Tag: Rilke

15. A Mind Is Like a Parachute; It Only Functions When It Is Open.

If you’re a fan of Frank Zappa, well, Frank Zappa gets a lot of cites for this statement and that’s fine. Truth be told, he was born in 1940, long after this pithy statement had a rash of appearances in newspapers across the United States as early as October, 1927. It was picked up by a Scottish distiller-and-maker-of-witty-epigrams, named Lord Thomas Robert Dewar in 1928 (he read Brit versions of US papers) so he’s credited with it too. It’s been recurring all the decades since—the Kansas State Board of Agriculture, the Cornell Engineer, even the 1936 film Charlie Chan at the Circus (screenplay by Robert Ellis and Helen Logan)—because, a Truth will stick around to be re-dis-covered forever.

Truth springs Eternal: A Mind Is Like a Parachute; It Only Functions When It Is Open.

Open-mindedness seems the natural default to me. Yet I’ve known people who were welded shut with close-mindedness on a certain subject, or as a lifestyle. Out of fear? Of what?  An ‘unknown?’ The Unknown? Remember the friend who gave me the Rainer Maria Rilke verse of “live some distant day into the answers?” (Post 4. Clinging I Shall Die of Boredom) She also framed and gave me this quote:  

“I dwell in possibility.”

Emily Dickenson

What is so fearful about ‘possibilities’ that a person cannot bear to stray one question away from their known? They remain clamped shut to considering anything other than what they presently believe? Why not ask? Why not venture? You can always come back. You can always return to Square One. Ground Zero. From whence you came. You will not get lost. I’ve asked a lot of questions…a…lot…of…questions…and I’m still standing.

A case for close-mindedness—not open to any and all considerations, to other possibilities—it just baffles me. I can’t make the case. It seems so limiting to me. Can anything be gained by closed-mindedness? Who benefits from close-mindedness? Perhaps a person wants to limit the amount of information they must contain? To be open-minded to possibilities, to ask questions of the status quo would be to have to contain ‘more’ than they want to deal with?  Maybe.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes.

Life is all about evolving. Think about fire and the heat it provides. How it started with a couple rocks or sticks, a teeny spark and look what we have evolved fire into today. It can be brought inside and char our meat beyond palatability.  It can be harnessed to provide warmth through big silver hoses to anywhere in our house. Think about communication.  From smoke signals to jungle drums to telegraph wires to air waves to a computer on your wrist! Think about the Industrial Revolution…then picture every “As Seen on TV” gadget that has ever been invented. That’s evolution. And evolution is what EVERYTHING is about. Evolve is what EVERYTHING does. We started as energy blasted from a big bang, not even a dust mote, and look what we and billions of galaxies have evolved to.

I recall that the word ‘evolution’ may be a sticky wicket for some. Evolving is just growing. A baby grows to a child who grows to an adult who grows to an elder.   What if a baby didn’t ‘evolve’ into an adult? What if an acorn never evolved into an oak?  Growing is what is built in every molecule of our DNA, in every thing. Life was given to us for the purpose of growing. Not just in size and stature (or acquisitions), but in improving—understanding, communicating, coping, interacting, contributing. Learning more about why we were created in the first place. Evolving. Growing better, stronger, smarter, kinder.

Evolving is improving. Look at how rudimentary inventions have been improved through multiple generations of product.  “All New and Improved.” And they just keep on improving, growing, evolving.  Since humans are the creators of inventions, products, we should be the leaders in evolving and growing our selves.

I hear myself pointing out that even God “evolved.”  Look at the wrathful, smiteful God he was in the Old Testament, sending all sorts of plagues and tragedies on one of his most faithful, Job. Then, seven, eight hundred years later when the New Testament books were being written after an infusion into the human species named Jesus, look what a loving father he grew into being.  Did God himself evolve and grow? The Omniscient one? Once Omniscient, he should always be Omniscient, right? Maybe he got better writers to describe him?

So I’m pointing out that God probably didn’t ‘evolve.’ It really was OUR understanding of God and OUR place in the universe that evolved. We grew in our understanding about ourselves, the human psyche, relationship to nature, our surroundings, that big ball of heat in our sky, and those starry, starry nights. Hence, as we evolved/grew in our understanding of ourselves, our understanding of the unknown/Unknown ‘evolved’ with us. We wrote new stories and myths to exhibit our new understanding. Practically every Sci-Fi show or book you’ve seen or read is someone trying out a new possibility of our existence to consider.

I’ve mentioned Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, many times, and many times repeated one of the plethora of Dots he dropped: “Myths are the contents of man’s psyche.”  So as we grow in our understanding of our place in the universe, our myths grow with us. Hu-man started out feeling there was something else in control of us, so we called upon sun gods, moon goddesses, fertility gods, corn maidens, rain gods, and multitudes of gods we intuited we had to appease for help in surviving this unknown nature around us.

Greek gods were overtaken by Roman Gods. Egyptian gods, Indian gods paralleled. Everyone was writing their stories to better grasp an understanding of our place in a life on this one planet of an unfathomable universe of unknown ‘out there.’ Gods kept being replaced, morphing, as the first humans grew to cogitate on their experiences in life and increase their understanding of who we are…trying to answer, “why” are we? Evolving. Eventually we made our way from many gods to one god. Polytheism to monotheism. And even monotheism just keeps evolving, changing, splitting, asking new questions and getting further awareness.

Evolving is our way of life. How can we do our best if we aren’t open to other possibilities, the all-new-and-improved, the next step in growing? Growing/evolving/becoming more than we are now/growing forward—it was hardwired into us as the very first energy of the big bang started a multi-billion-year-process that would become us. That’s a Big Picture.

You really can’t stop evolution. You can be blind to it. You can deny it. But you can’t stop evolution. Humans are going to evolve even if it means leaving others behind.

It is reported that there are as many as six (6) billion, with a b, Earth-like planets in our galaxy. And billions of worlds beyond our solar system. Whoever set off the big bang which evolved into this particular human species on this one-of-billions-of-planets biosphere–It built in the mechanism to evolve. We are ONLY here because of the innate and persistent evolution that has taken place for billions of years. Billions of years.

If you think of it at all, you can’t think that this place that we are all at right now is the end all-be all for human evolution. If as a species we can’t exhibit the love and acceptance that Jesus personified as an example for us, if we can’t “love thy neighbor as thyself” (as commanded over two millennia ago) or even “tolerate thy neighbor,” or erase all war, erase all inequality, erase all hunger and poverty, how can we possibly think that we are where God intended us to “stop” our evolution. Poke a fork in it—Done?  Don’t think so. I certainly don’t have the quantity of hubris needed for that, so I keep on asking, searching, growing—evolving.

Just like the acorn has everything in that tiny kernel to become a giant oak, so does every soul born have everything inside to grow into a manifestation of the Eternal–that is the Self that Jung helps us find.

So to me, the Raison d’etre is to grow. Be All That You Can Be. Look on the inside and you will find the Eternal hidden there, covered up with all the flotsam and jetsam and BS you’ve piled on yourself from the day you entered earth’s atmosphere. Re-learn all the Knowing you dis-remembered when you left that warm, cozy, fully-nurtured womb for a shockingly cold, bright-lighted earth’s atmosphere. The Ember of that Knowing is still there. The Raison d’etre is to look at You and find It.

4. Clinging I Shall Die of Boredom.

 

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.”

“The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center.”

Joseph Campbell, “A Joseph Campbell Companion,” p. 24

I’m sure I got the flow seed planted after reading Richard Bach’s “Illusions.” It was a Dot for sure (he dropped several of them in that book). I can’t be sure if it was dropped just before, after, or coincided with the event of My Catalyst. Reading the book was easy, especially when he hooked me with the very first words, “There was a Master come unto the earth, born in the holy land of Indiana…” (my home state—how could I not read on!)

There is the part in the intro where he talks about the creatures in the river who “cling” as a way of life. Then one creature decides he’s going to let go and see where the crystal river takes him, because, clinging he shall surely die of boredom. He trusts that the river knows where it is going, and so (with much fear and admonishment from his peer clingers) he let go to go with the flow of the river. A Dot dropped and I was in the ‘let it flow, let it flow, let it flow” mode.

Or, maybe my entire life was a part of ‘let it flow,” and I just had to recognize and name it.

In the age of career specialization I was a generalist. Dig deep into just one career path? No. I would try one career path, be there long enough to see behind the curtain and opt out.  I was a systems analyst for Blue Cross-Blue Shield because someone recognized I was a problem solver, organized, efficient, and could manage people.  An industrial psychologist who tested all BC-BS management said, “You ranked in the 94th Percentile of Upper Level Male Managers, BUT, you have no goals to be president of BC-BS”—as if that were a bad thing. He was right—I certainly did not have goals of becoming president of BC-BS. I opted out.

I moved to the country music industry because my husband wanted to be a songwriter. We moved to Nashville so why shouldn’t I be in the music industry also?  Three years with a major record label run with a mafia-management style of rewards and punishments, and I opted out again. Seeing behind the curtain is always eye-opening—and a test to see just how much you’re willing to pay for the pretense.

 I left it to fate (aka the flow) to take me to my next career, and my organizational skills took me to becoming Associate Producer (the logistics person) for a new television show. Out of the music business, and into television. One season of organizing and logistics, and I decided I could write the show, too. I did two sample scripts, and the producer who had hired me for my organizational abilities, agreed. Soon I was a writer—television, print, marketing, publishing—writing for anybody who would hire me to hone my skills. Just going with the flow, where the flow would take me.

Jump. It’s Not as Wide as You Think. (Or) There Are No Pumas

Let’s just say “waking up” sets you up with lots of questions…lots…of…questions! Try and describe that to friends and about all you’ll hear is, “Awake? Of course you’re awake. You’re talking. There’s no question there.” Hard to explain unless you’ve been there.

Questioning—especially the “Why” question—and “seeking answers” is trying, anguishing work, and most times tinged with a bit o’ fear (hence why it’s “the road less travelled”). Looking inward for answers to questions can be especially fearful because somehow we innately ‘believe’ we’re hiding some sort of monster inside. (I have yet to determine where we got this—unless it’s the deeply ingrained ‘original sin’ that’s been taught us by a loving church.)  We fear if we dare peek inside, we’ll let loose the monster on the world. Some sort of beast is hidden inside! We’ll be out of control!

Yes, I know this from personal experience. I have feared the monster and asked that exact question.

When working with a wonderful counsellor whose name, Mrs. True, said it all, I had begun to feel good about myself—getting self-esteem can do that for you. I remember specifically asking her (because I felt good), “Aren’t you afraid you’ll create a monster (meaning me)?” She just laughed and reassured me, “No, I just want you to throw back that curly hair of yours and laugh.”

Please believe me, I have looked: There are no monsters inside. It’s ok to look.

I believe that is why so many people are afraid to ask questions of themselves, to look inside. They fear they will face pumas in the crevasse. (That’s an old Smothers Brothers routine—Tommy Smothers was afraid of the pumas in the crevasse, and his brother had to convince him, “There are no pumas in the crevasse, Tommy”—for those who are wondering where that came from…or for those who may remember!) I chose to believe Dickie Smothers! (That was a Dot dropped waaaay back!)

Asking questions of Life and looking inward for answers, yes, that requires facing the (phantom) pumas in the abyss (or crevasse). Joseph Campbell came through again, reassuring me with this myth:

“A bit of advice
Given to a young Native American
At the time of his initiation:
As you go the way of life,
You will see a great chasm.

Jump.
It is not as wide as you think.”
― Joseph Campbell

Dick Smothers would add…’and there are NO PUMAS in the crevasse!’ Those are the pumas we fear are lurking inside us if we ever look. (Who knew Dickie Smothers was a mythologist!)

Reassured by both Dickie Smothers and Joseph Campbell, jump I did. More asking. More seeking. More questioning. More reading. More learning. More dreams. More Dots. A whole lot of “Why me’s?” because answers were slow in coming. (Patience, remember?) Some bon-a-fide gnashing of teeth involved. A good friend who’d listened to me gnash teeth, wail, found a poem and gave it to me as salve. It came first as “Anon” but, as the poem itself told me, I would ‘live along some distant day into the answer.’ I would find its true source.

I magnetized it to my refrigerator.

Have you heard the term, Synchronicity? We’ll get more detail on it later. It’s a term that pops up again and again when you enter the forest on your own path. Synchronicity may feel more like a breadcrumb you find on your way, assuring you that you’re on the right path home.  A few years, yes, years, after receiving this Anon poem, another friend gave me a book as a birthday gift, “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke. In that book was the very verse that was on my fridge:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

and try to love the questions themselves,

like locked rooms and like books

that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

Do not now seek the answers,

which cannot be given you

because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will then gradually,

without noticing it,

live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Salve for an anguished heart for sure. It was like getting a primer for learning a new language and here was my first translation. Love the questions themselves. Locked rooms. Books in a foreign tongue. Live everything. Reaffirmation that I was not alone in the experience I was having. Others had gone before me and were dropping their own Dots and breadcrumbs for me to follow and be encouraged by. And somehow, they would make sure I found the ones I needed. How could I not trod on?

The original Anon paper stayed magnetized to my refrigerator for years til it had stains and curled edges. It reinforced for me that, indeed, I would ‘live along some distant day into the answer” (and answers) that I sought.

Synchronicity… A Dot dropped one year connected to a Dot a few years later. Check-Check.

How I Found Synchronicity Synchronistically.