Life hammers its minute nails
into the houses of bone in which we live.
Did you think your coffin made of wood,
awaiting construction on some future day?
It should be so easy to see:
this coffin I carry around with me:
206 tiny timbers sewn by ligaments
waiting for me to die.November 2005 Archives
A while ago, when talking about the light and dark sides I think we all have, I was saying that while the light has direction, the dark has energy. So it’s not too strange that if left alone, the dark will do what it decides to do – while if left alone the light will not! In fact, it takes energy to stop the dark and motivate the light; they react oppositely to the influence of determined force. Which raises the question of where the light gets its energy to oppose the dark? This would seem to come from four very plentiful sources, means by which the dark willingly grants its energy to the purposes of the light: internally, from self-admiration and self-loathing; externally, from love and hate.
For example, the light’s is a world of discipline and control. The more a person feels in control of themselves, they more capable they feel of acting out the plans of the light; the less control, the more they feel susceptible to stirrings of the dark. But where does the energy come from to maintain all that discipline? I find from watching people that it is either from deep self-loathing: they hate who they are and wish to govern it – or admiration: they love who they are and want to further the good parts. Since these forces originate in the dark, they of course both have the taint of “self” (from the light’s point of view) and secretly make the light feel ashamed to use them. Isn’t there a source of energy, it wonders, that might be utterly disconnected from the dark? Pursuing that end, it might seek energy from other people, or purely external motivations like social dictum. But in the end these too must be enforced within the individual, and so the dark has to play its role. There is no escaping the dark side, even though at times it seems like all the light wishes to do.
I’ve even found that you can hear in a person’s voice, and see in their eyes, which part of themselves their sentiments are coming from. The “pure light” sounds strangely tinny and high-pitched, like something with little depth. When a person speaks in that voice alone, I’m almost certain that whatever they’re saying will not come to pass. The “pure dark”, on the other hand, is deep and dusky. If they speak in that voice, I’m almost sure it will come to pass, even if it’s something the speaker fears to happen.
When the two reach common cause, however, their voice has a real timbre. If the dark is a lump of black iron, and the light a concept of steel, the two together can become a keenly-tempered blade. It’s like we have these two ingredients and the real challenge is to learn the correct admixture. It’s a difficult balance to achieve, but the results make it worthwhile.
So when people recite to me a new litany of discipline they’ve introduced into their lives, I think, “There’s the light side again, seeking to regain its dominance.” I can hear how the effort will tire them out, how they will spend furtive evenings indulging themselves as a way to release the inner pressure. I also listen for whether their motive is from loathing or admiration, since these two have very different dynamics.
On the other hand, if they talk about new plans for gratifying some wish, I think, “There is the dark side, racing to escape its prison.” I hear how freeing and exulting the release will be, but also the nights of worry, and self-recrimination for straying from the path.
It seems that none of us can live on one or the other side for too long, without mental or emotional repercussions. And thus what I really listen for is the person who seeks to marry the two sides: to serve a higher purpose in a way that brings them continual joy. I am always listing to hear such tones from my own voice.
I have spoken to a few of the wise ones
who journey after God.
They speak often of the length of the journey;
of its perils and subtle trials;
of their longing, and deep ardor.
So many, it seems, are on their way;
so few, it seems, are arriving.
Perhaps the problem here
is that they sought what they sought;
for what man can discover God?
Perhaps the answer lies, instead,
in seeking what He seeks...
If a child wants truly to learn of
the world of his father,
he must put away childhood
and become a parent.
But in doing so,
though he learn the lessons of fatherhood
it is no longer the child who knows it.
There is no way for one world, so apart,
to become another.
So too, a man who would find God
must leave himself to begin that journey.
Yet it would no longer be him, when he arrives.
Does a parent long for the child
to leave his own state
and join him in his?
Or would he rather be a parent
spending time with his young ones...
In truth, he wants what all fathers
wish for their children:
that which best suits the child.
One world, looking over the other,
fulfilling itself
by wishing the fulfillment of the other.
I think all this journeying of the wise
is to a place with no reality:
like a seed wanting to know the Tree
who ceases to be in that knowledge.
Such a thing *is* a long, impossible journey
for the seed.
Perhaps it were better
if we sought what seeds should know:
and in this Way,
learn the mysteries of growth...This theory has been part of my thinking since it first occurred to me several years ago. As I remember, it happened while I was still working a regular job. Back then I was very interested in planning and how to arrange my life to be most effective (which is still an interest – just not in the detailed fashion of before).
As I sat and made my daily plans, I saw very clearly what I intended to happen each day. The days were part of a progressive plan that moved from month to month, ostensibly toward some specific goal.
What I noticed, however, is that my life – as seen from month to month – betrayed a very different character from what my planning led me to think. I knew who I was, and the choices I was making day to day, but somehow another creature was appearing between the lines: a personality who lived only from month to month.
This concrete, well-defined, daily me became my Short Man – the person I see over short time-scales; the other is my Long Man, who strides across the years. Sometimes they are very different, having opposite goals and means; other times they are harmonized and we work together.
Have you ever noticed how sometimes you do things without explanation? An impulsive word or deed, a sudden change of plans, an inspiration following from a dream or a sudden moment. This is how the Long Man acts; he slips between the moments of our otherwise ordered lives. Nor is he easily put off. You can deny his existence altogether, but he still finds ways of accomplishing his ends.
At times the Long Man has scared me to death. Do I want what he wants? Why is he moving me down a certain road? Who does his thinking? Other times he’s given me a sense of security, because although I have no idea how I will achieve certain things, if the Long Man wants it also, I can be pretty sure it will eventually happen.
Nor is the Long Man necessarily a moralist like my Shorter self. He seems to play out a deeper life of the heart, which may go against what I believe to be right. Other times he will stop me – in the end – from denying what I truly believe in. He is neither good nor evil, just inexorably true to my heart.
Lately I have even begun to think there are many Long Men: one who walks the months and years, another who passes slowly through the stages of my life, and another who encompasses the whole and whom I might call Destiny. And beyond these, there might be another who spans a greater whole – my part in the zeitgeist of mankind – and yet another who expresses the most basic desires of my species. I even wonder if it does not continue, until I would find that my Longest Man, the Infinite Man, is none other than the role I play in God’s Being.
To see the Long Man in action requires either keeping a long diary, or having a good memory and enjoying self-reflection. I first noticed the Long Man when I started seeing certain things coming to fruition in my life, mostly regarding career and relationships. I realized that these changes were complex, and required too much “planning” to have simply happened of themselves. There are times when one can even sense the Long Man in another person, which prompts us to feel like we know what the flavor of their future will be, despite what they imagine for themselves.
Both Long and Short Men seem to express facets of one personality with many strata. They are only incompatible if there is doubt and conflict in the individual. A harmonized mind (in my experience) tends to move in a more synchronized fashion, as if we possess the capacity for multi-level, simultaneous thinking spanning multiple time frames. It’s amazing to me that the Long Men “think”, but they do seem to express a coherent intent. This is a side of myself I have wanted to cultivate and enlist the help of, because some of my desired personal changes are daunting to the Short Man Alone. To harness the power of all our dimensions would allow us to grasp for futures which deny immediate comprehension.
Then one day I was reading a book by Greg Egan titled Quarantine, in which he played with the idea of human’s control over the function of quantum coherence in the observed universe. He suggested that life naturally exists in a state of superposition (cf., the movie “What the Bleep do we Know?”), but that humanity possesses a unique capacity to collapse these states based on our intention. For this reason, the rest of the beings in the universe quarantine us, so that our particular biases and prejudices are not allowed to decide what the rest of the universe will look like.
The main character in the book is surgically altered to be able to exists in a natural state of superposition, only causing a collapse when he consciously chooses. In this way, for example, he is able to open combination locks by trying every possible combination simultaneously, and “collapsing” the desired result. But, he wonders, who chooses what is “desired”? He is separately conscious – through superposition – in every one of these possible states. In all but one state he experiences frustration and failure, while in that chosen state he knows success. What troubles him is that there must be another entity, a state of unity higher than all the separate states, who chooses the outcome most profitable to the whole. This “super identity” exists beyond nature, beyond superposition, expressing its desires through the choice of which superimposed state to collapse.
This sounded an awful lot like the Long Man I was experiencing! The Short Man always looks at immediate details, while the Long Man seems to choose which set of details his counterpart will face. Are we at each moment presented with a multitude of possible futures, our Short Men confronting them all, while a deeper aspect to our being – beyond place and time - decides which of these is incorporated into our realized future?
Perhaps there are even Shorter Men than the immediate will: the decisions of my organs, cells, part of cells – even molecules. Looked at this way, I see myself more as a pan-dimensional being, my feet in the raw stuff of my body and surroundings, with my head and heart reaching up through levels I can barely visualize. At this point, thinking of “I” is like taking a slice through a being who crosses multiple potential realities. Is the function of my soul a cohering aspect of Infinity to bring out Its colors and flavors? Is my “self” just the experience of witnessing that effect?
