Journal of a Soul 45

Wooden sculpture, Botanic Gardens, Belfast

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

The above rather long quotation with which I begin this post this evening is the third stanza of W. B. Yeats's masterful poem Sailing to Byzantium.  This poem recounts the Nobel Laureate's frustration with the body as he grows old.  The first stanza talks about Byzantium's being "no country for old men," stanza two that "(a)n aged man is but a paltry thing", and then in the above quoted stanza we read that the poet's heart or soul is "sick with desire//And fastened to a dying animal//It knows not what it is."  In other words, Yeats is cursing the body in a way, or at least writing it off as a very frail vessel for the soul/heart. Now, these poetic sentiments are all very much in the tradition of Western Philosophy and Western Theology, firmly reinforced by the Cartesian dualism inaugurated in the seventeenth century and almost fully swallowed whole by more unquestioning scholars in the centuries thereafter.  What I am speaking about here is what the modern English philosopher Gilbert Ryle decried as the "ghost in the machine," a severe criticism of Descartes' mind-body dualism or mainline Christianity's  soul-body dualism.

Immortality, a work I reviewed here.  The exact sentence that elicited this post were: “But it is precisely in this contradiction that I find the crux of the human condition: our heads are full of dreams but our behinds drag us down like an anchor.” (Immortality  by Milan Kunders, Faber and Faber, London, 1992, translated by Peter Kussi, pp. 269-270). 

Body and Mind/Soul/Self

Art on concrete path, Baldoyle, Dublin

Some of the more vexed questions that bother me from time to time, and perhaps sometimes the readers of this rambling journal, are (i) whether the mind equates to the self, (ii) whether the self equates with the soul, (iii) whether the three concepts are really the same and (iv) whether any one of the three survives after death or more specifically whether in my more spiritual moments I really believe that the soul itself continues in another dimension of existence after we have "shuffled off this mortal coil" (Shakespeare) and have left the "dying animal" (Yeats) behind.  These questions bring me into the land of mystery and wonder, rather than into the land of strong belief on the one hand or the land of strong unbelief on the other.  After much reading, study, reflection and discernment I still remain with an open mind, not too sure at all, at all, but that is fine - after all, what is wrong with open-ended-ness?

Where does all the foregoing speculation lead?

Speculation is just that, speculation.  In the end, we humans are left with our experience.  No concepts, no matter how intellectually convincing they may  be, will, in the end, "cut the mustard" or "come up to the mark" when it comes to matters of deep human or existential concern like when we are faced with life or death crises, deep emotional pain or some such human trauma. And so, where does the speculation lead?  In a sense, all speculations only matter as supports for what's deeply held in our experience.  It's hard most times, I believe, to move from speculation or thoughts or theories into deep conviction, though if we are to believe many authors, both theists and atheists, that thoughts and thinking can and do lead to deep confidence in this or that principle.  However, I have always been captivated by John Keats's remark that "axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses." In other words, we will deeply hold philosophical (or theological) axioms only when we have validated them first in our experience.  Hence, the only place we can really turn, then, when we have ceased all our intellectual explorations is to return to the, perhaps not very solid, but nonetheless somewhat firm ground of our own experience.  It is to this ground of personal experience to which I wish to devote the immediately following series of posts.

Journal of a Soul 20

Searchers for, or Makers of  Meaning?

It is wonderful to write one's thoughts, give them shape and pattern on a page, and even see them take a virtual form that can be summoned up at the touch of a button or as a random connection to some remotely connected search on Google, initiated by an unknown soul.  Then that those thoughts might be read, that they might even elicit a response only adds to the wonderment.  There are times when I wonder do my thoughts precede my words or do my words precede me thoughts - the hen-egg conundrum in another guise.  And yet, I believe instinctively that it is the interplay of both, that dynamism, or symbiosis even, where one supports the other that is more important.  

As I write these thoughts, I also fully realise that these thoughts write me, that they are, in fact, giving shape to "me", forming my selfhood.  We find our selves (and I deliberately disjoin this word) in doing, in action and in all things that we pursue to give our little lives meaning.  As I have said in these posts so many times before, we are meaning-making creatures, and the greatest meaning we can make is our very own SELF.  Again, we shape our selves in another important way to - by simply learning to be and become the person we were innately meant to be.  In that sense we make ourselves by metaphorically travelling in two directions as it were, by going without (going out and interacting with others and the world) and by going within (through meditation and contemplation, through entering the stillness of not alone one's own being, but discovering in that stillness the unity of all being of which the self is put a drop in the ocean.).

And yet, I don't want to make too much of "making meaning" here.  I wish, rather to comment on the human condition insofar as it relentlessly searches for meaning.  In a sense, this is almost a counter spiritual movement if it is a fraught and lonely search that reveals very little meaning, maybe even frustration and despair.  In this sense, I am writing here about the very heart of existentialism - that lonely search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless world.  Searching for meaning can be both a spiritual and a disillusioned aspiritual (I'm not sure if this word exists, but unspiritual is certainly not what I mean, what I mean is a-spiritual in the way amoral relates to moral!) quest at one and the same time.  Let us not dwell too much on the sheer meaninglessness of life as Camus would have it in his version of the great myth of Sisyphus. 

Ah, dear reader, you are probably wondering where these thoughts are going to at all, at all.  In these posts, I often believe I am feeling my way in the dark, but hopefully with a little more direction than Mulla Nasruddin searching for his lost key under the light of the street lamp simply because there was more light there than in the dark house where he had lost it.  And so let me come to some point in this meandering post.  Last Thursday evening I had the pleasure to view the wonderful film The Great Gatsby.  Indeed, it was to my mind wonderfully loyal to the book, or at least to my memory of it from years ago - having read it for my Leaving Certificate many years ago when I was a young lad of 17 years. What comes across in the film is the sheer feeling of lostness, of being cut adrift on an ocean of multiple, though colourful and alluring experiences; of searching for something of value, almost irretrievably lost in that multiplicity; of tasting excess after excess and finding it all so hollow.  What is it, at all, that can make us humans really happy?  Why do things, which we once desired so much, eventually leave such a rotten taste in the mouth?  

In a sense, this book or film is quintessentially about F. Scott Fitzgerald himself.  After all, all writing is inevitably autobiographical  when pondered and reflected upon and cut back to the bone.  One quotation I placed on the flyleaf of a recent piece of work was a quotation from this wonderful Irish American writer.  That quotation runs:  “Five years have rolled away from me and I can’t decide exactly who I am, if anyone.  (Letter, 1932).  He had written The Great Gatsby in 1925 at the young age of 29, when he was obviously a searcher for meaning in a fraught and intense way.  One can see this search for meaning (let's call it meaning as revealed in love, in human love - yet very much in this case in the form of the classical love for the unobtainable beloved) in the following quotation about Gatsby which we find in the first chapter:

―He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far way, that might have been the end of a dock.

           (Scribner's paperback edition, p. 21)

That green light in the darkness marked where his beloved Daisy Buchanan lived with her millionaire husband Tom.  And, indeed, we instinctively know that this love is pretty much unobtainable, and the fog that is not quite as thick as that in Eugene O'Neill's wonderful play Long's Day's Journey into Night, is all too indicative of lostness: "―If it wasn‘t for the mist we could see your home across the bay…You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock." (Ibid., p.92)

And then, there is that very sad expression, which is the very antithesis of all spirituality, that suggests that the only way of steering our barque of self through the choppy waters of life is by living in the past or by the vain attempt to recapture that past in the now..  The quotation I have in mind is given almost verbatim in the movie:

"Can‘t repeat the past?‘ he cried incredulously. Why of course you can!" He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand...  I‘m going to fix everything just the way it was before," he said, nodding determinedly. "She‘ll see."

―He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy.  (Ibid., p.110)

In this sense, then, as I have already stated, this could be said to be an aspiritual quest, an illusive and elusive quest.  Those of us who deeply accept the spiritual life believe fervently in living in the now.  Indeed, we could say that Gatsby was living in a spiritual or existential hell, well before Albert Camus gave it philosophical form.

One theme of this novel  or film could be stated as follows: Dwelling in the past can only result in obsession and misfortune. We cannot transplant ourselves into the past again as it is passed and gone forever. The future misfortune can only be prevented by learning from the past.  Gatsby simply had not learned this lesson.  Another theme would be: Some of us drink in and swallow whole the illusion that the rich person's life is perfect.  In other words, we confuse illusion with reality.  After all, is this not one of the main symptoms of mental illness - that the border lines between illusion and reality are very blurred indeed? Another theme, still, would be that when dreams become an obsession they fall out of our reach.  Finally, another theme would be that wealth is not all it's cracked up to be; that the American dream may be linked to wealth, but that it is much, much more, too.

In writing this novel of quest for meaning, F. Scott Fitzgerald penned a classic which has made his name immortal in human culture as he pointed out the sham which life can be.  Deep down as humans we know we want more.  The tragedy may be that this wonderfully gifted writer F. Scott Fitzgerald may not have truly realised how great a writer he was and that his finely crafted words would live on after he had passed into the mist or fog of the past as a person.

Reading the book and viewing the film can only affect us deeply if we are at all human.  Both will push us to want to live in the now with an eye to our future. We can never, for an instant really believe the words of the narrator as we finish the novel or film, because we know, that like Gatsby we, too, will be lost forever in the fog of our own illusion if we do:

―I thought of Gatsby‘s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy‘s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could barely fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night....

―Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that‘s no matter – to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And one fine morning...

―So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.(180, 182)

Journal of a Soul 7

The universal call to be Mindful: The Bell

It is said well that the longest journey is from the Head to the Heart.  In making our slow way through life we have to engage both, otherwise we are in danger of doing damage to both the Self and to the Other.  The philosopher in me tells me that there is also the faculty of the Will to be engaged also.  Thinking and Feeling alone will not bring me safe and sustained along the road of being and becoming.  There is also the ethical drive in me to will to do the right thing.

When literature really speaks to me is when the author either consciously or unconsciously engages at least two of the three faculties of Head, Heart and Will.  I have just recently finished reading John McGahern’s wonderful book That They May Face The Rising Sun, and therein the author writes with a lightness of touch that can only come after much practice at his craft and after a deep melding of Head and Heart and Will.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said that the signs of a great style of writing in any author were simply the right words in the right places.

Now, to get the right words in the right places is no easy task orally, let alone in its written format.  How often do we “put out foot in it” with others by insensitively using the wrong words?  In short we often don’t engage heart and head in unison. 

Indeed, in the old days a lot of people who made it to the top were often what the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) called high Ts or high Thinkers.  Nowadays all Business and Administrative courses use many different indicators to train their students so that those who get into any position of power will know more about what makes us humans tick.  Heart and Head have to be deployed in unison for the better (I won’t say best) decisions to be made by any of us in any human encounter.

Then, there is the classic quotation from T.S.Eliot’s play Murder in the Cathedral which deals with the assassination of Saint Thomas a Becket which our author places in Thomas’s mouth: “It is far better to do the right thing for the right reason, than merely doing the right thing for the wrong reason.”  Now, the words I have quoted here are not verbatim, but they capture the essence of what Eliot had in mind.  It is easy, and indeed right to give money to charity.  It is perhaps easier to give it if you know that others will be impressed.  However, we all know that in this latter case the person’s motivation is selfish and ego-centric.  He or she is doing the right thing for the wrong reason.  There are, then, those who give to charity and they do so quietly – these are doing the right thing for the right reason.  Those who belong to the existentialist school speak of the second of these actions being authentic and the first inauthentic.

To travel the road to Selfhood is no easy task.  When one questions one’s motivation from time to time one often finds that we are a cauldron of contradictions.  We are a mix of motivations, and have not really sorted out what the Self is at all. 

Even the art of grafitti can call us to Meditation!

Meditation, I find, is a good tool to help the Self reach some sort of equilibrium, but it has its high points and its low points.  Let me explain.  There are some people who literally cannot sit still – they have to be up and doing all the time.  This is more than likely because sitting still will cause them to look inside to face the abyss within.  Slowing down, then, is a far too costly thing to do if it means facing what they cannot accept about themselves.  It is often crises in their lives like a heart attack, a bout of cancer, or the sickness or death of a loved one which makes them stop in no uncertain manner to face the real Self within.

Even for those of us who have looked inside and faced the abyss, all is not a garden of roses either.  Sometimes within I find a sense of a very fragile and brittle Self, a Self that can be buffeted way too much and way too easily by the winds of change.  Now, indeed, at other times I find a stronger and more solid sense of Self, too.  But, I can never guarantee which Self I shall encounter.  As I say, even though I have been meditating for years, and possibly not as often and as regularly as I should over those years is no guarantee that I still don’t have to wrestle with “my inner demons.”  That’s why meditation is no panacea, no quick cure for a troubled soul. Meditation brings us down into the abyss of the Self and we will find many frightening things below in the unconscious level of the Self.

However, that’s where the practice of literally concentrating on one thing only, say the breath can bring a stillness or, in the title of a previous blog I wrote, a Still Point – the method of concentration or still-pointedness, if you like. The other main method of meditation – that of awareness – can lead, I find to a dissipation or separation or scattering of the Self as there may be too much going on to be aware of.  Hence, to return to the method of concentration can draw the dissipated, separated and scattered parts of the Self somewhat together.

There is nothing as bad as when I am scattered or “all over the place” or confused or pulled in many directions at any one time.  It is at these times that meditation can help.  It is also at these times that I attempt to engage the Heart as well as the Head, and, indeed the Will.

Journal of a Soul 6

Cross on old ruined Church, Badolato Marina

The early Christians spoke of their being “in via,” or on the way to Heaven or the Kingdom of God.  In this last sentence, it is the beautiful and succinct Latin phrase “in via” that I want to highlight.  All cultures and all religions, which by definition are cultural phenomena, speak of the metaphor of travelling, or journeying or making a pilgrimage.  I have always liked those rather reflective and quirky Westerns starring Clint Eastwood, because they captured the lonely soul on his/her way or journey.  However, the Pilgrim in question is more often than not a very misguided soul, and yet the example stands in the sense of our travelling through the wilderness of life. In fact, in some of those Westerns the term “Pilgrim” is used quite frequently. 

In American literature and films, one gets the sense of the early Pioneers striking out into the unknown deserts, mountains and prairies in search of a “Promised Land” so to speak.  I have always felt that the case of the Native American Indian was never given fair treatment in 99% of those Westerns.  Indeed, in actuality, it appears to this rather ignorant writer on the far side of the great Atlantic Ocean that the poor Native American Indians got treated harshly, all too harshly by the so called enlightened early Pilgrims.  However, as I say, that is an uneducated view from afar.

Anyway, my point here is that the Spirituality of these Native Indians is very attractive and grounded in the cycles of the Seasons.  Theirs is a rich and pure spirituality with a wisdom all its own.  Again, over the years I have only got the vaguest glimpses of it in this or that rare film or in this or that rare novel.  Then, those of us in any way au fait with the Ecological or Green Movements in any of their incarnations will be very aware of the great speech of Chief Seattle which is quoted very frequently in such literature.



Lizard at the top of ruined church, Badolato

We are very much creatures of the earth, bound to the cycles of its movements about the great and sustaining Star called simply Sun.  As I type these few reflective words in the South of Italy the Sun is high, very warm and burning of the skin at some 32 degrees Centigrade.  There are no signs of the little lizards which come out along my back patio in some numbers in the calm of the less hot evenings.  As I sit and rejoice in this retreat time in the South far away from the colder Northern climes of Ireland, I am reminded here also of the closeness of humankind to the Seasons.  These are very much a peasant people here in the Mezzogiorno, a people who work slowly and surely to the patterns set down as paradigms by Nature.  These are a people in harmony with the world, just like the American Indian or like the Irish peasant, of whose origins I am proud to be.

It is so hard to have a spiritual sense in a large city.  Or as I remember reading somewhere once: it is hard to put down roots in a concrete jungle.  A lot of our cities, especially in the poorer quarters where human beings are forced to live shoulder to shoulder, eyeball to eyeball, one on top of another with very little “elbow room” as the great John Henry Cardinal Newman put it.  He was describing his freedom to research and his freedom to think for himself actually, but his words are lovely and indeed apt for our purposes here, are they not?  What little elbow room all those children have to be themselves in the modern concrete jungles of our cities.  This writer, as you have long since discovered, is a romantic and indeed a peasant – or countryman – at heart.  The words of a local woman, who is the landlady of small agriturismo lodgings, come to mind here.  Proudly she told me in her native language – “Sono Contadina” – “”I am a peasant.”  To her, I replied simply, “Anch’io, sono contadino nella sangue” – “I, too, am a peasant in the blood.”

To bring these few words to a conclusion, I will mention here a wonderful Irish novel that I am reading.  It is called That They May Face The Rising Sun, and it is written by one of the greatest twentieth century Irish novelists, the late great John McGahern.  This is a novel written in the simplest and easiest of styles with a flow that only closeness to nature could have begotten.  McGahern is of all too obvious obvious peasant roots.  He writes like an angel, inspired by the movements of the earth around our great Sun Star.  He writes with a consummate ease that can plumb the depths and scale the heights of the human heart and soul.  As any observer and lover of nature will know: everything in its province has its time and its season.  Just as surely as the sun goes down it will rise again tomorrow.  Just as surely as an old cow dies another calf will delight the on-looking eyes of a farmer’s child.  Just as surely as the storms and rains come the calm of the cloudless skies will return.  Those of us close to nature will realise that we, too, are part of that very same cycle.  We humans come and go.  No sooner has one poor soul ceased breathing on this earth of ours than another soul will be born into the bounty of the earth.

The sad thing is that it takes us a lifetime to learn the simplicities of life, the simplicities which our forefathers acquired ever so easily because they were so close to nature.  We have lost a lot in gaining such advancement in technology.  Not that I am decrying technology here as I use the Internet a lot and find it comforting and useful, and even sometimes distracting and even rewarding.  I am no Luddite.  My point is simple – we moderns have become so alienated from our true nature as part of the cycles of the Seasons.  We moderns have become alienated from our real Selves, what it means to be truly human in this wonderful, if at times painful, world.