The other day I had a chance to go hiking with my father at the Seven Falls park in Colorado Springs. There are several photographs from the hike we took here. And no, there are no people in the pictures! As a few have noticed, my artistic side resonates more with the idea of an empty landscape.
August 2005 Archives
The past few months I have been working on a theory of personality to help me understand some of my behaviors. It follows roughly from a few earlier thoughts – when I wrote about a house divided – where I hoped to find a method of self-improvement that did not require a constant, inward struggle.
I think the pressures of modern living have placed demands on us to act a certain way before we understand the reasons for those actions. This is especially so how because people’s lives interrelate so much that there isn’t great deal tolerance for odd behavior.
Faced with one set of impulses and desires, and another set of prescriptions for living filled with expectations, we learn to fragment ourselves very early in life, presenting our best side to the public and hiding our darker side until even we can’t see it.
This darker side is dark, not in the sense of evil, but because it is hidden from view. Sometimes its contents are indeed horrible, but probably not always as horrible as they seem. As a result, this side is left unexamined, making it very hard to form accurate judgments about is character.
One thing for certain though: the dark side is filled with energy and potency. It exists because our actions are at variance with our deepest urges. Conversely, the “light” side of our nature can lack genuine spirit if it is only a prescription with no connection to our urges. All of the dark side is to some extent desired, but only a portion of the light side overlaps with our basic interests. These areas of overlap between our desires and the accepted forms of behavior provide us with an outlet for creative energies – otherwise the individual finds himself frequently indulging the dark side to find sufficient release.
The light side – often socially and morally determined – is famous for priding itself on being “selfless”, and thus not only failing to consider the individual’s desires but actively ignoring them. It may even reach the extreme of choosing the exact opposite of what the heart wants, believing there to be more merit in rejecting what the self desires.
Since there are two origins of behavior: impulse and determination, I think health lies in harmonizing the two – blending short-term desires with long-term goals; enough release to know daily joy, but enough control for overall happiness and direction; and neither to excess.
Further, the dark parts that must stay dark – the desire to harm, for example – are not condemned, but found an accepted channel, perhaps only in fantasy. I don’t believe guilt is an effective way to “keep on track”, except to the extent that it makes us aware of our decisions and their consequences. There is no reason to loathe any of our impulses, simply to decide how to express them. Also with our moral choices, not to make them in defiance of the self, but in reference to what will complete us and integrate us best with the world around us.
Based on this division, I find in myself the greatest power and energy come from my dark, less evident side; but my best wisdom comes from my light, determined side. This is why my passions sometimes override what I know is best for me, because the two sides experience momentary conflict between short-term and long-term interests. Whichever side “wins” is sometimes a coin toss, because I don’t want either side to have absolute dominion. Who knows, sometimes making a mistake is the best way to learn. What seems to matter most is fairness and making the best decisions when times matter most – not striving for an illusory perfection that I always feel guilty for not achieving.
As the two sides reach a greater respect for one another, I start to see them as two aspects of a unity rather than as opposing sides. At times they fight, but more often they find ways to cooperate: for the dark side to offer its energies in service of the light, and the light to choose options that consider the dark. It is not necessarily a position of compromise, but of mutual interest. A compromise would satisfy neither one for long – such as a morally ambiguous but pale indulgence – but rather to find among the fields of possibility options to satisfy more parts of me at once. This happens when I serve society in a way that excites me, for example. The crusader-type moralist would look down on this as a concession to self-hood, and the rebel-type might see it as dancing to the tune of the Man, but I see it as a fulfillment of self within a greater field than self alone: something that benefits all parties, and not just “self” or “not self”.
In my earlier essay I had wondered how to achieve inward unity while aligning myself with an outer purpose. I think the answer lies in marrying the two – engaging self in the service of society. This creates a perpetuating cycle, so that the energy source for activity is constantly available and replenished and one’s motivation is at its highest: both external and internal. It’s a framework that must also remain flexible: sometimes a selfish indulgence, sometimes a selfless correction, but which on the whole leads consistently to a better end. Anything else seems to me so far to be either too inhuman (a quest for perfection) or too dehumanizing (giving up on perfecting anything).
Something that’s been puzzling me a lot lately is my reaction to possible romantic relationships. When I was younger I remember wanting to meet someone very much, and getting into relationships almost as quickly as they became available. But I realized in the end that either my personality is not very amenable to living with another person (something I still think may be true), or I’ve been finding women who don’t really want the kind of person I am.
These days I’m averse to any sort of relationship other than friendship. When things start to get closer, I pull back, sometimes harshly so. The mere thought of it depresses me, and I find myself getting unhappier the more things might develop with someone. It has led me to believe that I might have been made for the hermit’s life, spending most of my time with thoughts and other interests. But last night a realization struck me with all the force of the truth, and I think I understand now why I’ve been avoiding it – other than the usual reasons of fear and uncertainty.
What I was thinking about was love. Most of the poems I’ve written about love start with the thought of a particular person (or persons), with real inspiration coming from the translation into the spiritual dimension. I’m thrilled by the reality of love, and find my happiness wherever it occurs: love for beauty, computers, ideas, people, food, etc. It doesn’t really matter what prompts my experience of love, since they all seem to share common traits that I connect back to their origin in God. In this way I experience God through my love of the world.
It’s been my life’s ambition to learn how to love all things. This is no easy task – many things still bother me and I wish for them to change, as if to wipe them from my experience of life – but month by month I learn more, and move further down that road. Life as I experience it today is incomparably richer than what I knew as a young person. It’s a labor I dream of, and I feel as if untold worlds await me behind each new moment.
I describe this as a pursuit of universal love, or true love; but the world’s romantic ideal seems to credit only exclusive loves. Everyone I talk to wants love, but often they want only one or a few forms: love of a person, career, family, etc. When I talk about universal love, some suggest that it’s impossible for mortal beings, or flatly state they don’t want such a thing! Of those who want it, many retain the thought that it lies always beyond reach. But I intend to find this universal love, this complete vision, or die having made of my life an earnest attempt. Yet this also where I run into problems with those who want the typical ideal.
The modern romantic ideal envisions one person as the primary focus of our capacity to love (with a possible allowance for children, though some relationships even suffer when children appear, because it distracts from that singular mutual focus). In essence, one person becomes the “sink” of the other’s best energies, and they the “source” for replenishing them. By feeding each other in this way, the relationship perpetuates with enough excess that some degree of social involvement is possible.
Too much external involvement, however, deprives one side of the pair of what they need to replenish that lost fuel. One cannot be the focus of another who is too much outwardly occupied. This is the situation of an “unloved spouse”, who must turn to others to get what he or she needs.
This dynamic is what I grew up believing in, and I used to see no problem with it. I was even eager to participate. But I found in the end that my dream of universal love is incompatible with the romantic ideal, and I am unwilling to give up that dream. Why is it so essential to me? Because I believe that if I can discover true love for all things, then I can believe – with all my mind, my heart and soul – that God loves all things in me. This is a form of my quest for God, and it seems unreasonable and unjust for a person to ask me to give up that quest. There are things we should never ask of one another.
The thing is, I have many loves – programming, reading, thinking, photography, chess, and more – and almost all of them require significant amounts of uninterrupted time to achieve fruition. This fact has been called “selfish”, because I demand time to myself to complete what I love. (To those who’ve said it, my being “selfish” is usually paying attention to things other than themselves – though they rarely see how selfish this claim of selfishness is. If a man can never expect time to himself, how are people to get anything done?)
Under pressure to be less “selfish”, I have bent to the ideal before: the belief that all my love and attention should go to one person. But when my love turned again to other things, the word “selfish” returned, and with it various forms of jealousy: anger, resentment, vindictiveness. I’ve heard my laptop called “the other woman” more than once, because I chose to focus on it rather than the person I was with. When they’re around they want it all! absolute focus and attention; an exclusive love that ignores every other thing.
Exclusive love, however, is the anti-thesis of universal love. Rather than making progress in learning to love all things, I experienced a constant pressure to love one thing above all. However much I’ve heard the desire expressed to watch my spirit to fly, I’ve felt an unconscious wish to ground me. At times, it even seemed others wished to become my God: a focus of worship, origin of laws, setter of standards. If I happened to choose one of God’s laws above their interests, it provoked anger.
Faced with this demand to relinquish my universal dream, I have at times relented. I’ve bent as far as I could, until the bitterness of despair was too great. My dream and my romantic love became at odds: pursuing my passion began to hurt the one I loved. How can I withhold my heart in this way and still have something left to give? What in the world was being requested of me??
But I can no more sacrifice my soul’s life than I could violate my integrity in the name of a just cause. They want a passion from me that asks for the muting of all other passions. Unsurprisingly, I became more and more dead inside as this progressed. I stop writing, creating, seeing people. My life became an endless hope for escape. I could neither move nor stop. My existence began to decay.
And when things ended this way, I faced a terrible realization (this is what I became conscious of last night): Where did all my love go? I spent years trying to devote the majority of my heart and soul to one person after another – curtailing my writing, hobbies, and creative output – but where is that love now? As far as I can see, it was wasted.
Whenever I pursue the universal love, the results affect large numbers of people: those who use the software I write, who read my thoughts, experience my friendship or find beauty in my art. In this way I feel worthwhile, because people around the world receive the fruits of my love. If one doesn’t care for something, another will. I don’t have to tailor my work to one bias – there are as many perspectives as there are people. As long as I honestly love what I do, someone out there will appreciate it.
The demands of exclusive love are the opposite of this. Rather than benefiting whomever is receptive, I must aim my love at one mind, one point of view, one set of prejudices. If they don’t appreciate it, it falls flat; if they do, they might keep it to their own heart. The fruits of this love rarely reach beyond that one person, unless it’s an outward-directed activity we both share in.
As a result I can spend years devoting my heart to one person, expending time and thought and energy – and then one day they leave, and all of it is lost. There is nothing to show but what I learned from the experience. Even that does not go beyond the relationship, does not touch other’s lives, except insofar as I now treat them better. It’s like a mutual navel-gazing society to which no one else is invited.
In this type of scenario I feel my capacity as a human being is wasted. This is why I fear relationships that seek the romantic ideal. When I start dating someone, they don’t want to hear about my love of all things, about how sometimes I don’t want to go out with them but would rather stay home and write. They want to hear how I love them more than anything else, how they are more beautiful than everyone else, that I would give up everything for their sake. Hence my realization: that I avoid romantic relationships because I have a dream and don’t want to be pulled away from that dream, sucked dry by a heart who in reality is thirsting for God. I am not a surrogate God by any means, and do not wish to devote my life to anyone’s quest for satisfaction. Is it really “selfish” that I would rather benefit more people than just one? Each time I’ve been married, I stopped writing. But I would rather write and offer myself to whomever passes by, than lose my writing for one person’s sake; while the person who could join me in this endeavor is the one who would cause me to write even more.
In a dream I was climbing a long tower. I asked, “Where are we going?” and people said: “To see the Christ.” It was a broad tower with a spiral staircase in the wall – something like a lighthouse.
As I neared the top, a feeling began to come over me. It was a kind of joy that reached fingers through my body. At the end of the stairs I saw what looked like a picture frame, or a small mirror. This, I understood, was Christ’s reality. People were approaching the mirror and disappearing as they touched it. They were being transported to another world.
As I walked toward the mirror, my feeling of joy became overwhelming. It was more intense than anything I had ever felt before.
Meanwhile, in the distance, I heard someone sobbing. I drew closer and became intoxicated; closer and I began to fade and glow. At the same time, the sobbing grew louder and more insistent. Touching the mirror, I knew, would transport me into another life. I longed to reach it, but someone near me was in pain. What was happening?
At that moment I awoke and found that it was I, myself, who was crying… I wonder if my body could not endure the revelation. It was begging me not to touch the mirror. Ever since, this image comes to mind when I think about the “next life” – which in a sense is found when we die, and in another by our recognition of Him.
While reading further in one of my favorite books today, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (which takes a bit of getting used to, but is worthwhile after that), I came across a discussion of some early ideas about the divinity of Jesus Christ. What was so interesting about them is how the doctrine of the trinity was almost forced based on prevailing assumptions about the nature of the world.
For example, it was a strongly held notion around that time that divine substance (the quintessence) was something indivisible, perfect and beyond corruption. Anything divine was of the quintessence, such as soul, heaven, etc. Alchemy was a science devoted to discovering the relationship of quintessence to ordinary items, thus enabling the scientist to convert them to any other form, heal the material substance of the body, and live eternally young.
Now, based on the idea that divine things are of quintessence, it was impossible for thinkers to conceive that Christ could be both divine and yet of human form. They believed Christ had come from heaven (and returned to it), but they sought a model to allow for a visitation within the physical world of One who must have been a living form of the quintessence – otherwise His divine nature would be in question.
It is surprising how many theories evolved from the single necessity of requiring that Christ not be of common flesh in order rationally to accept His divine nature. A first group asserted that He never had physical form at all, but was an optical/auditory illusion who simply bore the appearance of a human being. In this way the Divine visited humanity without becoming “corrupted” by intermingling Its substance with the four elements.
Another group believed that Christ was in fact human, with the Holy Spirit being the real divine agency. It visited Jesus of Nazareth at the time of His baptism – which allows for His being an ordinary human being during birth and childhood, a very messy consideration (e.g., how could the Son of God have come through a woman’s vagina to enter this world?) – and left Him during His trials on the cross, immediately before His seeming exclamation of despair. This model invoked a dual nature to Christ which again permitted the Divine to visit humanity without the taint of mortal corruption.
Later this dual model evolved into a triune one, afterwards confounded as a unity to avoid the obvious problem that quintessence must be indivisible. But I still have more to read on that development…
What interested me is how strong the basic assumptions were – of the nature of things, and how mortal substance could not become the carrier of divinity because of its corruptible essence – and how these assumptions forced religious thinking down certain avenues in order to reach a compromise between what was believed about the world and what people had come to believe about Christ from His teachings.
Then what about the assumptions we have of the world today? In what ways is the same thing is happening now as then: the invisible bending of religious interpretations toward a believable model based on the context of our world-view. How we see things seems to put a range to the truths we can accept – those which fit the model somehow. Are there assumptions we hold of mortality and selfhood that run so deep, our view of God is not so much a form of truth as an inverted picture of how we see ourselves?
Starting from south of Phoenix, this month I went to Albuquerque, then the Navajo reservation, then Flagstaff, back to Albuquerque, then to Sante Fe, and at last up here to Colorado Springs. Although I took more than 500 pictures, only a few of them turned out to my taste. Those pictures can be seen here. The girl who appears in two of them is my friend Marjan, who took me up to the top of Sandia Peak outside Albuquerque.
Today I was driving up north from Albuquerque to Colorado Springs, to visit my dad for a few months. While I was driving I saw two amazing things. First is that I was headed toward a huge storm, which I could see from about a half-hour’s drive away. There was lightning and huge pockets of rain pouring down in several places. When I got to the storm, however, I ended up driving between all those pockets, so that it was very dark and humid but there was no rain on me at all. There was lots of lightning, though. Thinking I might see and hear more of what was going on, I rolled down my window and looked out at the grass field passing on my left.
During those few moments a bolt of lightning struck the ground about eighty feet from my car. To get a picture of where I was, to my left was a strip of grass between the northbound freeway and the southbound freeway. The lightning hit about twenty feet to the left of the southbound freeway. I had never seen lightning hit so close, and I noticed two interesting things: one is that at the point of impact – which I saw clearly, because I happened to be looking right at that spot when it happened – the lightning bolt created a very bright red flare. But after the bolt passed, I couldn’t see any sign of where it struck. The second thing was the sound, which was not like ordinary thunder at all. It was sharp and high-pitched, more like hitting a piece of sheet metal with a hammer. And loud. From that point on, I began wondering why lightning doesn’t hit cars more often. (Perhaps something about the engine running causes a car to be somewhat positively charged, since I’ve read that negative seeks a path from the positive cloud to a more negative pole).
The second interesting thing occurred later on in the same storm. I arrived at a pocket of sunshine near the middle, where the storm was still all around me but the clouds had opened on the left side to let in sunlight. The sky was bright blue on that side. The rays from the sun hitting the vapor-filled air to my right created a huge rainbow; and at the exact point where the rainbow was touching the ground, a patch of sunlit grass. Now, the grass was somewhat yellowish, and everywhere else the darkness of the storm made it seem grey and green, but in this one place it glowed bright greenish yellow. If I didn’t know it was the ground, I could have seen it as the opening to a huge pot of gold, since it shone with just about the right color. That’s when I wondered if such an effect isn’t what started the original fable. Anyway, for the first time I felt like I was seeing the famous “pot of gold” which I had always wanted to find as a kid. The end of the rainbow was clearly rooted to it, though both the rainbow and the patch of gold moved along as my car moved.
By sunset I made it to Colorado Springs, and saw the dimness of Cheyenne Mountain with the sun setting behind it. I hope to have some pictures from this area soon.
