Existential Musings

The gray twilight of morning with my host Mom sweeping outside my room & the world slowly turning.
04.27.04

It’s the ability to wrap yourself in a cocoon of your own hopes, dreams & ambitions, held tightly closed by circumstance & discipline that can elicit true growth in that direction. The longer you can stay there the more the world will allow you the change. (and the more you strengthen your soul, the powers of your mind, the less you really care what “the world” thinks.) It is so easy to be overwhelmed by the world and our place in it and then to become lost and wandering in it, trying to help with what feeble skills and powers one has developed, by chance, along the way. The deeper you burrow into your soul and forget about the immensity of the world, the immensity of duty, the immensity of pain, sorrow & suffering, the immensity of the love held, shown & sacrificed the more you can train, the more you can grow and the more focused you can become. & you can emerge more able to face the immensities of life with poise, grace & purpose. The greater the impact you can make.

For all change must start from within. Do you want to change the world? Start with yourself. Until you begin to figure you out & what you really stand for & might want to believe in enough to fight for don’t come talking to me about me.

Or the world, or our place in it, or duty, or love, or your fleeting ephemeral dreams and ambitions. Don’t bother me with all that for I am trying to develop my own foundations and a place to actually stand. Youthful exuberance is fine and dandy, but only if your erratic passions drive you into your own cocoon.

If you want to change the world. If you want to really engage in my world. Start with here.

Mind. Body. Soul.

05.15.05

Lost & Wandering

And as I read Thomas Merton’s autobiography a month later I criticize him for the same desire to wrap himself in the safety of his own cocoon within the walls of a monastery. Maybe the difference is he has yet to have a desire to return to and engage in the world after his transformation. But he has the advantage of a place to withdraw into. He has a tradition, a set of beliefs, and a community to provide support, direction and validity to his chosen way of life. What beliefs, desires and ambitions am I to wrap myself in? What direction to I want to develop in? What do I really believe in? I fight with what skills I have gained, through chance, and I always seek to acquire more, but I do not yet know what foundation I want to rest them on. I do not know from what reality I want to approach the world. And therefore I still do not really know what direction to travel in. I do not have peace of mind. I do not have discipline of body or soul. I do not have poise, grace or purpose. I just flail at the injustices in the world with a mixture of faith, love, rage and determination. For the love of all that is Holy, I do not want to create another reality, another set of beliefs and values in a world that has so many. I just want to find a community I can believe in. I want to find a mentor I can follow. A place I can call home. But I have yet to find a tradition that I agree with, that I can support, that I can throw myself into with the reckless abandon and faith shown by Thomas Merton. So I am still lost and wandering on the other side of the world with no real idea of what I am searching for or where I am going.