On adventures and morality. . . .
. . . .I am once again realizing just how backwards societies version of it all is. Somehow we are often given the thought that our fathers and grandfathers generation was stronger, harder, or more "moral".
It is factually bullshit of course.
When I was in Germany recently I was having a conversation with a friend about some of the people, and 'types' of people, we once both admired. When I was younger I would look up to the men that I felt had the qualities of being 'tough', rough, and stoic.
Now as I have grown older I see these same men as simply uptight, and repressed.
No thanks.
. . . . . .I am back from Europe. It was a great trip, and this will most likely be a large BLOG update. So stay with me. During the trip I read a book titled 'Lila' by Robert M Pirsig. This was Pirsig's second book. His first being 'Zen and the Art of motorcycle maintenance'. A book I have yet to read. As usual, the trip, book, people we met, places we visited, and things we observed, all blended together into an interesting adventure.
For this entry I will blend an account of what we did and saw with some text from the book itself. I would like to give you a feel for what the entire journey was like.
Here is a Scrat we found in Germany
The trip began in Munich Germany, and I was accompanied by fellow SBGi Coach Michael Chapman. Munich hovered around 20 below zero for the majority of our trip, yes it was very-very cold! Much thanks to our host Jan Kroker for showing Michael and myself the sites. On Friday was walked around downtown Munich which is beautiful. We wandered into some of the old churches, tasted some of the food and wine, and enjoyed the scene.
Saturday and Sunday we taught a packed house. Karl Tanswell, our UK director, came to Germany to train, visit, and help, and it was good to have him on the mat. We covered the fundamentals of BJJ, the idea of slow rolling, and some intense clinch work on day two. Karl showed some of the material he has been working on to Michael and myself. This included his new "wall sprawl" drills. As usual it was highly creative, and functional. The innovation amongst the people within our organization never ceases to amaze me.
Some typical weather
On Monday we drove through the Bavarian countryside to a small village under the alps which is known for its natural warm springs. Located outside, surrounded by snow in weather that was 15-20 degrees below zero, where about half a dozen large hot water pools. These pools are known for their healing properties due to the minerals found in the spring water.
I waded out into one of these pools at night, looking up at the crystal clear Bavarian sky you could see all the stars shining brightly. As the steam shot off the top of the hot water, making it difficult to see more then a few feet in front of me, I swam around in the hot pool surrounded by snow and mountains. The whole scene was very surreal, and very relaxing. After a time I reached up and touched my head and realized that my hair has frozen into solid ice. I ducked my head under the water to solve that, and went back to enjoying the scene. It was a good day.
* * *
On Victorian "morals" from Lila by Robert M Pirsig:
Their entire social and emotional lives where filled with impossible proprieties of table manners, and speech, and posture, and sexual repression. Their paintings and art captured it perfectly, expressionless, mindless, cream skinned ladies sitting around ancient greek columns, draped in ancient greek robes, in perfect form and posture, except for one breast hanging out, which no one noticed, presumably because they where so 'pure'.
When Victorians where being "moral", kindness wasn't anywhere in sight.
That period ended when, after having defined for all time what was truth, virtue, and quality, the Victorians and their Edwardian successors sent an entire generation of children into the trenches of World War One on behalf of these 'ideals'.
And murdered them.
For nothing.
That was the natural consequence of Victorian moral egotism. When it was over the children who survived the slaughter never got tired of laughing at Charlie Chaplin comedies of these elderly people with silk hats, too many clothes, and noses up in the air. Young people of the twenties read Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Fitzgerald, drank absinthe and bootleg gin, danced tangos into the night, drove fast roadsters, made illicit love, and never wanted anything to remind them of the Victorian "morality" again.
And I say. . . .thank God for their rebellion! It was-is beautiful.
* * *
On Tuesday we visited Dachau. Dachau was the first, and largest German concentration camp which was created by the Nazis. Words cannot express my own personal thoughts and feelings experienced while visiting the place itself. It is one thing to read about these places, or see them on television or movies, and it is a completely different thing to be standing here, feeling what is here, for yourself.
I will let the photographs we took while there, and some pictures of what Dachau was like during its use, tell the tale.
It was easily 15 degrees below zero while we there. Standing in the camp dressed in thermals, a jacket, gloves, and a snow parka, I was still very cold. I could not imagine what it must have been like this time of Year for those dressed only in the thin zebra striped pants and shirt, and often without shoes.
This was a sign someone wrote in the snow at Dachau
On the roof of the main buildings at Dachau remain the German sayings which existed during the camps use. . .they say:
There is a road to freedom its milestones are:
Obedience, Diligence, Order, Cleanliness, Sacrifice, and Love of Country.
Obedience, Order, Sacrifice, Love of Country. . .all the favorite words of the Devil himself.
It is all such nonsense.
The sign you go through when entering Dachau says:
"Work will set you free"
Don't you ever believe that!
* * *
"Sane people don't realize what a bunch of role-players they are, but the 'insane' see this role-playing and resent it.
Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not."
* * *
On Wednesday we flew to Scotland. . . .
"Mankind is driven forward by dim apprehensions of things too obscure for existing language" - A.N Whitehead
* * *
In Lila Pirsig advances the concept that reality is not a division of subject and object, or good and bad, and neither is morality. Rather, static and dynamic is the basic division.
"Static quality, the moral force of the priests, preachers, and ethics proponents of a given generation emerges in the WAKE OF dynamic quality.
Static quality always contains a component of memory. Good is defined as conformity to an established pattern of fixed values and value objects. Justice and law are identical. Static morality is filled with heroes and villains, loves and hatreds, carrots and sticks.
It's values don't change by themselves. Unless they are altered by dynamic quality they say the same thing Years after Year. Sometimes they it more loudly, sometimes more softly, but the message is always the same.
Dynamic quality is a very different thing.
Dynamic quality is outside any culture, and cannot be contained by any system of precepts, but has to be re-discovered as as a culture evolves. Good and evil are not matters of tribal custom. If they where no tribal change would be possible, since custom can never change custom. There has to be another source OUTSIDE the tribal customs that produces the tribal change.
Everything is composed of static patterns of value, and these patterns are evolving towards dynamic quality.
To hold dynamic quality in time, static quality is needed. The trouble begins when static quality is attached to, or given a higher moral value then the dynamic quality which created it."
* * *
On Wednesday we arrived in Glasgow Scotland and our host Paul McVeigh did a great job in ensuring Michael and I got to see as much of the Country as we could on our visit.
Sneak attack on our host Paul
On Friday we visited Edinburgh Castle
Sat and Sun we taught a great crew. Lots of game in Scotland.
And this would be. .
Guess.
On Monday we visited Stirling Castle. Stirling castle is the location of the palace where Queen Mary of Scots ruled from.
And this is Mary
* * *
Regards Pirsig's idea, as I see it. . . the pitfalls or tension that occurs within the interplay between the two (static and dynamic) is as follows. . . . . . .
Those attached to static quality will always be in the majority. And by their very nature will fear what dynamic quality does and brings. They will resent those playing the role of dynamic quality, and resent the process of being stretched.
Their is a part of many of them that will love those of dynamic quality for being what they WANT TO BE, free, creative, wild, and open.
And their is a part of many of them that will hate those of dynamic quality for being what they CANNOT BE, free, creative, wild, and open. And as such, they will label them rebellious, degenerate, lazy, the list is long.
On the flipside, it is fairly easy for those living in the realm of dynamic quality to paint the majority with static quality as simplistic, repressed, uptight, conditioned, outdated, backwards, organized, ignorant, twisted. . . . evil.
And although it is often true that static quality is all those things, a certain appreciation for the social stability provided by static patterns of quality goes a long way towards understanding the roles it plays in all our loves.
Static patterns of values can be organized many different ways. . .in Lila Pirsig using the following classifications:
1 - Biological patterns
2 - Social-cultural patterns
3 - Intellectual patterns
4 - Dynamic quality
The moral order is fairly logical. . .a religious law which becomes a common law rule, (such as the current laws banning rape) are a social and cultural pattern. These patterns override the biological urge to procreate, by creating and enforcing a moral order for the process. Social and cultural patterns of value override the biological patterns of value in this case.
However, a society which decides to use religion, or tribal custom, as a basis for banning books. Such as what the church attempted to do to science during the dark ages, is clearly immoral. This is a social pattern of value (religion) devouring an intellectual pattern of value (science). It would be a lower form of life, feeding on a higher form of life, and therefore "immoral".
Once intellect has been let out of the bottle of restraint, it is almost impossible to put it back in again. And immoral to try.
On Tuesday we visited Roslyn Chapel. The Chapel was made most famous by a poorly written book I wont bother mentioning. But regardless of that fact, the chapel itself is a monument to the enlightenment our ancestors shared. The clues are everywhere. And the more people brought to the subject, the better.
Pirsig states:
"Intellect is a higher level of evolution than society; therefore, it is a more moral level than society. It is better for an idea to destroy a society than it is for a society to destroy an idea."
dinner in sCoTlAnD
As an example:
"Victorians believed that little children were born in sin and needed strict discipline to remove them from that condition. The twentieth century intellectuals called that rubbish. There is no scientific evidence that little children are born in "sin", they said. The whole idea of sin has no objective reality. Sin is simply a violation of a set of social rules which little children can hardly be expected to be aware of, let alone obey. A far more objective explanation of "sin" is that a collection of social patterns, grown old, corrupt, and decadent, tries to justify it's own existence by proclaiming that all who fail to conform to it are evil rather than admit any evil of its own."
the inscription reads: William St Clair Knight Templar
So intellectual patterns have a higher moral quality then social-cultural patterns. And regarding intellectual patterns:
"Science's empirical rejection of biological and social values is not only rationally correct, it is also morally correct because the intellectual patterns of science are of a higher evolutionary order then the old biological and social patterns.
However, dynamic quality, the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experience over a confusing, inconclusive one. . .is another matter altogether.
"Dynamic quality is a higher moral order then static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try and suppress dynamic quality as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method."
St Francis is one of the patron saints of Roslyn
"What you are looking for is what is looking."
- St Francis
Matthew is the other patron Saint
* * *
On Wednesday we flew into Belfast Northern Ireland. Belfast is an interesting city to be sure. We where given a rare tour of the Government headquarters for Northern Ireland. And we taught a great group of people that evening.
* * *
"Static social and intellectual patterns are only an intermediate level of evolution. They are good servants of the process of life but if allowed to turn into masters they destroy it."
This really says it all doesn't it
"The hippies have been interpreted as frivolous spoiled children, and the period following their departure as a "return to values", whatever that means. However, that is completely backwards. The hippie revolution WAS the MORAL movement." - Pirsig
* * *
This is a "green man". At one time they where plentiful in many churches, and still can be found in a few of the older churches around the world that where not destroyed by prodestant zealots. They can also be found all over Hindu temples throughout India.
If you are confused as to what he means. . .read the inscription on the picture above this again, and notice how he is part of the vine itself.
Wednesday night we stayed at my friend John Boyles place in Dunegal. Dunegal is a part of Ireland everyone should at some point see. Michael Chapman was searching for some long lost relatives who lived about two hours from Dunegal. With only a single letter written many Years previously we drove to the city, and walked into a pub. The bartender turned out to be a distant cousin, knew the people mentioned in Michaels letter, and within a few minutes he was sitting is his cousins living room. . . . yes, sYnChRoNiCiTy.
* * *
"Sometimes in a dynamic individual the whole being senses that the static situation is an enemy of life itself. That's what drives the really creative people - the artists, composers, revolutionaries and the like. The feeling that if they don't break out of this jailhouse somebody has built around them, they're going to die.
They're fighting for some kind of dynamic freedom from static patterns.
* * *
Below is my favorite statue from Roslyn
It is pretty clear isnt it? It is Satan himself, always seeing things upside down, bound by rope that is not actually tied. . . .sound familiar?
If she seems to be running from something, that could be the static patterns of her own life she's running from. But she may be running towards something as well. Perhaps, if the running is stopped, if any static patterns claim her. . . .if either her own insane patterns claim her or the static cultural patterns she is shutting out and running from claim her, then she loses.
* * *
Friday night we arrived in Dublin and many of the guys where preparing for one of the largest MMA events to ever be held in Europe. Michael and myself found out we would be live commentators for the event that evening. It was an interesting experience, and all of the athletes did a great job playing it out. Though it was billed as Ireland vs England, it was clear backstage that the fighters from both Countries where all friends, and good people.
John finds a pal
Monday we flew home
* * *
Listen please. . . .it is not the lens, but the light that shines from it that interests me. . .
Lamps are sometimes used as symbols of learning. Why should they be? A torch is often a symbol of idealistic inspiration. Why? When we suddenly understand something we say, "I have seen the light, or "it dawned on me". Why? Cartoonists draw light bulbs over peoples heads to symbolize realization. . .why?
Undefined Auspiciousness. . . .that is, dynamic quality.
That is. . .Aliveness.
The light signals a dynamic intrusion upon a static situation.
To Reka I say thank you. . . .thank you for reminding me what the birds sound like, when I am silent enough to hear them.
Dynamic quality seems like a death experience. It's a movement from something to nothing. How can "nothing" be different from death?
All the Buddha would say was, "See for yourself."
And we will.
"Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness provided the madness is given to us by divine gift." -Socrates
And on we go. . .
It is factually bullshit of course.
When I was in Germany recently I was having a conversation with a friend about some of the people, and 'types' of people, we once both admired. When I was younger I would look up to the men that I felt had the qualities of being 'tough', rough, and stoic.
Now as I have grown older I see these same men as simply uptight, and repressed.
No thanks.
. . . . . .I am back from Europe. It was a great trip, and this will most likely be a large BLOG update. So stay with me. During the trip I read a book titled 'Lila' by Robert M Pirsig. This was Pirsig's second book. His first being 'Zen and the Art of motorcycle maintenance'. A book I have yet to read. As usual, the trip, book, people we met, places we visited, and things we observed, all blended together into an interesting adventure.
For this entry I will blend an account of what we did and saw with some text from the book itself. I would like to give you a feel for what the entire journey was like.
Here is a Scrat we found in Germany
The trip began in Munich Germany, and I was accompanied by fellow SBGi Coach Michael Chapman. Munich hovered around 20 below zero for the majority of our trip, yes it was very-very cold! Much thanks to our host Jan Kroker for showing Michael and myself the sites. On Friday was walked around downtown Munich which is beautiful. We wandered into some of the old churches, tasted some of the food and wine, and enjoyed the scene.
Saturday and Sunday we taught a packed house. Karl Tanswell, our UK director, came to Germany to train, visit, and help, and it was good to have him on the mat. We covered the fundamentals of BJJ, the idea of slow rolling, and some intense clinch work on day two. Karl showed some of the material he has been working on to Michael and myself. This included his new "wall sprawl" drills. As usual it was highly creative, and functional. The innovation amongst the people within our organization never ceases to amaze me.
Some typical weather
On Monday we drove through the Bavarian countryside to a small village under the alps which is known for its natural warm springs. Located outside, surrounded by snow in weather that was 15-20 degrees below zero, where about half a dozen large hot water pools. These pools are known for their healing properties due to the minerals found in the spring water.
I waded out into one of these pools at night, looking up at the crystal clear Bavarian sky you could see all the stars shining brightly. As the steam shot off the top of the hot water, making it difficult to see more then a few feet in front of me, I swam around in the hot pool surrounded by snow and mountains. The whole scene was very surreal, and very relaxing. After a time I reached up and touched my head and realized that my hair has frozen into solid ice. I ducked my head under the water to solve that, and went back to enjoying the scene. It was a good day.
* * *
On Victorian "morals" from Lila by Robert M Pirsig:
Their entire social and emotional lives where filled with impossible proprieties of table manners, and speech, and posture, and sexual repression. Their paintings and art captured it perfectly, expressionless, mindless, cream skinned ladies sitting around ancient greek columns, draped in ancient greek robes, in perfect form and posture, except for one breast hanging out, which no one noticed, presumably because they where so 'pure'.
When Victorians where being "moral", kindness wasn't anywhere in sight.
That period ended when, after having defined for all time what was truth, virtue, and quality, the Victorians and their Edwardian successors sent an entire generation of children into the trenches of World War One on behalf of these 'ideals'.
And murdered them.
For nothing.
That was the natural consequence of Victorian moral egotism. When it was over the children who survived the slaughter never got tired of laughing at Charlie Chaplin comedies of these elderly people with silk hats, too many clothes, and noses up in the air. Young people of the twenties read Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Fitzgerald, drank absinthe and bootleg gin, danced tangos into the night, drove fast roadsters, made illicit love, and never wanted anything to remind them of the Victorian "morality" again.
And I say. . . .thank God for their rebellion! It was-is beautiful.
* * *
On Tuesday we visited Dachau. Dachau was the first, and largest German concentration camp which was created by the Nazis. Words cannot express my own personal thoughts and feelings experienced while visiting the place itself. It is one thing to read about these places, or see them on television or movies, and it is a completely different thing to be standing here, feeling what is here, for yourself.
I will let the photographs we took while there, and some pictures of what Dachau was like during its use, tell the tale.
It was easily 15 degrees below zero while we there. Standing in the camp dressed in thermals, a jacket, gloves, and a snow parka, I was still very cold. I could not imagine what it must have been like this time of Year for those dressed only in the thin zebra striped pants and shirt, and often without shoes.
This was a sign someone wrote in the snow at Dachau
On the roof of the main buildings at Dachau remain the German sayings which existed during the camps use. . .they say:
There is a road to freedom its milestones are:
Obedience, Diligence, Order, Cleanliness, Sacrifice, and Love of Country.
Obedience, Order, Sacrifice, Love of Country. . .all the favorite words of the Devil himself.
It is all such nonsense.
The sign you go through when entering Dachau says:
"Work will set you free"
Don't you ever believe that!
* * *
"Sane people don't realize what a bunch of role-players they are, but the 'insane' see this role-playing and resent it.
Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not."
* * *
On Wednesday we flew to Scotland. . . .
"Mankind is driven forward by dim apprehensions of things too obscure for existing language" - A.N Whitehead
* * *
In Lila Pirsig advances the concept that reality is not a division of subject and object, or good and bad, and neither is morality. Rather, static and dynamic is the basic division.
"Static quality, the moral force of the priests, preachers, and ethics proponents of a given generation emerges in the WAKE OF dynamic quality.
Static quality always contains a component of memory. Good is defined as conformity to an established pattern of fixed values and value objects. Justice and law are identical. Static morality is filled with heroes and villains, loves and hatreds, carrots and sticks.
It's values don't change by themselves. Unless they are altered by dynamic quality they say the same thing Years after Year. Sometimes they it more loudly, sometimes more softly, but the message is always the same.
Dynamic quality is a very different thing.
Dynamic quality is outside any culture, and cannot be contained by any system of precepts, but has to be re-discovered as as a culture evolves. Good and evil are not matters of tribal custom. If they where no tribal change would be possible, since custom can never change custom. There has to be another source OUTSIDE the tribal customs that produces the tribal change.
Everything is composed of static patterns of value, and these patterns are evolving towards dynamic quality.
To hold dynamic quality in time, static quality is needed. The trouble begins when static quality is attached to, or given a higher moral value then the dynamic quality which created it."
* * *
On Wednesday we arrived in Glasgow Scotland and our host Paul McVeigh did a great job in ensuring Michael and I got to see as much of the Country as we could on our visit.
Sneak attack on our host Paul
On Friday we visited Edinburgh Castle
Sat and Sun we taught a great crew. Lots of game in Scotland.
And this would be. .
Guess.
On Monday we visited Stirling Castle. Stirling castle is the location of the palace where Queen Mary of Scots ruled from.
And this is Mary
* * *
Regards Pirsig's idea, as I see it. . . the pitfalls or tension that occurs within the interplay between the two (static and dynamic) is as follows. . . . . . .
Those attached to static quality will always be in the majority. And by their very nature will fear what dynamic quality does and brings. They will resent those playing the role of dynamic quality, and resent the process of being stretched.
Their is a part of many of them that will love those of dynamic quality for being what they WANT TO BE, free, creative, wild, and open.
And their is a part of many of them that will hate those of dynamic quality for being what they CANNOT BE, free, creative, wild, and open. And as such, they will label them rebellious, degenerate, lazy, the list is long.
On the flipside, it is fairly easy for those living in the realm of dynamic quality to paint the majority with static quality as simplistic, repressed, uptight, conditioned, outdated, backwards, organized, ignorant, twisted. . . . evil.
And although it is often true that static quality is all those things, a certain appreciation for the social stability provided by static patterns of quality goes a long way towards understanding the roles it plays in all our loves.
Static patterns of values can be organized many different ways. . .in Lila Pirsig using the following classifications:
1 - Biological patterns
2 - Social-cultural patterns
3 - Intellectual patterns
4 - Dynamic quality
The moral order is fairly logical. . .a religious law which becomes a common law rule, (such as the current laws banning rape) are a social and cultural pattern. These patterns override the biological urge to procreate, by creating and enforcing a moral order for the process. Social and cultural patterns of value override the biological patterns of value in this case.
However, a society which decides to use religion, or tribal custom, as a basis for banning books. Such as what the church attempted to do to science during the dark ages, is clearly immoral. This is a social pattern of value (religion) devouring an intellectual pattern of value (science). It would be a lower form of life, feeding on a higher form of life, and therefore "immoral".
Once intellect has been let out of the bottle of restraint, it is almost impossible to put it back in again. And immoral to try.
On Tuesday we visited Roslyn Chapel. The Chapel was made most famous by a poorly written book I wont bother mentioning. But regardless of that fact, the chapel itself is a monument to the enlightenment our ancestors shared. The clues are everywhere. And the more people brought to the subject, the better.
Pirsig states:
"Intellect is a higher level of evolution than society; therefore, it is a more moral level than society. It is better for an idea to destroy a society than it is for a society to destroy an idea."
dinner in sCoTlAnD
As an example:
"Victorians believed that little children were born in sin and needed strict discipline to remove them from that condition. The twentieth century intellectuals called that rubbish. There is no scientific evidence that little children are born in "sin", they said. The whole idea of sin has no objective reality. Sin is simply a violation of a set of social rules which little children can hardly be expected to be aware of, let alone obey. A far more objective explanation of "sin" is that a collection of social patterns, grown old, corrupt, and decadent, tries to justify it's own existence by proclaiming that all who fail to conform to it are evil rather than admit any evil of its own."
the inscription reads: William St Clair Knight Templar
So intellectual patterns have a higher moral quality then social-cultural patterns. And regarding intellectual patterns:
"Science's empirical rejection of biological and social values is not only rationally correct, it is also morally correct because the intellectual patterns of science are of a higher evolutionary order then the old biological and social patterns.
However, dynamic quality, the value-force that chooses an elegant mathematical solution to a laborious one, or a brilliant experience over a confusing, inconclusive one. . .is another matter altogether.
"Dynamic quality is a higher moral order then static scientific truth, and it is as immoral for philosophers of science to try and suppress dynamic quality as it is for church authorities to suppress scientific method."
St Francis is one of the patron saints of Roslyn
"What you are looking for is what is looking."
- St Francis
Matthew is the other patron Saint
* * *
On Wednesday we flew into Belfast Northern Ireland. Belfast is an interesting city to be sure. We where given a rare tour of the Government headquarters for Northern Ireland. And we taught a great group of people that evening.
* * *
"Static social and intellectual patterns are only an intermediate level of evolution. They are good servants of the process of life but if allowed to turn into masters they destroy it."
This really says it all doesn't it
"The hippies have been interpreted as frivolous spoiled children, and the period following their departure as a "return to values", whatever that means. However, that is completely backwards. The hippie revolution WAS the MORAL movement." - Pirsig
* * *
This is a "green man". At one time they where plentiful in many churches, and still can be found in a few of the older churches around the world that where not destroyed by prodestant zealots. They can also be found all over Hindu temples throughout India.
If you are confused as to what he means. . .read the inscription on the picture above this again, and notice how he is part of the vine itself.
Wednesday night we stayed at my friend John Boyles place in Dunegal. Dunegal is a part of Ireland everyone should at some point see. Michael Chapman was searching for some long lost relatives who lived about two hours from Dunegal. With only a single letter written many Years previously we drove to the city, and walked into a pub. The bartender turned out to be a distant cousin, knew the people mentioned in Michaels letter, and within a few minutes he was sitting is his cousins living room. . . . yes, sYnChRoNiCiTy.
* * *
"Sometimes in a dynamic individual the whole being senses that the static situation is an enemy of life itself. That's what drives the really creative people - the artists, composers, revolutionaries and the like. The feeling that if they don't break out of this jailhouse somebody has built around them, they're going to die.
They're fighting for some kind of dynamic freedom from static patterns.
* * *
Below is my favorite statue from Roslyn
It is pretty clear isnt it? It is Satan himself, always seeing things upside down, bound by rope that is not actually tied. . . .sound familiar?
If she seems to be running from something, that could be the static patterns of her own life she's running from. But she may be running towards something as well. Perhaps, if the running is stopped, if any static patterns claim her. . . .if either her own insane patterns claim her or the static cultural patterns she is shutting out and running from claim her, then she loses.
* * *
Friday night we arrived in Dublin and many of the guys where preparing for one of the largest MMA events to ever be held in Europe. Michael and myself found out we would be live commentators for the event that evening. It was an interesting experience, and all of the athletes did a great job playing it out. Though it was billed as Ireland vs England, it was clear backstage that the fighters from both Countries where all friends, and good people.
John finds a pal
Monday we flew home
* * *
Listen please. . . .it is not the lens, but the light that shines from it that interests me. . .
Lamps are sometimes used as symbols of learning. Why should they be? A torch is often a symbol of idealistic inspiration. Why? When we suddenly understand something we say, "I have seen the light, or "it dawned on me". Why? Cartoonists draw light bulbs over peoples heads to symbolize realization. . .why?
Undefined Auspiciousness. . . .that is, dynamic quality.
That is. . .Aliveness.
The light signals a dynamic intrusion upon a static situation.
To Reka I say thank you. . . .thank you for reminding me what the birds sound like, when I am silent enough to hear them.
Dynamic quality seems like a death experience. It's a movement from something to nothing. How can "nothing" be different from death?
All the Buddha would say was, "See for yourself."
And we will.
"Our greatest blessings come to us by way of madness provided the madness is given to us by divine gift." -Socrates
And on we go. . .
