The Insanity Inside

Working my way through All of the Above this morning. This excerpt really resonates:

"Most of us are not insane, if you define the word in terms of brain dysfunction and bad chemicals. You're right about that. But if we're not mentally ill, Mrs. President, would you agree that we're certainly culturally ill? Spiritually ill? Wouldn't sanity mean being consciously connected to reality, to what's actually so? And if we start from there, how should we then regard our society? Our culture tells us that we can fix every problem and control every outcome, even though we can see, if we just look, that most of our solutions simply lead to more problems. Our culture tells us that we will find true happiness through the things we own, that the material world is all there is, and that the rest of the planet is here merely to serve as our resource. Yet we know in our hearts that money does not, and has not, bought us true happinness and fullfillment, only comfort."

As Obie spoke, his voice grew louder, and his eyes glinted, like a televangelist reaching the high point of sermon.

"In this physical plane, Mrs. President, it's the soil and water and forests and sky and plants and animals upon which our very lives ultimately depend. The structures of civilization cannot exist without those things. And yet we live inside of those structures - houses, offices, stores, factories, cars, roads, subdivisions, cities, whatever - and those structures keep most of us almost totally disconnected from the real world that serves as their foundation. So you might begin to see the benefit of just sitting for a while with the notion that not only is this culture not in touch with reality, but that this insantiy lives inside of you." Pg.293, All of the Above

A Good Morning So Far

Behaved myself this morning. Woke up and sat zazen for a half-n-hour. Afterwards pulled out the notebook and journaled, read some of Timothy Scott Bennett's All of the Above and then reread the section about fathering out of James Hillman's The Souls Code. As a result of waiting a couple of hours to get on the internet I feel less overwhelmed and rushed. And, of course, I found a dandy of a quote by James Hillman about fathering and parenting.

"When your child becomes the reason for your life, you have abandoned the invisible reason you are here. And the reason you are here as an adult, as a citizen, as a parent? To make a world receptive to the daimon. To set the civilization straight so that a child can grow down into it and its daimon can have a life. This is the parenting task. To carry out this task for the daimon of your child you must bear witness first to your own." [The Souls Code, Pg. 85]

A Bit Wiser, Atleast I Thought

I'm still working my through All of the Above. The other day at the dinner table I attempted to explain to my family how Dwight Eisenhower was the first president in our nation's history to have to deal with aliens. And, of course, how the aliens didn't like Kennedy so they had to got rid of him.

Their response to my newly gained insights was: You can't believe everything you read in a book!

Purpose

Off to carry mail for the United States Post Office again today. I don't think I've mentioned this yet but I'm a substitute rural mail carrier. Which means I work an average of one day a year carrying mail. Given our lifestyle that's about enough for me.

Planted thirty-five red pine and an apple tree over the weekend. It always feels good to plant a few trees in the spring. Now the work begins trying to keep them alive through the summer dry spells.

Yesterday I got the chance to sit down and read close to 50 pages in All of the Above. I bookmarked a page so I could write down a quote(I usually do this but never write down the quote. Then I end up pulling books off the shelf looking for the quote that never got written down.)that I think would have went well with yesterday's post.

"It's the last thing he would have expected, but there it was. For the first time in a long time, Cole felt fully alive, as if the state trooper had given him a blessing instead of a fright. He could still feel the Earth moving majestically beneath him. And he could imagine himself standing straight and true on this slowly-spinning ground, as if, finally, finally, he belonged here. There were huge forces at work all around him: spinning underneath, flitting overhead, stirring deep inside. There was some vast story being enacted in the universe. He understood very little of it and he was scared as hell. But he was also needed. He was involved. He had a role. His actions now mattered in a way they never had before. Like a pupal moth beginning to form it's wings, Cole could feel the first hints of some new purpose he might serve in the wider world, some grander meaning he might discover beyond the caretaking of his family. Rather than finding the right script to follow before he could live his life, Cole now found himself thrust onstage with no script at all."--Timothy Scott Bennett, Pg.140, All of the Above

Although I wasn't married after I had read Ishmael, most of the paragraph describes how I felt. There really was no script to follow, and that felt odd but good. It still does.