On fairy-tale endings...

Lived happily ever after......??????

I think we all suffer from it - the "live happily ever after" syndrome.

You know - the perfect man, or perfect woman - when she/he comes into my life, I shall live happily ever after.
The perfect job - when I get it, everything in my life will be perfect after.
The perfect car - All I want is a Ferrari, and I will be happy eternally.
The Perfect House - If only I had that place, my life would be fulfilled.

Funny, isn't it - this so-called perfection! What we are really seeking for seems to be some kind of closure, some end to it all, where there will be no more pain, and emotion, and conflict, and struggle, and effort.
If that's what you want, go become an opium addict!

Why do we delude ourselves? Where in hell did this fairy-tale dream originate from? And it is propagated in everything around us - the stories, the books, the movies, the advertising (this soap shall make you eternally beautiful, this refrigerator is the culmination of all in your life!). Even in all the advice we receive from our parents, teachers and peers.

This political system will make life perfect for all who subscribe to it - Democracy, Communism, Dictatorship, Anarchy, Nihilism.

This educational system will produce enlightened souls - Montessori, Experiential Learning, Rote Learning, Drills, Vocational Training, Beating with a cane, etc.

This spiritual system will fix everything: Transcendental Meditation, Yoga, Swiss Spas, Ayurveda, Kerala Massage, Marijuana, Blow, Celibacy, Trappism, Cults, etc.

Why?
Why do we insist on propagating this myth? For me life is about the unpredictability, about waking up every single day ready for the fact that everything might have changed. Ready to discard what was yesterday. Snakes moult, and I think that's wonderful - to physically undergo a personality transformation every once in a while. Humans moult too - it just happens inside our minds. The only reason it hurts is that we fight it.

Haven't you ever experienced a period when you needed to be quiet and alone, in your shell, cut-off from the world - and then you emerge from that feeling different. Why be scared? It's only natural...

This is the greatest, ultimate freedom, the greatest joy, the greatest thrill - the choice to be different every single day - to lead many lives, many existences, many visions, many dreams, many loves, many professions, many worlds - all in a single lifetime. Reincarnation is here, it's now - not tomorrow. This is our chance for rebirth, for a complete transformation.
Not an addiction to things.
Or ideas.
Not in looking for the source of your happiness and contentment in anything outside yourself.
But in yourself...

Isn't that what all the religions say - that true happiness lies within. Hinduism says that all the cosmos lies inside every tiny particle of yourself. Quantum Mechanics says pretty much the same thing!
"I am large. I contain multitudes." (Walt Whitman - for those unfamiliar with his work)
The world is everything that is in it - pleasure, pain, joy, hatred, happiness, suffering, food, drink, love, sex, walks, skies, clouds, oceans, rivers, streams, trees, stones, rocks.
Why cast your eyes on any one as a source of salvation?
For the answer lies is seeing everything as part of the great cosmic dance of existence, of which you are inextricably part.

There are no answers.

There aren't even any questions.

There's only what your mind decides to make of it all - day by unescapable day.

Take joy in it, revel in it, seize life by plunging your hands deep into it's marrow, by immersing yourself completely into every act that defines your existence that moment, that day!

Live. Be free. See. Feel. Be.

And forget about fairy tale endings. They are only momentary.

The funny thing about so-called art and creativity

"Kierkegaard declared that too much "possibility" led to the madhouse. But when I came upon these cautionary words, I already had what Kierkegaard called, "this sickness of infinitude," wandering from one path to another with no real recognition that I was on a search and scarcely a clue as to what I might be after. I only knew that at the bottom of each breath there was a hollow place that needed to be filled."

- Peter Matthiessen

The funny thing about so-called art and creativity (and yes, even science!) is that it is conceived in chaos, as is heroism and new thought.

It's always a difficult path to follow - that of the explorer, the wanderer or the artist. It's a path of much pain, but of as much fulfillment.

Chaos is where such a person lives, works, and creates. I don't believe that such people choose this path over any other in life, but that they are driven by strange internal demons, cursed to seek and never find, ordained by divine right to plunge into the centre of chaos and drag screaming, out of the madness, some semblance of sanity, some perspective where all is revealed - even if only for a moment.

Why is it that great images, great writing, great science, and great music can introduce us to complete joy and ecstasy. Precisely because, when we experience greatness, some part of that perspective is passed on to us - some part of that moment where all is whole, where everything makes sense.

Why is happiness momentary? Why is love so important? Why is the pursuit of joy and meaning 'forever' so futile?

Perhaps just because order can only be momentary, and chaos is the real way of life. Perhaps the negative connotation we give to the very idea of chaos is the problem.

Have you ever travelled down a series of river rapids? Have you ever been caught in a violent storm? Have you ever looked on the face of real beauty?

You know that feeling - of completeness: complete power, complete beauty, complete terror, complete perfection!

Those are such moments when nature is completely herself, just as we are completely ourselves only when we are completely immersed - in love, in passion, in danger, in being so totally in the moment that nothing else exists. It is when we have no past, no future, no knowledge or consiousness of anything outside or inside ourselves that we are truly, completely human.

And yet this world is engaged in a collective retreat from this joy. Everything we do is a defense against ourselves. it always has been. Every religion, every organisation, every school, every prescribed cultural rule has become a withdrawal from the very thing it purports to celebrate - call it what you will: the Godhead, Nature, the Infinite Is, the Collective Unconscious, Divinity, God or the Devil.

Why?

I don't know....

All I do know is that my path leads down crumbling cliff faces. If following my heart means living as an outcast - of this world but not of it, I have no real choice. It is the way I am.

I know, instinctively, that my answers lie in the chaos and the suffering that surround us. I know that I am a creature of that chaos - born and raised in it, and destined to die by it's hand. And yet that thought is strangely comforting, not in the least terrifying.

I have often been asked - what do I do? Who am I? What is my profession? Who? What? Why?

Well, the answer is that I don't really have a job description. I'm a student, and servant, of the chaos. I do different things, but they are all piqued by my curiosity to see the next great moment, the next revelation, the next perspective that throws everything else into sharp relief. At the moment I'm a teacher,but I have done many different things through my life and this is just my latest whim. I have, in the past, been a writer, filmamker, actor, producer, director, storyteller, student, motorcycle rider, and clown - but that has never been what I am.

I guess, if I had to put a label to it, that I'm a professional gypsy - nothing more,nothing less...

Thoughtdrops

If my life were not a dangerous, painful, experiment; if I did not constantly skirt the abyss and feel the void beneath my feet, my life would have no meaning and I would not have been able to write anything.

- Hermann Hesse

The funny thing is - when I first read this sentence (it's from Hermann Hesse's diaries) it was as if a shock of cold water had been poured over me. I had to resist the urge to jump up and cry - "Yes, that's it, that's how I feel too!" And then, as my conditioned self-control kicked in, I thought - "Wow, it's okay to feel that way..."

I was seeking approval for my own thoughts and feelings. I was able to feel better about my life because someone else - someone famous, a Nobel Prize winner - had once felt that way too. This fact validated my emotions, told me it was okay to feel and think the way I did. Now it was okay to let others know...

It's amazing how much in our lives is dictated by the need for approval from others. In a way, this is the most dangerous need that society conditions us to feel. The whole reward/punishment nature of parent-child relationships dictates a constant need for approval in our adult lives. This approval is needed from some source - parents, elders, teachers, peers, subordinates, journalists, politicians, people, anywhere - sometimes even from our pets. The instinct for approval is so strong that it overrides every natural instinct and desire.

My own view is that it cripples us, as a race.

I can't help but think about our favourite pets - dogs. It's said that any dog's genetic structure is 99% the same as that of a wolf's - even the chihuahua's! Just that 1% difference in genetic structure makes for the amazing variety of domesticated canines that we see around us. Among this diversity of canine forms, one thing is common - the need for approval. All dogs are bred to exhibit this ability. It's what makes them tame.

The domestication of animals was achieved by men/women who bred approval seeking behaviour into wild animal species. Perhaps that's how "lesser" humans were bred too. Kings and tribal chiefs would have wanted their subjects to be more docile, and pliable. Perhaps early societal structuring (especially in the Indian subcontinent) was created in order to domesticate the "wild" nature of the human animal.

This experiment hasn't worked as well with cats, for example. Felines seem to resist approval seeking genetic changes. So do African Elephants, though Indian Elephants succumb in some measure. However, reptiles and other non-mammal animal species don't seem to have an approval-seeking gene in their systems. Mammals suckle their young, and the parent-child relationship among mammals lasts much longer that any other animal species. Perhaps this approval seeking gene (or part of the gene) only exists in mammals - and in some more than in others.

Perhaps this gene (or behavioural instinct) helps pack behaviour. However, I feel that in human society this conditioning results in some very damaging patterns. First of all, this pattern is so deeply ingrained in us by the time we are teenagers that a period of rebellion ensues where natural instincts and the approval-seeking gene vie for mastery. In most cases approval wins out - and then we are said to be mature, or grown up, and capable of handling responsibility.

What are our natural instincts? To feed, to fight, to procreate, to invent belief systems, exercise the imagination and learn about the world through play (simulation) activity, to communicate, to seek shelter, and to seek affection. It is this last need that is corrupted, by turning affection into a reward for imitating societal behavioural patterns, rather than naturally given.

The danger with the long parenting period that humans undergo is that affection, which should be given and exchanged naturally, now becomes allied very strongly to behaviour. If the behaviour fits in with what is accepted by that particular social group, all is fine. If not, the natural tendency towards affection is held back by the group - a punishment for the offending behaviour. However, that behaviour has no connection with the need (affection). When the need is used as a lever, (as, indeed, are starvation, loss of shelter, freedom, etc.) the animal side of our beings gets very confused.

Behaviour, and all action and culture, are created (historically and zoologically) in order to fulfill and provide for our basic needs. When behaviour becomes more important, and needs get relegated to a simple reward-punishment status, the human animal grows up a little twisted. As this behaviour-need hierarchy is reinforced throughout schooling, the modern "civilized" human is created - in whose psyche approval-seeking takes precedence over basic needs.

It is my contention that this is the root-cause of many things that plague our society today - violence, abuse, hatred, communalism, terrorism, and the subjugation of the individual to the mob in all it's various forms.

More about this later, though, as I have to go. This is my first experience with blogging and I must say it has been fun. I just hope that people read this and I can start a discussion about this and other things that worry me, and things that make me laugh - the stupidity and idiosyncracies of homo sapiens....