Here's one for the "easier said than done" department:
It started with a letter from a relative who admitted to waking at 4 in the morning filled with regrets and hopelessness, even as his life is taking a sudden and dramatic turn for the better. Ah, yes, those 4 in the morning moments! Have them all the time myself, and did last night. It comes as an assault on the self, ruthless and unadorned - if it were another age, it would be the harsh cry of "sinner!" from the clergy, although now it is more personal: you are a loser and a fool. One might think that this is the conscience working, but that is not it; the conscience of spiritual name works to guide our actions and thoughts, not pummel us for our irredeemable transgressions. More than that, a proper conscience would not call us a "loser" because we had not measured up to a social standard of success.
No, this voice is ourselves (that is, a part of our contemporary selves) , what Freud termed the "super conscious," that harsh dictator of social control. Ruthless, it tries to whip us into action to appease the ego that is socially allowed, and to chastise the part of the ego that is forbidden. It often works in contradictory ways - social success might have to be bought by social transgression - that is, one might have to remain distant from raising one's children to satisfy the drive for success in the marketplace, causing more 4 in the morning moments. And it is this voice that I described and criticized in yesterday's long-winded blog, Nebraska. Yet here I am, admitting to my own early morning horror story.
"Nebraska" is giving in to this voice, this nag that will never give us peace. We should be smarter than this, but this is not such an easy path. Like the Believer who shines in public but sins in private, following what we know to be best must be done with "impeccability" as Don Juan of Carlos Castaneda fame often said. It means careful discrimination between what we, the social animal, wants, and what we, the spiritual being, must have. Enlightenment is not bought with guilt and self-recrimination. That was the way of the villagers and Pharisees in Jesus's time - sin once and get caught, and one is an outcast and unworthy for all time. But this is not so. We will sin, but we must then recognize it and walk away, free, to try to sin no more. But past sins (inadequacies) cannot be bought off by internal torment. Such is a useless thing. And the future should not be run for public approval. Thus all the prophets have told us to go into the wilderness to find ourselves - that is, to get away from the social noise and expectations (to, as Jesus put it, "despise one's family and leave it behind) to find the true path, the only worthwhile path, the path to enlightenment.
But no one who knows anything said it was easy. It is easy to leave the state of Nebraska, but much harder to leave the Nebraska state of mind. FK
It started with a letter from a relative who admitted to waking at 4 in the morning filled with regrets and hopelessness, even as his life is taking a sudden and dramatic turn for the better. Ah, yes, those 4 in the morning moments! Have them all the time myself, and did last night. It comes as an assault on the self, ruthless and unadorned - if it were another age, it would be the harsh cry of "sinner!" from the clergy, although now it is more personal: you are a loser and a fool. One might think that this is the conscience working, but that is not it; the conscience of spiritual name works to guide our actions and thoughts, not pummel us for our irredeemable transgressions. More than that, a proper conscience would not call us a "loser" because we had not measured up to a social standard of success.
No, this voice is ourselves (that is, a part of our contemporary selves) , what Freud termed the "super conscious," that harsh dictator of social control. Ruthless, it tries to whip us into action to appease the ego that is socially allowed, and to chastise the part of the ego that is forbidden. It often works in contradictory ways - social success might have to be bought by social transgression - that is, one might have to remain distant from raising one's children to satisfy the drive for success in the marketplace, causing more 4 in the morning moments. And it is this voice that I described and criticized in yesterday's long-winded blog, Nebraska. Yet here I am, admitting to my own early morning horror story.
"Nebraska" is giving in to this voice, this nag that will never give us peace. We should be smarter than this, but this is not such an easy path. Like the Believer who shines in public but sins in private, following what we know to be best must be done with "impeccability" as Don Juan of Carlos Castaneda fame often said. It means careful discrimination between what we, the social animal, wants, and what we, the spiritual being, must have. Enlightenment is not bought with guilt and self-recrimination. That was the way of the villagers and Pharisees in Jesus's time - sin once and get caught, and one is an outcast and unworthy for all time. But this is not so. We will sin, but we must then recognize it and walk away, free, to try to sin no more. But past sins (inadequacies) cannot be bought off by internal torment. Such is a useless thing. And the future should not be run for public approval. Thus all the prophets have told us to go into the wilderness to find ourselves - that is, to get away from the social noise and expectations (to, as Jesus put it, "despise one's family and leave it behind) to find the true path, the only worthwhile path, the path to enlightenment.
But no one who knows anything said it was easy. It is easy to leave the state of Nebraska, but much harder to leave the Nebraska state of mind. FK
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