Davy Jones Locker

Locked in

I don't believe I have ever received any help … that wasn't in some way aimed at making me work my way. Its curious therefore to think … that I stand the risk of creating an indulgence … with the help offered to me … as if I would create a continued expectation of that help. I wonder at how I came to fear such a risk?

Beyond the cultivation of a civilized society … our concerns today center around the efforts at cultivating the mind. That would explain the incredible … pace of life in these times. A glance at the proliferation of books and videos on the subject today … is staggering.

Of these … is an account … I came across … of the Navy Seals training in the US … where the trainees are put through a grueling pace of practices. In the final part … they swim through a stretch of freezing sea … to a waiting ship … where they are offered a hot cup of chocolate … with the suggestion that … ' if you refuse it you'll score higher marks.' The point of course is to train soldiers … not to let their guard down.

' It never rains but it pours ' … is a common expression that records a series of unfortunate events … taking place one after the other … as if to break a man's will. In this situation … we find the wisdom of suggestion that … ' its not about being good … or bringing ourselves to deserve … but about getting the job done.' The implication is that we are doing it for ourselves.

I remember being in a hurry to grow up when young … and hoping that my mother would cut me some slack. Its such a difference to love someone because you want to … rather than the advocacy that we have to. To be able to do so … implies a freedom of thought on our part … to understand the reasons for our actions … and to undertake such activity volitionaly … rather than a studious enactment of compliance.

In seeking the will for such a cause … we encounter the Zen aphorism that … ' what you can't help doing … you're doing it voluntarily.' That leads us to another raging storm of arguments that examine the issue of … God as creator … or is evolutionary science correct about the natural intelligence of creation?

In the current mood of social mind development … I'm inclined to say that the issue of God the creator … arose as a perception of the passions. Today as we move into a greater reasoning of issues … we will be inclined to subscribe to the intelligence of the physical laws of nature … where these laws appear to place the mind of man at the center of creation … and man himself is one hand of the will of progeny that moves the creative forces to where they want to go.

The idea is not as preposterous as it seems … if we consider the critical nature of the eros impulses and the way they bring an experience of vanity to man. In viewing the Indic processes of self-realization as an illustration … we find that even with all the efforts to break down the ego of the man … he finds in a final analysis … that nature exposes a vanity about itself … that is critical to the life force … and admonishes the aspirant to stop running himself into the ground.

Herein begins the pilgrim's dawn of realization. That vanity is not the great evil … but when a man creates an obsessive possession of vanity as his reward … for the conspicuous genius of his creative actions … then and only then does he create a trespass. For he undertakes his achievement with the cooperation of the divine forces … that act to further his interests and will … in accordance with the wisdom of the mind … and they challenge the man to identify such a wisdom in himself … beyond the anxiety of the apparent commitment that such an exercise would involve.

Odysseus swam the Aegean after the ship sank on the way back from the battles at Troy. In Troy … the world watched as man's ingenuity fooled the Gods into defeat … and no doubt Odysseus was bringing home that sense of man's will and victory. Floundering in the water … he refused the help of the Gods. Perhaps he thought himself now greater than even the Gods. That is assuredly not the defining perception of man … but someone who finds his rightful place as an equal partner of the Gods. It is to Odysseus wit and credit that he relented … and they saved him from the tempest.

In our daily experiences … we sometimes encounter a similar situation. When we extend ourselves to help … the response is often gratefulness. In viewing that … we are obliged to communicate to the other … that it was for him to pull up his socks. I can't help but feel that the Gods view man the same way. To continue to say that God's mercy is not strained … and is without any limitation of measure … is to trap man in Davy Jones locker … in the satiric sea of indulgence. It locks from the inside.