As a callow teenager I sat down one late after-school afternoon at the kitchen table and mused over what to write an English-class essay on. For whatever reason, I came up with the idea of writing On War.1 I remember my opening almost as clear as it came to me at that time, now these sixty-plus years ago:
"Down through the eternal ages Man has been witness to one internecine carnage after another.2 The Battle of Thermopylae; the Peloponnesian War; the Punic Wars; the [something or other; perhaps the Thirty Years War, of classroom reference]; and the two recent World War holocausts - what can be the reason for it all?" And I remember, after muddling my way through a few paragraphs of reflection on the subject matter, coming to my gloomy, and disgusted, conclusion about it all in general, and specifically, war; that "It has become a part of the nature of Man".3
I then continued on in my studies, into university, until I hit a block, occasioned by the distant, er, Police Action. We were told, upon entering our college years of that batch of potential cannon fodder, that it would be wise to take ROTC - Reserve Officer Training Corps; so I dutifully did as I was told. Until one day, in my second year, when our instructor got telling my class - on a very hot early-autumn afternoon, as I recall - about various types of machine guns. There are water-cooled such-and-such millimeters' types, and air-cooled such-and-suches, and…whether it was the heat in the quanset-hut classroom, or just where I was at in my life at the time, or some combination, but I left the classroom and walked straight to my room in my men's dormitory and closed and locked the door and put on some heavy music - Wagner - and lay down, with something over my eyes, and tried to 'sweat out' the terrible, nauseous feeling that had come over me in that class. And came out of my fevered state of mind quite some time later,4 with the very clear awareness that The World's Way was not the way for me. And stopped going to ROTC class. And got into some trouble for doing so, without official - 'adult' - permission. But I didn't care. I just knew that that way was not My Way.
It all ended with my dropping out of school at the end of the next, my Junior, year, and going off to NewYork City - which I figured had the largest public library in the Western world, as my guide - to read everything I could get my hands on regarding 'spirituality' - what the hell was the truth about life - and what was really going on in the world5 - and after a year there, mostly of haunting their Main Library, I was given the hands-on opportunity to test my budding spirituality when I received notice from back home that my name had come up for the draft.6
In the event, I went into the Army as a c.o. - conscientious objector; which meant that I wouldn't carry a weapon, was in the Medics. Which suited me fine;7 although in that event, I moved over into Special Services, and was involved in administration for the entertainment of the troops in my Division, in Korea. And after my two years of national service, returned to the States, determined to do all I could to help bring about the kind of world that I wanted to live in. Which I am feeling is now coming up for delivery.
For, now we here in America are faced with an enemy, and its conspiracy, so vast as to defy the imagination. And as I go to prepare for final battle - in My Way - I leave you with the highest accolade that I could give you, on this level:
May you be chosen for Thermopylae.
--
P.S. Where am I going, you ask? First, a quote from 'Aldous Huxley - Biography' at the site The European Graduate School (egs.edu):
'Brave New World would also delineate what the perfect dictatorship would look like. It would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be, as Aldous Huxley tells us, a system of slavery where, through entertainment and consumption[,] the slaves “would love their servitude”.'
I go to help humanity - through America - dream into their escape.
It's my job. It's what I incarnated for.
What did you incarnate for?
Come on. You can remember it.
You just have to line up with the energy of it. By 'practicing the Presence'. Over and over again.
Until it lands.
For you. And those other incarnate souls around you.
Who need you to help them 'get it', too.
---
footnotes:
1 Perhaps it had something to do with the recent breakout of hostilities in Korea; for some reason, known only to the adults, being called a Police Action, rather than what it clearly was: the Korean War. By whatever name, it was potentially impinging on my future; although we high school students were told that we would not be called up by the draft if we were in higher education, and I had four years of that still to look forward to, after the completion of my high school years of study of Important Things.
2 I was also deep into extending my vocabulary at the time; wrote down at least 3-5 new words a day in my notebook dedicated to same. As I say: my callow youth.
3 I remember my English teacher writing on it something to the effect that she was sorry that I felt that way; but she didn't chastise me, or judge me, for it. It was simply a comment from a member of the adult world to an up-and-comer.
4 I went through at least two Wagner LPs. For whatever reason, only his deeply powerful music could gentle me down, from the terrible vomitous state I was in.
5 All the religions and their critiques; Theosophy (Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant and Alice Bailey - the whole coven), Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky; Rudolf Steiner; William James's 'Varieties of Religious Experience,' Huxley's 'Brave New World' (and his exploration into the world of psychedelic drugs that was just opening up at the time, titled 'Doors of Perception'); Spiritism; ESP; UFOs; the origins of civilization in Sumer, and their gods (depicted on their cuneiform tablets with a star above their heads - what was that all about??) - you name it, I most probably read it.
And with a nod to Fawn Brodie's 'No Man Knows My History' biography of Joseph Smith, the founder of the so-called Mormon Church (real name: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints); which helped me to read my way out of having been born in that Church. Which process had to happen a few times, before it finally took. But that's all another story.
6 The Korean War - excuse me; the UN Police Action on the Korean peninsula - had come to an uneasy end while I was at university, but The Draft continued in place; not to be terminated until the Vietnam War forced that outcome, with both the Left and the Right in America following the public's lead on the issue.
(When both Barry Goldwater and Ted Kennedy could agree on an issue, you had to know that something was up. It's called democracy.)
7 In part because I had been a pre-Med at university. (Had actually received notice of admission to my university's Medical School starting the following year; when a funny thing happened to me on my way to it. I call it my 'spiritual experience'. It followed, by some time, the moment of epiphany I had had after my encounter with my deeper self in the ROTC quonset hut; but when I looked back at my life, as to what was going on for me at that time, I realized that the two occasions were organically tied together.
And this isn't the time or place to go into that story, either.)
No comments:
Post a Comment