Welcome Back

The hiatus is over.  It has been too long, but the past couple of years have been filled with wonderful changes and serendipity.  I learned, among many things, to come to terms with uncertainty and yet to also simultaneously remember and project the core of who you are.  The latter is very important.  In fact, it is the singular KEY to Everything.  No other tenet in my life has had so much evidence supporting it, and held so much infallibility.  Time and time again, it holds true -- no matter the circumstance.

What have you done lately to get back in touch with your true self?

"How can a man know himself?  It is a dark, mysterious business: if a hare has seven skins, a man may skin himself seventy times seven times without being able to say, "Now this is truly you; that is no longer your outside."  It is also an agonizing, hazardous undertaking thus to dig into oneself, to climb down toughly and directly into the tunnels of one's being.  How easy it is thereby to give oneself injuries such that no doctor can heal.  Moreover, why should it even be necessary given that everything bears witness to our being -- our friendships and animosities, our glances and handshakes, our memories and all that we forget, our books as well as our pens.  For the most important inquiry, however, there is a method.  Let the young soul survey its own life with a view of the following question: "What have you truly loved thus far?  What has ever uplifted your soul, what has dominated and delighted it at the same time?"  Assemble these revered objects in a row before you and perhaps they will reveal a law by their nature and their order: the fundamental law of your very self.  Compare these objects, see how they complement, enlarge, outdo, transfigure one another; how they form a ladder on whose steps you have been climbing up to yourself so far; for your true self does not lie buried deep within you, but rather rises immeasurably high above you, or at least above what you commonly take to be your I."

- Nietzsche, from the essay Schopenhauer as Educator

Peace.

SM

Richard Wright on Truth

Richard Wright (1908-1960) was an American author who is best known for his novels Black Boy and Native Son.  The former is an autobiographical novel detailing his hard life growing up as a black boy in Mississippi in the early 20th century and eventually moving north to Chicago in the 1920's.  Much of his work contributed to the growing sense of awareness of the plight of African-Americans in post-Civil-War America and the urgency and anger than helped to fuel the Civil Rights movement.  Here are some interesting things he says about truth that I came across today:

I have found that to tell the truth is the hardest thing on earth.  

Harder than fighting in a war, harder than taking part in a revolution.  

If you try it, you will find that at times sweat will break upon you.  You will find that even if you succeed in discounting the attitudes of others to you and your life, you must wrestle with yourself most of all.  Fight with yourself.  Because there will surge up in you a strong desire to alter facts, to dress up your feelings.  You will find there are many things about yourself you don't want to admit about yourself and others.

As your record shapes itself, an awed wonder haunts you.  

And yet there is no more exciting an adventure than trying to be honest in this way.  

The clean, strong feeling that sweeps you when you've done it makes you know that.

Peace to you all.

SM

Happy New Year - 2014

Diana Nyad set a world record in 2013 as the first person to complete a 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida in just under 53 hours.  She is 64 years old.

This was her 5th attempt.  She swam without a shark cage, exposed to venomous jelly-fish, fighting against dehydration and throat constriction and hallucinations, and in the blackest of black darkness.  One stroke after the next.  She kept singing to her favorite songs, she kept moving forward.  No matter what.  Her mantra: "Find a way."

What an incredible woman.  And by far THE best story of 2013.

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as 

what you become by achieving your goals."

- Henry David Thoreau

Peace to you all.

SM

Aspen in Summer

Now that it's winter and I'm in Ohio, here is where my thoughts are 99% of the day:

Aspen is well-known for its winter season thrills, but it's also an equally beautiful place to visit in the Colorado summer.  Vast swaths of gorgeous mountain wildflowers, endless firs, pines, aspens, crisp clear air, and of course the beautiful backdrop of the Rockies.  What more can one possibly ask for???

"Dedications", Adrienne Rich

Happy Post-Thanksgiving!  And whatever else has happened since my last post, which seems like too long ago.  But, then again, even yesterday seems like long ago...all of time seems to be passing at the speed of molasses for me lately.  Days feel like weeks, weeks feel like months, and months feel like years.  Life is being lived in painful, dragging out, slow-motion.  Of course, in true Sona fashion, I am doing all I can to change this as soon as possible.  Until then, however, one of my tricks to surviving such phases in life is POETRY.  Here's another of my favorites, from the great Adrienne Rich.


Dedications

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window

in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour.     I know you are reading this poem

standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear

where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet.
             I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before
             running up the stairs
toward to new kind of love
your life has never allowed.

I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by a fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, and too early an age.      I know
you are reading this poem through your failing
              sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning
              yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book
in your hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.

I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language,
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for
            something, torn between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there
            is nothing else left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.



Peace to you all.
SM

"The Laughing Heart" - Charles Bukowski

And now for some poetry.

The Laughing Heart
by Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can't beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Physics & Life

Here is a great quote from the physicist Arthur Eddington:

"If ever the physicist solves the problem of the living body, he should no longer be tempted to point to his result and say ‘That’s you.’  He should say rather ‘That is the aggregation of symbols which stands for you in my description and explanation of those of your properties which I can observe and measure.  If you claim a deeper insight into your own nature by which you can interpret these symbols—a more intimate knowledge of the reality which I can only deal with by symbolism—you can rest assured that I have no rival interpretation to propose.  The skeleton is the contribution of physics to the solution of the Problem of Experience; from the clothing of the skeleton it (physics) stands aloof.”  --(Quantum Questions, Wilber, p. 194)

Do you agree?  Is physics limited in how deeply it can go towards understanding who we really are, the nature of consciousness, the underlying truth of Reality?


Peace to you all.
SM