Is Love all we need? You decide of course... but please watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mMRR0yP0C4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUE4CypfFS4&feature=related

The Dark Knight, Derrida, and a failure of autoimmunity...

After watching The Dark Knight, a columnist recently wondered about the ferry passengers in the Joker's "social experiment" (if you live in America and have a pulse, you'll know what I'm talking about):

"What if the detonators they were holding were actually for their own bomb?…and that in thinking they’d kill the others and save themselves, they’d only kill themselves."

Hmmm. Now there's a predicament that sounds politically familiar: our situation is a failure of autoimmunity. In other words, the patient is killing itself by deploying too high a fever. An hysterical response.

Here's a summary of the concept: It comes from Jacques Derrida, a philosopher deeply influenced by historical trauma, specifically colonialism in Algeria. His work originated the school of deconstruction: a method of reading text which seeks to disassemble any discourse standing as a "construction". Deconstruction demonstrates how if you read a thing against its own grain, it reveals something about itself which undercuts itself (this concept is sometimes called up as an "always, already").

How does it work?

Take 9/11 for example. Derrida deconstructs the "event" of 9/11 and problematizes the concept of terrorism. As always, he is interested in the question of language and how it is powerless to identify and label the attacks of September 11. The "event" is reduced to an "intuition without a concept", an "incantation" repeated continuously, by which the date "9/11" becomes more real to us than the actual event. Therefore, as we repeat the term "9/11" endlessly (in a traumatic "repetition compulsion") we become the continuing agents of our own trauma. We terrorize ourselves.

In this perspective, repeating the phrase "9/11" and compulsively attaching images of the towers falling, "spectacularize" September 11, and make it a "major event" in our psyches.

Even if we weren't there!

Derrida thus explores the suicidal temptation of "being there, as if." This could be called a "failure of autoimmunity" in contemporary American politics. For Derrida, "9/11 is the symptom of an autoimmune crisis occurring within the system that should have predicted it. Autoimmune conditions consist in the spontaneous suicide of the very defensive mechanism supposed to protect the organism from external aggression."

Fox News much?

This is how Derrida reads the stories which we tell ourselves about ourselves. He also calls up the heritage of the Cold War, during which the United States provided weapons and training in Afghanistan, and to the hijackers that actually perpetrated the September 11 attacks and contends that the 9/11 attacks were the manifestation of this suicidal paradox.

He observes the same failure of autoimmunity regarding the problematic expression of a "war on terrorism," because it tends to generate a "vicious circle of repression". In other words, by evoking a "war against terror," the United States terrorizes itself.

So too, the Joker tried to activate this psycho-logic in the passengers of the two ferries.

It didn't work. They stopped the cycle.

They grasped that the only way was a third way: throwing the detonators out the window. They'd have only been blowing themselves up anyway.

Yay for Hollywood naivete! Sometimes it's kinda wise. Never tell an entertainer to shut up and sing--they'll invariably surprise you.

Zen in the Art of Shooting Yourself

To gain a better insight into the paradoxical relationship between the way of the warrior and his responsibility for waging peace and war simultaneously, I have recently reread Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel, a German professor of Philosophy.

Here's an excerpt I found most intersting:

"The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art..."

This idea, "something of a quite different order" which finds similar expression in such texts as The Art of War, and the Tao Te Ching, would seem to render the idea of "reading the enemy as the enemy" impossible. If the target is oneself--if there is no fundamental difference--then killing can be a suicidal gesture.

Even according with Western mental health theory, deploying force often sustains more concentrated trauma to the perpetrator than the victim (assuming the victim survives, of course). This has been elegantly demonstrated in Spielberg's Munich and Henckel's The Lives of Others and dare I say in the real-life Sonderkommando at Auschwitz, Gen. Wesley Clark, Robert Oppenheimer, Maj. Claude Eatherley (commander of the spotter plane over Hiroshima), and possibly John McCain, to name but a few.

According to this vector, difference is erased between subject and object as a consequence of the act of violence... As my favorite teacher, Jacques Derrida, used to say: there is no différance = a French neologism on différer which puns on "to differ" and "to defer," i.e., closure in finding meaning is always deferred because things (especially signifiers/words) are never as they seem.

Yet, Derrida cautions that we still live in a world which demands provisional action and responsibility. As such, we continue to act "under erasure" which means we're all just shooting in the dark... but the shooting is sometimes, however rarely, consistent with the ethics of protecting the body and the body politic.

How do we decide when, where, and if, to act?

I would say it is here that the discussion often gets messy and, instead, I would like to demand intelligent specificity from my life.

However, speaking from experience and as I mature, I see that it is exactly topics like this which I revisit year-after-year... and more often than not, I simply cannot believe that "I actually said that"--but here goes, under erasure (how convenient):

This year, I will be traveling to Japan under a fellowship to study the beautiful but deadly Martial Arts of Kenjutsu. To prep, I have been examining Bushido, the traditional code of the warrior.

Please don't mistake this for a romanticization of the Samurai ala Zwick's culturally naive and condescendingly PC The Last Samurai (though I find some guilty pleasure in that film, I have to admit). But even though the Samurai messengers were feudal, womanizing warlords, their essential founders' message contains much wisdom.

The Bushido code is typified by these virtues:

• Rectitude (義 gi)
  
• Courage (勇 yuu)
  
• Benevolence (仁 jin)
  
• Respect (礼 rei)
  
• Honesty (誠 makoto or 信 shin)
  
• Honour (誉 yo)
  
• Loyalty (忠 chuu)
  
• Filial piety (孝 kō)
  
• Wisdom (智 chi)
  
• Care for the aged (悌 tei)
  

Each of these virtues demands a lifetime of study, but, in brief, you may notice that nowhere in this code is any specific exhortation to violence. Instead, we are given the moral framework for a life, not death.

However, in Bushido, if any of these virtues are directly threatened by an honorable adversary (i.e., one of equivalent or superior skill than you posses) or oneself, the warrior is obliged to do battle with the opponent (not "enemy") and/or herself; hence, the very important tradition of Sepuku which can be performed non-lethally by westerners as the Buddha recommends: "show endless patience to your self, but show no patience to your delusions." Literally kill your delusions for they are sometimes more skilled in deception than you are.

Your delusions truly are master terrorists and there can be no negotiation. They must be held to account, rapidly.

The delusions are:

• desirous attachment
  
• anger
  
• jealousy
  
• pride
  
• miserliness
  
• ignorance
  

Without constant vigilance, "moral bankruptcy" is inevitable if we posses these qualities overmuch. Note that if our "leaders" were to divorce themselves from these delusions, almost all wars after WWII would be nearly impossible to initiate.

And make no mistake, much of the Allies' intentions to enter and prosecute WWII, were fueled by these delusions. I would also say that their purposeful failure to target Auschwitz is in fact proof that, at best, "ignorance" was at play... and, at worst, "desirous attachment" to anti-semitism and economic expediency was the order of the day.

It is indeed very hard to get around the moral imperative to make war on genocide--and rightly so. But I would suggest that these clear-cut examples are far fewer than most of the conflict-zones currently under Western eyes.

So how does one "do" or "make" war as an individual?

Here, I believe we should return to the Gandhiesque approach as a default. Note that in the Buddhist, Sikh, Taoist, and even Sufist traditions, the sword is not a phallic symbol, but, instead, actually symbolizes "Shakti," the eternal feminine power. And like all things feminine, the sword is not a sword. It is also not a sloppy apologetic metaphor. Rather, it morphs fluidly into whatever weapon one yields according to one's talents.

There is no doubt in my mind that the peaceful placard is one of the finest weapons in the protester's arsenal. The proof is in how much true attention it has received during the 20th Century (e.g., India, South Africa, American Civil Rights, et al). It makes a difference or a différance, as you like. In this respect, the peaceful protestor acts honorably with the pure and brave heart of a warrior.

However, a nagging question remains: when I return from Japan, I will be far more skilled in the art of physical combat than I am currently. In fact, it may become my most precise skill.

What to do with it?

Obviously, this skill is in the mind as much as the body... and yet, I am troubled by the fact that if we were ever to encounter such a clear example of massive delusional forces, such as those which existed in WWII, would it be my wise honor and duty to actually fight? And what does it mean "to actually fight" in someone else's house, as it were? This opens up larger questions about the ethics of "collective security" and "peacekeeping operations," doesn't it?

I pray we will never, ever find a clear-cut context... but Rwanda, Darfur and a dozen other examples are not promising signs for the end of these questions.

On the other hand--and here we really get into metaphysics or "higher" consciousness--when is doing nothing exactly the appropriate thing to do? When does the system demand mindful observation rather than intervention, even if every cell in our mistrained body-mind is telling us to fight righteously on behalf of the oppressed?

Inside/Outside is not a binary... it's just incorrect.

I am resuming this blog as of today--it's been an incredible ride, one worth "putting out there" for consideration... mine = this is the simple truth of blogging as a state of solipsism. Note: solipsism can be a tremendous framework for generosity as it can (contingent on discipline) eliminate fear and delusions--they're all in the mind. So just deny them access to the mind. They do not invade from "outside" so solipsism facilitates the work done "inside":

For example, see:

In Praise of Shadows (陰翳礼讃 In'ei Raisan) by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

Some excerpts:


[W]e Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty. But the progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot. From candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light—his quest for a brighter light never ceases, he spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow.

I would call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration.

Celebrate Summer Solstice in NYC with Yoga

In celebration of the longest day of summer this coming Saturday, I'd like to invite those of you who live in and near NYC to join me for the following Yoga events--beginners and masters welcome:

Start the day with Yoga in Times Square:

See: http://www.timessquarenyc.org/about_us/events_solstice.html

If you're in the mood for more, my studio, Golden Bridge Yoga, is holding a free open house for Kundalini Yoga study from 11AM-4PM.

See: http://www.goldenbridgeyoga.com/

Kundalini Yoga is the oldest and most powerful of all the styles and is rarely taught in the West. Contrary to internet rumors, it isn't dangerous at all and even one class will do amazing things for your body and mind. Golden Bridge is the preeminent studio for Kundalini in NYC and our teachers are brilliant and generous.

Hope to see you there!

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

I apologize for the paucity of posts recently. As I've mentioned, I work as a director and one of my plays will be going up tomorrow evening. We work the night shift in theatre.

I have encountered some tremendous grace notes from the actors. I can see that they really are courageous people. I am also a little more open to acknowledging their fear on the night before a performance; that they are just professionals in need of some basic reassurance. I can provide that now, more meaningfully... and yet, in seeing their fear, I've become troubled by my role in this occupation. 

Flaubert kept a sign above his studio door which read: 

"Be orderly in your life so that you can be violent on the page."

I agree with the orderly part... and I still see tremendous value in ecstatic engagement with the violence of human stories... and yet... my mental focus and emerging sense of calm have been damaged by my professional engagement with "tragedy" onstage/on the page. 

This is a disquieting realization. Since I am not yet a master (in art or in practicing life), I am concerned about a certain kind of negative energy: the pain which one showcases when directing a play about human beings who are hurting. 

One cannot make art only from the POV of compassionate observer. I would say that good theatre moves beyond measured empathy with our characters. At some level (Method or other techniques) we must become them. There's a danger there that I didn't acknowledge or understand before.

I suspect this is something to ponder rather than act upon (no pun). Still, it's a bit disturbing to realize what one loves in life is potentially hazardous to health and spirit.

Battlestar G. is my Teacher Part II (spoilers)

For people who saw the finale. If we cannot forgive we will be in the last shot of the season. 

Religious people when faced with such imagery often say: repent now.

Frak that. Just forgive. 

Forgiving Dr. Mengele

I've shared this doc with quite a few people. The reaction is usually near violent disagreement. Yeah... the Ego dies hard.

A vibrator for your mind

Quantum physics and string theory have been subject to a lot of use and abuse in recent years by the spiritual community. 

Cough-cough-What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?-cough. 

Actually, as long as you keep your wits about you, it's a very beautiful documentary. But, please, please, after you're done viewing it, read something like The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene to make your inner science teacher happy.

However, taking the above as an inspiration only, I would like to make a more basic point here:  just as it is the nature of all atomic and subatomic particles to be in a state of constant vibration, consider your thinking--when you "talk to yourself" in your mind's ear, do you tend to monotone your inner monologue? I do. I drone it--that's why it's usually not helpful.

In kundalini yoga and mindful meditation which follows, a gong and singing bowls (the famous instrument from Nepal) are employed to literally vibrate the bodies of the students.

It's a very pleasant feeling. I like being vibrated--and who doesn't really? What one realizes after a while of practicing this (especially with chanting) is that your thinking's perspective is altered: you actually begin to think musically... sometimes in words and sometimes in images. Vladimir Nabokov, for example, claimed to have so mastered this process that he only thought in images. 

This is one of the ways through which one can realize that thinking isn't a bad thing--it's just that we don't do it very well. Like all things monotoned, so often there is a lack of color to what we call thinking.

Recommendation: try to think when your body is moving and see if you can apply a tempo or timbre to the words forming in your mind. For musicians and music lovers, it's often a lot of fun to try to think words out in a key--say A#. It really allows one to transform familiar thoughts into strange and new ideas. And making the familiar strange is literally the definition of divergent original thinking. 

Yoga on the MTA

Maybe it's just me... do you know how it seems when you learn a new word "all of the sudden" you hear or read it quite a bit. The question of coincidence--or an explanation for coincidence--is beyond the scope of this blog. However, one thing is certain, the more one is out of the apartment doing something, the greater the chance for synesthetic happenstance.

Case in point: After yoga tonight, I left the studio, and walked to the 6 train on Canal. In the station, I bumped into an actress I had worked with previously. She told me that she was coming home from work, a nightclub gig. 

Then she told me this job was secured for her by the very same person who inspired me towards studying yoga. 

Furthermore, this actress was looking for a studio in which to study kundalini yoga. I referred her to mine (Golden Bridge) and so the triangle was complete.

But there was more: at the next stop, as we were discussing the benefits of various styles, an entire class of yoga students from another school, hugger muggers dangling, got on the subway and started a sacral chant. It was sort of in jest, but after a while the whole car (half of which was taken up by the class) was either listening or participating in the chant. 

Summer in NYC. Get out of your apartment, right?

Enlightenment through entertainment?

Every Monday, I attend Kadam Morten's class (see my May 2nd post), sponsored by the Chakrasambara Buddhist Center.

For more info see: http://www.meditationinnewyork.org/

This class concluded his series on The Compassionate Warrior: The Six Practices of a Bodhisattva. It was entitled "Concentration: Power of the Focused Mind."

If I didn't know his presentation style better, one could have mistaken Kadam Morten's countenance as stern. The focused, skilled mind is no laughing matter in Buddhist thought--well, actually everything is a laughing matter in Buddhist thought.

For example, the following joke is one which I'm told His Holiness the Dalai Lama is quite fond of:

What did the Buddhist monk say to the hotdog vendor? "Make me one with everything."

When the monk asked for his change, the vendor replied, "Change comes from within."

Buddhist humor, no less than a skilled mind, is actually an exercise in accomplishing multiple tasks with one clean and efficient gesture. The joke (and the famous "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" is most certainly a form of joking) rips up language and preconception--it's a form of entertainment. Comedy is effective--especially stand up--when the practitioner is focused on disrobing cliche.

Similarly, Kadam Morten's style is light-hearted but tough-minded. However, as I noted, his approach to the topic of Concentration had a tactical urgency to it. It is his belief that the focused mind is the finest weapon wielded by the compassionate warrior, an illusion smashing nuke, as it were. 

Kadam pointed to distraction, particularly our attachment to being "plugged in," the new human condition lived "online," as the counter-measure to this weapon. 

OK, so far nothing new or groundbreaking. Admittedly, freeing the mind and focusing it is also not new... we just never seem to get it. So these poor Buddhist monks have to repeat themselves over and over until we lay-practitioners catch up. 

When I asked him if that meant unplugging as the solution--he shook his head. Buddhist approaches very rarely advise a retreat from the world. Instead, the idea is to re-contextualize the world from your mind's point-of-view. Everything is an obstacle course for your mind to train. 

Solipsistic much? Yes, very. And that's a good thing because it allows one to be genuinely compassionate and generous. 

I then asked him if unplugging isn't the way to go per se, what challenges does entertainment provide for the mind? He pointed to TV's preoccupation with death. For the average western person, distance from death is at a maximum right now. Actual death's visibility is either sanitized, or removed completely. The nature of the impermanence of all things is less keenly felt now more than ever before. As such, Kadam suggested that every time we see death on TV or in cinema, it can serve as a strong reminder to consider one of the most important precepts of wisdom: everything dies. Please consider it and do not welcome fear into your mind as you do so.

Of course, such meditation begs the important question (also too oft repeated but rarely put into practice): what would you do if today was your last? 

Live that way by choice. Because one day it really will be your last day. 

Conclusion: Focus. And make absolutely certain that you are entertained and are entertaining during that process.

Battlestar G. is my teacher

I will write more about this topic over the coming days: the rising idea of forgiveness in pop-culture... how are we seeing the need for grace in entertainment? 

My first example: Battlestar Galactica

Huh? I'm kidding, right? What's with the cheesy title for starters?

Well, for those who aren't yet in the know--trust me, it's worth your time--I recommend a recent Salon feature, titled: 

Everything you were afraid to ask about "Battlestar Galactica"

A complete primer on the smartest sci-fi TV show ... maybe ever.

By Thomas Rogers

http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2008/04/02/bsg_explainer/

"...by virtue of its strong writing and naturalistic style, the series manages to be engaging and politically relevant. Its creator, Ronald Moore, uses "Battlestar's" universe as a funhouse mirror for American post-9/11 cultural anxieties. Since the miniseries' initial Cylon attack -- with its parallels to the events of Sept. 11 -- "Battlestar" has broached topical debates about torture, military occupation, abortion, genocide and war crimes. It has managed to do so while avoiding the trap of strained allegory and partisan politics..."

And how does forgiveness figure here?

To quote http://redblueamerica.com/:

"Battlestar Galactica" and America after 9/11

"'Battlestar Galactica'" is perhaps the smartest and most comprehensive artistic meditation on life in post-9/11 America that exists in all of popular culture... At the end of Season Three, in fact, Lee Adama -- the admiral's son -- gives a rousing courtroom speech. Everybody, he says, has committed awful mistakes in the course of trying to survive the end of the human race. But those sins should be forgiven, he suggests, because everybody is trying their best in the face of unspeakable evil. Left and right, we all need to give each other a little grace."

If sci-fi can change it's spots and really speak to us like the adults we are... then the sky's the limit. That's the final frontier; or put another way, consider Battlestar's thesis: survival is not enough--you have to earn it, be worthy of it. One accomplishes this by finding grace in situations where it is profoundly absent from the scene. You have to make your redemption stick. Every day. And then you have to live with your choice. Every day.

1 Week: serenity now

I am very tired so this will be short. This week has been one of the best--or at least one the most radically different--in my life.

I have been inspired--by choice. By the ability to actually choose to be happy. And I've even inspired a few people. My friends have asked me: what are you up to? You look great!

Two people even suggested that I seem "serene". 

Surely that's the goal. It's nice to know that I am seen by others in a positive light. It feels good. I think it will continue.

And finally the night of rest...

Tonight was wonderful. 

Based on the last six days of work, I finally feel happiness that is meaningful: my friends detected a change in me and responded organically with warmth. They embraced my new focus on THEM. They responded enthusiastically as they noted that I was really interested in THEIR lives.

They enjoyed our time together--and so did I. 

I meet up with my friends almost every Friday night. And for the first time in three years I was truly happy with them. 

Why? Because--FINALLY!--I was a friend.

Some wanted to know what I'd been up to that felt so realistically palpable to them--in fact, they wanted in. I recommended the practice of yoga which has been so transformative for me. But in the end of the day, in the evening, it was due to the fact that I listened. Really. The night was about them from my POV. I chose to make it so... as much as I could. And in the language of capitalist economics: the relationships returned dividends based on real investment. And in the far more generous language of socialism: the smallest divisible human unit is at least two people, not one.

My friends and I now have an economy or a collective going on, depending on your political outlook. The result is the same: we are not in a hopeful welfare situation anymore.

We exchanged.

The lesson: practice in the form of rehearsal, when done with intent, pays off in performance. As I noted in a previous posting, I am a theatre director, not an actor. My friends are all actors. They know what it means to put themselves on the front lines. Tonight, their director decided to be an actor. 

Now I know what a director must do in rehearsal = act. Do.

If this post seems grandiose as it surely will to me in the morning, I ask for this: if you've ever been happy, and realized that it came from love and you were desperate for more... know that love may be the only sustainable happiness. It can be felt again tomorrow. Choose to do it. With effort. It's a choice. 

Actors frequently talk about "choice" because those are the moments to moments which build a full performance.

Thank you, friends. I'm grateful.

And there was evening and there was morning: on 24

Day 5:

This is why I don't own a TV: I stopped by a friend's apartment earlier this evening and he was strung out on his 4th DVD of 24 which apparently he's been watching for the last 12 hours--straight.

I used to find 24 immensely entertaining until Jack Bauer (and the show in general) became certain that torture was the way to go. Now we--the audience--let Jack get away with, and righteously enjoy the torture because his hyper-moral clarity and certitude tell us its ok, necessary, inevitable.

In earlier seasons of 24, torture was not the sadistic show-stopper it has become--torture was even dismissed as an option by Jack on several occasions because "it would take too much time"... but now, it's really become sick and I've definitely watched people "getting off" on this... maybe the lack of a grey zone surrounding the torture on 24 (a FOX network show after all) makes it easier for conservatives and liberals to sleep after Abu Ghraib. I don't know...

I work in theatre. I direct plays. I'm not exactly known for directing light-hearted pieces. Like Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, when given choice of material, I'll always go over to the dark side (they have cookies) and praise shadows specifically because rolling that way demands rigor of interpretation. Why? Because, if you "fake it," if you try to to force the light from the dark in these plays, then you quickly realize that you're practicing kitsch.

And kitsch, like certainty, seems to me to be one of the worst bad-faith gestures I can think of.

So dark plays can sometimes force honesty from us. 24 isn't dark. It's gauzed up, bloody kitsch. It doesn't really confront torture--it denies its awfulness by making it safe to enjoy.

Right now, I'm rehearsing Samuel Beckett's "Endgame"--what a force against certainty, against fascist aesthetics; relentlessly questioning and without answer.

If Freud is right, or even partially right, our need for psychic payback, vengeance against perceived wrongs, and aggression in general is a drive which cannot and should not be denied. But how we express this need, as artists, or consumers of art--even when watching 24--perhaps there is a demand for more questioning, no?

Day and Night: Separated?

Day 4:

In general, for the seeker, I think it's important to look at the "return to Freud" trend which has dominated critical theory and even the social sciences over the past few years.

This is based on a refreshing reappraisal of his work. Many people (feminists included) have noted upon rereading Freud, that his approach is a great deal more subtle and "tough minded" than was popularly thought.

Particularly in works like "Civilization and its Discontents," and especially "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," Freud repeatedly indicates how the logic of the psyche operates in "compromise formation" like a palimpsest. A palimpsest is defined by Webster as:

Main Entry:
pa·limp·sest 
Pronunciation:
\ˈpa-ləm(p)-ˌsest, pə-ˈlim(p)-\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Latin palimpsestus, from Greek palimpsēstos scraped again, from palin + psēn to rub, scrape; akin to Sanskritpsāti, babhasti he chews
Date:
1825
1 : writing material (as a parchment or tablet) used one or more times after earlier writing has been erased
2 : something having usually diverse layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface 

So, when Freud talks about "the death drive" and "the life drive" (i.e., traditionally thought to be an  binary which is analogous to thanatos vs. eros, anxiety vs. rest, inertia vs. the second law of thermodynamics, death vs. sex) he is not describing two mutually independent drives.

Quite the contrary!

Freud says if the psycho-logic operates like a palimpsest, in compromise formation, then our minds are always (must always) wrestle with paradox: the paradox of self-destruction emerging from our most creative instincts and similarly creativity emerging from our most aggressive impulses. How we act out these strange bedfellows on the mind is dependent largely, according to Freud, on cultural context.

Interestingly, as a side-result of the renewed serious attention paid to Freud, Jung has completely disappeared from the academic radar screen. He is seen as little more than a new age symbolist, a deck of tarot cards. In all my undergrad and grad classes, I haven't once heard his name mentioned with anything but dismissal. 

That’s a shame. I hope Jung finds a similar renaissance. In fact, I know more than one physicist who secretly enjoys reading Jung.

Surfacing

Day 3:

Here's what I'm learning to believe:

A Mayan proverb: If you do not ask, you will be lost.

As one begins to step across the limn of a different way to live, the dissolution of unskilled thinking is key. Keep asking for more focus as you fight through illusion and step onto dry land.

Ask penetrating, insightful questions.

Ask these questions precisely.

Demonstrate to yourself that your mind may finally function as more than just a noisy reflex organ.

It may now become simply elegant.

But make no mistake: the dissolution of the cringing mind, the end of an addiction to the disease of thinking MUST NOT EVER manifest itself in anti-intellectualism.

More than anything else, unmindful anti-intellectualism is responsible for the madness of our unending state of war.

But unskilled finger pointing is also unmindful. It is also banal. So I will stop doing so.

Instead, I would emphasize that the only thing that matters is that you or I must not fall into this trap on the way to waking up.

Anti-intellectualism is a form of spiritual death.

Kitsch, sentimentality, and tautology are not acceptable or appropriate tools for the seeker.

There is such energetic rigour and specificity required in the work of skilled living.

Where you find kitsch, you will not find enlightenment.

Why?

Because kitsch is incompatible with meaningful questions.

Anti-intellectualism is incompatible with meaningful questions.

I'll close this post with an excerpt taken from Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It may be very familiar to many of you, but it rewards another close reading:

"The fact that until recently the word 'shit' appeared
in print as s--- has nothing to do with moral
considerations. You can't claim shit is immoral, after
all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The
daily defecation session is daily proof of the
unacceptability of Creation. Either/or: either shit is
acceptable (in which case don't lock yourself in the
bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable
manner.

It follows, then, than the aesthetic ideal of the
categorical agreement with being is a world in which
shit is denied and everyone acts as if it did not
exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch.

'Kitsch' is a German word born in the middle of the
sentimental 19th century, and from German it entered
all Western languages. Repeated use, however, has
obliterated its original metaphysical meaning: kitsch
is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal
and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes
everything from its purview which is essentially
unacceptable in human existence." (Kundera 248)

Firmaments

When I go looking in search of what I've lost--if I bend literary--well, that would be fun. But it wouldn't have any love in it.

Remember: in things past, blogs, talk, and text--it's all been said. Time after time.

That's OK.

Reader, that's OK.

This post is simple minded. It's been said before. In this one case, I have no problem with that.

So: on the second day of this blog, I would like to show some love. I am grateful to Kadam Morten Clausen for his lucid, lucid, lucid lecture delivered earlier tonight. It was entitled: Effort: Enjoying Life

See this link for more info: http://www.meditationinnewyork.org/Resident_Teacher.php

Kadam Morten noted that:

1) Things we do which we say "make us happy" are said to do so because they function as a "relief" from a prior state. For example, after work, we might go golfing. Perhaps the day at the office did not make us happy.

2) However, after sufficient time, happy at the links, we need relief from the golfing as well. Every golfer has to and wants to call it a day after a point. In fact, it would make them unhappy to continue.

One could imagine a version of Sisyphus' hell as a never ending golf tournament, caddying ones irons from hole to hole. Indefinitely.

3) The same could be said of any thing which provokes a "happy" state of mind.

4) For example: Pizza makes me happy. So theoretically the more pizza I eat, the happier I'll be. But after two or three slices... a fourth, let alone a fifth becomes nauseating. The effort will not repay itself.

Interim conclusion: happiness that requires effort will burn out.

Well...

Maybe not...

To "obtain" happiness as a thing, something outside to be annexed, surely that requires effort. And one only has just so much effort on reserve.

Is there another happiness? One which you couldn't give or get enough of when you were a child and--hopefully--when you are an adult? One which will never burn you or itself out, even though it requires much effort?

Yes. And you know what it is.

If you've forgotten, as I have--we'll I'm making an effort! Immediately.

Seriously, like right now.

It's sustainable. I'm told.

In the beginning was fear

In the beginning--of this--there was and is fear...

But there is no false profundity.

Beginnings, especially written beginnings, are only "hard" because I want to impress somebody.

So there will be only one commitment here: there will be no pretense. It will be avoided. Rigorously.

Instead: honesty. As best I know how. I suspect honesty actually improves with use. I wouldn't know. Yet. But I'd like to.

This blog is a journal. A journal's function is to record. I will do that. I am doing that. As simply and as honestly as I know how now.

The Goal: So that in the end I may return to this point and KNOW there was no beginning and end. There is only now.

I don't know that. Now. Maybe I will.

I'd like to.

Here. Now.

Giving testimony:

I'm here.

The rest hasn't been written yet...

I'm doing that.

Now.