From Stalin to Rumi
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John Aufenanger
 May 17 2023
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    Why so glum?

    Why so serious?

    Let's turn that frown upside-down.


    Talking about laughing yesterday, with a friend. Imagine that - Talking about laughing led to actually laughing. We laughed quite a lot. It's a lovely thing to do.


    I took a walk to the river, with the neighborhood good dog. Being a dog, he is bound to leap about in the tall grass and last year's rattling bamboo chasing after every sound and motion real or imagined. It struck me that I am very like the dog, except that it isn't sound and motion that I am leaping around to find, but thoughts in my mind. Memories, fantasies, ideas for stories, and so on. Is this "bad?" I don't know. I'm asking. It's a rhetorical question.


    This took me a little while to get, and there was frustration here. 


    A memory has just popped up. I cannot recall which of the many nuns that I've known said it, but one of them - I'll call her Sr. Mary Tabernacle Door - had said, "It's one thing to entertain a thought, and another thing to allow a thought to entertain you." I must have interpreted this to mean something to do with sexual fantasies, and fantasy in general - just daydreaming when you're supposed to be doing equations. Only now do I realize that it means thought isn't a problem; but attachment to thought, or identifying with thought, is a problem. Does an Eighth Grader tend to go straight to Sex for every explanation? Yes.


    Imagine trying to not think. Pushing thoughts away - on purpose - is also a thought. Then we might say, "Now I have no thoughts" - except that one. Of course there are many occasions in which thought is quite calm, and may seem to be gone completely, as in meditative states that a lot of us find so appealingly peaceful. But, "getting" to those states, whether in meditation or walking-talking-around daily life, is never a matter of pushing thoughts away. That only brings them closer, right? So, it is moving attention away from the thoughts, not resisting them in any way.


    Let's understand that a little more than a year ago I would have called all of this nonsense. Spirituality is complete hokum. We've got real world worries to worry about. "Real world worries" - try saying that five times, fast. This is a habit. I have written about whatever was important to me for many, many years, to whatever random group of invisible readers. I wrote about model railroads, Old Time Radio, Music, Hi-Fi, and politics and politics... There have been many enthusiasms, looking back. Naturally, this continues. I've wondered till I'm silly whether writing about this new enthusiasm is "bad" in some way. What's my motivation? Am I asking for affirmation, approval? Is this just an Ego stroking occupation?


    Finally, I landed on the answer: Who cares? It's what's happening. Don't take yourself so damn seriously. Thirty years ago, I was a 30 year-old teenager who went around with a paperback of Joseph Stalin's "The Road to Power" in my back jeans pocket. This was my "identity." Twenty years ago, the book in my pocket was written by Ayn Rand, and ten years ago it was Lysander Spooner. Today, it's Rumi, it's T.S. Eliot. It's the Gospels. Naturally, habitually, or with a kind of downhill-rolling momentum, I have been writing all the while to strangers - first in print, and now on the glow box. I am an expert on all subjects because I deliver flowers for a living. Surely, that's plain.


    Why so glum?


    Peace, friends. 



    philosophy spirituality beliefs opinions ego identity laughter ayn rand lysander spooner joseph stalin consciousness
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