In comes Romeo, he’s moaning
“You belong to me, I believe”
And someone says, “You’re in the wrong place, my friend
You’d better leave” 1
In classrooms, workplaces and cults of marx-leninist or ‘spiritual’ stripe, I’ve spent my whole life feeling I’d drifted down the wrong cul-de-sac, but would one day make my escape to that sunlit upland where I truly belonged.
But what is this I-thing?
In one sense that’s a no-brainer. I am the one who, rather than the next guy, bellows and curses when brick falls on big toe, and who, rather than his partner, gets that joyful letter from the cops when his car not hers is captured on speed-cam doing 80 on the M1.
I, me and for that matter ego are in that sense organising principles, as necessary to survival as heart, lungs and a working nervous system. But if that’s all there is to it, why did so many of my generation – the first to be blessed or cursed by having, en masse, the space for so holy grail a project – throw heart and soul and worldly ill-gotten into seeking – by way of acid and therapy, macrobiotics and pilgrimages to Benares – “the real me”?
And why are ‘spiritual’ texts and gurus so insistent that, in its sense of arrogant self-importance, ego is the mortal enemy of our liberation?
Yesterday I featured Media Lens on that sentence to life without parole of chasing the pot of joy everlasting we know lies somewhere over the rainbow. Today I give you Zenmeister Alan Watts in stern interrogation of the self.
* * *
- Bob Dylan, Desolation Row, closing song on Highway 61 Revisited
It’s a constant struggle between individual salvation and societal cohesion. Either extreme leads to disaster, while balancing in the middle is not really that satisfactory either. My opinion is that the Universe is badly designed, but I don’t know how it could be improved. I could make a guess, but as I an not ‘god’ I am incurably ignorant of most of the criteria for making it better.
I might say ” ‘god’ help us” but that doesn’t seem to be in her/his job description.
The only really good advice I can offer is “Never tie your shoelaces in a revolving door”.
Nice!
Oh the wonderful Alan Watts!
He helped pave the way for another level of adventure into the hidden realms. The next generation though sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, through the political awakenings of feminism, through liberations on many fronts, woke up to another level of collective experience and consciousness. One that involves the body. The body is not an object that belongs to us, it is a flow of energy interconnected with the great river of all life. The body is life. And life is not what we think it is. But to dive into the mystery and wisdom of the body is a challenge to our intellectual ego. And the vulnerable soft animal body teaches us about love as well consciousness. ‘This very body the Buddha, this very Earth the Lotus Paradise.’ So much to say. So much to feel. So much to be.
Love to you Phil
Aw shucks – love to you too Anne.
As to the rest, Dory Previn comes to mind. Something about mythical kings and iguanas
Yes I said yes I will Yes! X
(:-)