We live in a day and age with many different opinions and in a time where people don’t know what live and let live means.
Some might say it is because we have surrendered too much of our self government to the governing powers.
The Project Vehicle.
Others would say it begs the question the idea that the government would not ‘enshrine our values’.
For people like me the poles of secular and religious nationalism express perfectly why I don’t consider myself having reached my country. My kingdom ‘is’ not of this world.
There is a belonging without violence.
There is a city without nationalism.
There is an inclusivity with open diversity.
There is identity with cosmically aligned individuality.
There is a post post modernism that progresses and doesn’t destroy all ancient values.
The apex we stand on like a spinning globe is the interrelation of movement that is fixed and chaotic.
The social architects of the world may be called ‘they’ by some but to cool headed non conspiracists who are not afraid of the mechanics of the worlds infrastructure we merely call it a project vehicle.
I’m nervous as all get out tonight and I don’t really know why but I can say for sure that part of it is exemplified in how long it has taken me to make another blog post.
Cohesive senses of identity are difficult for neurodivergents like myself who have goldfish level attention to the present unless the deepseated passion quota within is met.
As a father and a husband I find myself struggling between the pragmatic mercantilism of St. Francis of Assisis father and the universal trustful love of St. Francis as if there were no way to balance the two.
I’m torn; comparing myself to the subjective standard of success I see in others and my fear of not measuring up to the imaginary ‘standard’.. all the while fearing the giving up of better heavenly real estate, my truest goal because I could only ever justify being a capitalist in the kingdom of heaven because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work very well for human nature down here on planet earth.
And yet somewhere deep inside my conflict (deep conflict) is that I of assurety believe in balance and yet I desire for the extremes of childlike trust in God and radical trust in His free miraculous work through His creation like I knew in my youth.
What do I need to become not only who I used to be but the next chapter of me?
Am I perhaps meant to be both? Sometimes a turned page is merely the front and back of one turned page.
I’m convinced I’m too young for a midlife crises but perhaps I’m early! If I die before I’m old perhaps I’ll have the luxury to live before I’m dead.
As a guy I knew once said.. “I don’t know what I’m doing and so can you.”
Original clay and mixed digital media art by me: “Blood and Water”.
The usual trifle of a mastermind is their undoing but there is a mastermind of daunting courage, accidental lack of ego and yet an individualism that “seeks not its own.” yet “lacks nothing” and is “perfectly equipped for every good work.”
‘The usual trifle of the Mastermind is the ‘truffle’ of the Mastermind. Wishing to escape the watching eyes of commoners presumed swine that are in their common simplicity the sign and signat of that primeval connective singularity of all beings the mastermind alone presumes to be the all seeing eye..and yet..”the spiritual man judgeth all things and yet is judged by no one.”
This is Yin and Yang, Light and Dark, Batman and Robin.
Shadows have the tendency to reveal the truth.
Just as Sherlock Holmes might make a game of wits with a man of wits similar and the chess game that interweaves as we see consciousness show mysteries, that is the mystery of evil and the mystery of good.
How does one of similar temperament and comportment as another choose evil or good?
How many of us truly ever meet our archnemesis?
The arechtypical mastermind is not entirely evil and vile.
The Benevolent Ego of the good Mastermind absorbs into the all.
Whilst being an individual self he is at the service of all.
While being egoless he has become all.
While the evil mastermind secures his fortress the good mastermind makes a glass house.
Through accountability is wrot tranquility for accountability is “to be known” by another name.
The evil mastermind secures his own house. When the good leader rules he secures homes for all.
Two houses all and all and great the potential dirges for if either were to fall and yet one shares generosity with urgency the other clenches stones and gold alike.
Like a dark prince of shimmering, ethereal and uncreated light so is the rarity of this egoless gift to humanity.
He/she calls back the valor of the medieval knights of lore. He is victorious and powerful and has found the white stone with his name on it. His name will never be blotted out.
May we all strive for such egoless truth of existence.
It is easier than people think for you to have an opinion when people are listening; contrary to the modern proverb “You can’t even have an opinion anymore.”
I know this because I wanted to be heard for years.
I had been glossed over. I had been forgotten. I had been passed over.
For about 5 or so recent years though I was performing live very regular as performing artist/ musician and in what could be considered a pendulum between a new entertainment extroversion to never before experienced levels and on the flip side semi extreme hermitism.
Then in comes the pandemic and I assume the role of a stay at home dad, the multimillion dollar company that used to pump posts about the show I leaded was no longer boosting my content with consistent and gratuitous amounts of ad revenue and that even in cahoots with some of my personal accounts.
The connection of my activity to Facebook translated mysteriously into my person seemingly having value to said algorithm (even if I wasn’t by any means even close to making the type of money the company I worked for was). To all possible intellectualization I could make out however, that the algorithm believed I was famous whether I was much at all. I was noticed somewhat. I was heard. I wasn’t so passed over.
Let me give you one lesson though. Facebook is not censoring you because they do not like you. Facebook just isn’t ‘boosting you’ because you aren’t making them money. At that time I was but now the algorithm believes I am noone, caput, basically a nobody.
This is the sad value testimony of human value in our crapitalist society. Nothing is usually popular in the way it was in ancient Athens.. back when intellectual values, philosophy of ideas and metaphysics were valuable of their own accord and merely for the fact of having mused upon them and nursed them into schools of thought. Now even that value is worthless unless it’s ready to pay the piper. I wonder how much money Facebook wastes not investing in these ideas. But I guess every time a toilet flushes at Walmart a tax deduction angel gets its wings!
So I’m settling in to a more long lasting version of my hermitage but I would be lying if I said that my depression has been totally at bay.
And yet still I’m doing something that some in the medicine/ science only crowd might think muddies the waters into dangerous hippy sentimentalist territory. I’m taking alot of walks in nature, exercising, taking my cbd, eating better, avoiding excessive alcohol or cussing at puppies and of course writing my blog as one part of my weekly healing process.
And you know what .. it helps; because sometimes even after a good helping of protein rich organic peanut butter pancakes.. on a rainy day, when your mind is racing and the sleep disorder demons have clocked out, they need someone to pick up a shift and of course the depression demons are ready and rearing to go. Even so when I write it out it has been transmitted from the realm of thoughts to the realm of words and in my subjective pseudoscientific opinion it seems to help.
I always knew I was an ‘ideas person’. I was always desperate to be stuck in a college academia library studying theology, philosophy, science, physics, social theory (EVERYTHING)!
I have always been mad that whatever secret branch of the government that hires for think tanks hasn’t broke their silence and reached out to me yet. But patience is a virtue after all! Le-sigh.
Re-sign. That’s my miraculous auto predict shake out of writers block! And that’s precisely what I’m getting to now.
The first step to embracing and truly enjoying solitude is getting past the loneliness and just because I’m married doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely when it’s just me and my daughter during the day. Yes.. even with my daughter there I get lonely sometimes and that’s ok even if her just being there really really helps!
You see loneliness is no respecter of persons. And yet perhaps its more helpful and comfortable to be all St. Francis like and call her Sister Loneliness.
Loneliness is like engaging a Jericho wall and sometimes you just got to blast a trumpet in your heart and shake yourself up a little to get past the false barriers it suggests and remember somehow, right now, life is still being lived.
You also must be humble if your’e more the type to be desirous of the hermit lifestyle because whether Pentupium Introvert 5.0 or not you just have to face the music that people aren’t always terrible and in many ways many of them are much better than you… and that’s ok! After all you have your own strengths and weaknesses too!
Most saints probably don’t mantra on that word too much or at the least they think it means something different than most people think it means.
So also a healthy hermit has to be humble and it is as intriguingly intricate as this idiomatic tongue twister.
The healthy hermit is the balance of ones needs and “the Others” needs.. whichever other or Other that may be.
Healthy solitude is a gift for a heart that is healing. It is the opposite of the crusted bitterness of undealt with trauma. The deep irony for he, she or they that seek solitude is this.. one can only seek solitude well as they find a supporting cast.
I want to let you in on a secret. People dealing with depression are not necessarily less motivated. They don’t fit one ideological category.
They are not crazy..at least no less than your average human being.
They have no major discernible differences in lifestyle from many others.
Many of them hold jobs, have families and many other things. People who are depressed may be hiding in your own family. They need your support. They are not that way because of drugs necessarily or some grave fault of their own. Many people are just depressed because this world is full of problems and over time the pressures both ideological and physical bare down upon them and wear them down. Many Darwinian elitists may “say big whoop…get over yourself.”.. but what then are you actually doing for your species? It was common in many cultures to carry the weak or the elderly. Sure, maybe it was common in some cultures to bury them alive but surely our time is not so barbaric!? Not all people who are depressed are suicidal but that does not mean they might not feel like they are dying inside. Please, if you know anyone who is depressed give them a hug. Give them a phone call. Stop by their house and show them you love them. We all desperately need each other. Sometimes the greatest heroes are common people with ears to listen. Lend your ears to your friends. If something seems amiss check up on people. The golden rule has not changed. You are your brothers keeper.
Musings of a Picture Frame Conversationalist. 