Alpaca picnic
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John Aufenanger
 May 29 2023
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    What fun we are having.


    I caught a smattering of television "news" this morning, in a breakfast joint, while eating a plate of sausage gravy and biscuits the size of my head. The closed caption interpretation of what was being said was extremely amusing. One of the featured talkers must have spoken with a slight lisp. The volume was off, you see. I might have dialed back the clock twenty years. I noticed that nothing has changed except a few of the names. It was very like looking into a tunnel that leads into another world. Nothing was relatable. I have been here and there - many of the places that were mentioned. There is no similarity between what was being reported and my own direct experience. Is it ALL fiction? It's a sincere question. If I knew the answer I wouldn't ask.


    There's a wonderful little book by C.S. Lewis titled "The Great Divorce." It's an unfortunate title because it is dissociated from the content. The reader will have no idea that it was written in rebuttal to William Blake's lovely proverbial meditation, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," which is, in many ways, the greater. Though centuries divide the two works, both were written at the same time: Now. Both are beloved. I use both as indispensable reference, essentially, as both are from the heart and to the heart, and in their different ways explorations of what lies beyond our accustomed paradigms. I might put together a reading list, come to think of it. These would certainly be featured.


    Where would we be without the "news" to misinform us about that which doesn't exist in actual experience? We would be Here. Same as always. "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's," yes? This is interpreted in several ways. We might say it is an argument for what we would later call "the separation of Church and State." It has certainly been employed as such. There's another "great divorce" for you. Who gets the kids, who gets the dog, and how do we divide the LP'S we both enjoyed so much together? What a mess! I am feeling playful, apparently.


    Words are like birds. They are here, and then they are not. Where do they go? Presumably, they go to a nest. Where is this nest? Follow them, in experience. A word appears in the Mind. It is invisible and insubstantial, as is the Mind itself. Not a thing in the same way a bird is a thing, or a bathtub, or a finger, or a pencil. We may write a word but words are primary, writing secondary. The experts tell us we spoke words before we could write them. As we grow up we speak before we can write. "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water." Writing is like having a word-catcher. A word comes fluttering to the window ledge, and if we have a word-catcher, we can capture it temporarily. Keep it as a pet. But, at the same time, it can never truly belong to us. For this reason, both linguists and mathematicians are apt to go mad, by and by.


    I write from the presidential suite of a 19th Century hotel that is being slowly restored. This will be home for a month, maybe two. Ice cream sandwich. Chicken noodle soup. Eat dessert first. It is 80°F in Central New York. Only one of these delicacies will keep. There is no television. I'm here every summer, you see. I love not camping.


    What did the lama say he would have for dinner? Alpaca picnic.


    This is happening. Have you ever just stopped thinking that you are moving through a world and just rested motionlessly in what is happening? Yes - often, as children, I think we do this. You'll know right away. Wonder fills you up, like water fills a sponge. It's subtle. There are spaces between the words that arise invisibly in the Mind. In these spaces there is a glimpse of Eternity, and to enter into the realization of Eternity is to abide within the space, or within these spaces. "Within" is a slippery word, and so is "space." This is happening. What is "this?" It is the stillpoint. In this stillpoint there is no world; there is You. No subject, no object, no people, places, or things.


    Solipsism? No. That's a belief. Not a very good one, easy to see through. Drop beliefs. Don't make conclusions. 


    Usually, it seems that we are thoughts that are thinking thoughts. How does a thought think? ONLY a thought can think. There's no thinker. My Dad used to say, "I always thought people were calling me a big thinker, until I lithened more closely." Sounds like me, without my teeth. (You'll have to take my word for that.) 


    Usually, we look at the Mind from the Mind. Needless to say, all we find there are words - thoughts spoken by an "inner voice," a narration describing objects: refrigerator, chandelier. Shapes and forms. If we believe this narrative then it appears that the narrative is what we are. Naturally. But this is fundamentally unsatisfying because it's not. That's the stuff that comes out of your nose, right?


    Remember how I have confessed to you that when I was a child I judged the world as being unworthy of me, unreal? I wondered, "Where is the real world? When does the Real Life begin?" Remember how I have confessed to you that it took me many years to realize that this is suffering, that I suffered from thinking it should not be this way, and that it should be some other way? Here is the answer: the real world, the Real Life is always right here. It is simply what is happening when we drop the belief in the narrative, in the endless twittering of words on the window ledge. "Should" is just a word without a nest, without a home, without a place to be. It is a rebuttal to experience, a refusal of the gift of Life that comes from God.


    We want a divorce from Life. We have irreconcilable differences with Life, with experience. "Stop the World! I want to get off!" right? These people (I never met) should be doing this, and those people (I never met) should be doing that - thinking this or thinking that, believing this or believing that. As if there are "people," as if there are "shoulds." It turns out I am not alone in suffering. It is not my suffering, as if it belongs to me, as if it is my pet or my property. It is Us. It is "We the People," if you'll forgive the grammar. It is what unites us - this constant dissatisfaction, this perpetual "shoulding."


    Shoulding all over ourselves. 


    This is why the television "news" is the same today as it was twenty years ago, or thirty, or forty, or many centuries ago. (Yes, I know we didn't have television. Just roll with it.) The "news" is about dissatisfaction with what is happening because it is not what should be happening. Endless conflict is inevitable. Endless war is the only possible result. And that is what we see. It is a twisted form of fetish pornography.


    But, when One awakens to reality, all of Consciousness awakens with the One.


    Be the One who awakens to reality.


    Now, since I began with C.S. Lewis, let me provide a short synopsis to explain how his book is relevant. The story is a fable about a man who dies in a bombing during the blitz in London, for it was during that time the book was written, who finds himself after death in a dreary sort of inner city which is full of dark buildings but almost entirely devoid of people. Unpopulated. There are, however, several others - a small group - whom he joins to board a special bus to Heaven. 


    The bus leaves the ground and it begins to rise, affording the passengers a view of this city from above. As they ascend higher and higher it is perceived that the city appears infinitely large, ever-widening out and out in a circle of largely abandoned buildings. It is explained that here, in this place, buildings are simply made of thought - which, in fact, is how real buildings are also made, though with a few extra steps - and, as people lived there, conflicts between them inspired them to move farther and farther away from each other. 


    The center was abandoned as they thought up new homes farther and farther away - ever widening, ever expanding outward into the unseeable misty distance. There is a great deal more to the story, and I may revisit it to summarize the rest if the occasion warrants, but we may think of this city as a Purgatory that we the people turn into a Hell. There's your "news." That's what it's always about.


    Well, this took a depressing turn, didn't it? So let me change it up. Since I recently drove across three-quarters of this beautiful country from New Mexico to New York, this comes to mind: 


    What did Tennessee? What Arkansas. 


    Peace, friends.


    philosophy spirituality william blake c.s. lewis dad jokes current events the media
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