VISIONS
Xander Stone Ink / By Salvatore Folisi
In a society with little time for rest, our sense of self is identified with anxiety and accomplishment instead of our true being.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/OtnaYdur
February 12, 2013 |
The following is an excerpt from Eros Over Logos: A Revolt of the Instinctual Mind Amidst the Madness of Modern Life.
We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it's all about. —Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
As human beings living in the modern world, we must ask ourselves, “How does our being coexist with all our going?” It‘s an important question because every day we are constantly and simultaneously moving in multiple directions so rapidly that we rarely have the opportunity to connect with the being of our human nature.Being is not the same as doing, and we live in a culture of non-stop acceleration, of continual, frenzied, anxiety and competition-driven, on the go action.
Even our foremost pastimes, the movies, television shows, and sporting events we view—things we do to recover from all our work and busyness—exemplify this glorification of non-stop, nerve-riveting action, of violence, crime, sexual exploits, and destruction.
In this world, there is very little time for rest and relaxation, and when there is time we virtually recoil from it in horror, somehow believing that the moment we cease to act, we also cease to exist. Thus, our most revered and apparent sense of self is identified with anxiety and accomplishment. Many of us tend to resolve this predicament, albeit temporarily, by sedating ourselves with drugs and/or alcohol. When the work day is done the only way many people can change gears or get relaxed is to crack open the bottle or load up the pipe. Our use of mind-altering substances also displays our need to return to the being of our human nature; so why does our normal modern mode of living have to operate in antithesis to it?
By losing regular contact with our underlying non-anxiety driven, non-neurotic, but intrinsically stable, calm, and reflective inner nature, we have ceased to function as, or find fulfillment in, the inherent human being that we are. Indeed, we are becoming increasingly like the programmed devices with which our technological society inundates us, giving the outer impression of vast and dynamic possibilities, but moreover removed from the human heart. Because we lack a true connection with our inner being,we are terrified of being alone or of being at rest; and, paradoxically, through our compulsive obsessions with the frenetic, technology-driven pace of life: we have alienated ourselves from ourselves.
The more we aspire to be in touch with each other via technological devices such as the cell phone, internet, and webcam, the further we stray from the simple human capacity to share space: to talk in person face to face, to be silent, to listen, to breath the same air, to break bread, to live closely together, and to feel the true embodied companionship of those we love, of family, friends, and even strangers. Having quantifiably more contacts in our cell phone, MySpace, or Facebook account is not the same as having more quality relationships that incorporate depth and richness. Sometimes “less is more,” but that‘s something our capitalistic, money-driven society does not easily grasp.
In the modern Western world, powerful personalities are not usually measured as such by their magnitude of loving-kindness or their propensity to inspire the imagination and the human spirit—although figures such as John Lennon and Martin Luther King, Jr. certainly were—but moreover by their capacity to control others, to manipulate the markets and accumulate wealth. In the world of capitalism, the way powerful people relate to things, such as time, or even other people, is not in any way contemplative, reflective or appreciative; it is almost completely manipulative, aimed at molding things to fit in with their goals of how they want the world to be—for them, “time is money.”
Many of us, especially powerful people, actually value our manipulations of machines over our human relationships, and over activities or engagements that do not involve machines, like reading a book, taking a walk, or watching a sunset. The living spirit inside us was not made by a machine, neither was the sun, nor the sky, nor the earth. But the way we live denotes that machines are more significant than any of these things, and such a way of life neglects our opportunities for truly being human.
Why, in our modern world, is going valued so utterly and completely over being? Why, indeed, is being so profoundly devalued, held in high suspicion, and looked upon as idleness and laziness? Perhaps because if one is simply being, simply enjoying being alive, being human, being in time and space, being a human being; then one is not contributing to the slavish wheel of commerce, one is not feeding the grand capitalist system with one's time and energy, with one's blood, sweat, and tears, or with one's very life.
In the state of being, we cannot be accounted for by the measuring sticks of materialism.
Going makes money, being has no need for it. Going needs to be fueled by saleable items like gasoline and coffee, doughnuts and cell phones, CDs and computers;being needs no fuel, its fuel is the acceptance and appreciation of whatever exists in this moment. Going has many goals and agendas that require much effort and activity to accomplish. Being has only one goal: to be. In a state of being, just being is enough.
“What the hell are you talking about!?!” you exclaim, jumping out of your seat. “What is this being of which you speak?!?” In the modern world, there is an unacknowledged social consensus that we should always be preoccupied with some form of outside stimulation, that we are forever in need of something we don't have—we've become chronic “channel-surfers" of life. That's why we're always going. We can't relax. Most of us can't just sit with ourselves for five seconds.
In a state of being, however, we have the opportunity to notice what we are experiencing without reactively and automatically pursing our attachments, cravings, or desires. In a state of being, we are able to notice what our minds are thinking, and what our bodies are feeling. We are able to notice, or sense internally, the sensations inside our own skin and our perceptions of the world around us, as well as how it feels to simply be in the world. Attunement to your being is the same thing as becoming aware of your presence:the spirit, force, energy, or whatever you would call the essence of who and what you are as a living, sentient human being.
Although being is shared by all humans of all cultures and all eras, and by all living creatures, in truth, being as an aspect of our human condition and potential is not a reinforced or celebrated capacity in modern Western culture. Because we focus so exclusively on going and on becoming, you could say that being is not an innately modern Western phenomenon or faculty. Therefore, it is somewhat strange for us to consider. In fact, being is more well known to pre-Western, indigenous, and Eastern cultural paradigms in which humans co-existed more directly with the planet and with one another. Being implies a sense of profound interconnection and interrelationship with the social and natural world, involving not only one's mental processes but also one's body awareness, sensations, energies, instincts, and intuitions.
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According to historical accounts, it is reported that when European colonialists came to the American continent, they tended to view the Native Americans as lazy and lacking in ambition. In his recent book, Tree Of Rivers: The Story Of The Amazon, John Hemming quotes the French scientist La Condamine, from 1743, as having described Amazonian natives as “Enemies of work, indifferent to all motives of glory, honour or gratitude; solely concerned with the immediate object … with no care for the future; and incapable of foresight or reflection.”
Obviously, time enlarges perspective, and we know today that during the brutal conquest of the Americas, the European mind-set differed so radically from the Native American‘s that gross misjudgments and racial prejudices were made. Commenting on this situation from the other side of the looking glass, the Native American medicine man Lame Deer states in his autobiography:
Because we refuse to step out of our reality into this frog-skin illusion, [his term for capitalism] we are called dumb, lazy, improvident, immature, other-worldly. It makes me happy to be called 'other-worldly,' and it should make you so. It's a good thing our reality is different from theirs.
Both these accounts, the first discriminatory and the second revelatory, imply another way of relating to time within the Native American culture in which—unlike our modern Western model which is bound to the clock—it appears that being is as equally valued as going. Denoting this other kind of time, the poet Juan Ramon Jimenez wrote, “More time is not more eternity.” Thus, from the poet‘s perspective time is a subjective experience, closely related to one's particular state of being.
Similarly, from The Labyrinth of Solitude,the Mexican poet Octavio Paz states, “the conception of time as a fixed present and as pure actuality is more ancient than that of chronometric time, which is not an immediate apprehension of the flow of reality but is instead a rationalization of its passing.” He goes on to describe “original time” which “coincides with our inner, subjective time,” in which one's “subjective life becomes identical with exterior time, because this has ceased to be a spacial measurement and has changed into a source, a spring, in the absolute present, endlessly recreating itself.”
These descriptions of time are certainly different from the ways in which we are conditioned to conceptualize, and thus experience, time in modern Western society. Time as “pure actuality,” and as “a source…in the absolute present” connotes time as being and as presence, as the flowing of life, and as the flow through which we encounter existence. Experiencing time in this manner relates to the context and process of our lives, as well as the contents. In this mode of reality, by virtue of containing and underlying our experience, time becomes the ocean and ground of our being, and—through having been returned to its a priori or transcendent function—loses exclusive identification with going.
One way to illustrate the experience of being,not in chronological or linear time, but in this other, magical or eternal time, is to recall a time when you were in love. For love has always been an experience that somehow takes us out of the ordinary mode of mundane time as experienced by mortals, and into the realm of angels who live in mythological time. At such a time, and in such a state of being, the love you shared with the other person felt like the truest, most profound fulfillment of your life, of your entire being. What you did or where you were going didn't matter, because you were in love, and in that state of being all your pressing concerns with the world faded away … for awhile.
It could be that something other than being in love takes you to a state of being,wherein you are completely absorbed and fulfilled without having to go anywhere else or accomplish anything. Simple everyday rituals like having a cup of coffee and gazing out the window at a beautiful landscape can induce our appreciation for being. There are also a variety of awareness disciplines, such as meditation, that provide practical techniques for developing one‘s reflective awareness and appreciation of being. Being as a quality of experience can be cultivated in many activities, even washing the dishes.
Creative activities—like painting, dancing, playing music, or writing—induce states of being in action that, once engaged, seem to take us over, to transport us effortlessly into another state of being in which our capacity to experience and express our human identity and potential is profoundly intensified, expanded, and illuminated. Though we may end up with some kind of a finished product, such as a book, poem, song, or performance piece, the essential aspect of the activity involves a creative, or otherwise unnamable, transformation in the interior quality of our state of being, which then becomes manifest as an external accomplishment.
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The point here is not that modern technology and its advancements are implicitly wrong or bad for us—though that may ultimately prove to be true—but that becoming entranced with them to the exclusion of our true human nature, our inherent humanness, is a problem. It is both ignorant and dangerous to focus only on the outer world we have created and not the inner worlds that compose who we are. And yet how can we remain connected to the inner world of our essential selves when our very civilization is based on the domination and manipulation of human beings, as well as nature itself.
Our current thrust of technology and perpetual states of rapid social activity—in the name of progress—has a two-fold effect: the first is the internal eclipsing of our capacity for being, the second is the external eradication of nature—the native environment in which we are most truly human. Through social engineering—gradually eliminating both our internal and external reference points for who we instinctually are as human beings—society remakes us into creatures who think, feel, and behave in the ways they want us to.
How do we address such insidious problems that are so deeply embedded in the function, structure, and foundations of our society that they compose the basis and overall effect of how we live? For most of us, it is nearly impossible to conceive of another perspective or way of living that does not entail the continual subjugation of nature, alongside the never-ending build-up and harnessing of technological forms of human preoccupation that guide us away from our inner selves. How can we live simultaneously in a machine-based world and on a nature-based planet? Isn't such a way of life an inherent contradiction forecasting an imminent demise?
Currently our machines, our industry, and our technology are not only eclipsing our souls, they are killing nature. Because we are not machines, because we are of the earth, and because we are also nature, our machine-based way of life is also killing us.
If we are to find solutions other than an unconscious global suicide and apocalypse, we will find them not through a crescendo of our current maniacal mode of reactive action, but through a more reflective attuning of our human being to the being of the world. Perhaps in tending to the world—through our own conscious beings as opposed to our unconscious goings—we can effect a healing in which we will discover the reality of the anima mundi, the soul of the world that, like us, is also alive. Through this deeper connection based on spiritual recognition, we can initiate more sensitive, aware, and unifying interactions within ourselves, with one another, and with the planet whose beingis also essentially part of ours.
Copyright © 2012 by Salvatore Folisi. Reprinted with permission of Xander Stone Ink.
Salvatore Folisi is a published poet and writer who has just completed his first book of philosophy Eros Over Logos: A Revolt of the Instinctual Mind Amidst the Madness of Modern Life.
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