Heart of Awareness

The heart as invitation

I'm returning to a … ' same old … same old ' … today with an affirmation of what our lives have always been about … either as we lived them in dreams … our hopes … and the work to achieve them. But there's a difference at this time … we are coming to a greater awareness of what we are doing … and the way we relate to each other … and to the world community. The clarity is remarkable on account of the fact that … we may have thought we had lost the link all together.

 

It appears to me we engaged a great many disguises … because we didn't have all the answers yet. It was a temporary measure … until we got our land feet.  We had always shared a common impulse with regards to what ought to be undertaken … brought into effort … and continued into the achievement of promises we have undertaken with each other. But we wonder about who wrote the book on life … and how did we view that in so many ways through the supervision of the faiths … the tolerance of the mothers … and the will of the father.

 

In the common experience of humanity … we all share in the concerns on a collective basis … and are in contact with each other … on the basis of ideals … a sharing of perceptions … and the realization that the affirmed values of one man … is also that of all men. In the work we undertake to understand this in a conscious manner … we realize that its always been moving in that way. However it comes to a remarkable experience … regarding our will and participation … in the process of life's cultivation … that is astonishing.

 

Fitzgerald wrote about the people … who came to Gatsby's parties … as having a heart that was its own invitation. It is certainly the quality of the rich … to practice a certain fluid sense of relation to all achievement in society … and are therefore beautiful together. And then there are those … who create an appreciation for what they receive … and in the act of appreciation … become enjoined in the achievement … as a participant.

 

Either way … its a feeling of the miraculous … a sense of wonder that accompanies the experience … which we express as … ' being self made ' … ' the luck of the draw ' … or the feeling of grace … as if God knows the address at which we live. It makes us feel that someday we would want to give some of that back … to the society that nurtured us. And it is a growing society … that extends around the globe … and makes a relation to us … we didn't know existed.

 

I seem to recall … having a lot of difficulty … at one time … in coming to terms with the reliance I had placed on the word of the Indic faith. I had gravitated to Zen Buddhism … and found in its expressions … the simple admonishment to open my eyes to what is in front of me … and say it for what it is. I started to do that … and was soon in appreciation of its expressions … such as … ' sitting just to sit ' … or … ' marvelous activity … drawing water from the well and hewing wood.'

 

But the restless passions couldn't stop there … and wanted more. So I transferred from the Indic … and ' sitting just to sit ' … became the door to my introduction to Indic meditative techniques … and thereafter … a bunch of Indic representations of faith … suddenly appeared in front of my eyes in the world's experience. And then I realized … that what I had grappled with as the Siva family … is not a self gratification of know-it-all by Indics … but it referred to the world family.

 

And thereafter … when the stories of Siva … became too embroiled with the Indic vernacular … I switched to the Zeus family … and realized that they were telling me the same thing … in response to my western education. And then … in the way that internet signals travel around the world … I came back to understand Hinduism better. I had re-discovered my faith … with help from the world family … and suddenly it didn't matter that I continue to call it the Siva family.

 

Reading Joseph Conrad's … ' Heart of Darkness ' … drew me into the depths of the passions … aggrieved with the way changes brought on by modernization … had crippled parts of my joys … with the old ways … but I couldn't finish the book. But switching my reliance … and taking to ' Apocalypse Now ' … helped me to go further into the issues. With loud rock and roll music on the portable stereo … a gung-ho attitude of war … and stunning visual images helped me get past the dross of lethargy … and I made it to Col. Kutz’s hut. It was a revelation of feelings clamped down by an attitude of … not-letting-go.

 

Its strange how an awareness of past loves … influences our will … not to undertake any activity … that is going to bring us further away from the past. It raises an impression of being disloyal … traitorous … or switching our alliances. It feels phoney … after the grand opus of views we used to experience as promises … versus the simple achievements we make to buy into a new fashion … or to try a new flavor of ice cream … we had never thought we could possibly like.

 

It brings me to a strange view of my birth in these times … that preceded the 'X' generation … and I think I know what  the ' X ' stands for. Its a state of passions … in newborns that has grown cold … from past longings and disappointments. On reflection … I appear to have been a doctor … working on his patient … and viewing my faith and loves … with an eye for understanding its traumatic state … and using the mind like a scalpel to work on it. Was I even Hindu to start with? I don't really know!

 

However I have come to a great view of my capability in handling myself … under the circumstances. It may have started with improvisation … but … I picked up on my work experiences … traveled the world a bit … and brought myself back to the surgery table to work on the reluctant patient. Then I wanted to know what others had said of life's achievements … and compared that with my views. Past the bouts of wrestling … and the profound natures of the classical texts … my enthusiasm for mixing my volitional views with that of the old … continues from step to step. Even right now … I'm simply taking the next step.