Memento Mori

You know, it really doesn't pay to trust people who are "up" all the time.  Or who insist on always looking on the bright side of life.  That doesn't ring true to me.  It feels like they're lying.  Or at least that they're hiding their less pretty sides. 

Sometimes I think that people who insist on always looking at the bright side are really in denial and terrified of what they may find if they go scrabbling around in their own closets.  Sometimes people who don't wanna go down are suffering from one of the diseases pertinent to our culture - the sort of excessive hubris that automatically comes after a while when you're up too long.  It starts to feel illegal to go down in a death-denying culture which insists that you must be always up, and that if you go down we'll medicate you.

That's insane.  That's like being a parent and allowing a red lemonade-drinking child to have as much as they want and to stay up for as long as they want.  Who isn't allowed to see dead Uncle Fred in the front parlour because that's too scary for children.  (But then what kid would see dead Uncle Fred anyway these days?  We secrete him away before he can give the game away.  Chances are Uncle Fred will wait out his closed-casket funeral in a funeral home.

It doesn't pay to shield ourselves from the dark, simply because we'll always be afraid of it.

When you are down, there are no end of advisers on hand to recommend how to change your viewpoint,  your habits, your diet, to quite simply harden the fuck up.

But no.  When you fight tooth and nail not to come to the dark place like I consistently do and consistently have, once you are here there is a clear-seeing that strikes you, that is beautiful in its starkness, so that you almost don't want to leave.  There is a space here and a silence that you wish to try to remember to take back with you when you swim back up to the surface.

You want to find a way to bring these anti-hubris eye drops back with you when you go back.  To remind you of that which you keep forgetting, that both sides of the coin belong. 

Darthdowney

And that your sadness is beautiful. Though it not be sociable, or you be palatable when you are in that space.  That's okay.  Let it be.  Despite what anyone else may say, your sadness and your darkness is a holy space.  It is sometimes best to walk the holy and dark space in your own solitude.  It's okay.

I think this is why people have skulls on their desks.  It is a reminder of the darkness, of that which is not able to be seen when you are in the light.  Memento mori - remember that you shall die.  It's not really as morbid as we've been led to believe. 

Boundaries

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone
~ Henry David Thoreau

Anyone read Walden here?  It's sort of been on my to-read list for ever but I haven't got there yet.  The snippets I come across from this man though, such as this one, make me think I should be bumping it up the list.

What wisdom there is in this.  It's not on a materialistic level where this hits home for me most most profoundly but on a spiritual interpersonal level.  See, I have this desire and liking to help people. Up on my list of the 10 things that make me feel the best, knowing I have helped someone rates up there.  It's all tha gooey "I'm not just a waste of gimpy space" thing that gets all tied in with feeling the golden threaded interconnection of us all and of God and us all that just curls my toes with pleasure, you know?  Along with that, I've been blessed with a few not-inconsiderable talents that mean that I can be a real help and a healing to people in need sometimes.  I like to pray for people when the occasion springs itself at me and as I go on further and further into spiritual abject heresy I find my repertoire of how that plays out expanding.  I can feel in my body what other people are feeling if I tune myself in.  Sometimes the best sort of prayer is sharing in that sort of suffering.  It feels like this amazing privilege of God flowing through me, embodying him/herself in you.  A privilege.  A real privilege.

I guess sometimes though I don't always know easily where it ends.  Along with this gift I have this quite ridiculous overdeveloped sense of responsibility when it comes to the wellbeing of others sometimes.  It is difficult to do only what I sense I are being asked to do and to then leave the rest alone.  It's difficult to switch off from people who are in need.  But then it's difficult not to without burning myself out in 10 seconds flat.  That's partially why this introverted extrovert needs a lot of down time away from other people.  I still haven't quite mastered the arts of tuning others out when I need to.  I do it for a while and then I forget how important it is to do it.  Suddenly I realise I am frazzled around other people, I am feeling things that I wonder where they came from and sometimes I don't realise until later that what I really needed to do was shut everyone else out because I needed to only feel myself feeling for a while instead of picking up on other people's stuff.

So, you think I'm a loony yet?  :)

Sometimes you can just help too much.  Sometimes you can be doing yourself and others damage by helping too much.  This is where wisdom is called for.  Come in off the street for a while, will ya, wisdom, and sit down a while (milk with your tea?)  I need to hear you on all of this.

How about you?  Anything you're whistling down wisdom about at the moment?