Archive: Craving God fearing Delusion

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON THE NORTHLANDS: MARCH 4, 2007

Hey God, it's for you!

Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God
John Donne (1572-1631)

Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend
Your force, to breake, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to’another due,
Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearley’I love you,’and would be loved faine,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,’untie, or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish mee.

I love John Donne.  I once read a commentator state that his is ‘the most seductive spiritual poetry and the most spiritual seductive poetry ever written’.  This sums him up pretty well.  Born Catholic, after succumbing to pressure from King James To convert to Anglicanism he eventually became the Dean of St Paul’s, gave really cool sermons and obsessed about death in a very creative manner.

The reason I love him (apart from the fact that his poetry rocks) is that he really craved God. He ached for God with an intensity that shakes me. I can taste it in every line of this poem. I understand it. I feel the same, sometimes.

Yesterday Wolf and I were in a book shop and I saw Richard Dawkins‘ book The God Delusion. The title scared me, I leafed through it with ill-concealed hysteria and asked Wolf if he found the title sad or threatening. Wolf is grounded in his faith (unconventional, he is no monotheiest) and moves easily past naysayers. I fear contamination. A guy, a clever guy, a scientist, publishes a book asserting God is nothing more than a dangerous delusion and I linger, fearfully – wanting to read it, and yet not.

It is like passing the scene of a car accident, not wanting to look and yet wanting to. You want to look and see people ashen faced and trembling, lighting cigarettes and saying “what a relief I could have been killed”. You want to see survivors not corpses. I want to read The God Delusion and survive. I don’t want to be contaminated with even more doubt.

Like Donne I crave God, like Donne’s God, mine remains just beyond my fingertips. People who know God exists draw me, people who know He doesn’t scare me. The beauty of faith is in its struggle.

To protect myself from Dawkins the non-believer I call upon another love, Einstein, the pantheist – speaking in Hindu:

‘A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.’

So who’s deluded now? Thanks Albert I owe you one.

Illusion #2

The taste of an orange is an illusion;

All you have to do is catch a cold to know this.

Opinion is an illusion;

All you have to do is look within to know this.

Lines drawn on maps are an illusion;

All you have to do is see the world’s strife to know this.

The passing of time is an illusion;

All you have to do is fly over time-zones to know this.

The passing of a lifetime is an illusion;

All you have to do is look in the mirror and see your 70 year old face through your 20 year old heart to know this.

The value of money is an illusion;

All you have to do it is loose your life savings in an economic crash to know this.

Power is an illusion;

All you have to do is gain and lose it to know this.

Material success is an illusion;

All you have to do is walk through one of the poorer places of the world and see the inherent wealth in life of to know this.

Religion is an illusion;

All you have to do it open a newspaper to know this.

Self is an illusion;

All you have to do is fall in love to know this.

God is an illusion;

All you have to do is find Him to know this.

Everything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste and know is an illusion;

All you have to do is die to know this.

Love is real.

All you have to do to know this is raise a child with patience and understanding through an endless succession of good days and bad days, until one day they leave and start a journey of their own.

All you have to do to know this is say goodbye to your mother or father for the last time.

All you have to do to know this is watch your lover while they sleep.

Love is all that is real.

All you have to do is attain enlightenment to know this.

Illusion #1

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once upon a time there was a young prince who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, and he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father’s domains, and no sign of God, the prince believed his father.

But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace and came to the next land. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore.

“Are those real islands?” asked the young prince.
“Of course they are real islands,” said the man in evening dress.
“And those strange and troubling creatures?”
“They are all genuine and authentic princesses.”
“Then God must also exist!” cried the young prince.
“I am God,” replied the man in evening dress, with a bow.

The young prince returned home as quickly as he could.

“So, you are back,” said his father, the king.
“I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God,” said the prince reproachfully.
The king was unmoved.
“Neither real islands, real princesses nor a real God exist.”
“I saw them!”
“Tell me how God was dressed.”
“God was in full evening dress.”
“Were the sleves of his coat rolled back?”
The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled.
“That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived.”

At this, the prince returned to the next land and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress.

“My father, the king, has told me who you are,” said the prince indignantly. “You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician.”
The man on the shore smiled.
“It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father’s kingdom, there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father’s spell, so you cannot see them.”

The prince pensively returned home. When he saw his father, he looked him in the eye.
“Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?”
The king smiled and rolled back his sleeves.
“Yes, my son, I’m only a magician.”
“Then the man on the other shore was God.”
“The man on the other shore was another magician.”
“I must know the truth, the truth beyond magic.”
“There is no truth beyond magic,” said the king.
The prince was full of sadness. He said “I will kill myself.”
The king by magic caused Death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses.
“Very well,” he said, “I can bear it”.
“You see, my son,” said the king, “you, too, now begin to be a magician.”

From “The Magus” by John Fowles.

Preservation

‘Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual’s instinct for self preservation.’ Albert Einstein

My initial response to the concept of preservation is it’s like an N.R.A approach – be willing to take a life in order to protect one. I have always believed that is utter crap. I have argued this on The Northlands I won’t go into it again except to give this summary and link:

The reason I hate guns is if we have got them we use them. I have had really fucking awful days when the thought of a quick and painless end to it all would have been attractive. Thank God I didn’t have a gun. I have had fucking awful days when I could have cheerfully blown my husband’s head off and done a happy dance in his pooling blood. Thank God I didn’t have gun. I strongly believe people do not have the right to bear arms… no matter what is says it says in your constitution.

It is also (as in the image I chose to illustrate this post) an illusion. A rose pressed into a Bible like a blood stain. How can a dead thing be considered preserved? The simulcrum is all that remains; the mammoth in the ice, a damp fossil. Take the DNA, create a new beast and what have you preserved ? A sense of man as god? Or a faker? Magician or illusionist?

So is preservation ever worthwhile? I think it is a subtle power. Culture preserves a sense of self and Faith a sense of Soul. We should be willing to die for something. If not the right to bear arms then maybe the right to lay them down.

Destruction

I have been avoiding making this post for a month. The truth is when I said that I would post on the five themes I knew there was only one thing I could discuss under Destruction and eh, it is hard.

My Dad has cancer and I am afraid he is slowly dying.

Ok, that is that out in the open, so let’s delve a little deeper. I have this Hindu/Buddhist journey thing going on. My dad is an athiest. He says he believed in God when I was born but I think it had worn off by the time I had started school. So he faces death as the ultimate, no bullshit end. That’s it, it has been wonderful, drive safely, lights off, goodnight. I wish I were a proper Christian so I could say “no not that, this” (heaven etc.). Because although my dad could be a bit of a shit and in his day was a lot of a womaniser – he is a wonderful human being and would be the kind of guy God would love to have on his team. But I am the mess of faith and so I find myself believing something, but what? I have no idea. Suddenly my search for an answer has become more pressing, because my dad is on the edge of the abyss.

Aside from the desire to give my dad a convincing alternative to his spiritual nihilism I need the comfort myself. Wolf talks to his dead. I’m not sure when, or how often. But he communes… and sometimes (at least from the expressions on the cats faces I think this is the case) they drop by for a visit.

I guess this is why Faith is called Faith and not Knowing.

Incidentally, dad isn’t cashing in his chips yet. He is ready to fight and the weapon of choice is chemotherapy. Here I recognise Shiva’s dance – destroy to create. Just wish I could touch his hair one more time before the destruction starts.

Dance, then…

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

What better way to resurrect the dead than with the other man in my life, besides Wolf (and I have my suspicions about those two, but that can wait)? Lord Shiva – Nataraj, my cosmic dancer. He has been in my life overtly for about 10 years, but I think he may have been lurking in other forms before that. When I am lost and I remember to ask for help he usually appears to point the way.  And again feeling the need for this place I look for an opening and he provides it with his dance of bliss:

This cosmic dance of Shiva is called ‘Anandatandava,’ meaning the Dance of Bliss, and symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation and destruction, as well as the daily rhythm of birth and death. The dance is a pictorial allegory of the five principle manifestations of eternal energy — creation, destruction, preservation, salvation, and illusion.

So welcome me back, dancing.

 

Now

I have a wonderful life and yet I want more.  When you have so much it is hard to express what more is.  I want a Buddhist more or Hindu more.   I want more via less.  Strip down and reduce.  I want mystical Zen.  I want to appreciate the moment and live fully in the place that Wolf calls “now”.

Now. 

NOW!

The thing is you can’t think yourself into that place.  You have to sit there and… nothink.  Empty.  As with meditation, you can’t try too hard.  It is so easy to fall into the abyss of more when striving for less. 

…

I am meditating.

I am a spiritual person. 

Meditating. 

Me Di Tate

(pretty cool)

Hey, I might become enlightened. 

(I wonder if people will notice)

I will strive and eventually I will prevail. 

I will understand. 

I might even become a Master.

(walk before you can run)

I am meditating. 

I’ll write a book.

(with a cool cover)

Wear guru clothes and sit cross legged for days.

(do people pee themselves when they do that?)

You will just have to sit in my presence to know how enlightened I am.

(because of course you can’t brag about it)

I will be great.

(think positive)

I am great. 

I will be God.

(think positive)

I am God. 

…

Eh, I am lost.   Noisy little ego.  Shush now.

 Where was I?  Ah yeah, I want more – for less.