Letting go and letting come...
I have, of necessity, developed an inner impulsion to grow, to deepen toward my source, uncovering and uprooting my illusions and myths, stories and fairy tales that I can no longer live by; revealing raw reality, unvarnished truth, unmasked authenticity, true integrity. This impulsive drive became a fire in my belly fueling an unstoppable passion to understand that which is real and true while attempting to resolve some of the cognitive, emotional, and spiritual dissonance that is a sort of tinnitus constantly piercing and clouding my soul.
But this fire in my belly has been dormant for close to 50 years. The domination of cultural influences had its foot on my neck exerting pressure, very subtly and imperceptibly; just enough to keep my face in the dirt, keeping me unaware that life is so much more than the canned world and life view that I have downloaded. Under this impalpable duress, I settled into knowing that I know, content with what I thought I knew; with the status quo remaining rigidly and palpably sacred. This is the natural tendency for most people. That is precisely how cultural myths are sustained. Apart from trauma and crisis and broken dreams; my world view, my myth, would have remained intact. That’s what I wanted. I liked my life except for the heartbreak. But these disrupted the settled illusion of status quo to the extent that I could no longer survive. The foundational values and beliefs that had sustained me crumbled in the face of this upheaval. I felt the storms washing away the sand upon which I had built my All American, Christian house. It was either do or die. I could no longer survive with the same thinking and patterns that had worked for so long. It was then that my eyes began to open and I began to “See” beneath the surface, through the facade that had sustained me.
I began to see that the facade was made up of my lifelong assumptions, opinions, values, and beliefs. I began to see that anything and everything that I had been told, that I had downloaded from culture, that I automatically believed was mere sand shifting under my feet, preventing me from getting back up. There was no foundation. The source was not solid. Things fall apart; the center would not hold. I was no longer grounded. There was no going back or even looking back. But then, I realized that this foundational grounding that I had believed in was also shifting sand. This too was illusion. I needed to clear the space in my life of all assumptions because I began to see that there is nothing that is “certain”. Groundlessness is all that there is. I realized that being grounded is like clenching my fists around that which I wanted and desired; especially when it came to opinions and beliefs. Truth never becomes “true” or “more true” by clenching my teeth or my fists… I had to let go… of everything. I had to stop creating my own illusions. I had to open my hands, my mind, my heart, and my will to anything and everything that comes my way. I had to “let life come” as it is; emerging new, clear, and pristine everyday, without my agendas, interpretations, expectations; accepting all of life and all people unconditionally.
I found that without dogma, my conversations were more open and penetrating. Without expectations, there was a freedom to allow the dialogue to lead us where it may. Without assumptions and interpretations, I could truly seek to understand and more clearly hear others. Without hidden agendas and ulterior motives I could love more deeply and unconditionally.
“The organizing myth of any culture functions in ways that may be either creative or destructive, healthful or pathological. By providing a world picture and a set of stories that explain why things are as they are, creates consensus, homogenizes culture, sanctifies the social order, and gives the individual an authorized map of the path of life. A myth creates the plotline that organizes diverse experiences of a person or a community into a single story.
“But in the same measure the myth gives us security and identity, it also creates selective blindness, narrowness, and rigidity because it is intrinsically conservative. It encourages us to follow the Faith of our Fathers, to hold to the time-honored truth, to imitate the way of the heroes, to repeat the formulas and rituals in exactly the same way that they were done in the good old days. As long as no radical change is necessary for survival, the status quo remains sacred, the myth and ritual are unquestioned, and the patterns of life, like the seasons of the year, repeat themselves. But when crisis comes -- a natural catastrophe, the military defeat, the introduction of a new technology -- the mythic mind is at a loss to deal with novelty. As Marshall McLuhan said, it tries to 'walk into the future looking through a rear view mirror.'” (Sam Keen, Your Mythic Journey, p. xiii)
Things Fall Apart. The Centre Cannot Hold.
(My angst of dissonance)
THE SECOND COMING By W. B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
“The organizing myth of any culture functions in ways that may be either creative or destructive, healthful or pathological. By providing a world picture and a set of stories that explain why things are as they are, creates consensus, homogenizes culture, sanctifies the social order, and gives the individual an authorized map of the path of life. A myth creates the plotline that organizes diverse experiences of a person or a community into a single story.
“But in the same measure the myth gives us security and identity, it also creates selective blindness, narrowness, and rigidity because it is intrinsically conservative. It encourages us to follow the Faith of our Fathers, to hold to the time-honored truth, to imitate the way of the heroes, to repeat the formulas and rituals in exactly the same way that they were done in the good old days. As long as no radical change is necessary for survival, the status quo remains sacred, the myth and ritual are unquestioned, and the patterns of life, like the seasons of the year, repeat themselves. But when crisis comes -- a natural catastrophe, the military defeat, the introduction of a new technology -- the mythic mind is at a loss to deal with novelty. As Marshall McLuhan said, it tries to 'walk into the future looking through a rear view mirror.'” (Sam Keen, Your Mythic Journey, p. xiii)
“And you? When will you begin
that long journey into yourself?”
(Rumi)
“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea,
never regains its original dimensions.”
(Oliver Wendell Holmes)
Things Fall Apart. The Centre Cannot Hold.
(My angst of dissonance)
THE SECOND COMING By W. B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
(W. B. Yeats, 1919)
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
(W. B. Yeats, 1919)
Historical context
The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War[3] and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence that followed the Easter Rising, at a time before the British Government decided to send in the Black and Tans to Ireland. Yeats used the phrase "the second birth" instead of "the Second Coming" in his first drafts.[4]
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