Selections (2020 - 2025)
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I feel life so clearly moving through me again. And all is well in the world. To be free of the confines, and unbridled by the constraints of man.
I am come home. I do not need much.
Last night I dreampt of the animals. They are so beautiful in their shamelesness!
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Kindness is born of deep respect for self and others, built in understanding that everyone suffers. There is no judgement, and it is seen that if we would be in their situation, we would be the very same. Kindness knows that our true nature is happiness, that we are fundamentally good. It sees negativity and selfishness as born of fear and self-centredness. Ego is control, and control is anxiety. Anxiety is avoidance of pain. Pain needs love. Love is presence and awareness. We are love, not ego. Kindness is loving even to ego. Kindness cannot be taken advantage of because it can never be lost.
Humility is born of the recognition that, if we were anyone else, we would be as they are, and so can take no responsibility for any of it. To consider ourselves lucky. It is born of love and not ego. Humility is not self-negation. It is not born of confusing ourselves with the voice of shame. Humility sees that even the most neglected of things or people, are beautiful and therefore lovable. Humility feels love for the neglected.
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Reflections on that sense you have as a child, of not being the expert, of not knowing. That sense one can have whilst playing in a field, of not understanding the bigger picture. The parents drink wine and talk of sophisticated things, they organise meals, and understand the world. But we cannot hope to. Can this sense be maintained as an adult? Can we feel as though there is so much more that is going on? This is how imagination might begin. The games we play as the adults talk and drink, and we bond with the other children and explore the fascination of life itself.
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The sun’s children watch. The air is damp. The birds chirp and call, cry and below. In the sky, distant howls of dogs and the scent of a deep wood fire hold tight the winds, comforting her mind. Children hurry home, as tired mothers and flustered fathers gather slowly, the windows to their hearts. A storm lives on in the distance. Howling, judging, dodging. Soon, rains will cry. The sun will hide from the sight of the rivers, and the choking sigh of thunder will preach sermons of desire. Clouds wrap slowly, the deer, sheep, birds, and foxes to the hills. Days pass, and the sun’s children call again.
Why do we wish to know the conditions for beauty? If I have an idea of beauty, there is no more beauty. An idea of beauty is not free. What about good music? Why do we wish to have an idea of good music? Perhaps I must have an idea to feel valid in my pursuit of something. If I say what good music is, then at least I have something to stand for. The entire reason for doing what I am doing is justified. I feel secure. To valiantly stand for something which is ‘good,’ in pursuit of some idea, some phantom. But an idea is always an image, a projection. And so, my idea of beauty cannot be so. There is no freedom. And why must I defend the pursuit of ‘good’ music? Must a mother defend her love of a child? Perhaps she must defend her child, but never her love, lest it be superficial.
We only defend if there is a threat. Why then, do we feel threatened? This insecurity, this justifying. Must love justify itself? Must beauty justify itself? When we see a family of birds whispering to the sky, skating through the heavens as angels, pinned to a backdrop of the hills and the forest, must we justify the beauty of it? “Beauty is the harvest of presence.” There is no justification in presence because there is no other. Justification requires other, or division. If there is justification, there must be something we are justifying to. David Whyte articulates that beauty is “the self-forgetting… that erases our separation, our distance, our fear of the other.” What is this other?
What are we afraid of, what are we averse to, what do we repress? We cannot be afraid of thought, as thought is just symbol. Thought has no potency unless it is linked with sensation. Are we afraid of sensation, of emotion? What is emotion which is not felt now? Is it memory?
