If one is keeping up with the essays on this site, one can see that most of the stories are vignettes from my own life, bits and pieces that, by and large, are not all that remarkable. Many other people have lived far more adventurous lives (although I would have liked to have lived more), either in exotic travel or in jobs that bring them into contact with the extraordinary and unusual - jobs such as a teacher or a policeman or an EMT. In fact, there are dozens of these types of professions - how many remarkable stories do we now have coming from the battlefields and hospitals of Afghanistan and, until recently, Iraq? But the quasi - ordinariness of my own life is the point - the point being that remarkable things are happening to all of us if we take the right perspective.
For instance, the last essay, My Guitar, talks of an infatuation gone sour, of the oft-told and well- experienced story of unrequited "love." The heartache and sense of emptiness and loss might seem all there is to it. However, the very point of this website is to help others, as well as myself, understand that our ordinary lives are not ordinary at all - that rather, they are, all of them, imbued with cosmic importance. In most essays, then, I take an episode that qualifies as something easily set-off - a trip, a love affair, a specific experience - and then try to refocus from a higher perspective - a perspective from the great spiritual traditions of the world. Considering My Guitar, for instance, what would the Buddha or the Christ say about this infatuation and loss? Thinking in that way, one can quickly see that such cases are not mere anecdotes, but strong lessons about behavior and cosmic meaning (which, taken these sacred beings, can be looked at in two ways - for the Buddha, suffering led to to his enlightenment; for the Christ, enlightenment led to a martyred suffering). What can be seen is multi-layered - for instance, in this essay's case, to rely on things or associations of this world, from physical love to fame to wealth, is foolish and inevitably leads to disappointment and suffering. But then, when suffering comes, we come to learn that it can be our salvation, especially if we are stripped, left empty and hopeless. This is the "dark night of the soul", depicted and understood as the great night sky, with its feelings both of hopeless impersonal space and magnificence. And this is the gateway to Truth or God - for all of creation is God's metaphor, and in this grandeur and loneliness is the feeling - the feeling that beyond oneself is something of eternal greatness - which cannot be reached while immersed in the ego, which will seldom be transcended in happiness, simply because one is happy being there. And the beyond, the eternal, is Love, not in the Hollywood sense of infatuation and personal sexual desire, but rather the unity of ALL that might be seen once one goes beyond the perspective of isolation. This is TRUE love, but it is mirrored in ordinary sexual and platonic love - in that in the latter a union of sorts is made, which is what produces the desirable feeling - but which we find out is as small when compared to Absolute Love as ourselves, even our Earth and sky, is when compared to the universe.
For instance, the last essay, My Guitar, talks of an infatuation gone sour, of the oft-told and well- experienced story of unrequited "love." The heartache and sense of emptiness and loss might seem all there is to it. However, the very point of this website is to help others, as well as myself, understand that our ordinary lives are not ordinary at all - that rather, they are, all of them, imbued with cosmic importance. In most essays, then, I take an episode that qualifies as something easily set-off - a trip, a love affair, a specific experience - and then try to refocus from a higher perspective - a perspective from the great spiritual traditions of the world. Considering My Guitar, for instance, what would the Buddha or the Christ say about this infatuation and loss? Thinking in that way, one can quickly see that such cases are not mere anecdotes, but strong lessons about behavior and cosmic meaning (which, taken these sacred beings, can be looked at in two ways - for the Buddha, suffering led to to his enlightenment; for the Christ, enlightenment led to a martyred suffering). What can be seen is multi-layered - for instance, in this essay's case, to rely on things or associations of this world, from physical love to fame to wealth, is foolish and inevitably leads to disappointment and suffering. But then, when suffering comes, we come to learn that it can be our salvation, especially if we are stripped, left empty and hopeless. This is the "dark night of the soul", depicted and understood as the great night sky, with its feelings both of hopeless impersonal space and magnificence. And this is the gateway to Truth or God - for all of creation is God's metaphor, and in this grandeur and loneliness is the feeling - the feeling that beyond oneself is something of eternal greatness - which cannot be reached while immersed in the ego, which will seldom be transcended in happiness, simply because one is happy being there. And the beyond, the eternal, is Love, not in the Hollywood sense of infatuation and personal sexual desire, but rather the unity of ALL that might be seen once one goes beyond the perspective of isolation. This is TRUE love, but it is mirrored in ordinary sexual and platonic love - in that in the latter a union of sorts is made, which is what produces the desirable feeling - but which we find out is as small when compared to Absolute Love as ourselves, even our Earth and sky, is when compared to the universe.
And in the strange, poetic way of our world, it is often such things as infatuation - temporary, individuated love - that creates the suffering that might bring us to real, permanent love.
And that is just one case. Your lives and mine are filled with such lessons. As I write these essays, I see this more and more. Perhaps the reader does, too, in his or her own life. FK
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