To look toward a future we may wish to share, let us look back to a certain critical moment in the past. Let us call this moment the emergence of self.
Your post this morning for me followed a Vanity Fair article about Apple’s new VR headset. With that juxtaposition, I want a reminder of stardust written over the entry to every Apple Store: If you are stardust, now what? Would the reminder blunt the hypno-appeal of the next tech drug? I wish. Ok then, if I am stardust in an age of tech drugs, then what? I hope the question stays all day. Lovely writing, as usual. I love the choir of birds.
I love that you've referenced Báyò Akómóláfé. The work he's been doing feels fresh and very important and I'm joyful to find someone else who knows and cites it. Thanks for the reminder to hold onto that slow and eternal space. I'm remembering Koyama's 'three mile an hour god's here, too. Good to he in this online community.
You always encourage a stillness, quiet and slowing of being to immerse in your words, Renée. I read your reflection from a languished state of awaking being into awaring - a meditation that lingers beyond the time spent with you. Thank you for your endless and timeless beauty, and for aiding our journey of remembering.
I've been having another bout of insomnia. but felt everything within me (down to the space between subatomic particles) settle and sigh when I read this: "What we mind is what worries us, what’s directly in front of us, what we should and should not be doing right now, what’s for dinner, the horrifying news. The heartbreaking, horrifying news. All the while, we hold something inside that can see us through these altogether mundane with desperately terrifying worries that we can’t help but mind in these uncertain times." Thank you so much for that! ❤️ I think of the self as a cosmos with each component stewarding its own consciousness. And, to me, the ancestors are a huge part of that...in both the created and uncreated self. They pour into every corner of presence. Thank you, too, for sharing the link to Freya Matthews work. I can't wait to read every word of that! And, finally, may I please buy a print of your Crows in Tree photograph? I want to hang it on the wall across from my bed and encounter it every single morning, greeting each beautiful beast and beholding them all in wonder.🤗
Wow! there are so many lines in this that land in me today, but I don't need to comment on all of them. "Where does this begin, and why does it matter?" Firstly I would say for sure that I DON'T KNOW! But here is the response from my own imagination and life experience...... that is... that no one knows because of it's absolute mystery! Just as science cannot find the beginning of the cosmic creation, (what came before the big bang... or what is behind the "wall" they have located in the universe), the nature of creation's "infinite" being-ness does not lend itself to the perception or understanding by the "finite" self. For me, at this moment, what comes to me about WHY it matters is that it keeps us humble and open in our souls journey, and SHOULD keep us as a species humble, open, curious and cautious about our relationship to the creation in a way that could help protect us from hubris! We have forgotten the wisdom that can come from embracing "not knowing" and it has led to unconscious choices that were very short sighted and we now know... destructive......
When we identify with being a "who"; being someone; being the personality/persona; that is when we lose the sense of who we really are underneath that. The true self is the one that is whole, never wounded, always observing; is pure awareness ultimately. When I remember that, then my identification with my body as well as my personality (this "I" that has been constructed to function in the world) falls away, and I am more at peace. It is the clinging to the "who" we are that is the problem for humans; the "what" is the connection to all that is and has ever been and will continue to be. We expand when we live from that awareness. "Life expands and contracts in the yoke of a second. One minute, there's an unseeable vastness between life and death, and the next, it's the length of a needle we've dropped and can't seem to find. There is no one name or reason or label we can put on what we go through, though all of us, in our want to calm our fears, try to pin it down. Yet, when doing all we can: holding, listening, bearing witness; there's so much wisdom in the depths of our rawness. In being so present and engaged, we are forever shaped and carved, as we shape and carve. This only makes us a more finely wrought instrument. So, you are not blind and thick-headed no matter how powerless you might feel. Quite the opposite; you are a clear jewel being burnished until all of life is reflected through your deeply exposed heart."-Mark Nepo. We are the clear jewel (the soul, the true self, pure awareness) living in a body with a constructed self that gets burnished through life's trials and sufferings until we are able to more fully live through the one place in our being that is the portal to the truth: our hearts.
Where does ones self begin and end and does one return to it.
It should be understood that the karmas or habit patterns of every individual are effective at many levels: physical, emotional, mental, unconscious, subconscious, conscious, waking, dreaming, and sleeping. And those karmas extend beyond the individuals body-mind-complex to include others, objects, and environments on every level, visible (or gross), and invisible (or subtle), known and unknown - past, present, and future.
Also, because of the universal effectiveness of the karmic or conditional associations of individual being, it is not at all possible merely to invert upon and identify with the self-essence ( the atman or most inner consciousness) and have that be true awakening.
Such a Realization is not at all possible until the individual or grossly self-bound consciousness has first been purified and transcended through the real (and difficult) discipline of the body-mind-complex.
This is insightful beyond the conscious being of most. I am awestruck by certain passages. Also found the Ontopoetics treatise and examples quite engaging. I am hovering on the edge of a paid subscription -- thenk you for your words of wisdom. You are making a difference in this experience of life.
Your post this morning for me followed a Vanity Fair article about Apple’s new VR headset. With that juxtaposition, I want a reminder of stardust written over the entry to every Apple Store: If you are stardust, now what? Would the reminder blunt the hypno-appeal of the next tech drug? I wish. Ok then, if I am stardust in an age of tech drugs, then what? I hope the question stays all day. Lovely writing, as usual. I love the choir of birds.
I love that you've referenced Báyò Akómóláfé. The work he's been doing feels fresh and very important and I'm joyful to find someone else who knows and cites it. Thanks for the reminder to hold onto that slow and eternal space. I'm remembering Koyama's 'three mile an hour god's here, too. Good to he in this online community.
You always encourage a stillness, quiet and slowing of being to immerse in your words, Renée. I read your reflection from a languished state of awaking being into awaring - a meditation that lingers beyond the time spent with you. Thank you for your endless and timeless beauty, and for aiding our journey of remembering.
Stunningly conveyed. You have called forth enchantment in me from the habit of forgetting.
This clarity has emerged through your offering Renee, that ontopoiesis is relational becoming.
I've been having another bout of insomnia. but felt everything within me (down to the space between subatomic particles) settle and sigh when I read this: "What we mind is what worries us, what’s directly in front of us, what we should and should not be doing right now, what’s for dinner, the horrifying news. The heartbreaking, horrifying news. All the while, we hold something inside that can see us through these altogether mundane with desperately terrifying worries that we can’t help but mind in these uncertain times." Thank you so much for that! ❤️ I think of the self as a cosmos with each component stewarding its own consciousness. And, to me, the ancestors are a huge part of that...in both the created and uncreated self. They pour into every corner of presence. Thank you, too, for sharing the link to Freya Matthews work. I can't wait to read every word of that! And, finally, may I please buy a print of your Crows in Tree photograph? I want to hang it on the wall across from my bed and encounter it every single morning, greeting each beautiful beast and beholding them all in wonder.🤗
And you!🙏🏻
Wow! there are so many lines in this that land in me today, but I don't need to comment on all of them. "Where does this begin, and why does it matter?" Firstly I would say for sure that I DON'T KNOW! But here is the response from my own imagination and life experience...... that is... that no one knows because of it's absolute mystery! Just as science cannot find the beginning of the cosmic creation, (what came before the big bang... or what is behind the "wall" they have located in the universe), the nature of creation's "infinite" being-ness does not lend itself to the perception or understanding by the "finite" self. For me, at this moment, what comes to me about WHY it matters is that it keeps us humble and open in our souls journey, and SHOULD keep us as a species humble, open, curious and cautious about our relationship to the creation in a way that could help protect us from hubris! We have forgotten the wisdom that can come from embracing "not knowing" and it has led to unconscious choices that were very short sighted and we now know... destructive......
When we identify with being a "who"; being someone; being the personality/persona; that is when we lose the sense of who we really are underneath that. The true self is the one that is whole, never wounded, always observing; is pure awareness ultimately. When I remember that, then my identification with my body as well as my personality (this "I" that has been constructed to function in the world) falls away, and I am more at peace. It is the clinging to the "who" we are that is the problem for humans; the "what" is the connection to all that is and has ever been and will continue to be. We expand when we live from that awareness. "Life expands and contracts in the yoke of a second. One minute, there's an unseeable vastness between life and death, and the next, it's the length of a needle we've dropped and can't seem to find. There is no one name or reason or label we can put on what we go through, though all of us, in our want to calm our fears, try to pin it down. Yet, when doing all we can: holding, listening, bearing witness; there's so much wisdom in the depths of our rawness. In being so present and engaged, we are forever shaped and carved, as we shape and carve. This only makes us a more finely wrought instrument. So, you are not blind and thick-headed no matter how powerless you might feel. Quite the opposite; you are a clear jewel being burnished until all of life is reflected through your deeply exposed heart."-Mark Nepo. We are the clear jewel (the soul, the true self, pure awareness) living in a body with a constructed self that gets burnished through life's trials and sufferings until we are able to more fully live through the one place in our being that is the portal to the truth: our hearts.
Where does ones self begin and end and does one return to it.
It should be understood that the karmas or habit patterns of every individual are effective at many levels: physical, emotional, mental, unconscious, subconscious, conscious, waking, dreaming, and sleeping. And those karmas extend beyond the individuals body-mind-complex to include others, objects, and environments on every level, visible (or gross), and invisible (or subtle), known and unknown - past, present, and future.
Also, because of the universal effectiveness of the karmic or conditional associations of individual being, it is not at all possible merely to invert upon and identify with the self-essence ( the atman or most inner consciousness) and have that be true awakening.
Such a Realization is not at all possible until the individual or grossly self-bound consciousness has first been purified and transcended through the real (and difficult) discipline of the body-mind-complex.
This is insightful beyond the conscious being of most. I am awestruck by certain passages. Also found the Ontopoetics treatise and examples quite engaging. I am hovering on the edge of a paid subscription -- thenk you for your words of wisdom. You are making a difference in this experience of life.