The Sailor

The Yacht of Thought

I've been looking for a word to describe the way thoughts move. The legends created the initiative of Jason and the Argonauts … sailing in search of the golden fleece. No doubt … the bard … Apollonius of Rhodes … experienced thought as moving smoothly … without pushing and shoving … from one idea to another … in a long series of chains … that eventually lead a person to the object of understanding.

Perhaps we inherited the quality of the movement … from the stars … the way the constellations float in the night sky … and gravitate towards this and that … in a seemingly idyllic and unpretentious way … to express itself … with regards to man's growth and development … here on earth. As man … we feel that sensation of the sail … in a part of our passions … which one recent writer referred to as body-mind.* But has man … in recent times … all but halted the sailing process … choosing instead to obsessively … name himself after the experience of thoughts … and to assert that only he is the true representative of civilization?

It is here that the man seeking self-realization … is tasked to undertake his greatest endeavor. In possession of his body-mind … lashed with practices … rituals … and bias … to his personal body … he stands willfully on his tiny rock … as the storms of change blast their way around him … in a persistent challenge on his person. Andromeda of the legends … found herself in something similar … tied to the rocks … and waiting for the sea monster Cetus to come and devour her … until she was saved by Perseus.

In recent times … we encounter the attitudes of peoples … steeped in the traditions of contributing to the world's development … balanced on the rock of willful denial. Down to the ionization of their thoughts … and leaning on the remnant of their bi-polar pillars … they continue to fight for a fair cognition of their past contributions. Unable to be coherent in the process … they display an attitude of … ' my destruction will mean the destruction of the world ' … or the flagrant attitude of declaring that there is none who can prove me unworthy of exaltation.

In such a position of being nailed to their will … they sometimes encounter the sight … and sound … of a branch breaking on a tree … or a car horn … or a sudden fight that erupts on the streets … so unexpected it is that it jars their self conscious nails on their will … and suddenly releases them into the light of a new view … that has shifted their entire focus of attention. As they apply themselves to it … they realize that they are now coming into new rewards for their past efforts … and then slowly … they realize they are no longer the vanguards of the world's blossoming … and take their place along with everyone else.

In the learning they experience … they come to see that … thoughts that are true … need no further encouragement … but flows like the wind or the waves on the beach. Despite the powerful imperatives … of survival and the sustaining of life … we all are in some way … an object of creation and we live by the very instruments of its ways .. whether that storms up from the sea … or we encounter its expressions in a friend or acquaintance.

And when two friends meet each other … sailing on the sea of creation's wonders … many curious things can happen. Quite often … its love for the other … as a reflection of one's own personality and identity. Or it may evolve into a rattling of sabres … as they thrust and parry with each other on the issues. Then again they might just get along playfully … neither side wishing to upstage the other … for the common sense of identity they experience. And then of course … its possible for the two to pass like ships in the night … unspoken … unseen … unrelated.

The experience of the tempest … on the person of an Andromeda … is never forgotten … after it is first experienced. I remember my own sensation of it … while sitting at lunch in a cafe in Petaling Jaya … about a 100 miles north of my present residence. In front of the cafe … across the road was a police station … to the left a car dealer … and in front of me … a car park. As I chewed on my food … the police station seemed to float up in the air … and took along with it the car park and the car dealer. They swayed in the breeze almost like a dance before settling down.

Its an awesome experience to encounter some of creation's mysteries this way. It produces a powerful consternation of what is real and what is an illusion. Happily my own efforts in this area has been productive … and these days I'm treated to a little ' dancing moon on the waves ' on occasion … as a repeat of the experience of the tempest … this time moderated into a symphony of stars … sky … sea … land … and moon … relating to one another like a bunch of friends at play. It is reality too … but viewed with the mind of man.

The Wicca of years gone by got a bad rap .. in my opinion … about stuff that they did .. particularly in the way that it seemed to distort physical reality in the experience of man. These days we view them better … and even set up a day in the year … at Halloween … to celebrate their being. And I'm telling myself … it takes a Wicca to love life … and a man to understand it … and together to realize that there's much we still have to learn.

Note:
* Body-mind ... Sri Aurobindo, Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1996, India

Reviews

[New Theory]

A good read, well written. :)