I clambered up the trunk of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil,
but this time
I did not eat of its fruit.
This time, I was
looking for something else.
Some other way
to filter the incoming deluge
of data.
I scanned the horizon, and finally
seeing the light, I tilted my head
downward, to see
what might be closer to me.
A different fruit. I sought a different fruit.
Tired of judging, and being judged.
Plants must seek light, and animals food.
Light good, dark undesirable.
Food good, enemy bad.
Humans were born in a garden.
We had no enemies in the myth.
What is the lesson?
The lesson to be learned?
The snake never sought to harm us.
In the absence of enemies, we can seek beauty.
We have time to contemplate our environment.
We can learn to see how beauty emerges from
the background. See how the background gives
birth to beauty.
Homo Sapiens birthed themselves thanks to Eve.
But the early stages of our reign were Homo Confusus.
Womo Charmiens yet awaits birth.
I clambered back down to earth.
I scrambled past the edge of the forest.
I rambled around in the clearing.
Down. Down under. Under the earth.
In the beginning, we never
had to look under the earth,
with all the fruit hanging at eye level.
After expulsion, God told us to work the earth.
Why didn’t we see that as the hint it was?
It was obvious that God’s ultimate purpose
was to make us work for understanding.
Not to wear us out to the point
that we couldn’t think straight.
Knowledge can be given, but understanding
has to be created by the individual.
Today is May 28th. In a little more than a week, I will celebrate my 60th birthday. I don’t have any ceremony planned. I will probably go to a local restaurant with a bakery, and have a piece of Dutch chocolate torte cake. That’s how I celebrated my divorce some years ago.
You can hardly go wrong with chocolate cake!
But today is also the 47th anniversary of my Bat Mitzvah ceremony. I have kindof fallen away, and attend a Spiritualist church these days. But culturally, I am still a “Bat Mitzvah” or Daughter of the Commandments. I certainly don’t follow all of them, but try to live my life in harmony with the values of the faith, as I understand it.
I go to the Spiritualist church, as they welcome me, and there are other like-minded seekers trying to adapt the best of the Bible to modern life.
They don’t have ceremonies like Jews and Catholics. They teach and practice meditation, so all can access the wisdom of higher Spirit in everyday life.
A “Rorsach” Owl, flying on an oxidized steel leaf spring. Colors lightened for artistic purposes. The Owl is the familiar of the Greek goddess Athena.
NEWS!!! My friend Cathy from Mid-Michigan Word Gatherers brought a chocolate cake to the writing group this am!!! It was delicious and moist, just like my mother used to make. She was happy to have a “Failure Cake” for the “Failure Analyst!” Some of the frosting got peeled up (we’d say delaminated in the steel industry) with a thin layer of cake attached to it, when the cake cooled with a flexible plastic lid over it. The vacuum (Boyle’s law, folks) sucked the lid down into contact with the frosting, which was supposed to be applied when the cake was still warm, or the frosting was warm, or whatever. So here’s to the perfect failure!
My reward for telling the coffee guy that I had gotten thrown out of my interfaith place. He says his favorite stories are of people getting thrown out of Bible study groups and churches. 🙂
Happiness is a false goddess, unworthy of worship of any kind. The wise ancient Hindu teachers knew this, and warned that “The wise man hankers not after happiness.” Our American founding fathers were not as astute.
The middle name of Happiness is Fortune, and that reveals a truer aspect of her gift. If we are among the lucky, or rather WHEN we are among the lucky, we can experience happiness.
The very word HAPPINESS (note the similarity to HAPPEN???) expresses her fickle, random and uncontrollable nature. Maybe you randomly received good blood chemistry, but you probably believe you are happy because you “make the choice” to be happy, and “work to be happy,” or you have “good mental and emotional hygiene.”
That’s BS. It rings very hollow to anyone who either doesn’t have the blessings of cheerfulness hormones in their bloodstream, or is a thoughtful person. We all like to take credit when things go our way, and blame others for their personal ineptitude when they experience failures. We rarely give credit to our environment when things go well, and take personal responsibility for our failures. This is because most people are unaware of their susceptibility to “The Fundamental Attribution Error,” or as David Levy says we are prone to “Underestimating the Impact of External Influences.”
Some of the quotes he picked to illustrate this hardwired error in the human thought processes include:
“No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.” (unknown)
“Don’t call a man honest just because he never had the chance to steal.” (Yiddish Proverb)
“Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”
This last quote, attributed to Barry Switzer, gets at my point above.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for meditation and stopping the negative self-talk. Peace has now surrounded me, despite often severe or profound “reasons” to feel shaken and anxious. No, I have not escaped the human condition, and still feel anxious much of the time, especially when I am alone and slip into ruminating on my past, and the potential consequences on the future. I am at peace because I know that “I” am not the body, or even my mind or my history or memories. “I” am the one who watches the one who gets manipulated, by events and circumstances, into doing what has to be done to play the role “I” have been assigned to play in society.
Even if I have not been able to completely control my mind, and completely and permanently identify with “the witness,” (the one who watches my “self” go through life), I am not going to conflate peace of mind with happiness.
True happiness can only come when all are happy. Someone asked me “Don’t you want her to be happy?” My first (grouchy) thought was “I don’t give a rat’s ass.” (I said nothing.) My second (wiser) thought was “Of course I want her to be happy. I want everyone to be happy”
And so, like the Buddhists, I pray: May all beings be happy.
Furthermore, and much more importantly, like the Buddhists, I pray: May all beings have the causes of happiness.
As Lynn Sparrow Christie noted in a seminar I attended a few weeks ago, there’s the “problem of the food chain.”
When God, Mother Nature, The-Forces-Of-The-Universe see fit to have us all evolve past the food chain, all beings may have the foundation for the causes of happiness. We will no longer have to worry about maintaining the physical aspects of the carcass that carries the nucleus of the spiritual being within. We’ll have time and leisure to enjoy true happiness, not simple gratitude for what we have.
I’m not holding my breath.
PS Why does substituting SHM for H at the beginning of Happiness change it from the most desirable of emotions to a worthless mirage?
Maybe it’s the SHM sound at the beginning of the Yiddish “Schmutz,” or dirt.
I have always been a rebel. Osho says society can’t tolerate the Rebel. That’s probably at least part of the source of my problems!
You might enjoy listening to a short story I wrote about the source of our myths that evolved into Mother Mary, and The Goddess in many of her forms. This was humanity’s first major attempt to avoid the worst of the vagaries of nature.
You kindof have to be a bit rebellious to think that, as an outsider, you understand something that all the specialists missed.
I am a bit disappointed that no ancient historians have ever contacted me about The Convolution of Knomo Choicius, a sci-fi novel whose protagonist is a history professor. How many such novels can there be?
Nothing to flaunt at the playground. I will flaunt this rainbow, although it is not too bright in the photo!
I didn’t know what to write for flaunt as a prompt, so clicked on “Try Another,” and was taken back to 2015… with “Ode to a Playground.”
Boy did that bring back memories…of my elementary school playground. There was a small group of us, girls and boys from a mixed first and second grade class, before the boys started going into the their girl hating phase, who met, every recess, in a small “boat” made from concrete blocks. It was the outline of a big row-boat, and we sat on the block “edges” of the “boat” and pretended to be going somewhere. When we got bored, we went over to a big tree stump, that was just starting to rot in the middle. We’d put in acorns and dead leaves and pretend to be making soup. The hole got bigger and bigger, and when I went back to it in high school, the stump was almost completely hollowed out.
A far cry from the electronic games that seems to be the only thing that holds kids’ attention these days, I doubt any of them would be impressed if I tried to flaunt the fun times we had on the concrete boat near the dead tree stump.
Camille Pissarro (French, 1830 – 1903 ), Self-Portrait (Camille Pissarro, par lui-meme), c. 1890, etching (zinc), Rosenwald Collection 1953.6.115
It’s a monotone sketch. Dark background and he wears a dark coat, clinging to his shoulders, with the neck opening hidden by a fleecy beard. Said to be a key figure in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art movements, his dark eyes look out of his medium toned face. The eyes don’t stare, and maybe don’t even gaze, over the tops of the reading glasses perched fairly high on the bridge of his nose. The eyes look, his right eyelid a little lower, his left iris looking up, while the right perhaps focuses inward. Wearing an almost triangular hat, again light colored to balance the beard, Pissarro keeps his lips closed, the mustache hiding the slit between the partially exposed pair of lips.
The light must be coming from the lower left of the image, shining toward the subject-object of the work. Not at all photographic, he was afterall, an Imressionist artist. The glint of the light brightens the left side of the glasses, left as seen by the viewer, while the lack of light bouncing back at us from the right side of the glasses allows us to see through to the artist’s lower eyelashes.
Only now, I notice the hair, protruding from under the semi-triangular cap. The cap and face together form a bright capital T in a sea of darkness.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/observe
Another piece of writing from our writing group prompt today…
Querencia
Having never learned Spanish, this word sounds like it means something totally different from what it is said to mean by sources purporting to be truthful, or at least accurate.
Que usually indicates the root in Sanscrit referring to what. This root is used to make the word aqua. In other languages derived from Sanscrit, including English, there is also a relationship between what and water. In German it’s was and wasser. In Hebrew, ma and mayim, which is supposedly not related to Sanskrit. Anyway, my Hebrew teacher said it was because an untasted source of water was always a mystery. Always a question. That was my introduction to the name of the science of philology, which I had long loved without knowing her name.
So querencia sounds like what and hacienda kindof merged. What House? What home? The fantasy home that we can only have in our dreams. The home where there are always fresh flowers in the windows during the day, and a light at night. The home where someone awaits our arrival with open arms, a glass of wine, and a plate of cheese and crackers. The home where the sound drowns us not, but laps pleasantly around our feet, rising in gentle waves to bathe us.
Or is querencia a type of question? Yes, it brings us back to what, the exemplar question word. Like query and hence querant, the person coming to the Tarot reader. The one who wants to know. Kennen. Connaitre. Know. See. See what? See the eye. The eye is what sees what there is to see. Window is the eye for the wind. The wind carries spirit. Spirit knows all. What? What? Querencia. My final querencia is not the fantasy house. But the question. What? What lies where I can not see? What? The querant must query.
Almost always been a grouch. Since the age of four, according to my mother.
I think it is because I was very sick that year, perhaps had a near death experience. That’s my after-the-fact explanation, anyway.
Decades later, I learned the word curmudgeon. One of my mentors was known as “the curmudgeon’s curmudgeon.” He had a heart of gold, and he became a good friend. Never had to paste a fake cheerfulness on my face when I was with him. Yet, he called me “Sunshine.” Haha. I really felt that was funny. This was still during the multiple decades when my first thought every morning was “Fuck. I’m still alive.”
Things are significantly better now. I have even had some stretches of months where my first thought was “at least I can understand waking up and thanking the Great Spirit for bringing me back to life.” But I always sink back into my curmudgeonly ways. It’s not that I’m ungrateful for the comforts I experience. I simply can’t overlook the enormity of the suffering caused by obstinate adherence to outdated moral codes. That is the biggest thing holding most of humanity in bondage, and however blessed I find my person, I wish the Great Spirit would give up its attraction to horror movies.
A short elaboration on how to cultivate clear and creative thinking…
Compare-Contrast
Connect-Create
Choose with Confidence!
Friends, this is how the human mind works. To compare is inherently to contrast. By doing this basic mental activity, we create new connections in our minds. The burst of creative energy also increases the chances that the tendrils of our mind will reach outside of our skulls, and contact the collective consciousness. This improves the quality of information coming into our awareness, and helps us create multiple options for action. This Compare Contrast Connect Create procedure also allows us to Choose the best option more reliably.
In other words, with known confidence. Even if sometimes the best confidence available is low.
In order to keep the most boisterous, least thoughtful, greatest risk takers, and those with no depth of character, from destroying their own lives, and those of others in their environment, kids are conditioned to think of others first, not be selfish, etc.
But then the mild, shy, timid, thoughtful, risk adverse, end up being afraid to speak up for themselves, afraid to love and appreciate themselves, and can’t understand that if you are not loving and kind toward yourself, all attempts to be truly kind to others will fail.
This is a sad fact of life.
So remember, all of us have been conditioned by society to prevent the worst acts from the most barbarous 10%, and now that we’re adults, we should do our best to throw off the disguise and become ourselves. As Nietzsche/ Zarathushtra/ Osho /Merwegon said:
Reach, reach, reach. Reach for the stars! No. I’m tired. Why should I?
It’s what we do. It’s what you do.
Look, look, look. Look around you! No. That’s boring. Why should I?
It’s what we are born to do. It’s what you were born to do.
See, see, see. See what’s there, in front of you. No. I can’t. I’m blind. I like it that way.
No, you’re not. Take off the dark glasses. No. I live by my own inner light.
Wait, wait, wait. Patience is rewarded! No. I inhabit the now.
We are creatures of our history and our future. I am the creation of my own time zone.
