Time and space

Well, another winter has gone by, and not a single post. I'm not really certain why this winter stopped all writing and reflection. All effort felt worthless and redundant - as though thought didn't deserve to be written about. The past few months weren't even particularly cold, but everything felt more dead than usual. But if dying leads to rebirth, then here is the beginning, another posting. No. Not just 'another post'. A return. Continuing. Perseverance. Carrying on, damn it.

Today's reflection is on who we really are and how we know ourselves. Let me put it another way - are we who the group tells us we are, no matter what that group may believe or practice, or are we something else? When the ancient philosophers said 'know thyself', who were they talking about?

Camus wrote about this, but through the lens of alienation; what we feel when we are not part of the group, or for some reason we come to represent everything that the group fears. When we have a belief that doesn't fit the mold we are invited to enter and celebrate, but the voice that protests is increasingly shouted down.

The newest writer to bring Buddhism to the West, Eckhart Tolle, claims that this reaction on the part of the group is particularly strong if we carry a negative charge, or if our 'pain-body' is very heavy. My initial reaction to the term 'pain-body' was negative, but if I alter the vocabulary, I can see his point. If you are struggling under some personal weight and it is visible, then that is naturally annoying to people who are struggling under that weight but spending a lot of time and money to hide it, not just from others, but from themselves. However his focus is on the individual, not the group. His fight is the twelve step program that vies with the ten commandments for our attention. Change what you can, and that generally will mean yourself, not others. The question here is, how much change is good? And where is our authenticity? Who are we?

But we do live in the real world, even if it doesn't seem particularly real at any given moment. What I mean by this is that maybe your parents told you, as mine did, that lying was a part of life - that only a fool would be honest. I'm not sure how I feel about this anymore. I think it can be taken to extremes, where you try to make yourself not only acceptable, but invisible. When any confrontation is turned into yet another chance to hide or deflect the issue, the human version of showing your belly to an opponent. The animal cry of 'don't hurt me', on the emotional plane. So Tolle is right then - hide your pain, don't focus on it, treat the group as though they were your best friends. That doesn't do justice though to what I assume is his point about not being our emotions. Maybe the question here involves how we remain authentic when we take in and judge what seems like a thousand emotions in a second, all responses leading to a certain outcome. Do we choose the one that represents us, or that we think represents our stance on the world, or do we look at life as a test and choose the best fit for the question? Do you want to fit in? Do you want this job? Do you want to be liked?

Of course, as someone said to me, the heroine doesn't have to slay the dragon in the first few chapters - sometimes it's enough just to get past it. Round two.

How do these questions fit into the injunction to know ourselves? Is there an overarching narrative - how did we get into this space, and how do we get out? How do we stop shouting 'don't hurt me', and get to the place where we stop hurting ourselves?

Because I don't think it's possible to be creative and thoughtful if you are either hiding or fighting. Being authentic may take a certain amount of showing your belly, but it's not easy to be real to yourself if you are being bullied or coerced into a certain manner of behaviour.

I think even being told to stand up for yourself becomes coercion, however gently meant.

The monk who cried as he told his story of persecution under the Chinese showed what happens when someone is real - we felt uncomfortable watching, but I don't think there was anyone that didn't understand how he felt. He was expressing himself without premeditation.

However, I know there are people who would have only seen that action as planned in advance - who would say that there are no actions that happen spontaneously. What there may be are a lot of hard, suffering people who said it didn't matter - and went back to fighting their own battles for survival, in the boardroom, in the office, wherever, who rejected any link between themselves and their super important lives and one plain man in a homespun dress, weeping openly. People who will sink beneath the weight of pain and cruelty and send that out as their reaction to the world.

So, how do we know ourselves if we are constantly under siege? Do we withdraw from the situation? Fight harder? Or give ourselves space to understand our reactions and creatively explore our thinking?

Adrienne Rich said that language revealed our failures. I think this piece skirts around the issue, and fails to engage with the real issue. But it introduces an idea. And maybe that failure brings up another point - are we sterile without interaction with another being, however toxic they may be?

What I liked about the Tolle book is that he addressed the issue of changing your circumstances if they were damaging. Not all acceptance is good then - look at the Tibetans - sometimes enough is enough.

With that in mind, I'm going to write job applications. And imagine a place where I am 'seen', not invisible, not dismissed, not ignored. A place where I can do work without fighting every corner, a group that is aware of itself enough to move forward.

Uh huh. I hear Sartre laughing. Is hell other people? When they limit us, and prevent us reaching for the more that is out there, absolutely. But is their hell necessarily ours? That's the question. Is it our need that creates this hell?

I'm going to focus on the positive, hoping it isn't an illusion, and being aware that at this moment in time, every single person I walk by in the street is thinking about the world in a completely different way. Whatever my mother told me, is wrong. There is not one single way to do anything.

When am I going to accept my way is right for me?

If that monk can cry before the world, how can I be too frightened at times to even speak my mind? Because I've been cut down for behaviour that only the ones at the top of the group can demonstrate. It takes power to be honest - now can we give ourselves that power, or do we wait for it to be given?

I think I know the answer to this one. But I have another one - if something is painful, is it better? If you like pain, everything is going to hurt, just like if you go in the shop and you like chocolate, you're not going to leave with just a newspaper. Or does pain become a habit, a family story, like Sunday roast, or plain toast without butter - what you have been told to do?

So what is the attraction of pain?

So many questions. That's enough for today.