Neil’s thoughts on feelings, interior life, spirituality, philosophy, science, psychology, religion, and wth else occurs:)
When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.
And though my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none, I can read the writing on the wall.
[Smartphone cameras…] give us those nice bright colors.
They give us the greens of summers.
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day…
More: A 6-second dare
Related: Archetype of American Psyche: THE origin of rock ‘n roll?
[1 minute read]
I feel light, free, and strong this morning. Blaring my favorite spiritual music, and singing along.
A platitude came in my head as I shook off the fog of sleep in bed this morning. “The moment you raise your head from your pillow in the morning, you have all you need…”
Some spark inside me added, “… because it has been given to you.”
I’m not as lucky as evangelical preachers who hear voices from God:) But, like them, I like to write because I am conceited and like to hear my own voice and read my own words. It organizes my thoughts and expresses my feelings. I think that is a fundamental function of prayer too. Talking to God is talking to the divine spark within. The soul.
I bet Jesus did a ton of listening. I bet he did way more listening than he did talking. Each ear that listens to my conceited voice is the ear of Christ. Thank you for reading, for listening. You make me feel light, free, strong; all that I need comes from that. From Christ. From you.
Related: My original My love letter to you, My love letter to you PS, My love letter to me
Neil D. 2020–04–24
[5 minute read]
On her way to work Sophie showed up for her planned brunch with Ma. She has been working at the wool-weaving shop, steadily for 12 moons. Before she completed her studies 8 moons ago, she would leave tutoring, and work from midday to sundown.
At her young adult age, she was promised consideration for a promotion to be the candlelight shift supervisor. That was 4 moons ago. A poor imperial harvest has been depressing trade, so the shop is in straits. But a friend who coordinates the shop’s staffing is still optimistic. Ma periodically inquires gently if she has heard anything from him. Not yet.
Working at the shop was killing her soul. At least that is what “everyone” thought, because she complained persistently about the mediocre management and unmotivated coworkers who made extra work for her. And she also complained about all her elders who told her what she “should” and “could” be doing, as a privileged daughter of the landed class.
She had been planning to seek more gainful labor elsewhere, and four moons ago, inquired with several other proprietors. Only one invited her to interview.
As for Ma, through all this, she tried to let her natural love for a daughter flow out of her, by believing in her daughter, and not trying to fix or solve: Unconditional belief is the form of love known as faith. Other elders in Sophie’s life were already urging her to be more ambitious, at least as they see ambition. But Sophie was doing life her way.
Since her second year of tutoring, Sophie has gone from an overachiever wanting political grooming at the academy, to lower aspirations as a skilled tradesperson through apprenticeship with a guild, but is now a mere second-shift weaver at the shop. She still has aspirations to make more silver so she can lease a flat inside the city walls, where her restlessness suspects unknown freedoms. She has wanted that for a long time, but hasn’t had the coin.
Ma’s circle have offered supportive advice for mothering Sophie more firmly, about her ambitions and a life plan. Ma has not yet felt the gods move her to action. These associates and relatives have genuine affection for Sophie, so are troubled by the downward spiral of her spirit. Sophie complains privately to Ma that the paths these patrons endorse are not for her.
Ma sees her daughter’s heart with tender clarity. Like the well-wishers, Ma had strongly urged Sophie to reverse her declining ambitions. But Ma withdrew her voice from that chorus moons ago. Her vision sees Sophie’s heart judging herself harshly enough. It would do little good for Ma to pile on. By the grace of the gods, Ma’s hands are now clean on that count. Her tongue has been checked by a growing awareness of judgmentalism’s damage.
Sophie knows that her Ma is an educated lady and prefers she go to academy. Ma feels like a strong enough mother that she doesn’t need to repeat where she stands on things that stab Sophie’s heart. Sophie’s head is much thicker than her heart:-)
Ma has raised Sophie through 20 seasons, cultivating the patience to bear parental insecurities. Each time life bruised Sophie, Ma was her refuge. So Ma remains content to let Sophie’s well-wishers bruise her. In fact, Ma is herself encouraged by the confidence these patrons have in Sophie’s potential. They soothe her own insecurities about whether Sophie’s path will yield fulfillments.
Sophie is a young woman now. And her mother is a woman. Hardheaded free women like them must learn life’s lessons for themselves, earning their wisdom with tenacity that sticks.
One lesson that isn’t hard to learn is how to judge one’s self more strictly than anyone else—or Jupiter Himself.
“Everyone” thinks working at the shop is killing Sophie’s soul…
***
Ma cosigned a loan for Sophie’s wagon last season. The moneylender offered a three-year payback term. Sophie opted for one year, and has made all the payments herself.
Not once has she dodged her work shift for irresponsible frolicking with friends. Not once has she been late to the shop.
Her frustrations with her coworkers are rooted in her own strong sense of responsibility and work ethic. Everyone else in the world may want her to apply that ethic differently, but she is her own woman. She aspires to management. She doesn’t fear leadership. She is merely youthfully impatient about the importance of example-setting by a leader. Perhaps her elder loom-staffing friend sees that too.
Her aspirations are materialistic—-there is no mistaking that. But, she is not immorally procuring the silver she idolizes; she’s earning it. She is frustrated that she can’t get enough, fast enough. That is an instructive frustration. Her next move could be progress on that front. Or the move after that.
Ma earned an academy diploma. That’s her familiar path, so her voice readily joins the chorus who revere it. But her parental vocation now demands wisdom about caveats on any path.
“Everyone” thought working at the shop was killing Sophie’s soul. Ma used to also. But Ma is open to the possibility that, on the contrary,… Well… Just maybe… The contrary.
***
“By the grace of the gods” Ma has kept her hands clean from piling on judgment and making Sophie feel worse about herself. What form has that grace taken?
It’s hard to put words around something so intangible. Recent transitions in Ma’s life have forced her onto a transformative path in search of her truer self. Her soul. A few of the guiding questions she latched onto are: What are my core values? What are my core competencies? What am I passionate about? What good am I good at?
Answers to that question (it’s really all one question to Ma) have sure as hell been more elusive than she anticipated. She’s now resigned that fully satisfying answers may remain mysterious this side of Elysium. One answer that came easily and quickly has been affirmed, confirmed, and reaffirmed by all her beloved friends and family whom she trusts with her life. Rather than wax profound, we’ll end where we started…
The daughter in whom Ma believes, and for whom she has love without conditions, stopped in for brunch today on her way to work…
***
Sequel: Dark Night of the Soul (7) – A SOPHIE sequel: Mirabai Starr’s “Yes” in parenting
Neil D. 2020-04-21
In response to Pandemic. Narrow Vision, a dear friend reflected:
“Some think Bill Gates is connected to this ‘new world order’ where we become one people ruled by one leader, probably from the US. There’s a conspiracy theory that this virus was no mistake and that what looks very much like generosity to the eye may very well be a new plan of world Government control.”
When it comes to a conspiracy theory, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I’m inclined to see how corrupt leaders have lined pockets by fomenting war. But many individual evils don’t amount to a globally planned and coordinated evil, to me.
Carl Jung might say conspiracy theories resemble potent dark archetypes that appeal to our collective unconscious.
One out of 1000 are actually true — let’s say — and that distorts our visions of the other 999. I dump them in the same bucket as unreal reality TV, and the common non-sense of common sense.
If, on your life’s journey, you’ve reached some point of self honesty — rather than ego inflation — I’d trust your vision. Was George Bush II a goofball? Yeah. Was Barack Obama a good guy? Yeah. Is Donald Trump a good guy? No. Is Bill Clinton a mixture of both? Yeah.
Jordan Peterson paraphrases Carl Jung,
“Beware of wisdom not earned.”
Peterson, contends that there is grave vulnerability in naïveté, and those who have not probed and faced the darkness potential in every single human soul are naive positivists. The most reputable sages in our history concur that life is suffering. To pretend otherwise is psychological denial.
The truth is most often what it appears to be, when seen through the eyes of truthful people who are not Petersonianly naive. Satan only posits sheep in wolves’ clothing for those who repress wolves into the unconscious of their Jungian Shadows and deny the daunting imperative to face them.
[4 minute read]
I live a block from a Carnegie public library whose namesake wrote, “The man who dies rich dies disgraced.” Bill Gates prophesied a pandemic for which we are woefully prepared and has put his money where his mouth is, stewarding his fortune to address global suffering, including this pandemic.
The stewardship of wealth by titans is merely the most collectively visible reminder of the power of individual persons. Responsible stewardship by moguls is their “giving back” to the persons who collectively enabled their wealth. It’s their self-emptying from atop humps on camels which face needle eyes (or ropes or Gates, if you prefer; see).
Carnegie lived through the Civil War and The Spanish-American war, and was frustrated by the hypocritical lip service of US presidents to global peace—dialogs entertained for the sad purposes of campaign finance messes that continue to plague us a century later, according to at least one reputed historian indicts these presidents as war mongers. Carnegie was left to attempt global diplomacy largely on his own. World War I followed. And the unspeakable horrors of the 20th century ensued:
He was very much a “fool for peace.” His legacy is the notion that civilized people should not consider war inevitable but, rather, an aberration to be abolished. He was a “possibilist,” not a realist. We need more such [people]… willing to dream of a better world and to do what they can to bridge the gap between the present and that better future they envision.
Not too long after Teddy Roosevelt betrayed Carnegie, his fifth cousin lamented:
I have seen war… blood running from the wounded… the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed… children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
As we consume sweeping epic news stories about the pandemic, let’s remember that the agony and death are happening to individual human persons.
FDR’s hatred was penned half a decade before the US entered World War II. Half a decade before today’s pandemic, Bill Gates prophesied about our unreadiness for a pandemic in a TED Talk. He put his money where his mouth was even before that prophecy, and continues to do so, marshaling human resources to complement governmental, academic, and private corporate cooperation.
It’s easier to tell and hear the story of one person than of so many heroic persons. But Gates’ generosity has no meaning without single persons translating it into transcendent goodness. If we keep our global vision integrated with a narrowed local vision, this historical event can deeply touch both our personal and collective souls.
The call to social distancing etc. is a cosmically potent prophecy about thinking globally and acting locally: A virus has no respect for sequestered material wealth. Each individual person is vulnerable, and has a responsibility to the collective of humanity—because each person has intrinsic, divine worth by virtue of inestimable value, power, and therefore responsibility. We are all Spider-Mans.
The nobility of “first responders” now includes souls in the food industry and grocery stores. The unspeakable horrors of the 20th century have not entirely drawn our collective attention. At the dawn of the 21st-century, nearly 2 decades ago, horrors above central Pennsylvania, at the Pentagon, and in New York City produced tangible legacies in US society. Little motivates transformation more than the tragedy of deep suffering. As it is for individuals, so it is for a civilization.
Be a first responder to your sister, brother, child, parent… neighbor, grocery bagger, nurse assistant… stranger who walks past six feet away… We are persons before we are a people.
This mystery of paradox is this pandemic’s message:
Vulnerability and power are two sides of the same coin.
By honoring the infinite worth of each person we encounter, we honor our own divine spark within—vulnerable and powerful.
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[Tomorrow, related, “Pandemic. Mother Earth’s Dark Night of the Soul.” Tap “Notify me of new posts via email.” at the end of this page to receive an email when it’s posted. In the meantime, a first response: Pandemic Conspiracy Theory of The New World Order Cabal]
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Feel with Neil