Heavy rain outside the house at sunset
A friend points out that the reason I am not getting many comments here is that I don’t reply to many of them. I appreciate them all and am excited to receive them. They are helpful and encouraging. What’s my excuse for not responding lately? Well, the impact of remembering—before it is transmuted into a string of written words—has been so powerful that I have been absorbed, soaked up in the sponge of long ago. Our past is not constantly present to us. It is lost, but not forever. We have to journey to get there, and in that journeying the present is altered and so is the past.
I once talked with a shaman, I mean an Englishwoman who practises the ancient techniques as she understands them. She said you can go back and change your own past. The intriguing idea has stuck with me. It doesn’t mean undoing your deeds. Done deeds stay done. It is about repairing what life did to you, and what you did to yourself.
Another friend spoke about the writing of memoirs. What is the point? Are we writing for publication? What do we get out of this? I’m clear about it now. We remember to regain our wholeness, to overcome prejudices, and to discover who we are. Yes, we need to discover who we are. Not knowing handicaps us. One possibility, said the friend, is a spiritual biography. For my part, I’m ready to do without the word “spiritual”, especially if it means non-material. The best ally of memory is smell: what could be more sensual and evocative? It’s part of our evolutionary inheritance and I find that responding to the feelings evoked by smells is a “form of meditation” (though I don’t like the expression) which links us to our animal nature, that is what we are rather than what we think we are.
Today’s self interacts with the remembered self as if we had a time machine, and we could learn from the encounter between the two. There’s a novel on this theme by Richard Bach: Running from Safety, a fictionalised memoir. The kind of books I like best are those which inspire the reader to emulate: but not “self-help” books where the author claims authority. What one can, all can. What one can learn by himself, others can too.
The writing is important—its vividness, readability, honesty—but more important is the remembering. Entering into this looking-glass world, I come close to that child and give him what I have now, such as self-esteem. I tell him he did his best, and show him what his latent talents have flowered into. In exchange he invites me to join in the fresh playfulness of childhood, free from the complicated troubles of the adult who has allowed the world to put a saddle on his back and break him in.
a wayfarer’s notes 
As I am reading, let me say this about something.
Doing without the physical, to have the spiritual, not worth it, for the loss is too much….
It has long long been my position, but I guess in times I have not made it come out clear…
The Spiritual ALWAYS includes the physical, can't have one without the other, you always HAVE a BODY, physical to you wherever you might be in the Spiritual realms, but the 'physical' is relative and a part of the place you are, and wherever that is, that body is 'physical' and has the senses as you know here.
The reason for the confusion is that in this present inbetween state we call 'life' for want of a better word, this 'life' here, includes a thing that shouldn't exist, ie, 'death', that causes the body physical HERE to deteriorate and return to place instead of being able to transfigure or metamorphosis with Soul and not experience a 'break down'. This does not exist elsewhere in the fuller sense of 'life' than we HERE understand it, does that make sense?
Does to me, but it is wordy and so gets confused in the telling.
Let me know on that point Vincent, it would help me in my quest.
Oh yes, the shaman lady and what she claimed, tis true.
And back to the physical body thing, connecting you to the real you, the animal senses, which is body instinct and needs, as I see it, that is inherent in every body, and is also, as it is HERE, tied directly to 'place' everytime.
How do I know all this, is it my imagination? No, I know because I go, have been and know about it from direct conscious experience. But I cannot prove either that or the other to you.
I told another once, about we always have a body, like we have here, she was elated, she was comforted, (she had feared disembodied death), and she was comforted by the hearing, I believe, because she, as we all could, REMEMBER that it was true, it made a 'connection' for her between now and always, but holding on to that, without practise and further addition, is not what happens, the 'death' reality world returns and overwhelms the remembering capacity and one is once again submerged in fear.
This story I just told, illustrates I think, your statement of 'that is what we are rather than what we think we are.' You might agree.
As to the 'self-help' remembering thing, I believe that this is trying to accomplish what I just said in the little story, that one has to continue practise and make further addition, in the connection, when remembering the larger reality, but here I would say, it is by practise learning and adding to your body/spirit the pattern of Spiritual Psychology, this then gives you a new 'sense' that connects you with the rest of you, and then you 'know' and cannot be overwhelmed by this faulty world 'reality' and you will not be fooled by it. But like I said, this takes practise and adding and then, one reaches that state of defense from this place and its 'noise'. And it is true like you say Vincent, others cannot do it for you, you cannot get it from an authority like a Degree, you have to get it yourself, by yourself, but others can help from the distance.
I agree very much with your insight and hope you continue.
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My apologies, again, long winded, but great subjects to make me want to speak.
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One of favorite truths is 'there are NO disembodied spirits'. The fallacy is a rote and habitually encouraged illusion, sponsored by this world, to make one think this world IS IT, death and all included, pain suffering misery etc, but that is the trap, and that is the means of wealth here which is the reason for the trap, wealth and power from a human resource, recyclable, and so by this illusion, this world and its' stuff is continued. I think we all unconsciously or soulfully KNOW this, and so, KNOW we are in a trap, and that this is actually the SOURCE OF FEAR that we wrestle with, like Serenity is often talking about.
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Jim thank you so much. I don't know what i can say that will be worthy of the effort and depth of your comments, but your thought impressed me from the first with its pioneering originality.
Like everyone I wonder about the other side of death but have come to no conclusion despite the testimony of prophets such as yourself.
When you say the spiritual always includes the physical I concur wholeheartedly, for they are two aspects of one reality: like colour and form, space and time, texture and surface, air and temperature.
As for what comforts us, to be told this or that, oh yes, but I don't seek such comfort, only in what I experience myself directly, for that is already more data than I know how to interpret.
What you and I share is a refusal to accept the fallacies imposed by our culture. I don't feel I can guarantee staying clear of fallacies myself, and this is one reason why, as an instinctive follower of truth, I rely as little as possible on interpretation.
Thanks again.
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I've had that experience too sometimes. Writing vividly about the past takes you there in a way that nothing else I've found can.
As to comments, seems like making it a subscribed blog would cut down/keep it from building up. Also, in general, it seems like to get a comment you have to give a comment. It can be time consuming to visit enough blogs to receive more than a few.
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I like the idea of going back in your past and repairing what life did to you, and what you did to yourself. Sounds like great therapy. For me forgetting my past has been good therapy for me. but thats me.
I love your last paragraph! thats beautiful Vincent!
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yes, kathy is right. the last para is beautiful.
if we are allowed to change ourpast, shall we really go for it? what if your future, based on the alteration, turns out to be worst than your present?
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Yes, thanks Paul, I seem to have had enough of writing about the past for the moment. It will come back! As for the comments, it was the friend who brought up the topic not I for till then writing to receive the relatively immediate payback of comments had seemed a guilty pleasure, one indeed I am trying to wean myself from, for I would prefer to write for posterity!
And Kathy, thanks too. You have brought up that topic forgetting which is almost as vast as remembering. There were so many things I wanted to forget that I thought I could never write a coherent narrative about my own past. It seemed a poisoned barrel. In the book “Murphy's Law” – a wonderful source of (pessimistic) quotes by the way – it speaks of a barrel of wine to which a teaspoonful of sewage is added. Result: barrel of sewage. Then take a barrel of sewage and add to it a teaspoonful of wine. Result: sewage.
All the formulations of Murphy's Law are expressions of one humorous proposition: you can't win whatever you do.
It's not funny though to say that you can win. It's too earnest, too boring, too predictable.
Some Rabbis and Catholic priests love jokes but it is only in Zen that you find any kind of joke in scriptures.
My own favourite guide to life is the late John Cowper Powys, novelist and writer of popular philosophy books. His personal motto was “Enjoy, defy, forget!”
In autobiography one has no choice but to select. My remembering includes all kinds of stuff that I judge will not be fun for the reader, and in writing a memoir I am of course arranging the elements of the past for their group photo, as if nothing else happened.
My justification for leaving out so much (including what does not need to be forgotten) is that I could always come back later and have another go, plough the same field several times, publish more volumes of memoirs covering the same time-frame as the previous ones!
In fact one of the pleasures in planning memoirs is to see how innovative one can be. I can write them backwards. Start at an arbitrary point, like today, or my tenth birthday, and work back to the conception of my 4 grandparents . I am not serious about the grandparents. That would require serious research and I am too lazy to do any research apart from Googling.
The innovative thing which I have so far found successful by practising it right here is the creation of a memoir in short (max 1200 words) self-contained instalments, which could be bound in a book in more or less any order. this creates the other possibility, which you know about but a book-reader wouldn't, and that is to improvise these instalments quite rapidly. My objective is to write fast and fresh, not edit to death. the only time I really manage this is in comments!
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Ghetufool, you were writing whilst I was writing.
The kind of changing of the past i was talking about is actually a changing of one's memories.
Yes, in Murphy's Law even that would result in something worse, perhaps.
There are plenty of instances in which we follow the adage which my grandmother first taught me “If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again” (Her marriage didn't succeed, but she gave up on it, so far as I could see. Perhaps in that she was wise. I cannot see what she could have done.)
But what I was wanting to say is that sometimes we try, try, try again and a thing does get worse. Sometimes you just have to do your best and accept. I am thinking of a particular creative project: cooking a dish, plastering a wall, giving a speech. they happen in real time. You don't have the liberty to correct yourself very much, for the plaster will dry and the guests are too hungry and the listeners will be bored. You have to move on.
But in changing your own past through selective remembering, the process is (must be) organic. In nature a tree constantly tries to send its roots to the moisture and nutrients, even if subsequent drought and erosion mean it “makes mistakes”.
Let us not think of things getting worse in life. Let us never blame ourselves for mistakes. We cannot help trying always for the best.
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sorry for sounding pessimistic first time. i was not trying to be.
but what exactly you want to achieve by altering a selected portion of your past? even if that's just memories?
don't you love your past for what it is? it's plain un. even the hardships and insults/ it's so sweet now. that's the founation od wht we are now.
in altering the past in some way, you are going to largely change your present character. i am not that pessimistic to chang my present charactr. i love myself for what i am. that's why i don't want to visit a shaman or a palmist. even if i believe in their dubious abilities.
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I see that “changing one's past” can be interpreted in many different ways. What I actually mean is very similar to what you are suggesting.
Yes, I have to see that it is sweet for indeed it is the basis of what I am now, which I am happy with. Yes, even the insults and the sufferings of the past are tolerable because they are distant, they cannot hurt any more (unless they have been suppressed, and they they might do damage. this is not the same as Kathy's & JC Powys' forgetting, which is a free conscious act, not a suppression)
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“It’s part of our evolutionary inheritance and I find that responding to the feelings evoked by smells is a “form of meditation” (though I don’t like the expression) which links us to our animal nature, that is what we are rather than what we think we are.”
I love this post. Just out of curiosity, what’s the first scent that comes to mind when you think about smells?
For me it’s a smell from childhood. Stepping off the bus on gray winter’s evening, after a long headachy day at school and being greeted with the heavenly scent of my mom’s home-made bread floating down the long driveway on that mean northern wind. It was a comforting smell that has stayed with me for a life-time. Ha and now I’m hungry for home-made bread and stew. Dagnabit.
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Dagnabit! I replied to this but it’s gone. Just as well. Nothing comes to mind in that way if I try and think about smells. The smell comes first, perhaps when I walk through a wood or past a hedgerow or neighbourhood workshop, and then it wafts me back to some “indefinite nostalgia” – which is one of my new set of post categories! As for faraway memories, do you find it’s the first time that sticks best? A taste, smell, colour, texture, sound?
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I don’t know. Maybe. The first time I saw someone die was in 2nd grade. I remember the color of the old iron swingset that killed the boy who was swinging with me and the heavy sound of its legs as it lifted in and out of the ground. The gritty heavy texture of the top bar and the weight of it on his head. The bright redness of blood that was gushing from his eyes and ears. Teachers running back and forth with stacks of ugly brown paper towels.
I have always felt so awful about jumping off before it flipped without telling him to do the same.
So yeah, I guess so. Seems about right.
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