Sunday, October 29, 2023

Fragment: The Ruin

     It's been but a year since my last Fragment, but as mentioned in previous posts, there was actually a fair amount of work done in the intervening period. And since I've gotten this particular, elucidatory engine running again, a variety of verbal onslaughts await to be launched upon the unsuspecting masses (such as they are, the few who may read these ramblings of mine). At the very least, you can rest assured no innocent people will be harmed by anything I have to say. 

    Chapter 2 of Even the Gods Must Die is nearly ready to publish; it's written and revised, so I have only the layout to prepare. I'm still preparing the layout for my article on 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness'; it's been slow going on that one as I've jumped around on these different projects.

    I've recently been listening to a podcast called 'I Can't Believe It's Not Buddha' by Neil Webster and Lee Mack (whom I primarily know from the comedy panel show Would I Lie to You?). I recently discovered that Lee Mack has been practicing meditation for some years now and, perhaps if you're familiar with his work as I am, he doesn't strike me as the type. ;^) Anyway, this is all in light of my previously published piece 'About Dreams, Dreaming and Connection' for which I heard a quote in the podcast that struck me as directly relating to that article's theme. So, give the quote a read and re-read the article if you're so inclined. 

    "Awareness is all their is to experience. All their is to thought is thinking and all their is to thinking is awareness. All their is to emotion is feeling and all their is to feeling is awareness. All their is to sensation is sensing and all their is to sensing is awareness. All their is to perception is perceiving and all their is to perceiving is awareness. Thus, all their is to experience is knowing. It is knowing that knows this knowing." -- 'Being Aware of Being Aware', Rupert Spira

    It speaks somewhat to the difference between the dreaming mind and the waking one, the diffuseness of what is experienced in the dream state, how the egoic mind is present but incoherent, unable to coalesce in relation to what is being experienced, because what is being experienced is itself a creation of mind, pulled together from the flotsam and jetsam of undigested memory and association. And yet, perhaps that fundamental basis of human experience that is awareness is felt all the more keenly for the ego's lack of cohesion, and that this awareness is not only inherent in all human beings, but is the same awareness. And so this awareness continues to exist ... even after the death of egoic mind of the individual human being.

    Also, in light of recent tragic and ongoing human stupidity, this particular fragment should speak to the undigested memories and associations, as well as the unresolved traumas that continue to play out in realtime, festering, spreading, and consuming. What we do unto the least of our brothers and sisters, so we do unto ourselves.

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

About Dreams, Dreaming and Connection - a photo essay

Greetings, all, from the inner realms!
    
Once again, a different project than any previously mentioned grabbed hold of my inspiration engine and drove itself here to the precipice of public presentation. Well, it's a simple thing--I've already mentioned my Jungian preoccupation with dreams and the un- or subconscious mind. Some people in the world are very dismissive of dreams, seeing them as just the bubbling up and disgorging of mental effluvium, of no more consequence than a bowel movement. Maybe ... at times ... but surely dreams are much more interesting and meaningful than that. After all, just for one example, the melody to the song 'Yesterday' came to Paul McCartney in a dream and has since been the most covered song in ... human history, if I'm not mistaken. No such claim could be made for any bowel movements that I'm aware of!

Anyhoo, before this gets much sillier, let's go ahead and make that final push and see what's left at the bottom of this particular Cliff of Insanity...

- DH