REFLECTIONS
I
On The Streets
I walk the streets of the city, daytime and nighttime, and observe the activity; and look at the front pages of the daily papers, in their little metal kiosks by the side of the road, or read them in more detail in the Public Library, to keep up with what is going on in the world. In 'my' world, at this time. And I despair, a little.
Look up! I want to call out sometimes. Look up, folks! Higher than all of this!
I can now appreciate, more, the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, in one of his books, where he came down from his heights, as a pilot, delivering mail, and was back in the Big City for something or other, on the subway, and looked around him at the mass of humanity, engaged simply in their daily lives, simply doing their thing, and wrote that what he saw all around him on this level was a little bit of "Mozart murdered". (It sounds better in the French original.)
He had scaled peaks of consciousness in his life; and looked down, and had a difficult time with what he saw around him.
I understand him, better, now. Yes, I have read Thoreau, and about his observation that the mass of humanity "lead lives of quiet desperation". But there's something about the quality of being beyond it all now, in these the later years of my life, that is captured in the reflection of a pilot, rather than 'just' a reflector living beside a pond, if you get my drift.
But that's all not really what I want to comment on, here. It's preamble; as I amble the streets of a city, and glance through the daily papers, at 'the news'. What I really want to comment on, is the real news of our time. And that is: who all we really are.
We have to be careful of thinking in a limited way about what we call 'human nature'. There is a part of us that can succumb to our hominid ancestry, yes, and its lower, base faculties of simple survival instincts, reactive responses without reflection, and so on.* But we also have our higher faculties. Our brains are 'wired' for our receiving higher impulses.** So, although we could always revert to the 'older' parts of our potential, we are not stuck with them, and in them. We have, in short, a higher destiny. And it is now time to fulfill it.
Out of necessity, if nothing else The drive for, incentive of, 'profits' is about to cause a great Crisis on the planet. Let us use that as a tool, to turn it into a great Opportunity - in other words, to our advantage, in the game of Life; and in doing so, eliminate the illusion of our separateness from one another, and come into a sense of our Oneness. If only in the consciousness of our oneness as the human race, now needing to pull together, in order to create a positive future for us all.
And our real identity as One - as Chips off the One Block - can grow out of the experience.
And then we won't have to look up. We will be looking in. And reflecting on what a nicer place it is to be in, now: wherever we happen to be.
---
* I am thinking here, e.g., of the concept conveyed in the observation of Will and Ariel Durant, in their classic 'take' on History - 'The Story of Civilization' - that "inhibition - the control of impulse - is the first principle of civilization".
** check out the pineal gland. There's an interesting objet d'art for you.
II
On The Waters
In my new life - or at least, the new chapter of - here in my old home town, of Long Beach in southern California; and which is conducive to a contemplative life - time for reflection, and reading; the internet, yes, but no TV or radio; and walks and reading time on the beach (just a block and a bit away; where I go down to, carrying my light-weight beach chair, which leaves me sitting almost in the sand, almost daily; myself but a grain of sand on the beach of Life) - there is one thing in particular that I am already missing from my old life in the spiritual community in the north of Scotland (where I have lived for nearly half of my life). And that is the sound of the geese - or is it (was it, now) 'just plain' ducks, flying overhead in the mornings to feeding grounds somewhere to the east of our community (in a caravan park on the shores of the Moray Firth; a large body of water, almost cutting Scotland in half. Look it up; it's impressive), and then flying, in their instinctive formations, back in the evenings to their nesting places just on the other side of the Findhorn Bay (from which the caravan park got its name, and hence, we ours).
I speak of an early time of mine in the community when I lived for some years in the caravan park itself, rather than in a former hotel some five miles away, in the small town - a 'royal burgh' - of Forres, which became a part of of our community in late 1975 (I arrived that winter, at the very beginning of '76, from the warm climes of southern California - a wayward goose; looking for its Way), and where I started my time in the community, and spent most of my - what was it - nearly 30 years whilst living, and working, in that community of likeminded souls. I came and went a couple of times between then and now, but have always considered Cluny my spiritual home. (Whenever I gave the guests in their maiden week in the community - called the Findhorn Experience Week; or FX for short - their tour of Cluny, I would spend the first half of my time with them giving them the history of the place as it related to our community,* and would then say, in relation to Cluny and my feel for the place, "Welcome to my home.") But for all of my affinity for 'deal old Cluny' (it was built originally in 1865, with a couple of additions around the turn of that century. My, how time flies as well), I always missed the haunting refrain of the geese, book-ending the days in the winters and springs, until they flew away to God knows where for the rest of their years, as lovely mobile ornaments of and on Gaia.**
I myself flew away to the distant shores of Australia for most of the '90s; and when I came back - drawn to get back to my work (I wasn't ready to retire, then) - I came back again to Cluny; my basic home. But I always enjoyed, in my frequent trips to The Park, seeing, and hearing, the formations of the geese returning to their nesting grounds on the other side of the bay in the evenings.
That early time, living under their seasonal flight path - the clean, easy sweep of the natural world - was a heady time in the community. We really felt that we were helping to 'bring in the new' - a New Age for mankind. A time of living in peace and harmony and love with each other, and with Gaia, a living being in her own right. (The community is 'big' on Nature. Look it up.) By the time I left the community this spring - and as a large part of my reason for leaving (but then, these things are seasonal for us creatures, too; instinct/intuition, and all that) - I felt the community was becoming a bit dulled to its founding purpose. From a spiritual community dedicated to helping birth the New Age, from its nesting place on the near side of the Bay, it felt to me as though it had become - or was dangerously close to becoming - just a workshop centre; not with members of a 'religious' order, living their lives with a passion for their total commitment to their cause, but with employees of a business, wanting the business to give them 'a living wage' and a retirement program, and oh yes, look out for my employee rights; I have them too, you know...
But then that's just me.
Silly goose.
Still trying to find its Way.
Maybe I'll find it here.
Maybe I won't.
But I'll keep on looking.
Because it's in our nature to.
Our better natures.
---
* The founders of what has become known to the world as the Findhorn Community managed Cluny as a hotel for five years, in the late '50s-early '60s, before losing their jobs there and moving on in their lives, thence 'happening' to found the spiritual community on the shores of the Moray Firth of which I speak; wayward geese themselves, by then subject simply to the pull of spirit in their lives, and wherever that 'call' beached them for a season or so, before - who knew. They certainly didn't. They were just following inner orders.
** For others, of course, it was a different ballgame. The sound of shots would alert us to the fact that some locals were having a go at a cheap meal. Over the years we joined other voices in the area to put a basic stop to the shooting, there on our side of the Bay; and one of the hides was turned into a bird-watching locale. Not everybody was satisfied with that outcome. But you do what you gotta do.
No comments:
Post a Comment