Shakespeare's Cottage

To the Manor Born

On a visit to England … the ex-wife and I … took the tour bus to Stratford-upon-Avon to visit Shakespeare's cottage. No visit to England would have been complete without that. Along the way … the tour guide pointed to some housing schemes … where the doors had been refurbished to look grand. And his comment about the low cost nature of the homes … poked fun at the facade we engage.

 

I on the other hand was reminiscing about P.G. Wodehouse and the English country manors … set in the splendor of a large estate … with a pond … the woods … and perhaps on occasion … pheasants … foxes … and deer habitating in the wild. Its the stuff of dreams … and it reminds us of Dionysus … wandering among the vine groves … Pan … reclined on the grass with his flute and perhaps a peacock or two … strutting their stuff  … near the pond where the swans are gathered.

 

I think its sad in some way … to think … that such opulence … from the days of yore … is merely conspicuous lusciousness … best to deny … in an environment of a growing social consciousness in the world. However … in the pursuit of the individual quality in these times … we are by obligation … guided into inquiring about the nature of such individuality that existed before.

 

I am reminded of a comment by a former boss that she was capable of seeing into everything … and with a wave of her hand that seemed to include the whole world had said … ' I don't need any of this ' … meaning I think … that she didn't need anyone telling her what to do.  Certainly that's the Utopian sense of vision … we all feel inside … but work at keeping it down … in these days of 10,000 songs in our music jukebox.

 

I was quite surprised to find that I was enraged with  suggestions recently that such opulence … as the English manors … are decadent. Obviously when someone makes that remark … its in reference to the individual natures … not as a statement of the social order of society … in which we had commonly cultivated a high and low in our experiences … in order to guide our affairs … in a more informed sense of the issues.

 

Right there is where a thinking man applies himself to discover the difference between a social identity and the individual natures. In principle we are all equal … however in the way we come to perceive and understand our condition as man … may encompass a wide variety of landscapes … and certainly we do that without owning every inch of ground in the world. A truck driver in the engagement of his part in the social circle … is still in his individual nature … the world itself … depending of course on his reading habit.

 

In accepting our identity in the social experience … the gnosis brings to our understanding … the proper boundaries of the part we play … in relation to the whole. That would in some way redefine the nature of the physical we commonly experience … but in our subtle resistance to a life lived commonly … we find ourselves yearning for a heaven in the after life. How far is that from realizing that what we yearn for ...is a contact with our individual natures?

 

Obviously we need a way of organizing our perceptions to engage the growing experience of the world today. Our individual natures resist any attempts to put it down in the name of sacrifices and the greater good … we are instead being asked to inquire into the nature of the greater good. And such a direction leads us to our individual natures … in its former glory of opulence … or in its present experience of understanding … in a mind that is open to such a transformation of thought.

A man … in consideration of his prick … doesn't have to imagine … a prick … and most assuredly doesn't lust for more than one. Herein lies the original individuality of the cave-man … whose mere sense of privacy of his sexual nature … hid a sense of his individual nature … that was in that way brought to his experience.

 

As we pursue the idea of the individual … a man is necessarily covering the range of its experiences from the manor to his prick … without prejudice to either one. And in separating the individual from the social .. we avoid blunders of insight … the way terrorism took down the twin towers. We continue to pay for such blunders from our past … and that in itself contains important lessons for understanding the difference between the two.