choose, an unbiased, objective and free- we are already without freedom, being under the influence and limitation of the polarity that rules our life; an polarity to a ‘child‘, or a ‘parent’ whereas only the ‘adult’ is the only one that can only choose. This three terminologies are taken from the field of transactional analysis of D”R Eric Berne
On the real choice to be made from the adult neutral vector (which resides in the level above) – which is the only one which can choose, a choice which is not a surrender to the tyranny of that which is not balanced in us.
The polarization towards one pole is always ruled by infantile emotions, whereas that in order to choose there is a need to come from the neutral vector (which is the one which is the ‘adult’ in us). When we chose in politics, does it come from the non-choice of the ‘child, or the nonchoice of the ‘pedant’ or the choice of the ‘adult’? Well there is no free choice, for the choice comes mostly from the two infantile-emotional vectors and not from the sanity and neutral balance.
In voting time what tilts the scales to the right or to the left is the emotional load majority of the population. And so, the one non-choosing pole is fighting the other non-choosing pole, and both are convinced in the rightfulness of the free choice they did not actually made. Every pole is claiming that the other’s lack of free choice is worse than his lack of free choice.
So it is in human relations; the pole of rationality is blaming the emotional pole and the other way around. But only the synergy between them is the one which allows a true choice.
On work and learning (or the pure learning)
The pianist Arthur Rubinstein said: “I never learned in order to play in a concert: I played in a concert and from that I learnt”. Usually the situation is reversed: we learn in order to work, and the study are the introduction leading to the core. And indeed it seems true and sensible. An old Chinese proverb says:
When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. The bread will sustain life. The flower will give you a reason to live.
But is it really like that? Does the bread exist for the Lili? Or could it be a situation where the Lili exists for the bread??
In other words: does a person finishes his work day so he can relax and then read, learn and gather knowledge and wisdom? Or, maybe, in our society, success in acquiring knowledge – is the necessary selective condition for what kind of work and what degree of hierarchy within that work place – would a person reach. So, in this case, the Lili (the knowledge) is there for the bread (better position in the labor market).
The question is: what is the central value that this society gives to learning and to the acquisition of wisdom? Is it (as was written just now), a value of a door keeper, a secretary? That their job is to be an elaborate filter that weeds out students who are dysfunctional to the institutions. Or is the study and learning has a value for itself and by itself? And that work was supposed to allow after hours where he can learn and gather wisdom in peace?
The concept of learning which a spiritual concept at its base is, got contorted completely in the materialistic-technological society of our days. Instead of taking care to have bread in order to have Lili, the society turns the Lili into a filter in order to match that achievement of students in their studies – to the ladder of jobs available in labor market.
Society throws send in our eyes, there is no proportions between the amount of study a person has to invest and how much from it will he actually use in his work. It does seem that so many years of learning would better qualify a person for his work, whatever it might be, but in fact it is like what Rubinstein said: most learning is done on the job. The reason for so many years of learning is the social factor, being that competition in the labor field is so great, the need for a greater filtration was born, and this turned the learning to be a filtering tool.
We are were never flooded by so my knowledge, but maybe it could be said that ignorance was never greater…
With it, of course things are not so black and white, for in order to operate a computer – one has to learn, and in order to drive one has to learn. But I did not refer to this kind of learning called: a motoric learning that its purpose is to aquiver control and efficiency. I refer to a learning for the purpose of understanding inner processes, meaning and the reasons of things. This learning is called pure learning, learning for the sake of wisdom, wisdom or the sake of truth.
The only way of learning in the old day was the way of the apprentice; the young person was ‘thrown into the water, and ‘learn to swim’ under the guldens of expert field man. The idea of unrelated, general and massive learning material – isn’t organic and is not true, there is no training for a job except experience.
Pure learning is not a training for function and it shouldn’t be, it should be the highlight, a pure celebration of the mind, trying penetrate to a core meaning and expose a truth.
The average age of a person finishing his studies and is out to the labor market is above 25.
Meaning could not ne attainted before experience. Experience without prior learning would cause a yearning to know what to do and how to do it better, without this hunger – the food (the knowledge) if given before the hunger, will only make the body heavy, but will not go to nourish yearning muscles.
Learning without mental maturity and life experience – is sterile. Learning is supposed to be a reward, given to those grappling with life issues and gather much meaningless experience. And not a meaningless burden on experience less youngsters, they yearn for experience but instead learn about unrelated and no relevant – knowledge.
The problem with too much pre experience learning is that it blocks is us the love of asking fresh questions, and the curiosity of the wish to know. They kill the fire of the wish for pure learning.
*
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
Albert Einstein
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
Albert Einstein
The only source of knowledge is experience.
Albert Einstein
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Albert Einstein
The great power of the status quo
The terms: ‘change’, ‘progress’, ‘growth’, ‘improvement’ and more – are used frequently to describe goals and positive targets, in personal, social, educational and political fields. The greatest enemy that stumbles this good intentions is what could be viewed as an innocent and even neutral concept: the status quo.
The status quo is the existing consolation, static and unchanging. Status quo is a preserving gravitational power – that everything returns eventually back to him, unable to disconnect from its ties.
The status quo is in fact the hidden being, hiding behind and within the many efforts and the plans for change and development. It is amazing to estimate the amount of resources, of the emotions, of energies. The arguments, the conflicts that are investments, apparently, in order to change the situation, but in fact is strengthening the status quo.
The advancement soldiers are being defeated by the forces of the status quo, and the indentations for change and improvement are being swallowed by it again and again.
On the surface celebrates the technological advancement, the development in science, medicine, etc. – All give the impression as though everything is advancing in a dynamic breathless movement forward, towards the future… but behind all the noise and the activity of: congresses, seminars, political coalitions – all says the same; nothing moves, nothing happens, and everything stands still.
But the worst is yet to come, not only that the outward advancement is a cover for a status quo, but the stagnation (the status quo) itself is a cover, a cover for processes of regression and degeneration which are taking place behind the status quo.
In other words, even if we admit that nothing is changing essentially, we still did not touch the more bitter truth, fore behind the static state of things – slowly things are crumbling…
Every apparent status quo, is in fact a sign for a decadence.
Here, on this hard earth, nothing is achieved easily, and for every small result we need to put in much sweat.
Here, on this difficult earth, every spark of energy is surrounded by much matter, and in order to rescue dynamic sparks of achievements, there a need to ‘move aside’ many ‘mountains’ of matter.
Deterioration and regression are not reached by any effort, in order to deteriorate, there is no need to work hard particularly, all one needs to do is to decrease the degree of effort invested, and allow the matter to swallow the spark. And again, in order to regress there is no need to go back, only to stop.
-In order to destroy – it is enough only to regress.
-In order to regress – it is enough to stop.
So, how does one advances? How does one get rescued from the grip of the status-quo and becoming to reach growth and results which could not be disputed?
What can ignite the rocket’s engines and send it outside the gravitational pull of the status quo?
What can pull us out of the status quo?
We are trying to push our life with our own power, our own will, our own efforts, this is not enough, and we need an outside force.
Certain people did amazing things in their time: wrote great books, conquered half the world, created world religions etc. where does this great power come from?
Moving oneself with one’s own effort and willpower is limited, it working by the power of the emotions, and the ego, but all these are like butteries, with limited electrical power, they could bring one up till the gravitational pull of the habit and the mechanical way of living, no more, and from there on in a repetitive loop, a status quo. And in order to to be released from the gravitational pull of the status quo we need to connect to an unending source of power, a kind of electrical current, an external source.
But it is not my intention here to offer an answer as to what is this external source of power. I wish to remain with the question, Socrates taught by questions that that instead of leading to answers, they led to more questions. Questions could be more important than the answer, because it is an option, whereas an answer is the closing of an option. A too early answer, too ready, or too obvious – stope process instead of progressing them. But it seems that we have fear from questions, the unknown symbolizes for us danger (‘Skeletons in the Cabot’).
We have answers almost for anything, but not enough questions. We don’t let what we don’t understand – to be, we are not hungry enough to know, to understand.
The power come from the question, just like real power comes from hunger not from food.
To wonder all the time about the great enigma of existence.
And maybe this wondering, together with the longing to know – will connect us to the generator, to the power to get out of the mechanic al zone and into a new filed, a new dimension.
*
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
~ Ecclesiastes 1:9
1:9-10; New International Version
The priest and the prophet
The bustling consumer of modern culture and art does not rest for a moment, he is getting updated, renewed. He is having savvy, reading the prose that just now came out of the printer, watching the newest modern dance works, visiting new art exhibitions, knows about new movies, quoting from modern poetry collections and more. And if he managed to be updated well and bring convincing proofs for it in casual talks, the ‘reward’ will not be late to arrive: he is in; recognized as succeeding to touch the current representation of truth. And he is doing all this from real conviction that what is important is in the innovations and new material in the various art fields, as they are expressed in the new critic or story in the newspaper or the internet about what is fresh and current – all this gives the feeling that in all this fields and their new works, exists the last expressions about the discovery of truth.
But this hope, this fragile faith that claims that the truth about human existence is in a process of revelation and exposure – is actually the modern art’s version for the idea of the appearance of the Messiah… (or The Second Coming (sometimes called the Second Advent or the Parousia) is Christian, Islamic, Baháʼí and Messianic Jewish belief regarding the return of Jesus after his ascension to heaven about two thousand years ago. The idea is based on messianic prophecies and is part of most Christian eschatologist). In both approaches: the religious and the art one is the belief that till now we lived in comparative darkness, but the light is on its way at last (no need to wait for the Messiah), what you need to be doing , is to be updated with the newest art works, therefore be anticipating for the last novel of a well-considered writer as to not to miss being the first to discover it. For, again, we are convinced, that till now, all were experiments, and in fact all generation were lost in great darkness, but only now the next ballet company from Stuttgart would bring it forth it their new work.
The pioneering forces of the areas; prose and philosophy are at the front lines of discovery and translation of their discoveries into new artistic form. This is how we understand the word: Modern; Modern is right. Modern is an updating of what was and now it does not fit anymore to the truth that wants to be burn now.
But now, modern is not enough anymore, it needs to be post-modern, no less…
But now come the time, in this essay, for what I call as: a reversal point. Maybe what we think is the truth about what exists in modern and post-modern works might, in fact, only intensifying the fog and the uncertainty?? For maybe the future only has in store for us more confusion, more uncertainty, more frustration, despair and anxiety than ever before? Instead of what we would like to believe, that it carries the new fresh winds of upgrading and growth.
For maybe the truth is that all this race towards innovation and modernistic plays, dance performances, new novels etc. – only thickness the fog and intensifies the uncertainty?
Maybe the future has in store more confusion more uncertainty, frustration. Desperation, and terror greater than before? Maybe humanity is marching into darkness and away from light?
For we never lived in such false culture, concerning it values, and at the same time, so pretentious about glorifying art and artists as bringing forth progress and progression.
Truth does not have to be invented or created in an art form, it is here all the time. Covered by conventional current, accepted collectively – truth. It is more like a fragile archeological relic that should be uncovered under the many layers of out of date cultural art works.
Whatever happened to red riding hood?
Human history testifies that any change of direction that influence the course of history – originated mostly in a great inspiration, understanding, enlighten, that happens in an inspired individual. From this inspiration-discovery, a great evolvement and development is happening, as it pass from the inventor, the prophet or thinker – into the public: Moses and the Judaism, Nelson Mandela and South Africa, Marx and communism, Herzl and Zionism, Muhamad and Islam, Jesus and Christianity, Buddha and Buddhism and others.
There was a Jewish thinker called: Ahad Ha’am from his essay:
“Priest and Prophet” (1893). Here are some quotes:
- There are … two ways of doing service in the cause of an idea; and the difference between them is that which in ancient days distinguished the Priest from the Prophet.
- p. 130
- The Prophet is essentially a one-sided man. A certain moral idea fills his whole being, masters his every feeling and sensation, and engrosses his whole attention. He can only see the world through the mirror of his idea; he desires nothing, strives for nothing, except to make every phase of the life around him an embodiment of that idea in its perfect form. His whole life is spent in fighting for this ideal with all his strength; for its sake he lays waste his powers, unsparing of himself, regardless of the conditions of life and the demands of the general harmony. His gaze is fixed always on what ought to be in accordance with his own convictions; never on what can be consistently with the general condition of things outside himself.
- p. 130
- The Prophet is thus a primal force. His action affects the character of the general harmony, while he him self does not become a part of that harmony, but remains always a man apart, a narrow-minded extremist, zealous for his own ideal, and intolerant of every other. And since he cannot have all that he would, he is in a perpetual state of anger and grief; he remains all his life “a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth.” [Jeremiah 15:10] Not only this: the other members of society, those many-sided dwarfs, creatures of the general harmony, cry out after him, “The Prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad” [Hosea 9:7]; and they look with lofty contempt on his narrowness and extremeness.
- pp. 130-131
- The Priest … appears on the scene at a time when Prophecy has already succeeded in hewing out a path for its Idea; when that Idea has already had a certain effect on the trend of society, and has brought about a New Harmony or balance between the different forces at work. The Priest also fosters the Idea, and desires to perpetuate it; but he is not of the race of giants. He has not the strength to fight continually against necessity and actuality; his tendency is rather to bow to the one and come to terms with the other. Instead of clinging to the narrowness of the Prophet, and demanding of reality what it cannot give, he broadens his outlook, and takes a wider view of the relation between his Idea and the facts of life. Not what ought to be, but what can be, is what he seeks. His watchword is not the Idea, the whole Idea, and nothing but the Idea; he accepts the complex “harmony” which has resulted from the conflict of that Idea with other forces. His battle is no longer a battle against actuality, but a battle in the name of actuality against its enemies.
- pp. 131-132
So, after the prophets comes the continuing generation of the priests, who are made of: rabies, lecturers, teachers, educators, commissars, historians, academics, authors, interpreters and intellectuals – who cannot, in their life and way of thinking, are worthy of the vision. And then, not only there is regression from the original idea, but actually a reversal and an antithesis. For the next generations are betraying the original idea while apparently serving it. And so, they allow exactly the very same things that the establisher and originator of the idea, was objecting to, with all his might.
Indeed, this is the place that the antithesis (of the original vision) likes to live in, within the thesis, protected and hidden by the original idea that became to be only the cover.
The thesis (the original idea) resides in the antithesis (the priests), through the eyes of the priests it looks outside, priests who are roaring the massage of the prophet, who is the thinker of the original idea. But the voice is the hoarse voice of the priest. (There is nowhere the devil would like to reside in than in a monastery).
To be up, to be down
Like in the excellent British T.V. series: “Upstairs downstairs” – so it is in our life; there is the down floor and the floor above.
Like in the pyramid of needs of Abraham Maslow: below there the basic physiological needs, physical security and love- this is the maintenance floor, the two upper floors are to do with esteem needs and self-actualization.
Also in our life we have a similar pyramid; up is the master’s floor, or the head of staff, and downstairs we have the soldiers or the servants. Or in other words; up is the brain, down is the maintenance system.
The passage, in human life, from the lower floor to the upper one, the master’s floor – is never easy or automatic, to the needs in the maintenance floor there is a powerful demand, and the funny thing is that the more you satisfy their demand the more it’s demand will intensify.
In order to shift the center gravity from the lower department to the higher one there is one condition: to put a barrier to the unending dominance and demand of this lower department, to say: “till here”, otherwise the demand and dominance will only increase.
To us it seems that if we only respond to the next demand – we can, at last, be free for the upper floor (self-actualization), but it is not like that, for most of us it is difficult to rise above the lower floor, and we find ourselves running around trying to fulfil their needs which are like a bottomless pit, and if it will not get restrictions put upon it will expand like a cancerous growth.
From the point of view of the lower floor, the higher floor is conceived as non-relevant, as luxury: “what is the importance of finding a meaning to my life when my career at work is halted?”
So, how do we deal with our slavery to the lower department and the blockage from reaching the higher ones? When we are trying to compensate by escapism. But freedom is not is actually is reached by the opposite, by restraining the inhabitants of the lower floor; putting boundaries to them.
The inhabitants of the lower floor should be trained, so we could move to the higher floor, to free the creature living in it from the dominance of the lower floor, so that he can dedicate himself to self-actualization, and to his wish to give meaning to his life.
Without training, restraining and putting boundaries to wild emotions, such as: being hurt, taking things personally, putting the egi in the center, and shortly – the higher parts, like clear consciousness – will not function.
A beautiful piece about training as a positive approach (in friendship, we find in the story: “The little prince” in the dialogue between the little prince and the fox:
It was then that the fox appeared.
“Good morning,” said the fox.
“Good morning,” the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.
“I am right here,” the voice said, “under the apple tree.”
“Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added, “You are very pretty to look at.”
“I am a fox,” the fox said.
“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”
“I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”
“Ah! Please excuse me,” said the little prince.
But, after some thought, he added:
“What does that mean–‘tame’?”
“You do not live here,” said the fox. “What is it that you are looking for?”
“I am looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does that mean–‘tame’?”
“Men,” said the fox. “They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?”
“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean–‘tame’?”
“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. It means to establish ties.”
“‘To establish ties’?”
“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . .”
“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . .”
“It is possible,” said the fox. “On the Earth one sees all sorts of things.”
“Oh, but this is not on the Earth!” said the little prince.
The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.
“On another planet?”
“Yes.”
“Are there hunters on that planet?”
“No.”
“Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?”
“No.”
“Nothing is perfect,” sighed the fox.
But he came back to his idea.
“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .”
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.
“Please–tame me!” he said.
“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”
“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . .”
“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.
“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me–like that–in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . .”
The next day the little prince came back.
“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. “If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . .”
“What is a rite?” asked the little prince.
“Those also are actions too often neglected,” said the fox. “They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all.”
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near–
“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”
“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . .”
“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.
“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“Then it has done you no good at all!”
“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.” And then he added:
“Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.”
And the roses were very much embarassed.
“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.
And he went back to meet the fox.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”
“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
From a dead past to an alive present
Part one:
A nation or a religion, like an organic body are born, becoming shaped up and grow, but also grow old, and sometimes cease to live, all together.
The fact that they have died does not mean that they also had to disappear; for they can also still exist as functioning carcasses. Of course it is only the outer layer, for the living spirit and the inner dynamic movement forward – is already absent. At this stage, the nation or the established religion, begin to sanctify past – events, personas, dates, and scriptures – that would influence and make a mark in the present and the future.
A nation in this stage I in fact in its ossification stage, it is trying to reconstruct, by ritual patterns, what was once a living force, in living people, standing in front of living God. The formula for the reconstruction, became the main thing, and instead of increasing the spirit of search, wonderment and curiosity – they freeze and repress it further.
The written rules, lineage ways of goings on, repeating of the old ways – are kind of coffins for any personal growth, because they sanctify and preserve the results of activities of past forces, for the living force could not be preserved.
Concentrating on answers from the past (any past) will not revive the forces, only in confusion, allowing oneself to get and be, lost, becoming friends with questions – this are the tools for connecting with fresh living forces. Search means to be prepared to meet with the unknown, in order to integrate it into one’s present life.
I a person want to be alive with what is going on now, he must be prepared to give up readymade answers and cope with the angst of uncertainty: with the difficulty to determine what is right to do and what is not? What would be the next step? And when a person is trying to find his way in the uncertain darkness of his existence, what is greater than the temptation to reach back towards the artificial light of the dogmas, rules, conventions and norms, that are handed to him from the past, and light the road, but is it the right road for him now?
On riot, calamity and going wild
Part one:
Everything is yearning, in the end, to go wild, to break apart, to fall apart, to return to chaos: the apple of the shelf in the shop, like the pages of a book, like mirage, like the dress we wear, like our friendship connections. The order, methods and organization that we put in our life with much effort are pushing to go back to lesser order. Whether it is junk eating sexual hallucinations or difficulty getting out of bed in the morning. To let it happen without boundaries, to return to chaos. All which got together – done so only temporarily. In 2000 years’ time – what would remain whole under the archeologist’s brush?
Somehow we ménage to hold on to some sort of order, in our private and social life, great forces are pushing and pressing, to bring all to original chaos, which is always there under the thin and fragile organization cover.
Part two:
War happen suddenly, at once, as could be seen by the shock of all, it could breakout any minute. The rickety piece is doing it by the loose power of agreements and contractors. Great forces are pressing so loosely that eventually things will fall down like in a domino rally.
So it is in wars between nations and a fight between lovers; suddenly, because of a marginal thing – the chaotic forces burst out to break out that which was whole and in one piece, so far.
Part three:
The order in nature is internal and calamity and disorder could come only from the outside, from human being, that disconnected himself from nature.
But order in human society (and in human creature of society) is external, meaning, not burn like in nature, but political, national, military, educational etc. (enquired). Therefore disorder could only erupt from the unknown, from the subconscious. So it was in the two world worlds, and so it is in our individual and transactional catastrophes, threatening us from within any day, any hour, any minute.
Vive Le Bourgeoisie
There are many ways to live a life; through crime, through madness, through career, through academic study, through love, through family, through fun and games and sports, through the arts and more. All the ways are leading to one of two main roads; most ways are leading to the main road of materialism (in its wide term) and only few leading to the main road of spirituality (in its wide term).
In the followers of the ‘spiritual side’ we find: religious believers, philosophy students, and searchers after truth, eccentrics, dreamers, visionaries, creative artists and carriers of the spark. In the followers of the ‘materialistic side’ are we can find: practical people, lawyers, businessman, contractors, engineers, politicians, merchants, salesman, computer programmers etc.
Followers of the ‘spiritual road’ refuse to become bourgeois, to be part of the ‘materialistic, established, road’, this road is conceived by them as hollow and full of information instead of meaning. An in the same way that the bourgeois are downgrading the followers of the other way, so do the followers’ of the ‘spiritual road’ to downgrade bourgeois, the followers of the materialistic road. And exactly from deep conviction from the importance of the wide meaning of having spiritual life, I am going to defend few words of defense on the … bourgeois…
The humanistic-spiritual camp, claim that if the bourgeois get a house with the price of his spiritual life, then it wasn’t worth it. I wish to present it different; I prefer a bourgeois that got a house on a dreamer about reality, and this is because the bourgeois, at least succeeded to get out of a raw-infantile state and did something. The best dream about exalted state, cannot be of the same value to the smallest achievement in the area of materialism, because dream is still a dream.
The fortress of the dreamer is the conviction that dreams could be actualized, whereas the bourgeois’ reality is a dead end.
But in a second thought, maybe it is better to have the material achievements of the bourgeois? For maybe the hope of the humanist-dreamer that always there will be the next day, next month, and next year – is a powerful trap. This life was supposed to circle around actualization of potential. And everyone has some freedom whether to actualize, or not to actualize, himself, the best choice is of course – actualization, even if it is only the actualization of the material side. The bourgeois did something, got rescued from the raw state of life as a potential, and this could not be taken away from him, it could be a shame that this is all that he actualize from his potential, but he cannot be judged, definitely not by a person who did not achieve anything in his life because who was too busy dreaming about some sort of spirituality.
The difference between a person who got achievements in the material field and a person dreaming about a field of spirituality, is like the difference between a tuber of a simple plant that has grown a stem, leaves and a flower, and a tuber of a white lily that is only dreaming its beat full blossomless.
The jealous spiritual (again, in the wideset term) approach, sees justification for existence only if a person actualizes himself in his higher chambers. But the problem with those who ‘aspire for spirituality’ is, that their spiritual intention is a fig leaf, leaving them as naked as they were from any stand point, because at the end, they were left with no coping with anything real.
Coping in practice is as important as potential spirituality.
With it, coping which gets material asset, is never preferable on coping which gets a spiritual asset. To be a human being means: to actualize that which is hidden within you as a promise. Existence is first demanding from us: “do something with me” and only then, asks: “what are you doing with me”?
Many of the people who are on some sort of a spiritual path are escaping from taking responsibility on their life- don’t do, and therefore, from this respect, the Bourgeoisie knows what it means to work extra hours to close an overdraft, he knows self-discipline, cleavage to goal, pride on achievements that were got by much hard work. Whereas, the spiritual dreamer knows, maybe, to quote beautiful sentences, and to describe higher worlds, but he is enslaved to romanticism. The dread of the one on any sort of spiritual quest – is a kind of compensation for him not having a life…
It is comparatively easy to seat with likeminded spiritually inclined people and to criticize the establishment and the materialistic society. But intention could not judge achievements. For achievement is an achievement.
There should be a difference made between the apprentice and the master, the materialistically inclined is a master in buying a car of a house and it is not something to be taken easily.
In order to reach something in life, a person should give up his nativity and romanticism.
The Bourgeoisie are not guilty for living in a ‘sick society’, to which they try to adjust themselves, they don’t choose to be Bourgeoisie, in the manner of: “what would you prefer? Bourgeoisie or spirituality?” In fact he could be miserable, he is turn inside, for external success does not silence, for example, his inner cry for care and empathy. This cry motivates further to listen to external noises.
But in the end in this escape to the outer there is a struggle and achievements’ whereas whiten the other, higher camp there is much high talk, but in terms of personal achievements, like knowing’s, understandings, wisdom, balance, maturity, depth, meaning etc. this is not necessarily – happening.
The art of prose and poetry – the truth in a lie
Poetry, prose and the art of the written word to its varieties; stories, novels, tales, plays and dramas – are all various exiles, in which the holy spirit of life resides…
Once the Holy Spirit is exiled from the spiritual homeland, which is our daily life, now she lives as a captive in this kinds of artistic nature reserves, as a secret agent, rapped and covered in masks and coded in various codes. And the masks a double goal; one, is to hide to encode it real identity, from those who can damage it, and the other goal is exactly the opposite; to invite, to cause an interest and to ease accesses. Nice masks, welcoming, tempting with various stimulations, for those who can be benefited from the hidden spiritual message. For the citizen of the present couture can no longer digest pure spirituality which is presented directly and with no mediators. He needs invented fiction and fantasy, in which its hidden means of expression – there hides, implied and shy; the truth; which is known only to the few, to those who are kind of ‘priests’ of the artistic mediums: researchers, literary critics, teachers, lecturers and various experts.
Indeed, truth is now in exile, the sacred is hidden in the secular, half transparent, there, not there. And the thrilled readers are telling each other in intimacy and enthusiasm, about the new book they discovered, as a wonderful secret. What is actually meant is not the mastery in the professional craft of writing, but the hidden truths it carries, through the illusory medium of the artistic form, such as about: life, existence, love, loneliness, reality, God, aging and death.
Only through the lie and crutches of the arts – can those who did not give up the search after truth reach some truth – during this mediums.
*
A quote:
A HASIDIC STORY: KNOWING THE STORY ABOUT THE PLACE
Once, in the times of the holy founder of the Chassidic movement, grave danger faced the community. The Baal Shem Tov traveled to a special spot in the forest, lit a mystical fire and prayed a special Kabbalistic formula. Sure enough, the danger passed and all was well.
Many years passed after that incident. Then danger again loomed after the passing of the Baal Shem Tov. His successor, Reb Dov Ber of Mezritch, as leader now faced the danger and had to act to avert tragedy. The Maggid of Mezritch traveled to the same spot where his Rebbe had prayed. He was not sure how to light the fire, but the words of the Kabbalistic prayer, that he remembered. And so the Rebbe of Mezritch said, “Hashem, I remember the place and the prayer, but not the fire. Please accept the place and the prayer and help.” Sure enough, the danger passed and all was well.
Time moved on. The Maggid of Mezritch no longer led. It was now the holy Reb Moshe Leib of Sassov who had to save his community from a danger. The saintly Reb Moshe Leib traveled far, arriving at the spot he knew had been used by his Rebbe and his Rebbe’s Rebbe. Here, he burst into tears, declaring, “Hashem, at least I remember the place. The fire we didn’t know how to light already in my Rebbe’s times. And, now, what can I say? Even the Kabbalistic prayer I don’t remember. But, Hashem, here I am, at the place where the Baal Shem Tov prayed. Therefore, in the merit of the place, please save.” Sure enough, the danger passed and all was well.
Yes, dear reader, time doesn’t stop. It moves on, and the next generation saw the saintly Rizhiner Rebbe facing a danger. Alas, time had erased so much. The prayer had been forgotten. The way to make a special fire had been forgotten. And, now, even the place where the former great leaders had prayed, even that, too, was forgotten. Said the Holy Rizhiner, “Hashem, the story of the place, the fire and the prayer will have to suffice.” It did. The danger passed and all was well.
Meaning:
In the first years, when the strength is full-on, many heroic acts could be done. Fires lit, places traveled to, poetry written. Yet, when there is no strength left for that to be done, the memory of the past is enough to declare the same type of love. The story of the place…that’s enough.
Rabbi Yisrael of Ruzhin
Interpersonal communication series:
Games people play
Games develop imagination, encourage creativity, and create cohesiveness socially, being used as a necessary simulation towards the experience of reality. And from this respect they are very positive. But a game got also be destructive: when it is being used an escape and a hiding system from reality the way it is; especially when it takes over and doesn’t give way ti the real reality, when it functions as the only reality.
The question about games is bigger and wider; is life itself a game? (Meaning: something entreating, stimulating, fun etc.), or into existence and reality, being what it may, but it is real, not a game.
Two partners of a couple, after a while might ‘fall’ into a recurring pattern of response, reaction and attitude, this are ‘a bypass road’ of real experience which might be too much and difficult to handle, so game are invented. A recurring pattern in which the same people are being hurt and the same partners are being the dominant ones.
A game is a relationship that got stuck into recurring repeated patterns, in which each side has got a particular role. Without well-defined roles – there are no games. And if there are no game and no roles – the person is exposed, and if he is exposed he is vulnerable. And if he doesn’t have an emotional immune system and an emotional maturity – the emotional pain is becoming too much, therefore he needs a role a game framework.
In the works the mystical writer Hermann Hesse one can read, in “Steppenwolf”. The idea of the theater of games also appears id his last book: “Glass bead games”.
A development and expansion of the game concept appears in Games People Play by Eric Berne.
We play games all the time–sexual games, marital games, power games with our bosses, and competitive games with our friends. Detailing status contests like “Martini” (I know a better way), to lethal couples combat like “If It Weren’t For You” and “Uproar,” to flirtation favorites like “The Stocking Game” and “Let’s You and Him Fight,” Dr. Berne exposes the secret ploys and unconscious maneuvers that rule our intimate lives.
Explosive when it first appeared.
Even if we become aware of a repetitive game pattern, after a while it returns, and then, from its eyes, reality either looks boring, frightening, or both.
Bt the truth is that the power and intensity of the game is nothing compering to the great power of being exposed to the experience of naked reality. Which charges him with power that could not be compared to the charge that the games has for us.
A short story:
“in china there was once a man who liked pictures of dragons, and his clothing and furnishings were all designed accordingly. his deep affections for dragons was brought to the attention of the dragon god, and one day a real dragon appeared before his window. it is said that he died of fright. he was probably a man who always spoke big words but acted differently when facing the real thing.”
― Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
On the magnetic dynamic in communication
The definition of the term: communication is not unambiguous, for its conception depends on the point of view from which it is being viewed. There is formal and informal and communication in organization, persuasive communication in sales, empathic communication amongst friends and family. Is there such a thing as a communication on philosophical-spiritual level? Well, it is a journey from dispersion, separation and isolation- towards a state of unification and harmony. In interpersonal communication there is no intermediate state, there are to major states; ‘participation and separation’.
The beginning of any communication is in alienation, conflict between oppositions, estrangement, difference, defense, suspicion, officially. This belongs to the category of: separation, the center of gravity is the self not the other, there is no dynamic flow.
In a communication of participation there is the unification of opposites, support, listening, giving feedback (paraphrasing), allowing apace, empathy, openness, trust and the center of gravity in the other and there is dynamic flow between the two.
And here a question could be asked; what is needed in order to make the change to turn the separation into participation?
This is a relevant question each time when two, or more, people get together, the beginning is always difficult. How to switch the engine of the participation engine?
What is needed is a powerful agent that will synchronize al separate factors, it could be a common goal, a common ideology, something powerful they share. A good example is magnetism, one way is by simply wrapping wire that has an electrical current running through it around a nail,
you can make an electromagnet. When the electric current moves through a wire, it makes a magnetic field. If you coil the wire around and around, it will make the magnetic force stronger, but it will still be pretty weak. Putting a piece of iron or steel inside the coil makes the magnet strong enough to attract objects. The strength of an electromagnet can be increased by increasing the number of loops of wire around the iron core and by increasing the current or voltage. Another way is attaching a strong magnetic field next to a simple iron rod or a nail, this will cause the atoms the atoms of the iron bar to be arranged in such a way that their magnetic fields are pointing in the same direction, (and remain this way for a long time), and so the bar become a powerful magnet that its power are in the order and organization of its various atoms- which are now in participation & unification. The atoms in a regular iron bar re in an unorganized state (each atom is pointing at a different direction), whereas in a magnet they are organized turning in the same direction, and then they constitute a kind of conductive, And so now there is a process, a passage of energy, there is a communicative current, a dynamic flow, a positive dynamic.
This process can happen also within the person himself, he can become himself conductive, if a higher goal can magnetize his various confused elements – into one cohesive dynamic whole.
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Quotes:
- Be passionate. Generate the magnetic power of eros through sensual, mental, and spiritual delight.
- Nothing is truer, more real, than the primeval magnetic disturbances that two souls may communicate to one another, through the tiny sparks of a moment’s glance.
Rhonda Byrne
Caitlin Rose
The circular nature of the authentic communication
Everyone’s interested in good communication, but only few know how to cause it to happen. The general attitude towards it is that is is mainly a matter of the right match or luck.
Like the growth of a plant, first there must be the right ground and whether conditions. In communication the main condition is the existence of the right atmosphere: an atmosphere which openness, allows, venti lies, expands, is quiet, flexible, not stiff and stressful, soft and flowing, not hard and fixing, roundish and friendly and not angular and straight lined. The urban environment is angular and straight lined:
There we press, compress, get crowded create tension.
Nature, in contrary to that, opens possibilities; there the lines are roundish, curvy, continuous, and flexible – like a river, winding, like mountain range and the skyline.so it is supposed to be also in true interpersonal communication; streaming, continuous, roundish, allowing, coordinating with environment, etc.
An atmosphere of stating facts, expressing unambiguous opinions and answering ‘closed answers’ – sharpens things and closes options.
However, an atmosphere which allows wonderment, exploration, and mainly asking question, asking questions opens options and allows process to take shape freely.
In asking questions it is not meant to ‘closed questions’ (that the answer to them could only be: yes or no), but to ‘open questions’ which allows space and choice, ‘open questions’ creates conditions that allow a flexible individuality, that adjust itself to the situation and to the other; to evaluate instead of fixing. To converse in a dialogue way instead of argument. To give space to the other in conversation and to put him in the center.
This could be called: soft, or roundish, or Yin – kind of exchange.
Without this kind of communication our world is cold, alienated and hard.
The hidden worlds in interpersonal communication
In every meeting between people there is the layer of the things being said and in is the overt exposed layers, and there is another layer, of things not being said, (like: what does he really want to get out of the meeting? What he really thinks about the meeting, and what is happening in him during the meeting (the hidden layer).
The exposed layer (which includes the things which are said) is a kind of public relation, saying it in a language which obeys to vocabulary and wording the herd mentality dictates. But behind it and inside the person there is his truth about what is happening, here he preserves his internal exile.
Usually we fulfill rolls in a play. And the more we persist in a certain roll, the more we would be expected to continue and fulfill it. As long as we are in the company of others –we are busy in ‘behaving right’ (the way we understand it), so that any chance to meet the other in and intimate way, what the philosopher Martin Baber called:” i and thou’ in which Buber’s main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:
- The attitude of the “I” towards an “It”, towards an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience. This is: “I” and “you’. This is an “I” and object relationship.
- The attitude of the “I” towards “Thou”, in a relationship in which the other is not separated by discrete bounds. This is intimate relationship.
The hidden level is “I” and “Thou”
The hidden communication is “I” and “Thou”, this is the
Intimacy level, we hide it for not wishing to be hurt.
Another example is “me to”, not the exposed: “me too” – but the general undercurrent of treating women as objects, while on the outside there is an apparent respect.
Relations of body and soul:
The human in the dimensions of: body, space and time
Our body moves in space and traveling in time; we are prisoners of the body and limited by the time and space in them it moves.
Our body has got actuality and presence that are attributed to him by being with volume and weight.
Space and time has also actuality and presence. First by: the limitation it puts upon the movement of the body and its place (in the dimension of space). And second is by: the time effect on the wear and tear of the body (in the dimension of time). The space is tolerant to the temporary presence of our body in it, our body is passive to the influence of time upon it.
Body, space and time – this three dimensions are our bridge to the world in which we live. Any understanding of a person and his life, must take into account this three dimension:
- Usage of the body – body language, movements, postures, facial expressions.
- Usage of space – territoriality, arrangement of environment and relation of body-space.
- Usage of time – timing, rhythm, synchronization and time-length of response.
The human being operates through the body – transmitting emotions, feelings, sensations, impulses, intentions and relations.
The man operates through space – fills it up or shrink within it, aspires for a bigger space (extrovert, dominant, confidents), or is satisfied in a small space (introvert, regressive, lacking confidence, depressive), his relations with his surroundings are passing through the conditioning of how much volume (not necessarily physical) he is holding in relation to another.
The person that operates in the farm of time: he always fastens, stops, begins, in timing with the other or is cutting him, arriving before time, or after it, knowing what to do in his free time, or is ‘swallowed’ by it.
The soul is trapped in the 3 dimensions that were mentioned: trapped in the body (cannot get out of it); trapped in space (you cannot be in two places at the same time); and trapped in time (it is impossible to go back or go forward – in time).
The way a person relates to his body, to space he finds himself in, to his own time and of that of others – gives a sense about the way he lives with himself and within himself.
A person who is in harmony with his soul, and she shines and flows through him with no blockages and brakes – would aspire to a an open a wide space around him; his posture would be erect, aspiring upwards, his eye sight not downwards, non-evading, and no opaque look – but bright and shining, as though the soul itself is shining through them to the world. This kind of person might feel that he wishes to reduce the frequent contact with the stimulations of the environment and prefer less crowded environment, more spacious and open. In this situation – something strange happens to time: it shrinks on the outside and expands on the inside, meaning: from the outside he looks as though all his actions and reactions has been slowed down, he is conceived as passive, but on his inside – everything is getting into high gear.
When the dimensions of the body, space and time – are orchestrated and timed correctly according to the soul, lots of things are happening: the soul gathers great energies and velocities, the sensitivity sharpens, and reception processes became fast and precise. The body is asleep, while the soul is awake; contrary to the opposite situation, when, because of daily pressures and stresses – the body is awake, but the soul is asleep.
A person who is in synchronization and harmony with his soul – seem slow, passive, lacking power and vitality, but it is no more than an optical mistake; The person who in in synchronization with his soul is like a tiger, freezing on his position, holding on, before it will pounce on its prey. The alert soul will activate the body not by pressure, pushing and power, but by giving direction only, and the body’s action- will happen. This phenomenon is being explained in the “Alexander technic”, and in the book: “Zen in the art of archery”.
The dimension of time indeed does not spare the body, but it the soul is immune in front of time.
The human body, that the soul is its queen, moves in space softly, gently, as a baby or a spring breeze; it is open and relaxed, lacking effort and tension. The force of life is flowing through it and moves it (and not his muscles or his wail-power); when he stands – he only stands; when he sits – he sits with the whole of himself; and when he lays down – all of him is laying. He is giving himself to space and time, he is not swallowed in them and he is not forcing them for his own needs, he is simply there, present. (He also doesn’t allow time to pressurize him and get him out of synchronization with his soul.
The person who conducting the orchestra of his life must slow down the rhythm of the music of his body in order to intensify the inner rhythms of his subconscious. The faster the body moves and the faster it responds to outside stimulations, so, accordingly will pulse of the pulls of soul will slow down, until it will stop to respond. And the more the body will let go of his efforts to be in constant control, so could the soul gather power and velocity and to respond in wonderful timing.
The soul, which is spacing in the body and space, and is being carried with the flow of the river of time – will arrive at the end at its end result: the ocean of the spirit.
Our body – a resonance bell
The body is like a resonance-bell- or an arched cathedral that was supposed to echo melodic music.
When the bell is sealed or blocked (as the body of a guitar packed with paper) – the sound voice is obscure, does not expand and it doesn’t echoes but gets cut short instantly.
Also our body, when it is contracted and constricted (because of stresses and tensions) – it is like this sealed bell: it doesn’t intensify and echoes what enters in, for what happens to it is blocked by it; the experiences, the impressions – are restrained on the threshold of getting in. And so, the body does not take part in the happening of our life and becomes a braking of experiences.
Instead of a little external stimuli, like the gentle touch of the uvula in the bell-sides, (the sound of which continues to resound long after the uvula touched the sides of the bell) – there were hard and strong knocks on the bell’s side, knocks that don’t echoes it into its inner space.
And so, instead of one thought leading to many understandings, instead of one piece of knowledge that leads to great wisdom, instead of one spark creating a huge flam – we have got in our life, many thoughts but few real understandings, countless words that says nothing, much information that does not add wisdom.
The body of the bell is made from exact compound of materials so that it would echo the sound voice and will not ‘swallow’ it. (Materials such as: bronze with a higher tin content, usually in approximately a 4:1 ratio of copper to tin (typically, 78% copper, 22% tin by mass)).
Our body was also supposed to be this way, but instead of echoing the Universe into our longing soul, our blocked body is braking the world from reaching in. because our body has become an accumulation of frustrations, conflicts, tensions and anxieties, like a sink that the solids that has been thrown into it – block the passage of water.
The uvula of the universe is knocking on the sides of our thoughts, feelings and sensual channels – and we should listen to it with the receiver of the soul. But things are not like that for us and in us: instead of listening to our bell’s echo- we are too busy looking after external strong stimulations, after exiting impressions (which are, by the analogy, like strong knocks to the sides of the bell) – in order to cover-up on the emptiness inside, of the absence of inner happening in our own cathedral; that instead of it being empty and open (in order to echo influences and energies) – it is blocked as a result of the tensions and frustrations we threw into it.
Our body, as a bell or cathedral (that was supposed to echo music) – was supposed to act as a resonance-box to messages coming from within –out, and to ‘music’ arriving from the outside – in. And only if we would allow our body to return and function a bi-directional resonance-bell, only then, we can (maybe) be able to bare the frustration, the horror, the pain and absurdity of our existence: loss, aging and death.
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“Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’t just a fiction; it’s part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space, and is inside us, like teeth in our mouth. It can’t be forever violated with impunity.”
― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
The body language of the soul
Often, we ‘forget’ our body. The abundance of stimulations that current life offers us (smartphones and computers: youtube, twitter, Instagram, what sup, Zoom) – are occupying our brain and stimulating it, on the account of the body. Our body remains thrown in the computer or television armchair, or in the seat of the car or an airplane – deserted, abandoned, while our brain and emotions are busy in a hunt after new powerful stimulations.
The brain and the emotions live in a world which is competitive & alienated, and the body becomes the receptor to stresses, tensions and frustrations, the residues of, which, the body cannot drain and so it gets wore out.
But when we pollute the body we imprison the soul, and when we stream ‘hard’ feelings into our sub-conscious –we pollute the body. There is no separation; the body is the soul and the soul is the body. The body is the means through which the soul is communicating with the world, the body is the ambassador of the soul, and as any ambassador, when we relate to it we are reaching the other.
The body is not a separate being that asks for our attention when in pain or distress, it is originally a window into the precious and dear world of our inner life; our soul. And through the window of the body the soul is looking at the world, and in her stress she calls us.
Will we notice? Shall we help her?
Is it possible that within this great noise in our body – we could hear? Could we hear the cry of the soul?
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Sad Lisa
She hangs her head and cries on my shirt
She must be hurt very badly
Tell me what’s making you sad, Li?
Open your door, don’t hide in the dark
You’re lost in the dark, you can trust me
‘Cause you know that’s how it must be
Lisa Lisa, sad Lisa Lisa
Her eyes like windows, trickle in rain
Upon the pain getting deeper
Though my love wants to relieve her
She walks alone from wall to wall
Lost in her hall, she can’t hear me
Though I know she likes to be near me
Lisa Lisa, sad Lisa Lisa
She sits in a corner by the door
There must be more I can tell her
If she really wants me to help her
I’ll do what I can to show her the way
And maybe one day I will free her
Though I know no one can see her
Lisa Lisa, sad Lisa Lisa.
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Cat Stevens / Yusuf Islam
Sad Lisa lyrics © BMG Rights Management.
The existential change
The processes of life which are happening around, and in us, are apparently, symbols of stability & persistence; the sun shines every morning, the gravitational force is never ending, rain is pouring at the right time, all rivers flow to the sea and our bank account is striving towards an overdraft…
When we get hurt, angry or insulted – we respond as always; take it personally, and the sentence: ”this is the way I am” – is a sign of our surrender to that which cannot be changed. And on the background of that which we conceive as unchangeable stability of nature and the processes of life – change seems to us as polar opposition, as a special daring act, that requires great effort and focused intentioned.
This conception is faulty, this stability we tend to associate to the daily goings on of things: “until something will change”, or “until a change will happen” – are based in illusion; in fact everything changes, all the time, and “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Said: Heraclitus of Ephesus. Nothing in our world is not as it was or as it would be, from existential viewpoint.
Everything around us, the whole universe, changes all the time, in a range of many years as in range of few minutes or seconds; On average every minute 300 million cells are dying and are exchanged by new cells, (it is called: apoptosis). In the digestive system the cells which cover the stomach and belly are being changed every 6 days. The skim cells and being changed every 2-4 weeks.
Every generation is taller by few centimeters then the generations before. Every few years the flora is being replaced by a new flora (it looks the same but new), and every few dozen years most of the animals die and are being replaced by their cubs.
The only permanent thing in life is change, everything alive changes and that which changes is alive.
This change which is the breath of life, teaches us about the relationship between sameness and change; change is the natural state of things, whereas sameness is a by station on the way between change to change. Life is a dynamic process, that stops being dynamic only when the processes of life – ceases. Everything in life is in in one of two states: in a process of becoming or in a process of ceasing, but no doubt, in some process of change.
According to this conception this two kind of changes are not dramatic, but part of a process, we treat change as something much more dramatic; totally different to what was and what will be, this is not real, organic change but a trauma. When a fire breaks out a finishes a whole forest – it is not a change but a trauma, a crisis, a shock. When a person gets up one morning and decides to cell his property and go to a tour around the world, or to start a demonstration, or become a vegan – it is not a change, it is a crisis. It has a nature of rebellion or a protest that stems out of dissatisfaction from what exists. What we do to ourselves in our desire to change and be changed’ now, and with no delay, is our impatience about our inability to be part of real organic change. It is a radical act that comes to be an antithesis to what was before.
Real organic change, by its nature is a gradual process, based on many tiny moves, that are hardly seen or noticed. The real change does not suck its power from the antithesis it put to the stable life that existed till now, but from his joining to the stable stream of change of life itself. Real change is noticed only after a while, but its effect lasts for a long time, and for its execution – not power is needed but persistence. Real change is not something that ‘happens’ in life – it is life.
The change happens automatically in the lower levels of the physical body – there its results could be observed and measured. But change should also happen in the higher level of psychology and the emotions – there it is no automatic procedure there at all. Its power, intensity and quality on those levels – could be learned from the person’s state of consciousness; a person with an alert and active consciousness – is able to respond to external stimuli, according to what is required by the essence of the stimuli.
When the consciousness is frozen or asleep – the vitality of the person, decreases accordingly. And his tendency to act and react from fixed dogmas and deep rooted habits – increases.
A person with awakened and vital consciousness, is an unexpected man, who responds to here and now; he is with a wide & flexible range of choice, not restricted by internal dictates (psychological) and external (social norms). But while change is given to us by the very nature of life itself, an awakened and developed state of mind is not guaranteed to us at all. Therefore the investment and the intention should be directed not towards the change, but towards the awakening of the state of our consciousness. An awakened consciousness is the only guarantee for constant change, but doing changes often is not a guarantee for reaching an active state of consciousness.
The most essential change a person could and should aspire towards is not in the areas of doing, achievement, or the improvement of the conditions of life, but in the soul-spirit life. What is being written about here is the longing to grow spiritually, to bring ourselves to the intensification of the forces of the soul that exist in us. For that the person has to extract himself out the fixing gravitational pull of his habits, previous beliefs, deep rooted behavioral patterns, guilt feeling and the such.
The guide for tracking the soul in the foreign land of existence
Where is the soul?
The soul is almost absent, only practical’s are left, scattered in various exiles of existence, little bite here, little bit there. Mainly hints.
And many people doubt her existence at all, treat her as a metaphorical name to a feeling or a psychological part of a person.
So, in what kind of exiles is she still alive?
In babies and children
Of course there: shining in the big eyes of babies but still somewhat asleep, not yet outgoing and powerful as in the eyes of children. Within kids it is storming what there is with joy, dancing to all direction, until ‘the hand-break’ of youth:
The age of youth
Here the great catching fire of the soul is being halted; there is hesitation, some pain in the eyes… the soul is still there, but as though muddy streams got mixed in her. And with growing up life is coming and present plenty possibilities for actualization and occupation; I some the soul gets more space, in some – less.
In politics and commerce
Here the soul is almost gone, and if it still exists – it is hiding well… sometimes it shimmers in the enthusiasm of a young economist, or political ideologist, or an activist in a worker’s union – who are convinced in the in the importance of what they work for. They are convinced that in their way they are fighting for a better world, their, in their enthusiasm exists their soul, burning, dreaming, fighting the tomorrow.
In mirage & family life
Here the souls is very varied, sometimes is there, sometime she disappears. It could exist powerfully in the relationship between a parent and his child, a woman and her partner, a brother and his sister. When she is is here – she is very much here but also she is subject here too much erosion. Because here the soul is surrounded and imprisoned by bitten, insulted emotions, and every emotional tension & stress are suffocating the soul’s fire. After years of marriage the soul is more like a refugee, many families and relationships may survive – for the soul (to survive), it is more difficult.
In Media
The place of the soul is almost not there. Everything which is unique, sensitive, individual and of a high level – is being almost completely overshadowed by the sensation and the ‘heavy bombardment’ of outstanding happenings which are being reported in the media: bribery, murder, rape, political and national conflicts, strikes and the like – all this are reflecting the weakening of the soul.
The news reporters sold their soul in the role of reporting on those things. But here and there, in a certain heart touching story – it is still beating, still alive, berating heavily breaths low in oxygen.
On the road and in the streets
From there she is almost totally absent, the people who live and travel in the roads and the streets, often they carry a kind of roughness that shows us about the abandonment of the soul.
There are those who travel down the roads as part of a protest, this is based upon their experience with the dogmatic, rational establishment. They are running away from what feels for them as a prison for the soul. Usually they are wondering around, exchanging between then pieces of knowledge about places where the soul still exists.
In poetry
Here, of course. Poetry is one of the last fortresses of the soul, there she is still free, very much there; in rhythm, metaphor – being passed over in gentle feelings, through which we learn about the hidden quietness being the ongoing practicality of daily existence.
In the arts
Here the souls was supposed to live like in a ‘battered women’s home’… protected by professional codes and housed in galleries, libraries, theaters, opera-houses and concert-halls. The arts are the ‘little temple’ of the soul, and of oasis, nature reserve. But even there, more than the arts are safeguarding the soul, it is reflecting the injustices done to her by the commissars of the current culture. Today the art of the 21th century presents and symbolizes split, divided soul, surrounded by opacity and alienation, bombarded by commercialization and industrialism. The rhythms are fast, nervous, unrestful. The shapes are angular, sharp, turn and tainted. The sounds are hard, aggressive and piercing, and the message is often violent, loaded with conflicts, anxiety and despair.
In education and schools
Scholl is trying to dance a soul-dance in two weddings, and in both it dances while limping: One ‘wedding’ is the preparation towards success in life, the way they are, (for despite the great quantity of knowledge or high marks, the only preparation towards life is life itself). The other ‘wedding’ is the preparation is the preparation towards the ripening and maturing of the soul and the emotions, that fro from the purely pedagogical point of view the school was supposed to nurture and cultivate, and also from this wedding it goes out limping, (limping most heavily). The main fields of study are scientific discipline, which are on the account of humanistic studies, studies of branches of the soul.
In religions and mysticism
Here the soul is pampered and getting the best treatment so far,
Here she should be like a princess in her castle. But really? How the soul does feels in the strict orthodox religious rules? Eve here she survives in few individuals, burning in fire of God & spirituality.
The real nature of difficulties and hardship
It is the nature of life that it is full of difficulties, many sayings are dealings with it, like:
- The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead. -Bette Davis
- Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. -Robert F. Kennedy
- Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional. -Roger Crawford
- Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. -Helen Keller
- The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials. -Chinese proverb.
- When you complain to me that you’re feeling the resistance, I don’t feel bad for you. I’m thrilled. I’m thrilled because the resistance isn’t like a sprained ankle or some other malady we seek to avoid when working out. The resistance is the shadow of art. No art, no resistance. –Seth Godin
The essence of life is difficulty, suffering and struggle, and the essence of difficulty is that in order to reach and achieve something, we should pay a high price in return.
With it, still the most frequent response to difficulty is a recoil, surprise and disappointment, as though we were accepting for things to run smoothly. We believe that the easier and the faster we get to our goals – so it will be a sign to its proper goings on, good luck and improved destiny. Encountering a difficulty is an indication for us for a wrong move, wrong choice, or that that something is not right. The difficulty is conceived as something negative, as an element that it is best to eliminate from, as indicating of a problem, but this is not the case.
The difficulties in life are like birth labor that announce the forthcoming of something new to the world. The resistance is like an invitation to free the being from the prison of circumstance.
It is in the nature of things that low value things are reached easily, whereas the precious, rare and important things are reached only with much effort, despite the resistance, difficulty and suffering. The more something resists you, the more it is a sign of the value of that which is beyond the difficulty, that waits for help in order to be born.
Difficulty calls for courage, resistance calls for melting.
Resistance or objection is not an antithesis to success, it is actually the sign an indicator for it, success always dresses in difficulty. On the superficial & infantile level (that sees in the cover of life – life itself) – the difficulty might be conceived as a problem, as a deterioration. But at a different level (at a being level) – the difficulty is not a sign of regression but an invitation for coping, for struggle towards victory.
The difficulty and resistance are not a refusal of life but the barriers that were supposed to test how determined we are in our resolution to pass them; how serious is our approach. The more rare and precious is what is beyond the resistance – so would the price paid for them must be high.
And so, almost every resistance is a code that says: “only those with courage, determination and willingness to pay the price – – could move on, as for the rest, try again when you mean seriously…”
The right approach towards the difficulty and resistance in life says that, once a person decided on a specific target, he should be willing to make up with the difficulty and Shaw patience, till the doors would open.
The right approach towards any other approach that does not carry this degree of determination, will not melt the rigid code.
Many mistaken to think that determination means the activation of power. Many believe that the way to live is by forcing life & breaking the difficulty. People are forcing their lives, whereas they should be listening to life, trying to study the difficulty, to decipher the code of resistance in order to overcome it and to arrive to the inner reality that it hides. Like the Salomon fish that swims against the stream in order to reach the origin and there to lay its eggs.
On total questions
Since the beginning and the middle of the 20th century, the resistance of discrimination against woman – got stronger. But stronger as it might be this phenomenon is only one symptom amongst many to the illnesses of human culture in present era. The deeper our consciousness will penetrate under the culture’s external cover, thus the more illnesses and injustices we would discover.
The human race is flashy in progress, education, becoming free from old fashioned ideas, and the strengthening of liberal democratic regimes, in the united-nations, in the achievements of medicine and psychology, but really? Was there really an essential improvement in the being of the human? Or are they only cosmetic corrections that hide the fact that the core has not changed?
Let’s take the problem of ignorance; we believed that the elimination of ignorance and the giving of the possibility of education to everyone – we would solve the problem; that is they would learn not 10 years, but 12 or even 15 or 20 – husbands will stop being violent to their wife’s, rival parties in politics will stop to defame each other, nations will go less to wars and inter personal communication will suffer less from alienation and power struggle. But it seems that despite us having today more education, more educated people, more colleges and Universities – at base, nothing has changed. The education & learning succeeded to repress the problems inside by great amounts of knowledge. Education and learning does not acquire the ability to understand, to tie lose ends, to crystalize a living, berating being, that will increase the areas of human consciousness.
Or for example, the problem of government; we believed that if we get rid of a dominant and forceful government, (dictatorships) that gathers power on the account of the people and will exchange it with democracy – all will be ok. What is interesting is that the exchange of a rigid government with a liberal open government – isn’t a result of an advancement actually. The much admired democracy is in fact a disguise, under which the degeneration continues. Democracy is not a new way of governing as it is in fact a bankruptcy of the former dominant ways (dictatorships and monarchies).
Changing the style of government deals only with the symptoms not with the undercurrents.
So, how do we really cop?
The way to deal with deep & complicated problems is like in root-canal treatment at the dentist; you don’t just fill the hole, you need to dig and widen it until you reach the root (the real problem).
The root (in our case) is the inner being of the human, the way his psychic is organized. There is the origin of the discrimination of the weak by the strong, there prejudices grow, dangerous ideas are being born such as oppression, racism, etc.
There, in the psychic the female element is being repressed and priority is given to the male aspect, which causes a similar phenomenon in the society in which we live.
The patriarchal world, the rational, competitive, rational, purposeful, mechanical & dominant – in which we live, isn’t only a mirror that reflects the inner picture of the individual.
The weak, vulnerable, sensitive and female elements in the individual – are repressed and attacked by masculine elements of the psychic and in a dangerous imbalance is being created. We are about to lose the depth dimension of the psychic and with it, the ability to connect to qualities which are finer and higher, qualities that the connection to them is passing through the female element of the psychic (anima, Ying) and that could fertilize the life of the individual and from there to do the same to the life of society, that is strangled and trampled upon by the hard masculine (animus, Yang) Boot.
The solution to many ills of society is not there and not in children’s education but inside, in the human psychic, there the imbalance is created.
And so, not until a switch between a masculine center of gravity into a feminine one – is done, nothing in the external world could be done.
Part three: the gate of the soul
Preface to the soul’s gate
Everything begins at the soul’s gate.
A spark gets ignited and becomes flammable.
And during life the covers of the body are stacked around her.
And they also could catch fire (lust, greed, desire, and dominance).
The fire of the body is hot, fastening, addictive, and external – its wavelength are short.
The soul’s fire is cool, slowing down, releasing, internalizing – its wavelength are long.
And it is the fire of the body that mostly sacrificing our soul to the materialistic Moloch god.
*
As a body everyone is single, as a soul never…
– Hermann Hesse
“Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.”
― José Saramago, Blindness
“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
― Walt Whitman
“To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul – would you understand why that’s much harder?”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet.
In the spirit kingdom
On all which happens the spirit observes from afar, from a high-point lacking urgency and pressure.
There unending valleys are viewed – stretching unto eternity.
She is watching prisoners of urgency and pressure – holding us in administrative detention – in the narrow prison of this hour and this moment, that rush hysterically to the next moment, and the next and more…
But in the spirit’s domain, every moment is a corridor to eternity and every second connects to the infinite.
There, doing is stemming out of fullness, happening in the middle of silence.
There, doing is not a replacement for an experience, but is an outcome of it.
In the spirit’s domain, being is there, from wall to wall, from shore to shore.
Everything is full of being, full of permission – to be.
Yes, there, very near, almost here.
Beyond the almost unseen and almost inconceivable – gate that leads to her – here and now.
Transcendence
Life could not be an end unto themselves.
They come and go, moving and changing, from creation to extinction.
As a candle that was created for a purpose, and as it burns, its time left is ending, until it itself – ends.
To dance life like they are what we long for, is like a person trying to hug himself – and his hands could not actualize the hug; so is a person with his life – he should stretch his hands towards what is beyond, in a big desperate hug – towards the greatness, power and mystery of real life.
Man does not belong to the life of here and the reality of now; is a passing reality, a spark in journey, will it catch fire? Will it make light? Will he get there?
Life itself is not a destination but a passing through way. Whatever a person have reached in his life, the feeling is that it is ‘not it’ yet, not the thing itself.
So, it is not possible to get fixed in any actuality of here and now, because the here and now are supposed to be leading to a reality beyond itself.
The dove-man
Life of every human are housed in him like a dove in a dovecote, quiet dovecote, removed from the noise outside.
Only sometimes it is possible for a man to befriend with the dove in him and to observe the life happening outside, from the viewpoint of the dove in him.
Silently and slowly he looks at the outside life from the dove eyes.
He receives and examines every detail with attention, with thirst, creating a mute and strong contact, a contact of presence – with the subjects of his attention.
And the people outside are hurrying on their way, noisy in their talk and blind in their reception of what happens in the inside of them and others.
And the dove-man live in his look as much as he lives in he lives in his silence, and his released dove is talking to their imprisoned dove in the silent dove language.
And they pass on the silence of the dove-man, to their daily-chores.
And they don’t know that that his silence is not a silence of miscommunication, but of inner communication, blessed, and full of sympathy and interest.
The noise does not understand the silence, and the silence contracts and gets wounded under the heavy bombardment… and so, they passing over each other, as liquid state of matter.
And the dove-man continues in his communicational silence – lonely, isolated &unknown.
Spirit and matter
In the human inside, like in the planet’s atmosphere, there is an arena where two forces meet; the force of matter and the force of spirit.
And as always in the meeting between two forces, a question is being asked: who will win? Who will have the upper hand?
Matter creates stimulation, presents temptation and is bound to overshadow the spirit.
The spirit evokes longing (for the unattainable) and so it could shine across the matter that surrounds her.
Matter is the prisoner.
The spirit is the captive princess.
Many are the tales, fables and mythologies that deals with this subject; a pure and unreachable princesses, imprisoned behind the walls of a dark castle.
In order to reach her, the hero must go through must temptations of the matter and to overcome them, until he will be pure enough to rescue the spiritual essence from the material shells.
Every religion has got its own set of rules, laws and regulations that their purposes are to protect the pilgrim, who travels to the realms of the captive spirit, from sinking into the temptations of matter and the materialistic world.
There are many faces to the temptations of matter, and all of them present to the human (consumer of pleasures) ways to increase his pleasures and make him more please. Be it tempting food, tempting sex, enjoined entertainment, high status, earning much money – all represent the local, the exchanging, the limited, the relative and expendable: matter.
However, spirituality has another identity, unchanging and eternal.
Spirituality does not pretending or beatifying, is not trying to tempt or showcase itself. She is what she is, and the person wishing to reach her, must get out of the sucking power of consumption and to become a productive power that could be powerful enough in order to rescue the spirit princess from the walls of matter.
But with it, the traveler to the spirit should not become addicted to a pure, total & permanent aspiration to spirituality.
This king of addiction is disastrous, because it is not possible to actualize it; first, matter is necessary as much as the spirit, and second; you cannot reach to a complete and total union with the spirit.
Giving up any measure of matter, would lead eventually, to paralysis and to ineffectiveness.
A person needs always to long for the tyranny of the matter and to sing for it – to the spirit.
And so all the time to live in constant tension between the force of matter and the force of the spirit.
And a spiritual salvation would arrive from the celibacy of the spirit alone, this is the enigma.
Not for nothing the spirit comes to live in matter, not in order to surrender to it, but that in order that despite it and through it, enlightenment will arrive.
Me and God
Me and God.
Everything and nothing, the immediate and the eternity, the nullity and the completeness.
Me and God.
Me and God.
Traveling in the same journey, live from the same breath, we have the same spirit.
Me and God.
God and me.
Populate the same world, he as a creator, me as being created.
God and me.
God. He, that everything is under his word
And me, that my words are nothing, and I am nothing,
And I am all dirt, to it I am traveling and returning.
And his life – is my life, and my life is not his.
And his shadow- mu sun, and what surrounds him
Lights me up.
Lights me up from within,
In burning fire,
God’s fire.
Peace
Peace is little bit of death.
Little bit of the opposite.
Otherwise, life attacks everything on its way: running down the arteries, convulsing in the nerves, contracts in the muscles – in a wild rampage they crash all the fine systems to the rock of hard reality.
But peace is little bit from death. Yes, rocking gently down the muscles, cooling gently the nerve-ends. Resting for a while in space within the veins, gathering strength-from storm to storm.
Peace is little bit of death. Softens the sharp lines of the exposed, blunt existence, threatening the sensitive, the fragile and the gentle, expands the inner space- to rest within, to find in it, a home, a refuge, from the terror of tomorrow and yesterday; from the aggression that jump out of every traffic-jam, every news head-line.
Yes, this way, to rest for a while, not from life and not far away from them, but in them: to travel with the drop of death towards the silence within the storm of existence. Until we will be quite, until we will not feel anymore the beating of fear and panic.
Little bit of peace.
A reminder of the big sister that will arrive.
In praise of the cry
The cry.
It cannot be silenced.
Even from clenched teeth – she will bubble.
It could be renounced, it could be ignored – but to silence it is not possible.
It is very piercing; in the life and soul of a person it is the longing for understanding, intimacy, love, attention, truth and self-actualization.
The human-race is crying for thousands of years, and its cry is unheard.
The existing regimes are busy in silencing it by fattening artificial needs, until the cry gets lost in all the abundance and noise.
Within thousands of noisy people in a stadium, hundreds in a movie theater – the silent cry of an individual, for human-warmth or meaning is unheard.
But you could not silence the cry, because even if it is not heard, it exists, and even if it is not being payed attention to, it is there, and even if not responded to, at least it is transmitting a sign of life.
Therefore, here will be talked in glory of the cry of the beggar, the street drunk, the abandoned, the lonely, the heart broken, the forsaken, the outcast, the seeker, the wonderer and the homeless.
The world dresses and undresses, people come and go, generation is born and generation dies, and the cry goes on, goes on and intensifies. Silently, inside, far from what is in front, gathering momentum, gathering power.
A giant spring, getting compressed, getting tense – from within.
The art of living
The art of living does not give itself easily, and like any other art, it is not acquired by faith or wishful thinking.
The art of living expresses itself through the raw-materials of unique for it: suffering, the longing, the wondering, and the desire for meaning.
And like there is the ‘artist of life’, there are other ‘professionals’ within the areas of life: ‘merchants of life’ and ‘engineers of life’.
The merchant of life negotiates, bargains and sells (his qualities, charm, abilities) – expensively and byes (entertainment, excitement, pleasure, prestige and honor) -cheaply.
The engineer of life is manipulating and disguises cunningness in a descent dress.
And ‘the engineer of life’? He takes the confusion, the uncertainty, the absurd, the search, the terror, the emptiness and the alienation, and kneading and designing them in the vision of the spiritual pattern that he wishes to reach to.
As an authentic creative artist, the artist of life is always in a process of creativity, he touches all the time in the materials of life in him, looking, all the time, after the next pattern, and the next fabric, that will constitute another course, another dimension, to the creation he is creating in his life, by his life, during his life – his life.
On real wisdom
Real wisdom is in seeing things as they are, not as they seem to us.
Real wisdom is in having the ability of an ‘X Ray’ sight that penetrates through covers and masks, through what is routine and readily available, and discovers the real reality, that is always hidden from sight.
Only this kind of sight will discover the sheep within the box, the elephant in the bowels of the snake, the little prince wondering in the daily show of life.
And as the silence is beyond words,
And the darkness beyond the light,
The emptiness within the fullness,
The eternity beyond the temporary,
The truth within the lie,
And death after life –
So is real wisdom, behind, beyond and within – the passing, the comparative and the expandable.
Something is missing
In every situation something is missing, something is not there.
In conversation, in a meeting, in a television interview, in a family dinner, in an email that was sent yesterday – something was missing, something wasn’t there.
And the more what is around is noisy, demanding, dominant and forceful – the more this something which is absent, is missing more.
Because all which is, is a cover and a disguise for that which is absent, that which is missing. And that which is absent is that which is actually what influences and reasonable for what is happening.
We are used to relate to was is known and available as influential and important, but not so, it is what is rare and hidden which is important and influential.
What is not said? What is nor done? What is missing?
What exists – is easy to reach: it is made of vulgarity, loudness, boredom, aggression, bluntness, routine, and the monotony of existence, superficiality, lack of existential meaning and competition. All this is covering everything, until we forget what is below: what is rare, that of quality, the silence between the words, forgetting even that it is missing forgetting the spirit.
But at the same time, within what is all over the place there are clues, like in detective story, road signs that lead to the being that is beyond, to the hidden effective being, that its absent presence is what designed what is seen and known and influenced everything which appeared on the stage of what is appearing now.
Amphibians
We sink like heavy toads under the waters of our consciousness, breathing water through our gills.
For, the water, the shore and the sky are fantasy, philosophy, mysticism. And so we go on under the water, forgetting to remember how is it to breathe clean air.
*
This is the thing that we do with ourselves. We use ourselves as a carriage, while we could fly.
P.D. Ouspesky. From the book: “The fourth way”.
And what is in between
The dichotomy
When a person does not see what is in front of him or does not listen to what is said to him – what is responsible for it is the lack of communication between one eye and the other, between one ear and the other, between the right brain and the left.
Instead of one foot ‘listening’ to the other, and both trying to walk together…
Instead of one hand ‘listening’ to the other, and both trying to act together…
Instead of one foot ‘listening’ to the other’ and both trying to walk together…
Instead of one hand ‘listening’ to the other and of both trying to act together…
Instead of one eye ‘listening’ to the other and both trying to see together…
Instead of one ear ‘listening’ to the other and both trying to listen together…
And instead of the left brain listening to the right brain and both trying to think together…
The strong foot gets stronger on the account of the other, the strong hand gets stronger on the account of the other, the strong eye is getting stronger on the account of the other and the left brain is getting stronger on the account of the right brain.
The synergy
When the human could not reach an equilibrium in his kingdom, (for a favor of a status quo in which the dominant masculine dominant force is conquering the passive female force) then we become hostages in the hands of the dominants pole (Yang).
Mind, emotions and sex, that have in them a balance between the positive (Yang) and the negative (Ying) poles – will provide us with a center of gravity that will guide the eyes to see and not just to look, the ears to listen and not just to hear, the mouth to converse and not just to talk and our life to live and not just to exist.
*
The way of the warrior
From every conflict and a struggle a person comes out a bit taller.
Not a winner, not a loser, just taller, he becomes taller just by the fact that he took part in it, and survived as a human being.
And if he will evade confrontation, will escape it, his human and spiritual stature will bow down, and he would shrink, dwarf, and would lose his stature.
And this is why we so mush need it, the coping. And like our eyes need to cope with the burning of light, our legs with resistance of the ground and our muscles with the weight of the load – so do we need the struggle, the coping with the difficulties of life.
From time to time, a person should extract himself from the comfortable, correct, and conventional and bourgeois package of his routine life and release the power of the warrior that lies within him. To allow freedom to the force bursting out of him, dangerous and uncompromising, as a Genii redeeming out of the bottle, and is getting bigger and bigger, stronger and stronger. As a domesticated dog that the legacy of the coyote is forgotten by him. And only if he remembers the wolf in him, can he return to his inner strength.
And so, a person should not allow himself to get fixed in the degenerating & safe routine of his life, otherwise he would sink like a soufflé that gave up the challenging heat of its life’s oven.
He should stop running from confrontations, he should return to feel the hardness of his being and principles (as they are being expressed during the confrontation). He should throw himself out of the rang of the routine of his life and go out, like a knight in the Middle Ages, looking for a lady in distress, meaning; his real identity, the one which was swept under the mask and then he returns to the routine with both: with his lost identity, and with a knowing of the quite strength of the warrior in him.
In praise of the warrior’s stance
There is no shortage in reasons as to why to go out to war and fight. Almost every day another reason is added to the list, in this world, which allows old people to be thrown out of the circle of work like cans of drink. A world that allows discriminations, exportation and abuse of the weak. A world that forces the weak and the sensitive to suffer the tyranny of the strong, the humiliating, the domineering and the condescending.
A world that allows rudeness, lack of consideration – to appear, to exist and to flourish.
And the battleground is almost everywhere, because almost everywhere the lack of consideration and lack of humanity raise their ugly heads.
How comfortable it is to turn one’s head, to ignore, but at the same time it means, to become accomplice. Because the one who wishes to remain clean and dry in a dirty and wet world such as ours, is expressing lack of decency towards the basic principle of being a human being.
When a person choses to cope with a problem that he has a clear stand about – he is growing in his stature, he is growing as a human being.
But if he turns away his look, as he doesn’t see, and says in his heart: “it’s not my headache”, or “let’s other people break their heads”, or if he tries to polish the problem and eliminate it – he is again a collaborator.
With it, it is not my intention to refer to going to riots and public protests, or to the signing on petition (often the external movement could only be a compensation to a loose internal posture, or it is only to make the conscience quiet), the intention is that of an internal worrier posture. It is important that the person will say inside: “no”, and then he would ne with internal ‘spine’, and this is more important than 100 violent demonstration (more or less).
In the external arena almost everything repeat itself, and the only arena which could be subject to change is the inner arena and on this only is written in this essay.
Bibliography:
Bottomley and Hopson – Arms and Armor of the Samurai
Musashi, Miyamoto – A Book of Five Rings
Nitobe, Inazo – Bushido: The Warrior’s Code
Turnbull, Stephen – The Book of the Samurai – The Warrior Class of Japan
Wilson, William Scott – Ideals of the Samurai
Rati, Oscar and Westbrook, Adele – Secrets of the Samurai
The bottom line
It is not the top line which is responsible for the things being as they are, it is not the climax, not the head of the pyramid. It is the bottom line that carries on it the weight of the rest of the lines. The question is: would we allow ourselves to fall under it? And how fast would we fall?
The real effort to move, to motivate, to reach the top – is not embodied in what a person would do with his best, but in what he would not allow himself to do with what is bad (or weak or undeveloped) in him. In other words: advancement is reached not by improvement of what is functioning and developed in him, but is depended to what a degree a person would not allow himself to sink because of the heavy negative weight that is pulling him down. And the fall begins the moment you stop to make such an effort, the moment you lower the power of the internal pressure.
This frequent state happens when the attention is being sucked upwards, towards the upper line, the top, the end of the pyramid, and forgetting the lowest line.
And then, once the bottom line was broken – all start to sink, and down there, below the bottom line – nothing is important.
And what is winning in the end is mediocracy.
The secret of out brother – the lonely ranger
Part one: our brother
The eyes of the lonely ranger are half closed. He looks half asleep but he sees all. He is silent, almost a shadow, on the background in which he lives.
Therefore it is so difficult to believe that behind this exterior a judgment day storm is hiding, a storm which could burst out at any minute and without prior warning.
His frozen quite outside are deceiving. They are actually a sign of his total self-control. And the greater is his self-control the more his shop window would look desolated and deserted. And indeed many pay a price mistaking his self-control for a weakness, his external slowness stands in direct opposite to his internal speed.
The more the internal processes (perception, assimilation, decision, and response) and faster – so would his external appearance look relaxed and slower.
It is like helicopter or a fan blades, the faster they move so is the impression that they spin slower, and in faster speeds it seems that the blades don’t spin at all.
Therefore those who mistaken his outer desolation for a weakness and shove an aggressive finger into behind the blades, discover to their horror that their hand is missing a finger…
Part two: the secret
What is the secret of the lonely ranger? How does it work for him? And why does it work like this for him? Well, in order to begin to understand him there is a need to understand what he is not.
First of all, he is not a hero, (the aura of the hero was put on him in Hollywood movies that made him famous), second, he is not an independent creature, and in fact he is a prisoner. He is in complete surrender to the force that activate him, that passes through him now that his personal wishes and their boss: the ego, evacuated his place.
In other words: his secret are the forces that operate him, the forces that he is a wailing hostel for, forces that use him as a bye station, operate him like him was a marionette.
Part three: the analogy
Our brother the lonely ranger is like an elaborate receiver/transmitter radio, from the outside it looks like a regular radio, (even a bit neglected); from time to time a wire becomes disconnected, as though it has an overcharge or a shortcut. And then he tunes inside, listens, to the rustle of the electricity in the wires, checking the level of charge, moving a wire, and all during a deep concentration and conditioned peace. Tense through his peace towards any possible danger. Because his greatest fear is to find himself like Samson, without communication channels, through which he can be connected to the world that nourishes him.
Part four: Epilogue
To our brother there is a secret within a secret: he is a secret agent, an agent of a kingdom from which he draw his strength and which he represents.
Where is he? You ask?
Our brother is around, near.
Just have another observing look,
Just look again, look for the eye.
The void
The void is the quite eye of the storm, the black hole, the gate that swallows at the end everyone. But at the time being, everyone avoids it, denies it, and escapes from it.
Escaping from the nothing the lives within everything. Running towards the temporary, the immediate, the fast and the exiting. Finding refuge in T.V. serials, in love affairs, in novels, in high class restaurants. To escape from the nothing, from the void. But the nothingness, the void, is the only validity that exists, hidden by the temporarily that comes and goes, enters and exists, dancing and changing, like a curtain waving over an open window.
Life is a cover upon cover upon cover: the first cove is what is apparent, than the void, and behind the void exists the truth.
On outer & inner conflict
Disputes and differences of opinions and views existed always, everywhere; between the left party and the right, the democrats and republicans in America, between conservatives and liberals, fascists and communists, privileged and under privileged, racists and immigrants, executives and the worker’s union, between rude and gentle, strong and weak. Anywhere the dispute.
But there is another place, hidden from sight, only partially aware, in which the war is not less fierce; and it is the inner war, between the left hemisphere and the right one, between logic and the emotions, between a surge of desire and common sense, between temptation and conscious, between habit and initiative, between laziness and sports.
And it is an ongoing conflict, until from so many conflicts we become tired and slowly fractured and eroded.
And the external divisions and conflicts are only and outer reflection of our internal conflicts.
To dream reality – an eulogy
To dream reality, where the tiny grain of truth is surrounded by half and quarter truths.
To dream reality, a place where no one knows what everyone hides from all, and no one knows. They don’t know about the hidden reality that sings a sad song, a song of remembrance that exists beyond the half transparent threshold of their consciousness.
The silent whisper of excitement from the search and discovery almost is not alive in anyone. Most of them continue to hold to their grey disguises, and only the noise of their chatter and prattle constitutes the major indicator for the blockages that exist beyond the mask of trivia of the social convention.
Almost no one knows and no one cares that the lonely authenticity ship has sailed long ago. Only the waves behind her pass the message of twilight and locking.
Sad, sad in the mind, sad in the eyes, sad in the soul. For the wings of the sweet bird of our dear youth, of our intimate longing, its voice is cracked.
To dream reality: the journey is over, the trumpet were silenced. The convoy has passed. The beauty and truth has gone. And our throat is chocked with sorrow.
“Sad Lisa”
We are born with urges, impulses and needs, with needs without which we could not go on. Like a kid pulling strongly on his mother’s dress, in the same way the palm of the hand of the need is holding us from within, pulling and demanding to be to come to its satisfaction.
Many such demanding children are tagging our dresses: the eye demand to see sights, the muscles demand to be in movement and activity, the stomach demands food, the skin demands to sense, the brain demands stimulations, the sex demands release or pleasure, and the emotions demand confirmation, love and warmth.
But the most deep and powerful and demanding urge comes from the soul.
There is no need more urgent, a cry louder, a pain deeper than those who are coming from the soul.
So piercing and terrible is the cry of the soul, that if it would be heard by someone, he would leave what he is doing and would dedicate his life to fulfil her needs.
But humen’s ears are deaf from hearing the cry of his soul, of his “sad Lisa” which is laying deep in him.
The art of finishing
And it is also possible to know how to separate.
To tie together all which will remain behind, all the scattered, the thrown away – into one organized package. To check again and again every comma, every note, or as it was a big financial commitment, or as it was a self-portrait, hung forever in the gallery of time.
The ending should be different, polar and opposed to the beginning.
Beginnings are mostly not smooth, they are hesitant, stuttering, signal notes looking for the tune, for the right rhythm. Individual pieces of a puzzle looking for the complete structure. And then, once the pieces fell into their place and the picture got completed, the beginning became continuous. Things found their dynamic place, the happening as by itself.
And then at some time the end must arrive: organized, tied and united. Woven with reason, meaning and intentional awareness.
And so in every ending; when packing a suitcase, coming from the dining table, closing the house door, finishing a conversation or a relationship, or especially when separating from life… to end them with care, dignity, and full intention. (But for that, an exceptional high level of consciousness is needed).
The selling of the soul
We sold the vision too soon.
Indeed, at the end we all would be measured according to the results we have managed to achieve, but why reduce yourself, to the size of a book keeper that deal with calculations of gain and loss: “should I shouldn’t I”? “It pays me off or not”?
What about the mystery? About this marvelous magic that paints everything the colors more vivid than life. We got too old, too soon. We let the routine of reality to snap our kites and to exchange them with bank account reports.
Don’t sell your soul of the 30 pieces of silver that will acquire you recognition, stability, or status, here and now. Don’t sell for it for being secure economically, socioeconomically and by class.
Because the spirit is born free.
I look at you and you are grey, boring, forecastable and average. You have erased all the nonconformist bumps, so that they could fit into the squares and boxes that public opinion fashioned.
You are behaving like your parents, striving towards the comfortable prison of the ”little boxes” that are being reached by anyone that acts like a good boy, good worker, and good citizen.
But your soul does not carry with it anymore the fresh sent of youth and the open spaces. Now it is musty struggled.
You are afraid; afraid to be found wrong, afraid from loneliness, afraid to be ourselves in a group. And by crowing the fear we declare lack of belief in our inner voice.
You get divorced from your destiny, you became small, mediocre, and replaceable.
You sold the vision, the promise, your original inspiration for legitimation and a good place in the center in the hall in which the big show of life goes on all the time. But the hall of your life is empty and closed. No show or happening are taking place there.
Essential comment: this prophesy of rage is not addressed against the silent majority or the herd mentality, but only against carriers of the spark that are selling it for an acceptance within the consensus.
What are they talking about?
What are human beings talking about?
On fire in the middle of the sky? On stars in the middle of the day? The secrets of the mind? Or the mystery of the soul that doesn’t stop longing, night or day?
On what they are talking, talking and talking and conversing?
On various things that they are talking, that do not make any difference, nor here nor there.
‘What did she buy yesterday”? “And where is it cheaper”? And who wore the same dress”? And “who said to whom that said to them that told us…?”
What on earth are they talking about?
Are they talking about the mysteries of the cosmos and the way of the stars? About the enigma of existence and the meaning of life?
No, on tiny things, that do not matter nor here nor there, do not make a difference anywhere. Only tie the status quo in strings, cobwebs – which they weave, thin sleeping webs for the sleeping deep sleep in the middle of life.
From shock to shock
We live our life from shock to shock, they stretch from trauma to trauma.
Little disasters cross our life like dots and comas and the end of sentences; each time to stop, to feel that our world collapses, each time anew.
Our lives are full with storms in a tea cup, difficulties. And each one of them intends to be the last dot in the last paragraph.
And the force of life moves between the lines, and is being tested with every coma, with every dot – would it be imprisoned behind the final dot, or break through it forward, to another line, another sentence another time.
And so is our life: from shock to shock, from trauma to trauma, from disaster to disaster and in between – the flowers.
Part four: The existence gate
“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”
― Ecclesiastes 1:2
Forward to the existential gate
This is not the mercy gate, one day we thrown into existence and tan one day we are thrown into death
to live life, just for the sake of living without knowing why.
The gate of existence is on life as it is, without makeup; is mechanical, absurd, with angst, loneliness, Alienation. And I did not find a better illustration to this existential state of things than this Zen fable:
The Tiger and the Strawberry
The following ancient story- known as a “Koan”- from the Zen Buddhist faith tradition offers a useful insight into 2020.
Once upon a time, as a man was walking through a forest, he saw a tiger peering out at him from the underbrush. As the man turned to run, he heard the tiger spring after him to give chase.
Barely ahead of the tiger, running for his life, our hero came to the edge of a steep cliff. Clinging onto a strong vine, the man climbed over the cliff edge just as the tiger was about to pounce.
Hanging over the side of the cliff, with the hungry tiger pacing above him, the man looked down and was dismayed to see another tiger, stalking the ravine far below. Just then, a tiny mouse darted out from a crack in the cliff face above him and began to gnaw at the vine.
At that precise moment, the man noticed a patch of wild strawberries growing from a clump of earth near where he dangled. Reaching out, he plucked one. It was plump, and perfectly ripe; warmed by the sunshine.
He popped the strawberry into his mouth. It was perfectly delicious. The End.
The transience of human existence
The concept of transiency of human existence is not conceived in our normal consciousness.
“Yes”, we say we know that our existence here is timed and limited, but it is a lip service. We say and we ourselves do not believe.
We live as though our existence will not stop one day, one hour, one minute – and then we will be no more.
Mostly, a human does not dive and deal in it more that he deals in the complicated calculation of buying a new car. The social convention (through chatter) encourages the repression of the subject, but behind the social smoke screen a huge fear is hiding, a terrible taboo.
And we believe that the king isn’t naked, meaning that the fact that existence is temporary is not a problem, because everyone else doesn’t treat it as such.
And so, because we don’t cope with this issue, we also don’t acknowledge the fact that our life are moving in a corridor of uncertainty, between void to void, nothing to nothing.
In most of our lives we are only preparing ourselves towards the part which is left.
In the first 20 years we are preparing for the next 20 years, and later on -our wrinkles, white hair, tiered body, are signaling to us that all this is going to end for us, but we are don’t get the hint. Life is pushing us out and we insist to wish, to long, to hope – for happiness, satisfaction, pleasure.
We live in the certain, valid feeling that we were born to grow, and that we grow in order to live and to live is what it is all about.
But life is a journey towards their nonbeing.
We are just travelers passing this way, from one nonexistent station to another. We are just passing this way, and this way is our life.
We put too much emphasis on studying in school and then becoming a skilled profession, in order to get out of life the most, so that in order that when we would arrive, we would be equipped towards life.
And then we are already 30 and 40, and continue to search in books and seminars. Convinced from year to year that now we would learn, now that we learned how to live.
And also when the years continue to pass and we are already towards the end of the corridor of our life – we continue to move through ur life as though it is the main stage, we are the main actors and as though the show will go on forever.
All our childhood and young youth we expect for the moment the screen would uplift above our life stage and the show would begin.
And when we realize that all our life has upon us in a pointless expectation.
We examine our life with wonder: when did we miss the rising of the screen? The stage? Like this line of John Lennon: “Life is what happens to you when you are busy doing other things”.
Around us those who are close to us are all going and ending, and our dime consciousness receives for a second the real meaning of hurtling towards the end of life, but only until the wondering sends of the routine life that cover it.
And we are back to our own thing, as though we would be here forever, a frog in his drying swap. That sees himself as the prince of the universe, till the pond gets dry…
*
“Alas”, said the mouse, “the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I am running into.”
“You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.[2] * From: “A Little Fable” (German: “Kleine Fabel”) is a short story written by Franz Kafka between 1917 and 192.
Life is passing
Par A
Life is passing by, and any which way we look at them, they pass: left – right, poetry – prose, rule & separate – they pass. And no matter if they pass in a song or a melody – they pass.
And the silence that is after (we pass) is still as though there were no life before. And in this silence many battalions, our descendants our washing Passat us, as though we have were never been at all. As though as all this was created just for them … but even them will not would be.
And the great earth breaths our existence in the same as our non-existence, and Ecclesiastes was and will continue to be.
For every generation – the world is his and for him, he researched it, puts upon it etiquettes and stamps, as though the future generation would not come afterwards and act as though knowledge and understanding is happening for real only now.
And as our narrow and midget level of consciousness could not comprehend the intensity of the Angst and the dread that we repressed, so it doesn’t comprehend the unknown void which is all around; the egotistical ‘here and now’ hides everything, like a finger between our eyes and a four story building.
Part B
“Life is passing by”, we say and we don’t really mean and don’t really believe.
“Life pass”. We say and are abrasive the importance of this sentence. Because the busier are people in their lives, so would intensify their sleep that at this exactly this moment, their life is passing away without return and there is nothing they could do to eliminate it.
The life of all of us are passing away, and despite the transitory nature of things – we treat it as almost eternal and as will not pass away soon, too soon.
Where is the one who cries: “Just a moment, let’s stop for a moment and give respect to this passing existence before it will pass?” for it would pass without returning again, ever.
Within our daily chatter – can we pause for a moment, salute to this passing reality, shed a tear, before this moment would dissolve into the void, into the chaos?
And Ecclesiastes was and will be forever. And as time passes, so does his words surface up like a sunken island when the water recedes.
So, shall we wait for a while? Here is our reflection in the mirror, here is this house, news now in the T.V. the insult still hurting in us from yesterday, the hopes we have for the coming months… and we would know for a fleeting moment, deep and painful, that all, yes, all, is in a process of disappearance, and very soon it will not be… we will be with it for a while.. And return to daily routine…
*
All passes
Al is passing, all is passing; the expectations, the prizes – all is passes.
What does is matter what were the dreams and heartbreaks of little Jacqueline in the 16th century in a little village in the south of France? Where are they today? And where would be the heartbreaks of today in 400 years’ time?
Every rabbit feel that he is the only rabbit, but there were rabbits before and there would be rabbits after. Doesn’t matter at all who is the present rabbit, as long as there are rabbits.
Everything moves on. So, it doesn’t matter what and who; at the end, we all would be swallowed by time, and those to follow will not remember us, the way we don’t remember those who were before.
We are placed on the moving strip of time, trying with vigorous movements, as though we could break out of the automatic strip of time. The actors behind us are already breathing on our neck, we only barley found our place, we did not understand yet the laws of the game…
Maybe in the next book we would read or in the next friend we would meet, the next seminar – maybe than our wisdom of life would reach its top and at last we would become rightful citizens in this life?
And in the meanwhile we act it as though we already know: we buy in the supermarket, we drive a car, do bank transferences, but in fact, ‘we are still small’… in fact, we did not find our place in life… ‘Surly it is only a forward for some main-course, which is yet to come’.
But all is passing, and we, like this spring or this evening, must make way, this to summer and the other to night, and it doesn’t matter which night or summer; when its time is us – it is us, and the moving strip of time will not slow and will not stop.
Everything, everything is passing and we with it, into the void from which we emerged. And our songs/cries will unite to one big prayer of silence, a prayer that the generation that celebrates their turn in the ongoing exchanging carnival of life – would not hear.
Life aren’t but a train
Life isn’t but a train ride, from a departure station to an arrival station.
But the ride itself becomes a goal unto itself and cafeteria, entrainment areas and T.V. sets are popping everywhere.
And the train?
The train lost its target, the drivers are asleep.
From time to time someone gets up and protests against the wastage, and asks the real basic questions: “what are we doing here”? “Where are we traveling”? “What all this traveling is all about”?
But he is going to be ignored: “he will be over it”…
And the train of life goes on.
New and fresh passengers are born on board, old man disappeared, and the destination station remains lonely, empty and desolated.
Inertia
People live, and they live because they live.
And they get up in the morning because they get up in the morning.
And they continue because they continue.
And so they roll on, from day to day, day to day, day to day.
And another day.
There is nothing for. Living because of living;
Inertia.
Life and the missed opportunities
הכל נע, אך כה לאט, כה בשקט – צמיחה קמילה, שניהם כל-כך שקטים, עד שכמעט אינם מתרחשים כביכול.
בני השישים של היום חיים את עברם, אך נראים כל-כך בני שישים, כאילו מעולם לא היו בני ארבעים, רק לפני עשרים שנה…
ובני העשרים של היום כאילו לא יהיו בני ארבעים, בעוד עשרים שנה בלבד.
הזיכרון כה שוקק חיים הוא, ומה שיקרה כה מעורפל… ועדיין אותן עשרים שנה מוליכות לאחור כפי שהן מוליכות קדימה, ויום אחד אתה שם, ויום אחד אתה כבר לא, כאילו מעולם לא היית…
דבר אינו כשהיה ואינו כפי שיהיה; כדור הארץ, הירח, כוח הרצון, הכוונות שלנו – הכל נתון לשינוי, צומח או נובל, גובר או נחלש, מתעצם או נמוג.
הישן נע החוצה, החדש נע פנימה. ההצגה נראית אותה הצגה, רק השחקנים התחלפו, ממלאים את אותם תפקידים.
ההשתנות האיטית משטה בנו. אנו ארנבים האצים קדימה – רק לגלות בסופה של הדרך כי הצב האיטי של הזמן הקדים אותנו. הנה אנו בני שישים לפני שהספקנו (למרות המהירות הרבה שאנו שועטים בה דרך חיינו) להיות בני עשרים.
יש כאב בהסתכלות לאחור, כי לעיתים רחוקות אנו חיים את הרגע במלואו, בדרך-כלל, אנו נוגסים ממנו קלות ורצים הלאה, מותירים מאחורינו את הרגע שאך לא מכבר היה ההווה שלנו – מבויש, גולמי, לא-ממוצה, לא-מנוצל, אבוד לעד.
ואז חולפות עשרים שנה…
ואנו מסתכלים לאחור, והרוח הבלתי-ממומשת של הרגע שחלף בוכה מתוך ארון הזכוכית של עברנו: הצילו, אס. או. אס.
אך הזמן כבר ולא ישוב עוד וזה כואב. והתקוות הגדולות של פעם פזורות בגולת היומיום, הממשיכה בחייה מיום ליום, אינה מעיפה מבט לעבר הקהילות הקטנות של מאורעות לא שלא מומשו עד תום.. כי רק פשע אחד קיים ואין בילתו: להוליד במחשבה וברגש ולהותיר את העובר ללא התגשמות, ללא חיים – כי הנישואים עם המציאות הוחמצו.
*
“כל מה שלא סבלת ולא גאלת עד תום – יחזור אליך”
הרמן הסה
About the unbearable quivering of the soup bubble
From moment to moment happening our life.
Like drops dripping from a tap and get absorbed in the ground of our life.
A chronological Sequence like grains of sand, and another grain, all the great sand plane – from sand to sand.
So is our life; from dot to dot, happening from moment to moment.
Each moment rise or falls on the excitement which in it. Like in a roulette; a moment all, a moment nothing, the stock exchange of life of life.
Each time, the heart seemed to overflow at every minute, as though this minute is everything. In every scene the heart seem to burst, as a result of overflowing emotions.
And all of them are only soap bubbles. Bubbles that expand and quiver with every experience.
And all our life are stretching from bubble to bubble, vibrating with every inflation of the bubble; vibrating with passion, vibrating with joy, vibrating with fear, vibrating with anxiety, and more. We have no idea that the more they would vibrate, the more exited we get, there would come a time when the speed of the vibration would be too fast and strong for the ability of the bubble to hold it.
A small snap sound, and a moment that can flow softly into the next one, and thus create a continuous chain of happening, canny bare its own size and it snaps.
Drunken youth
An atmosphere of drunkenness is enveloping and surrounding the young and, youth drunkenness, drunkenness from life. There are in theme all the symptoms of an overdose from a intoxicaticating liquid which is too strong for them to be able to withstand it.
Old man, comparatively, show all the symptoms of a junky that stops to get his daily dose and he is in detox pains, what is called: “cold Turkey”, falls down to the hard drugless ground of reality.
Youth, drunken from life, is convinced that old age is a kind of disease that will somehow would skip them…
The joy of youth stems from the enthusiasm of the meeting with newness, with the passage through colored lively and curios covers: the first kiss, the first time we saw the sea, the first Chinese restaurant, the first marriage, the first child and so on.
And then one day, close to the age of 30-40 probably, that it, almost all the covers has been opened, and what is revealed is: aging, the betrayal of the body, loneliness, fatigue, disappointment.
The youth has gone.
In every generation arrives another wave of powerful lively youth who feels ad behaves as though youth is their private invention and for them alone.
The truth is that this rejoicing youth are for the purposes of nature; procreation, and once they are achieved the overdose becomes an underdoes.
Determined old age
There is something determined in an old car, a yesterday’s hero, that keep on going forward not because but despite.
This kind of determination is in old age, in those old people who keep on, grateful for the opportunity to display some vitality in what little time they still have left.
The young are different, they wonder around, waiting for something to fall upon them, just by them being them.
Blunt, full of themselves are youth. Learning little but demanding a lot. Convinced that the world is theirs and would wait for them.
The old, feel however, the transiences of time. Feeling the privilege they have to continue and remain here for a while.
The illusion has gone, self-importance has decreased, and all which is left is to keep on moving, keep on being.
Life as a corridor
החיים כפרוזדור
כבר מן ההתחלה מכינים אותנו, וזה נמשך כשמונה-עשרה שנים ויותר, שנים של הכנה והכשרה לקראת הדבר עצמו: החיים.
וככל שאנו גדלים, כן מתעצמת בנו הציפייה…
ואז, יום אחד, אנו מוצאים את עצמנו עם מנת-חלקנו, תהא אשר תהא: רכוש, בן זוג, ילדים, קריירה, מעמד, חברים – או היעדרם. מנת-חלקנו זו נהפכת ברבות הימים למחוז-החפץ הריאלי – “הדבר עצמו”, שאליו מוביל, והוביל בסופו של דבר, הפרוזדור המתמשך הזה של הכנה לחיים. אנו נותרים בהכרח עם השאלה המציקה: “מה? זה העיקר? זה שאליו הוליך הפרוזדור הארוך הזה?” והתשובה חייבת להיות: לא, זה לא העיקר.”
כי כמו בבצל, שאין בו תוך, אלא גלדים שבתוכם גלדים. כך חיינו: כל קטע מקטעי חיינו הינו פרוזדור, מבוא לקטע הבא אחריו: הנעורים הם פרוזדור לבגרות, המשמשים מבוא לגיל-העמידה, המוביל אל הזיקנה, כל גיל הינו פרוזדור המוביל לגיל הבא, והכל נמצא במעבר, בתנועה.
הרעיון של החיים כמחוז-חפץ, שיש לעשות כברת דרך כדי להגיע אליו, ורק משהגעת אליו, אפשר להתחיל באמת לחיות, הוא הבנה מוטעית ואשליה. מתחת לאשליה, אנו חשים היטב את ה”פרוזדוריות” והנזילות של מקטע חיינו הנוכחי, אך עם זאת, אנו רוצים מאוד להאמין כי אחרי הפרוזדור, נגיע לסלון, לחדר העיקרי בבית. אך גם החדר הבא יימס מתחת לרגלינו ויזרום הלאה, מותיר אותנו במצב של אין-ברירה: לזרום עם החדר הזה, ששוב נהפך לפרוזדור, הזורם לפרוזדור הבא… מטמורפוזה הולכת ונמשכת.
“אינך יכול להיכנס פעמיים לאותו נהר,” אמר הרקליטוס האפל. אכן, הדבר היציב היחיד בחיינו הוא השינוי: אנו משתנים כדי לחיות וחיים כדי להשתנות.
כי החיים הם פרוזדור והכל זורם אל המוות.
והעכשיו הנזיל הוא מה שיש, כל שיש, בינתיים.
*
“המוות לפי האקזיסטנציאליזם, אינו חלק מן החיים. המוות הוא אופק החיים. החיים הם, אם נרצה בכך ואם לא, קיום לעבר המוות.”
ש’ גיורא שוהם, יצירה והתגלות.
אוניברסיטה משודרת, משרד הביטחון, ע’ 25.
In praise of philosophy
מה הן שנות חיינו על פני האדמה הזאת? איוושה קלה וכלה. ואנו חיים אותם במעיין בולמוס, במעין מעורבות רגשית ולחץ היסטרי? קופצים מפיתוי זה לפיתוי אחר, ממשקל עודף למשקל רצוי, מרגש עלבון לזעם מוצדק, מדיכאון לעליצות, מחרדה לשאננות. בתזזית עוועים אנו חיים, בשכחה של הכל, חוץ מן הבולמוס הזה של הרגע שכבר חלף ואיננו…
אך מה הם ימינו אם לא אנחה חולפת, בועה מתפוגגת, השתוקקות שחלפה לה.
אנו ושגיונותינו והעולם במה להשתוקקותנו, וגופנו ורגשותינו הם הסופגים את האבסורד, האימה והכיעור שבהסתגלות לבינוניות, להזדקנות ולמוות.
כי מה הן שנותינו כאן, אחרי ככלת הכל? מסע לקראת הבוהו ומעבר דרך התוהו, ואת מס הנסיעות אנו משלמים בבריאותנו, בביטחון העצמי שלנו, בנפשנו; משלימים עם נטל המס בעזרת הפיצוי שמעניקה לנו הארוחה הבאה, תוכנית הבידור בטלוויזיה, הפלירט החדש, החלפת המכונית לדגם חדש יותר.
המחלות אינן גורמות לאדם את הנזק שגורמים לנו החיים עצמם. כי מה הן שנותינו על פני האדמה הזאת אם לא סדרה ומכלול של רגעים אבסורדיים וקפקאיים, שטופי אימה וערירות; ומעבר לזה אין בהם מאום. כי המשמעות של השיהוק הזה שאנו קוראים לו חיים אינה בקיום היחידני, אלא מעל, מעבר ומחוצה לו. במקרו, ולא במיקרו – בהקשר הכולל של מהות הקיום האנושי, היקום והבריאה.
שאלות אלה, שהפילוסופיה (אהבת החוכמה) עוסקת בהן, אינן מעניינו של האנוש המצוי, החי כשרגליו על פני האדמה וידיו בוחשות בחיים המעשיים.
“אני איש מעשה”, אומר האיש האפור והבינוני, שקולו קול החברה שהוא חי בה, החברה שהפילוסופיה נחשבת בה ללהג הגובל בביטול-זמן, חברה שהפרקטיקה של האבסורד היא זו השרירה בה וקיימת, וההתקרנפות (התגלמות הכוחנות) היא המולכת בה בכיפה.
כי מה הן שנותינו על פני האדמה הזאת אם לא ניסיון להבין מה אנחנו עושים פה, ולעשות עם זה משהו לפני שייתם הזמן, שעוד מעט קט כבר איננו.
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“חיים שאינם מושא להשתוממות ותהייה – נהפכים בסופו של דבר לדרך המובילה אל המצוקה.”
ר’ ארמין
מהי דרך חיינו בנוף מציאות שאין זכר למודעות
ולמחשבה על חידת הקיומיות ועל הנוכחות של הנמצאים?”
ג’ שטיינר, של מרטין היידגר.
“כי באתי – לא הענקתי לשמים כלום!
מותי לא ינחילם תפארת ופירסום.
ועד היום הזה לא בואר מאום.
לא בנתי, למה באתי ואצא עגום.”
עומר כיאם, המרובעים.
The void a death ambassador
ילדים חושבים שהם גדלים לקראת החיים, אך הם גדלים לקראת הכלום וצומחים אל היעדרם של החיים, אל הריקנות.
הם גדלים, ומחפשים את החיים: בפאבים, בפרשיות אהבים, בלימודים, בהקמת משפחה, בקידום מקצועי, בנסיעות לחוץ-לארץ, בשיחות נפש. אך במקום את החיים, הם פוגשים את היעדרם של החיים, חבוי היטב מאחורי מסכת האקטואליה, מחופש לממשות. ההיעדר מצוי מאחורי חיי הנישואים ובתוכם, מאחורי חופשה ובתוכה, מאחורי הסיפוק המקצועי ובתוכו; שהרי ההיעדר הוא המהות הריאלית ביותר מאחורי כל התרחשות ובתוכה.
כאשר קורסת מחיצת הממשות העכשווית הדקה, מתגלה ההיעדר בכל מאודו, ממיט שואה, טורף חיים, בולע לעמקי מחשכיו את כל הניצוצות המפרכסים. על-כן, מגפות, מלחמות, מהפכות, מעשי טבח – אינם תאונות הנגרמות כתוצאה מצירוף מקרים לא-מוצלח, אלא “קרע” המתהווה בכסות הזאת שאנו קוראים חיים; קרע שההיעדר מציץ דרכו החוצה. האסון או השואה הם כקרחת הנפערת לפתע במרחבים של דשא חיינו המוריק. כעבור זמן ישוב הדשא ויכסה את מקום הקרחת, וכעבור זמן נוסף ייווצר הרושם שההיעדר לא ביקר שם מעולם, כאילו אינו קיים כלל. עד ההתפרצות הבאה: “שלוש מאות בני-אדם נספו בתאונת מטוס.” “חמשת אלפים בני-אדם נרצחו במשך שלוש שנות שלטון רודני.” “מהומות עקובות מדם בבירה.” יעבור זמן, ושוב יכסו החיים את הפצעים שפצע ההיעדר, כאילו מעולם לא ביקר כאן, כאילו החיים לבדם משלו כאן בלעדית מאז ומתמיד.
כמובן שאשליה זו יכולה להתמיד רק עד הקרע הבא, ברמת הפרט כמו ברמת הכלל, ונשאלת השאלה: מה יוצר את הקרע, אותו קרע שדרכו בולע האין את הממשות שצמחה על גבי הכיסוי?
הקרע נוצר כאשר מתפתח איזור של לחץ נמוך בתוך איזור הלחץ הגבוה של חיינו. כאשר אנו מאפשרים לעוצמה או לאינטנסיביות להיחלש על-ידי כניעה: כניעה לחולשה, לעצלות, לפיתוי, לספקות עצמיים, לרגשות שליליים, להיסוס, לאי-חשק, לשפיטה ולהאשמה עצמית, ובעיקר על-ידי כניעה להיכנעות: “בשביל מה להתאמץ?” “אין טעם” “האם זה שווה טרחה?”
שאננות בתוספת חולשה זמנית או מתמשכת מובילים לירידה בעוצמת החיים. האין, המהווה אנטיתזה לחיים, אורב בשוליהם לסימן הקטן ביותר של חולשה, שיאפשר לו לפרוץ פנימה. כל הרשאה שאנו מרשים לשעמום, לתחושה של ריקנות קיומית, לביטול-זמן סתמי, לשלילי ולהרסני, כמוה כפתיחת הדלת לפני האין להיכנס אל חיינו ולנגוס בהם באמצעות שגריריו אלה. וכאשר גדלה הטריטוריה ומתרחב שטחו של האין, הוא יכול להרשות לעצמו להופיע בצורתו האולטימטיבית – המוות.
המוות לעולם אינו רחוק מאיתנו ממש, אלא מצוי תמיד בשולי חיינו, דרך האין, המופיע באמצעות נציגיו: הכניעה, הריקנות, השעמום והשיממון.
בסופו של דבר, ינצח האין תמיד, שכן, קיום החיים דרך מתווך החומר הינו זמני, וברבות הזמן נחלש החומר, מתפורר ונמוג אל תוך האין. אך הגוף אחת דרכו ממילא. הגוף הוא הקורבן שמקריבים החיים, המס שמתחייבים החיים לשלם בבוא הזמן לאין, כדי שיניח בינתיים לכוח האמיתי, הנצחי והבלתי-מתכלה של הרוחניות לצמוח – עד שתהא לעובדה מוגמרת. החיים הרוחניים של האדם הם הממשות הקיומית היחידה העשויה לפרוץ ולהתעלות מעל ומעבר לאיום המתמיד של ההיעדר. יש להיזהר ולעמוד על המשמר כל הזמן, לבל נרשה לעצמנו להיכנע לספק, לאוזלת-היד, לשעמום.
שאם לא כן, חודר המוות ובולע את ניצני הרוחניות הטריים, שעל אחר שעל, ומביט החוצה מבעד לעיניו הריקות של האיש המת בעודו בחיים.
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“המוות אינו דומה כלל לחיים. אין הוא דומה לשום דבר שאנו מכירים. המוות בוקע מתוך אותו אין כביר שאנו חיים בתוכו. הוא פורץ אל תוך הביצה הנוגהת המרכיבה את ישותנו ומנפצת אותה לערפל דק של רסיסי בדולח המתפזר אל תוך החלל.”
אריה יעקוב לייב, דון חואן. הוצאת גל, ע’ 61.
Madam History
Madam history is an old lady. She saw it all, she saw all those young that are sure that this time they really intend ‘to do it’, convinced that just because it is them now, they would make it.
Ancient history witnessed it all before; all this courage and conviction, many times before: she is waiting for her hero to turn to ex heroes or heroes in fantasy, like the 5 peas story of Hans Christian Andersen, that when they were green and small in the pod, each one imaged to itself that in a while the whole world would be his, only for one to find himself in the mouth of a cat, the other found himself in sewage water and so on.
Madam History is a future teller, for she knows that at the end the future would not be that different from the past: Toy soldiers climb up a mountain, toy soldiers tumble down,
Roll and fall down to the bottom of the mountain. And at the end toy soldiers go back to the silent earth from which they came, and in which they would decompose.
Wars, dreams, passions, desires, romans, power struggles – all passed and gone.
A green grass is growing on them now.
Quite.
All this effort, all this noise of thousands of years is sleeping now.
Sleeping forever.
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“לא משלים בפי, כי אמת אגיד:
אנחנו – כבובות אותן יד אל תרקיד.
נשחק במשחק קצר עלי במת היקום
ונגלוש מהר לחיק התוהו המאביד.”
עומר כיאם, המרובעים.
The death
Life do not know death, but death knows life.
And at the moment that he knows life, they are losing the knowing of themselves.
Life is full of itself, rejecting death all in all.
But in every night we are dying a little, and with every day which passes, something in us dies, and around us organic life are all in a process of dying.
The certainty of our life now is the absence of the certainty; in relation to the history of the planet, and the longevity of the stars life, our life is so nonexistent, it is as though it did not exist at all.
We who are who are on our way to die
Through the eyes of those who are on their way to die- life look different:
-Precious as lost golden bracelet.
-As a hug to the diving in loneliness.
-As a blessing to the cursed.
To the dead – we seem like dipping in ocean of abundance.
And them, who are going to die, are waving hands in a spasm, behind an opaque glass, one directional, seeing but unseen.
They wave dispiritedly and their voice in unheard.
Those who are immersed in life, don’t know, don’t guess the desperate departure which happening now all around them; above, below, in front, behind, on the sides and from all directions.
The going to die trying all the time to attract attention, but we running around in a great rage, passing through them without knowing, roaring the great roar of life.
We don’t hear, we don’t see, we don’t feel at all, that in front of us yes in front of us indeed, people are going and disappearing.
And we don’t know at all.
Deaf from the hustle of life.
Out and away
All which is alive, all which is organic, – is washed by the waves of time, washed onwards, and out.
The flee and the donkey, the grass shoot, the teacher, the prime minister, the homeless, the oak tree, your bashful smile, my fragile hope, and his blunt aggression – all are moving on and out.
And new actors will follow, on and out. In order never to come back.
The three levels of time
The time is like send. You pass through it, and your footprints are left behind. But the winds, send storms, the rain, and mostly the trillions of people that are passing after you – they will swipe will eventually wipe away your footsteps, until it would be known that you have been in this place.
But, they are signs left behind which are not footsteps, but marks of those who passed this way and did something with the send of time.
The majority relates to the send through the feet, the minority through the hands. Most are just passing through their time not doing much with their time.
Yes, time is like send, it is shapeless, being passed through.
However the creative artist who creates with the raw material of time, relates to it as to an expensive and important commodity, who ‘gives the permission’ to design it in the vision of the time he has in his mind.
The feet step on and trampling it, but the hands shape it through the idea in the head.
הזמן עשוי מחלקיקים זעירים – ממש כמו החול – וכל אחד מהם כה קטן ושביר, עד כדי ניתן להשליך אותו הצידה, ולא יוודע כלל שהיה קיים. אך כשאוספים רבים מהם יחד, יכולות כל אותן שניות ודקות להוות ישות אדירה.
ישות זו, אם היא נותרה ללא עיצוב כלשהו, הינה מדבר, מדבר של חול, מדבר של זמן, שממה של זמן צחיח ומת. ותוך כדי מהלך ההיסטוריה האנושית, גרגר מצטבר לגרגר, ועוד ועוד מדבריות משתרעות מאחור, מדבריות של זמן לא-מנוצל.
כך לגבי כל אדם בחייו: זמן שהאדם עובר דרכו ואינו עושה עימו דבר-מה נהפך מייד לשממה.
עד כאן שתי הרמות של הזמן:
הראשונה, לדרוך (ברגליים) ולעבור – דרך המדבר.
השנייה: לעצבו (בידיים) ובכך לתת לו צורה ומשמעות.
והשלישית? הרמה השלישית של הזמן היא של החול כחוף (לדמיין ברוח).
ואם ברמה הראשונה – מדבר.
וברמה השנייה – עיצוב אמנותי.
ברמה השלישית – חוף שאחריו משתרע האוקיינוס…
וברמה זו קיימים ההשתוקקות, הצמא, הכמיהה – למים הבאים אחרי הצחיחות, אחרי המדבר. למים שירוו לעולם ועד את הצימאון הנורא מכל – את הצימאון הרוחני.
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*ראה המסה “האדם ושאלת הזמן הפנוי” בשער זה.
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Gabriel