Quality Of Life

Quality Of Life

I think I developed a sense of the Other very early on. I remember standing in front of the mirror of my mother's vanity and singing to my reflection the melodious question, "what was my name before I was born?" Just  childish nonsense, or an intimation of another dimension where little Steverino was who, or what? At the very least more. I've always felt I was more not just merely. I used to love standing with my back to the morning or evening sun casting a giant shadow. Something would well up inside of me until I felt that I truly was the same size and I became impatient with being just a little boy.

The canyon formed by the tenement I lived in and the one across the way only allowed me a limited view of my young world. So I'd often climb the three flights of stairs to the neighbor's porch (Mrs. Pena) and look out over the top of my building at the southeastern Berkshire Hills. I imagined walking along the crest of those green blue mountains. Not as a little boy but as that great something else living inside me. Back then everything was supercharged, but I was too young to give it meaning: it was pure feeling. I always talked to It (myself), and still do. It's only with the advancing years that I've started answering back.

The Other was always there, but not always warm and fuzzy. The hair on my head and the back of my neck would often rise in the presence of shadows in the corners of darkened rooms or in the back of closets. Naturally, nighttime were the worst and I often went to sleep with the covers pulled up over my head. Then the adults gave It a name and for a long time I was afraid of the Bogey Man. They convinced me that he was coming to get me: and he is.

He's not scary anymore, this great unknown whose true name is Death. I figure Death has to be masculine. Men are by design alone. Everything for them is external. They do contribute a basic ingredient, but Life grows and emerges from out of the female and is able to continue. The Other is the memory of once having been part of an other. As long as there is Life the cycle continues. Isn't it ironic that as long as Life goes on Death continues also. They dance the eerie but beautiful Waltz Macabre.

Conception through to decomposition is attended by the (M)Other. Is that why men universally call out to their mothers when they die traumatically?

The Other continued to be present as I grew taking on the garments of worry. Each year it seemed that the struggle became harder as I grew and became more competent. The dance morphed into a grappling match. At times my breath would catch in my throat. Interestingly, it was because I didn't think that I was struggling hard enough: my pile wasn't large enough. I suspected that I was disappointing. But to whom?

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

Why?

Around this time I began to picture the Other with a benevolent smile on his uncertain face. The battle is won at the very beginning. The outcome is fixed. What we fear the most will come upon us.

I've heard it said that if enough pressure is applied everyone will break under it. Then again, there are stories of those who don't break because they realize the pressure will be unrelenting and the process long and drawn out. They abandon all hope, and in so doing gain the ability to endure to the end, retaining their dignity through their nobility (resignation, fatalism, acceptance). They understand that the outcome has already been decided.

Acceptance is not surrender. Acceptance is pragmatic. Acceptance is concerned with what is, what can possibly be done. Acceptance is patient, it isn't static. Acceptance comes with the understanding that while there may be more to be done only so much can be done in a discreet period of time. What isn't done or what hasn't yet been conceived of must be left to the future without lament. What's done is done. What will be, will sometime be done also. Every ending is a beginning. Every thing emerges from no thing evolves (grows, changes, declines) and then ultimately returns.

The Other is the Guardian Of The Threshold and the constant companion during the journey.

Time has taught me to sing and dance again. To carouse and laugh with the Other: to be alive every moment. To once again cast, and fill the long shadow. The pile after all only diminishes to what I'll take with me, which is the experience minus whatever I came with. The difference is that I am here.

Good, bad or indifferent the process goes on. The beginning and end are fixed only the middle can be enjoyed or endured. Why is left up to ???????

My Life: As Real As I've Imagined It

Direction, Meaning & Purpose

Life is relentless and unforgiving. Death brings a surcease of effort and forgives all. Life’s process is simple cause and effect, and consequences are inescapable. Accidents do not just happen. Accident is a misnomer. An  accident is nothing more than an unforeseen, unintended consequence: a mistake. While a mistake can be forgiven, it’s consequence - effect- is unavoidable. 

Life learns from its mistakes? Not unless the consequences are traumatic. There is little impetus for change if the natural consequence of an action is merely inconvenient. Overcoming the apparently insurmountable, reconciling the conflict between outcome and desire is dramatic.

The culprit in all of Life’s drama is the central nervous system: the originator of the pain/pleasure dichotomy. Where would be the conflict if Life could follow its blind obsessions unaccompanied by pain causing awareness? All its monstrosities could romp and reek havoc and spread mayhem without a felt effect. No pain or pleasure breeds indifference.

Instead, with the inclusion of painful awareness, Life carries out its vivesective experiments to the strains of global, if not cosmic, agony. The further irony is that Life agonizingly feeds upon itself: perpetually! The maddening question is: does it do so knowingly? Is Life a conscious Uroboros?

If Life is a cosmic mistake, who made it and why hasn’t it been corrected. The most hopeful answer is that Life is some sort of proving ground for developing the most durable model. The experiment is repeated over generations, testing the hypothesis, developing the theory until time introduces some random(?) variable which either brings the experiment to an end or takes it along another tangent. Leading to where? The best answer - back to the Source! Uroboros: the Dragon eating its tail.

Before the Beginning everything was in stasis; every thing balanced every other thing. Since the Beginning Life has been seesawing back and forth in the dialectic of leaving and returning, differentiating and assimilating, individuating or uniting. With each passing generation, the question of what Life would be returning to becomes less clear; what lies beyond existence? What is lifelessness? Can Life return at all; or does it just cease? 

While the living may long for a return to simpler times, that desire runs contrary to Life’s direction. The law of inertia claims that matter goes from a more complex state to a simpler state: from a high rate of vibration to motionlessness. Life, operating within the material universe, does not follow the dictates of this universal law. Life moves from the simple to the complex and carries self awareness along with it on its diametrical journey.

It must be noted that the question of direction, meaning and purpose is the concern of the central nervous system’s self awareness and outside of that closed system may not carry any import at all. The only measurable impact self awareness can have upon the central nervous system is to purposely impair or end its functioning. Otherwise, the central nervous system operates with little regard for the comfort or concerns of its parasitic personality.  In contradistinction, it often continues to function efficiently when its attached personality wishes otherwise.

The personality is the central nervous system’s crystallized self awareness. It’s as if self awareness is the string that the central nervous system suspends in the sugary solution of perceptual experience. The crystal of a personality forms and refracts experience according to how symmetrical or irregular its facets are. Continuing the metaphor, self awareness remains suspended in experience for the duration of the existence of the personality. After the crystal is formed, generally, without some traumatic intervention, it grows in size while retaining its basic structure.

Experience varies widely from personality to personality, yet there is a great deal held in common; same body structure, basic needs are common and culture also contributes. It’s been noted that while there are presently six billion people on the planet, there are only thousands of points of view. Experientially, perhaps collectively all personalities contribute to a global “crystal.” To speculate along these lines though is in the purview of the personality and is of no direct(?) concern to the central nervous system. 

Life, whatever it is, appears to have an insatiable longing for itself; at least on earth. The only Life the personality is certain of is carbon based and may be restricted to this planet. Through a long process that can be reconstructed but not totally accounted for the inorganic became organic: Life sprang from the non-living! Single cells united forming organisms. As noted, Life moves from the simple to the complex, not necessarily in a linear manner. Until very recently it was thought that the earth was basically stable, cataclysms being local in extent. It’s been discovered to be otherwise and several times in it’s planetary history Life has been very nearly wiped off the face of the earth. If Life is not able to develop its capabilities sufficiently to leapfrog out of this solar system before the whole is subsumed by Sol’s supernova it will have reached a dead end. If the Universe is truly inhospitable then it will have all been for naught: from nothing to nothing.

Even if the Universe is not averse to Life, it may be scheduled to collapse in upon itself erasing all of time and space and their by products. If there is a reality to be discovered and not merely invented by the personality and if it possesses verities beyond perceptual speculation then Life’s direction remains in question. Everything in the Universe appears to be revolving around a center, so why shouldn’t Life just be spinning its wheels?  

It’s fashionable to speak of epiphenomena: consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain. The implication being that consciousness is not substantial. That being so, how can anything be known? Further, the logical consequence of the epiphenomena hypothesis is that Life is merely an epiphenomenon of the physical universe and is equally insubstantial. Counterintuitive!

Life is, but what is it? Life is experienced, or is it experiencing: or . . . is it experience? Life appears to be tenuous, ephemeral. Something fleeting can’t have lasting meaning or purpose. Meaning or purpose, must be assigned. The assigner, personality interprets experience: the effect of Life manifesting in time and space. The meanings are indeterminable. Without an interlocutor to ask, there are no questions to answer. Apparently, within this illusory steady state system till the end of time, terrestrial, celestial or universal, Life will inexorably continue the paradigm of cause followed by effect.

Life moves from the nonliving into individual self aware experience and will cease when its operative conditions no longer function, holding all its minions in its iron grasp. Death will free each personality. From conception to death Life rules unchallenged. After Death; is the question even meaningful for the individual personality?

Perhaps Life is dreaming or is being dreamed blurring the distinction between perception, memory, and actuality. What is really happening?

Heart Seed

Science tells us the Universe (the phenomenal universe) began as a singularity. A ball of compressed matter somewhere between a teaspoon and a fist in size. Since a person’s heart is on average as big as their fist, I like the fist simile. So, science tells us the Universe began as a ball of compressed matter no bigger than the average sized heart. All the matter, and space, of the visible universe was once a supra-dense ball no bigger than a person’s heart; all the matter, and information encoded within the matter, of the visible, discoverable, Universe, was contained in a ball no bigger than the average person’s fist, in the beginning.

Fifteen billion years ago the ball exploded into what is now the Universe. The whole shebang appears to be expanding and our minds are expanding along with it in order to apprehend and comprehend all of the information (the apparently infinite amount of information) once contained in a ball no bigger than our hearts. All the information and knowledge we possess and will ever uncover was once contained in a universal seed no bigger than our hearts. What has been revealed, all that has unfolded and will continue to unfold infinitely, was known, initially, by an entity, of infinite potential, no bigger than the size of our hearts: the Universal Heart Seed.

The seed paradigm is well used by Nature. From mustard seed to acorn to embryo it works the same way. All the information necessary to grow and thrive is programmed by Nature into the seed. Given the right initial conditions, the seed explodes and expands into a viable life and thrives as long as its environment supports it. Life, in its entirety, is guided by the information programmed into a seed. Under the right conditions, life develops to its full potential. In essence, life is the seed manifest. Life is the seed in a different form. To thrive, life must access every byte of information encoded into its genetic material: the very matter it utilizes to fill out its form. Nothing is trivial. Everything is essential. Nothing is wasted. Everything is recycled.

There is a distinction between thriving and surviving; it’s contingent upon the environment. In a positive environment conditions are optimal so life achieves its full potential. The information it possesses interacts with the environ-ment and the ecosystem thrives. Even if conditions are not optimal, or perhaps toxic, the information sharing takes place, knowledge increases and new patters are formed.

Nothing in the Universe is irrelevant; nothing is inconsequential. Everything matters. Every thing impacts every other thing. No thing is separate: it is a byte of information, a complete byte, a Holon, contained in the greater whole of the Universe. Without the tiniest particle the Universe would be incomplete because that particle was accounted for in the original compact Universal Heart Seed. Each particle is essential to the Universe. Each particle has a function. Each particle serves a purpose.

The tiniest particle’s function is to contribute to the wholeness of the Universe. Science tells us that each particle’s awareness comprehends the whole Universe. Information concerning each particle is available to every other particle at any point in the Universe. It is necessary for it to be so; other wise nothing would cohere. The Universe would disintegrate into the Void: still complete in Itself containing everything in potential.

MacBeth Redux

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.

. . . . . . .

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more: it is a tale 

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing."

I am all we've ever been.

When I get weary my mind calls up the above passage from MacBeth. Sometimes I revel in it. Sometimes it puzzles me. Sometimes it appalls me.

The question is, does it contain wisdom? Who is the madman, and what is the meaningless tale?

The tale is creepy, or rather creeping, moving in seemingly disjointed episodes most of which are so common they escape notice. Each day begins with an awakening. Before we can jump into action we must take care of the petty necessities of life (so necessary to the maintaining of Life).

But no that's wrong. Life is not sustained by the small chores of corporeality; it's the other way around. To me the first step in understanding the passage is to realize that it's not concerned with Life: it's describing life. The speaker has fallen, or is among the fallen. There is nothing noble in what is being expressed. These sentiments are drawn from the well of despair. It sounds to me as though the bucket was lowered to obtain cool, crystal clear, refreshing, water and was raised full of mud.

The day, full of promise, is lost immediately after awakening, in the humdrum drabness of daily existence. The dream was so sweet, awakening from it so disappointing. In the dream everything contributes to the story: every detail is significant. Not so in the waking state ruled by time and biology.

The tale is structured by time and biology ( or rather, biology and time). Time is a function of biology as is space.  The idiot's tale is contained within the framework of biology's  time and space. The latter two being emergent epiphenomena of higher functioning biology. The creepy tale concerns humans, this planets highest functioning form of biology to date.

Evidently, only humans experience the "petty pace" of daily experience. 

The speaker climbed the highest mountain around in the attempt to transcend ordinariness. At the summit he reached for the stars only to find they were beyond his grasp. In despair he took a swan dive down into the muck and the mire. He became bestial and ignoble: despicably petty. He allowed changeable circumstances to victimize him. He wallowed when he might have triumphed.

So's the fool. His tale is an escape story. He wanted to break out of his existence. He would have done better had he simply embraced it. All of his yesterdays were illumined by Life's Light. He shaded his eyes, preferring the darkness of malice, murder and mayhem. He mistook his own shadow for that of Death's, thereby missing out on his true significance. Tragic!

The Fool's Tale does have a happy outcome. All of our benighted yesterdays bring us to the brink where we have no choice but to jump into the maelstrom of Reality which separates us from separateness. 

Turkey Song

It certainly is the best of times, yet not without qualification; but that's a subject for another day. Today I'm grateful for living at a time and in a place where and when things are stable both politically and geologically. I realize my good fortune is but an accident of birth and that I'm surrounded in time and space by myriads of beings whose experience is otherwise. It is my sincere hope that through thought and deed my life may serve to ameliorate the circumstances of these others.  I like to believe that through our collective experience Life is reaching for the best of all possible worlds.

Today, my gratitude is focused on music. Through miraculous technological advancements I am able to hear music of such variety and to such an extent as was only dreamed of in times past. As if by magic, I push a key or button and music falls out of the air. This modern wizardry provides me an experience superseding that of all the most fortunate throughout history. My life is enriched. Everyday is a musical holiday!

Amidst the noisome stress of those days set aside to celebrate our good fortune music can have a salutary affect. So far, on this Thanksgiving, it has filled my home with the good vibrations of peace, love and fellowship.  Mercifully, again through technological innovation, different musical tastes can be catered to maintaining harmony, avoiding the cacophony of conflict. 

In these noisy times when true silence is unattainable short of soundproofing I am thankful that I have access to music fitting my every mood.

Holiday Reading

What's better than sitting in a comfortable chair during a holiday break with an interesting book to read?

A skilled author directs my consciousness and off I go into another dimension peopled with characters simple or complex, settings familiar or bizarre, past, present or future. Time becomes porous. Real time melts into fictionalized time. Hours, days, months, years, decades, centuries, and millennia are experienced inwardly while outwardly the clock ticks off mere minutes. Ensconced in the warm comfort of my study, secure in the stable circumstances of my life, I become enraptured, jubilant, saddened or terrified as the author dictates. All from words on a page!

A well crafted story is like a dream. Who can tell while experiencing a dream that it is not real? Reading is akin to meditating: thoughts drift in and out of consciousness as the reader remains aware of reading in the same way that the meditator remains aware of breathing. In both instances actuality is blurred: what is really happening? Why at the climax of the story do I refuse to do anything short of saving a life until the the conflict is resolved? How is it that my knowledge of human nature and of different times and places is expanded through works of fiction?

How marvelous life would be if we were all skilled authors, or even editors!