May 18, 2011
- In search of the myth-true -
To the world-explorers, the myth-true lay over the horizon, or amongst the mountain peaks. Those of action sought the unknown there, and confronted truth and beauty.
Now, all horizons are inhabited by us, all mountainous values are known. What little empty spaces are left are dried up veins of pyrite, seeds spat out after the fruit has been devoured, for we know the ripe and golden flesh is long gone.
Where can we turn, to find our myth-true? Where is our unknown self? Where it has truly been all along. Within. The vast and ever-undiscovered country.
Nice.
Except and except… we are in the middle of a great forgetting, driven by the illusion of t’internet. What’s desperately needed is rediscovery on the ground.
Comment by speedbird — May 19, 2011 @ 1:50 am
– or rediscovery OF the ground? Which is neither ‘within’ nor exterior to us.
‘t’internet’ is just the latest manner in which noise overwhelms signal. I guess that’s why meditation seems a useful practice.
Comment by Kate — May 19, 2011 @ 11:04 pm
I think between signal and signal lies noise. Static always lies between. And the great forgetting is caused, I think, by expecting things to stay the way they were. We’re looking for solutions/safety/confirmation where it no longer is.
Whether the Ground is within or without, we must still go in search of it (only to find that the buried treasure we seek is hidden under our floorboards, of course).
Meditation as a way of fulfilling certain types of wanderlust and the desire for exploration is precisely what I am prescribing here. :)
Ah heck, sometimes I think maybe the purpose of the world is to have a place of static in which to find signal. If they signal were ever “pinned down” everything would collapse in on itself and hand up the “CLOSED” sign. We’re here to learn how to seek, and bundled up in that is the promise that what we seek can be found, but isn’t absolutely necessary. What’s absolutely necessary is the seeking itself.
Comment by Ian — May 22, 2011 @ 6:04 pm
Well that’s an interesting insight… … …
Comment by speedbird — May 24, 2011 @ 2:57 pm
… so what you’re all saying, is that the Great Forgetting is a consequence of a Great Clinging?
I once had a boss who kept telling me not to reinvent the wheel. I now realise that’s /exactly/ what we have to do.
Comment by speedbird — May 25, 2011 @ 8:24 am
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I was thinking. The Great Forgetting could just be that we’re sucking from an empty straw, there’s nothing there but we keep expecting something there because maybe at one time there was something. But it’s moved, and so we have to, as you say, “reinvent the wheel”.
Another way to put it would be “recalibrate the instruments”. We’re not headed north because north moved. We need to recheck our maps compasses and stop going by the old heading.
Comment by Ian — May 25, 2011 @ 11:12 pm