The Moon of Ennui

As we watch children develop, we can see that they each become many beings while they go through various stages of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual development.

That is true of all of us of course, and hopefully, we will continue to develop as long as we live.

It is clearly apparent that we are physical beings, for we can see, feel, touch, hear, smell sometimes, and even taste those bodies. It takes a physical body to know one.

So too, with our mental and emotional bodies. We all know about our minds and emotions, and we hear about them a lot; especially in books, movies and on TV. In fact, our minds and emotions tend to get intertwined and become undifferentiated, which is very bad for both, because they really don’t go together very well at all; together they form a bad melting pot which mixes and combines Thomas Jeffersons and Martin Luther Kings and comes out with Archie Bunkers and Phil Donohues.

And then, there is the spiritual body. We know we have one of those too, it’s just harder to pin the spirit down. Especially in our world today. Churches really don’t do it very well. Mostly they generally either aim for the mind or the emotions, or worse yet, both. Spirit needs spirit food to grow, and spirit practices to perform, and when your spirit is a “child of God”, caught in the cage of the church, it can’t grow up. You may have to “become as a child” to contact your spirit, but any true spiritual organization will be one which develops spiritual adults.

Back to the bodies for a moment, each body seems to resemble a world within itself. It has many organs and chemical components and many other constituent parts: heart and brain, liver and lungs, skin, and then blood and bones, even hair and nails. The organs of our body, we are told, are each a virtual continent in itself, afloat in a great sea of germs and bacteria and plasma and breath. From this point of view, our our bodies then might seem to be resemble a planet.

What then about the mind? Might it not seem to be more reminiscent of a solar system? A mind, resembling our sun with its own captured planets: Reason, Memory, Imagination, Will, Desire, Intellect and others, and each planet pulls and is pulled by its own moons, each in themselves planets, or mind-things that never fully developed: Call them Fantasy, Nightmare, Pleasure, Ennui, Logic, Yugan, Fancy, Pity, Ego, Whimsy, Caprice, Impulse and perhaps others.

And the emotions roll across these planets and moons like great seas: Pacific, of course, and Anger, Passion, Indifference, Forsaken, Envy, and they swell and race through many Gulfs of Fear and Isthmus of Intimidation, washing into great basins of Patience, Happiness, Confusion, and so swirl in and withdraw across the face of each planet and even some of the moons.

But then, what about spirit? Child of God, or child of the church? Well, first of all, the spirit is free. It is beholden to no mind, no body, no emotion; not a part of any universe, not associated with any thing or event, not a part of any church, temple synagogue or mosque. Not a resident of any heaven, not aware of any hell, Spirit is life, it is love, it is what we might call God. And it is our own true nature, as it is also the true nature of the mountain or sunrise, but still more than that, it is the true nature of the mountain and the sunrise at the same time, also our awareness of the mountain and the sunrise, and the awareness that the mountain and sunrise has of us - of our spirit, that is. Because “our” spirit can only be our awareness of spirit, not spirit itself. In the same way in which archeologists can be aware of bones, shards, and ancient weapons, and from that can be “aware” of the life that they represent, without “seeing” that ancient civilization in its entirety. So too with us, we are “aware” of spirit as it manifests in physical, mental and emotional things and events, but not in itself. Spirit often comes before us as kindness and gentleness, but that is because spirit is aware of what it is aproaching. Spirit is wild, wild like weeds and storms, wild like things you don’t expect; spirit is energy.

© John Womack, 2006. All rights reserved.

Wisdom

Comptemplating that big 7-0 - Today!

So the years pile up. After the big 2-1, they become more insignificant. Their reoccurrence begins to become a matter of mild amusement. Eventually you feel somewhat like Gulliver watching one more thread lead to the hand of yet another Lilliputian. As succeeding years arrive, they become even more insignificant than the last one until another year becomes a matter of complete triviality and total inconsequence.

Yet they also become a ubiquitous nuisance. They accrue and accrete. They spill out of one’s pockets and are strewn in one’s path – one must occasionally take care to find firm footing amongst them and occasionally concentrate to find one’s way.

More and more often they interpose themselves between you and the object of your vision, requiring blinking and squinting to focus clearly. This would be bad enough if they were discrete objects like ping-pong balls or moths, something fixed and knowable, an understandable expiation for occasional confusion and stumbling, but years cannot really be seen themselves. Other people sometimes attribute our clever circumventing of these obstacles as apparent confusion on our part. Sometimes the progress through these subtle impediments require one to return to the beginning of your immediate quest just to get another start on another angle.

Getting older is not really all that bad in some ways, you don’t feel any different, not really - not deeply inside. You finally do get wise - much wiser than anyone else you know - but part of the attainment of wisdom is finding out that no one else understands it, appreciates it or even wants it. Therefore, it is of little use with the younger crowd.  You can't even talk to them about it without seeming to babble.
 
Biggest problem with getting older? Easy. It happens too damn fast!

© John Womack, 2004. All Rights Reserved

The Smell of Coffee

The Smell of Coffee


There is a place of wonder that is eternally reserved in my memory, totally suspended in time, living forever in the late 1960’s and it’s in the heart of California. I can return there almost at will, especially when I toss some ground coffee in a pot and add a small amount of boiling water. Then, while I pause to let the grounds briefly steep, before adding the rest of the water, the memory of that place wafts right out of the pot, along with the aroma, like a great Genii and captures my moods and thoughts, and its presence stays with me for a while.
The place I remember is a small outdoor camping, ski and hiking shop in Merced. It is two stories high and has a small loft way up at the top. High up on its inside walls are great pictures of the great mountains, and all around below are the magnificent gadgets required by those who go to see those great sights and make those great pictures. At the very entrance to the shop, right at the front door, there is a wrought-iron table with its chairs, their white paint making them look strangely at home, maybe it is just a California-thing, but they look cool, and they beckon as a lens through which you can pass to change your direction of thought. It was impossible not to stop and pick up and feel those gadgets which were always displayed on this table, and when you did, you instantly became a different being - magically released from the humdrum day and the workaday world, suddenly a fugitive from the streets of Merced, an escapee from your body which you absently-mindedly left standing there at the table. There was also always a dark blue porcelain coffee pot and two or three porcelain mugs, along with instructions explaining how to do all those things that high mountain trekkers must learn to do. One of these instructions told how to make coffee over a campfire; it seems - let me think a moment - I believe you boiled water and then poured it into a pot just like that dark blue porcelain pot that you are holding in your hand right now, and it would already have coffee grounds in the bottom. Not all the water was added at once, as I seem to recall - I believe you first made a kind of “stew” with just a little water and grounds, then a short time later, the rest of the water would be added, and the top put on the pot. When the coffee had steeped long enough, the grounds were settled and the coffee poured. Hmmmm, I seem to have forgotten how the grounds were settled - let me think for a moment ... well, anyway, that initial smell remains, and I can smell it right now. And I see that table again, and the shop with its loft and photos, and then comes the feeling of those wonderful tall trees of California and their great bright mountains. Yes, that was a road I looked down, and yearned in my soul to follow, but it was a trail that I then could not then travel; for then my load was heavy and I pulled a long train. Now come again, thou great sense of joyful freedom; Thou, the sense of my main highway not taken because were were children to raise and wars to wage and an evil empire waiting if I had chosen to travel that trail then; Thou, yes Thou who beckons, I see you smiling and dancing, I hear your singing, and your joyful call: “Come with me, friend, old cake tastes good, it is the best of all, come bring your friend; she too, has marched other lonely trails of duty. But this trail is a dancing trail! Come dance and sing with me; I am a trail of life, leading into a new world. All that should have been will now be found, Glory gives, and Glory calls us to dance and sing. Yes, come dance and follow me, and look, look here: ‘Should Have Been’ grows here, right around this bend, here we call it ‘Beautiful Glory’, here it is, look at it ... behold its great beauty! And over here is a magnificent example of what you call ‘If Only’, it is such a beautiful plant that only grows in rich deep earth, we call it ‘Precious Fulfillment’; see, it really was planted, not lost, and has been growing all these years, right here, waiting for you! Oh, what a time to sing and dance! And follow me - ah look, here is the Sacred Tree itself, the tree of life. Only the wise can dance under its branches for its fruit is not to be eaten, its fruit is the dance of life itself; yes, this is the dancing tree. Let’s join hands and dance: for we are the seeds of that sacred tree.

©John Womack, 2006. All Righs Reserved.