Strange Pathways

Life is a strange thing. I think we spend a lifetime getting used to it and more or less failing because it keeps slipping from under our fingers.
I've just seen the second part of the Crow Road TV miniseries. It's based on the Iain Banks book of the same name. And it's as much about secrets and how they tear you down as well as Scotland and Scottish culture and way of being. And, if only for the latter, it's worthwhile seeing.

For a long time I've been thinking what should I write here. I mean sure, it's about spiritual stuff. Yesterday a talk I had with someone I recently met focussed precisely on this. His preoccupation had to do mainly with other people's expectations - and the change of those expectations. Like you'd been building a product and then somehow frustrated the reliability of that product.
My view is somewhat different.

But what is spirituality?

The best definition I can come up with is that it doesn't matter the theme as long as you are really fully there. There rest, when you're half there (or less) is just everything else we fill our time with.
In a word, spirituality is immersion.

I've been thinking about how and what should I write here because I am a bit shy of sharing my vulnerabilities. Not so much because I am afraid of being harmed by others people's knowledge of them (like most people seem to be) but because that experience may harm them in some way. I mean the world is filled as it is with negative stuff and white-brained dogmatism. I wanted to escape all that. At least here. And to be precise. To give people something worthwhile. Something somewhat different from what seem to be surrounded and to do it in a hopefully positive or inspiring way. Uplifting.
Arrogant of me? Perhaps. But I am sick of reading rubbish that's not even true to itself.
And I think it's important we protect one another. Things are difficult as it is without that.

But what is a blog? It's supposed to be a place where you come and you just write whatever comes to mind, writing for yourself, yet sharing it all for the whole world to see. So it's supposed to be personal, yet for the whole world to see.
It kind of doesn't make much sense now does it? But, then again, if you're like me and you have one of these, then you probably don't worry too much with these things and just get on with it.
Until the day...
(and that day ifs perhaps tonight for me...)

While I was walking down to the postal box to return the DVD something like this monologue was happening in my mind:
I'm feeling I'm moving too fast through life. Divided between a knowledge and a bodily yearning. As if I'm too old and still young enough. Trying to fit together two different perspectives about the same thing. As if I'm harbouring two different beings. But that are both myself.
I'll explain further.
The experience of meditation changes things a bit. You kind of fast forward into lessons that probably you're only supposed to learn and realise later on in life. The relativisation of romantic love. for passion is after all one of our most dire concerns.
And yet you're still young enough for your body to just want more than your mind deems necessary or even healthy.
And if you find yourself in a tight spot. Being the arbiter of a very strange game indeed.
And you end up doing what is only reasonable to do.
Everybody gets to win or to lose sometimes.
You improvise. You allow one to win and the other to lose whenever situations are appropriate.


I'll tell you what's perhaps my greatest vulnerability. Sharing my deeper, innermost truth with someone.
I always feel that if I do do it, I will be banished. I will be cut away for the very thing I'm trying to reach.
Writing or isolation then become obvious choices for a screen or pen and paper will never run away unless you want them to. And you can always have the secrecy of your mind to keep nurtured.
It's easy to trace back to where these things started to come into my life, at least consciously.
Just as it is easy to understand that these things are so deep and span so much that it's not likely that they'll be changed dramatically any time soon. Unless something equally dramatic happens to change that happens. I at least, shy of meditation itself, am not planning on undergoing other type of possibilities.

it is obvious that, either we like it or not, we always end up pouring ourselves into the characters we create. One way or another we have to give them realism, solidity, presence. And the only reference we've got is our own.
in a way the characters always control you. The difference when you do see it happening. And you play along. And the more you play, the more you see the subtleties in which they relate, that they change, that they mirror, that they escape. The way they represent the myriad of archetypes we all have inside ourselves.

It should be clear to you by now that I don't really know where I'm going with this: I'm trying to figure it out myself. I keep coming to the title but I'm finding no real solace there.

Here's another thing that I wanted to say.
people claim they want the truth all the time but, in my experience, very few are actually ready for it. I've done it a few times. Shared the truth (or as close as I can muster to it) with them. But more often than not people mistake the opening of your heart, with all its faults and failures (that's why it is hard, if it were perfect we wouldn't be so shy in doing so), by our shirking away from them. Because you tell them of the distance you feel, they mistake this with unloving feelings. They mistake confusion with not caring. Whilst in fact it's quite the reverse. You share the confusion and the distance, because you care, because you feel close, because in some strange way you've learned to trust that person, because you want to share yourself with them.
Being turned down on this is quite hard. It's always hard for me at least. It has happened numerous times, in varying degrees, but there's always a hurt and a feeling of betrayal... I don't know, betrayal is not the right word right now, right here, maybe disappointment. A feeling that things should've been different (yet perhaps you knew at the onset that this was truly the outcome only you didn't want to to believe it...)
And it makes you feel you don't want to do it again. Because you don't want the distance to increase, along with the confusion and all the other things you were trying to get away by sharing them.
That's why I keep trying. sometimes you get it right. Even for just a few brief moments. And when you do, life acquires something better than meaning. It acquires empathy. With what it doesn't matter. Perhaps just with itself. That's what I keep searching for perhaps. People that allow this feeling to surface more rather than less.

Whenever I come out of one of the retreats I always end up meeting someone. I'll recognise the shine in the eyes, the openness inside them. And I see the joy that doesn't come merely from being happy but the joy that comes from being in tune and in acceptance of all things, wonderful or not.
And I know that we can't talk. That we can share.
And I am comforted in the knowing that even if we don't talk, even if we don't meet that we're already sharing incredible amounts.
We're already sharing our strange pathways.