Tuesday, 6 October 2009 :
I want to thank you, dear Reader, for accompanying me thus far on this wayfaring expedition, in which, to be honest, I haven’t been sure where I was going. Amongst friends, this doesn’t matter, for the company makes up for any deficiencies in the scenery; and in any case, we get the exercise. It really is a co-operative venture, and these really are just notes—scrappy, inconclusive.
In the last few days—I think it’s a week, but it’s hard to keep track of things which creep up on you gradually—these wanderings, I mean the unpublished or even unwritten ideas which precede a new post on this blog, have taken on a more substantial focus, as if I were really planning to go somewhere definite with these words. And now I have the task of trying to explain this to you, from scratch.
All my life, well as far back as I can remember, the inner life has been more important to me than the outer. For example there has never been a time when I was seduced by the lure of riches, even when I made myself miserable with working all hours for the highest fee rates. That was just confusion of soul, a mid-life loss of focus. I’ve made up for that now, letting idle curiosity rather than anxious purpose be the pathfinder. My likes and dislikes, so powerful and irrational, are fully explained by whether or not they foster the inner life. Do I need to explain what the inner life is? It is the mystical; the realm in which you can be reached by angel messengers, and which is unaffected by global warming.
Just as I dislike the word spirituality, which trails around with so many strings attached, some of which drag rusty tin cans at the other end, I pretty much abhor the word mysticism, too. These words divide the world into two: spiritual versus material, mystical versus plain fact. I don’t like the words because they set up boundaries in the wrong place. I don’t want to set material against spiritual, nor mystical against common sense. Nor should the world of Man be divided into those who do and do not have a spiritual, or mystical “side” to their personalities. Not just Man: any thought which involves making judgements about other creatures is anathema. Or rather, this is one of my powerful dislikes.
These are not trivial matters, dear reader. We have to be careful with words, just as you would not build a great palace with crumbly bricks. Perhaps all we’ll achieve together is a shed, but the rule still applies.
So. Having identified this secret kingdom—the inner life—we now make it public, through sharing. When I physically go wayfaring, it’s to let the inner life sing its own song from the chimney-stack, like a blackbird before dawn. I haven’t been hearing them lately, since describing their dawn song here. I hope they are still around and not wiped out by global warming or eating slugs poisoned by gardeners. The blackbird is not the inner life of course. I rely upon the magic of fresh air, the distinctive human attribute of bipedal motion, or walking, to connect with the inner life, which some prize as mysticism, for it seems to convey the highest joy.