My old pastor friend Dr. Les Pugh use to do an annual sermon in which he pondered about his current beliefs and values… I think he called it something like “The View From Here”… (one of the phrases he tended to weave in each year- from Flannery O’Connor I think- was “the silent working of good”).
I think this is an excellent exercise but I’m feeling lazy this week and I have too many books to read so I’m just posting a few earlier thoughts on this topic… at this point in the journey the more things change the more they remain the same for me.
Regardless of your ideology, may peace rule in your heart, mind, home and work… and, may the force be strong with you.
Fomrism
A number of years ago I decided to try my hand at creating a new religion from scratch. Symbols, deities, virtues, liturgy... I'd settled on the perennial philosophy as the bedrock of my personal belief system and this struck me as a useful endeavor.
I decided to structure it as a polytheistic system of belief as opposed to monotheistic. 7 gods. I saw this less as a belief in multiple Gods but more of a belief in God being beyond our finite comprehension (hence, the ultimate ground of our being manifesting in multiple facets- like a prism). Or, as the Tao says, "The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao".
It didn't take long for me to lose interest in this, Fomrism, as a religion per se, and rather begin to see it as an exercise in developing a system for living. I also progressively saw this system as an attempt to encapsulate all of reality in a conceptual structure- hence, an intellectual endeavor.
In writing my last blog, "Why we exist", I realized that my explorations into Fomrism still guide my sense of why we exist (and how we should live) strongly. Apart from the "religious" aspects of the system (and the intellectual pursuit of placing all the universe in one basket), here is what Fomrism has taught me concerning how to live.
It is worth saying that I don't consider any of this original... it seems rather to me like an alchemical amalgam of all I've encountered life to date.
You can call these concepts values or characteristics or goals or virtues... Ultimately it has become for me a how to live life to-do list of sorts with archetypes.
- Wonder, awe, mystery, silence The unknown
- Union, synthesis, peacemaking King and Queen in union
- Nurture, loving-gentleness, kindness, mercy-charity The mother
- Passion, kaizen, energy The love between
- Justice, truth, wisdom The father
- Strength, doing right, courage The warrior prince son
- Beauty, creativity, compassion The healer princess daughter
Why we exist...
Why do we exist?
For some reason this particular question has been somewhat of an obsession for me in many periods of my life. I'm not sure why this particular question has meant so much to me over such an extended period of time. I'm inclined to think that there are many other questions that would have been more practical and/or useful... for example, what is the best way to earn money? How does one master the craft of songwriting? How do you write programming code for IPhone apps?
But why? Why has my mind, over so many years, has that question taken hold of me with such a relentless grip? I've considered the genetic possibilities... "Micro" and "Macro"... "Micro", I inherited this interest from my mom and pop (even grandparents, aunts/uncles). This doesn't seem right to me based on my recollections (although my great great grandfather on my dad's side was a moyel). I've settle on "Macro" as the driving influence. Jung speaks of the collective unconscious and I've wondered if my Jewish blood (and the collective unconscious of my peeps) has been a factor here. I don't have a better explanation at this point.
Many things have made sense to me in answer to this question over many years...
- It's an unsolvable mystery... who can know why we are here?
- Existentialism per Irvin Yalom (with credit to Victor Frankl's logotherapy)- Life has no inherent meaning... all we can do is attempt to piece together a meaning that holds together for each of us through life's travails.
- Absurdity per Steve Martin- Steve majored in philosophy in college and tells the story of sitting in the laundromat trying to determing the meaning of it all and coming to the firm conclusion that there is no meaning, the best we can do is laugh and laugh at the absurdity of it all.
- Christianity- Man exists to know, love and serve God through Jesus Christ.
- Judaism- Man exists for Tikkun Olam (to heal the world).
- Buddhism- Stop asking such silly questions and just be a compassionate being.
- Confucianism- We exist to be good, to honor our ancestors, to refine the self.
- Hinduism- We exist to become perfect.
- My own personal musings have included a few key options...
- We exist for joy.
- We exist to evolve.
- We exist because we exist (a variant of that saying, "We're here because we're here")
Who really knows why we exist? There are a multitude of opionions. Despite this there are some good common themes. Some time soon I'll blog on Aldous Huxley's, The Perrenial Philosophy... It focuses on themes shared in common by various faith paths.
My current position draws from all I've read, seen, heard and thought over these years...
We exist for joy- joy does not necessarily mean being happy.
We exist to serve- compassion as a way of being with the human family (and ourself).
We exist to evolve- we are accountable for how we play the hands of cards life deals us.
We exist to enjoy- to relish creation and life.
We exist to create- offspring, art, peace.
We exist to wonder- at all the mystery that surrounds us in the universe.
We exist to synthesize- to bring harmony where there is discord.
We exist to nurture- people, the earth, ideas, our soul.
We exist to burn- to be passionate about things and people that matter to us.
We exist to ensure justice- to fight for what is right and just and equitable.
We exist to be fathers, kings, sons, warriors and princes.
We exist to be mothers, queens, daughters, healers and princesses.
We exist to know the rapture of immersion in beauty... to make it... to be taken by it.
This is enough of an answer for me for now.
And one for good measure…
The Mystic Dean Moriarty: from the Gospel According to Kerouac
Everything since the Greeks has been predicated wrong.
"Now this is the first time we've been alone and in a position to talk for years," said Dean. And he talked all night. As in a dream, we were zooming back through sleeping Washington and back in the Virginia wilds, crossing the Appomattox River at daybreak, pulling up at my brother's door at eight A.M. And all this time Dean was tremendously excited about everything he saw, everything he talked about, every detail of every moment that passed.
He was out of his mind with real belief. "And of course now no one can tell us that there is no God. We've passed through all forms. You remember, Sal, when I first came to New York and I wanted Chad King to teach me about Nietzsche. You see how long ago? Everything is fine, God exists, we know time. Everything since the Greeks has been predicated wrong. You can't make it with geometry and geometrical systems of thinking. It's all this!"
He wrapped his finger in his fist; the car hugged the line straight and true. "And not only that but we both understand that I couldn't have time to explain why I know and you know God exists." At one point I moaned about life's troubles-how poor my family was, how much I wanted to help Lucille, who was also poor and had a daughter.
"Troubles, you see, is the generalization-word for what God exists in. The thing is not to get hung-up. My head rings!" he cried, clasping his head. He rushed out of the car like Groucho Marx to get cigarettes- that furious, ground-hugging walk with the coattails flying, except that he had no coattails. "Since Denver, Sal, a lot of things- Oh, the things-I've thought and thought. I used to be in reform school all the time, I was a young punk, asserting myself-stealing cars a psychological expression of my position, hincty to show. All my jail-problems are pretty straight now. As far as I know I shall never be in jail again. The rest is not my fault."
We passed a little kid who was throwing stones at the cars in the road. "Think of it," said Dean. "One day he'll put a stone through a man's windshield and the man will crash and die-all on account of that little kid. You see what I mean? God exists without qualms. As we roll along this way 1 am positive beyond doubt that everything will be taken care of for us-that even you, as you drive, fearful of the wheel" (I hated to drive and drove carefully)-"the thing will go along of itself and you won't go off the road and I can sleep. Furthermore we know America, we're at home; I can go anywhere in America and get what I want because it's the same in every corner, I know the people, I know what they do. We give and take and go in the incredibly complicated sweetness zigzagging every side."
There was nothing clear about the things he said, but what he meant to say was somehow made pure and clear. He used the word "pure" a great deal. I had never dreamed Dean would become a mystic. These were the first days of his mysticism, which would lead to the strange, ragged W. C. Fields saintliness of his later days.
~Jack Kerouac "On the Road"
No comments:
Post a Comment