Web-of-life surfing on the iPad within
For me to feel the interior groundedness to create, I have to go within. I have to spend a serious amount of time surfing the cosmic ether on the iPad within (my thirdeyePad?).
The minute I’m disappointed, I feel encouraged.
When I’m ruined, I’m healed.
When I’m quiet and solid as the ground,
then I talk the low tones of thunder for everyone.
This quatrain by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks and John Moynes, expresses the cyclical nature of being…
Quiet and solid as the ground… how is this possible in a human world where we are inundated, mostly electronically, by information, disinformation, misinformation, and other contributions that cannot be called any kind of information except on some meta-level of information about the human condition. Just random stuff people say, do, and like. There has never been a time in which we have so much access to so many unmoderated offerings of self-expression. Which is as wonderful as it is terrifying and distracting.
And don’t think I’m about to get all judgmental here. I love the weird randomness of Facebook and the internet in general — the way everybody rubs up against each other, like any subway system at rush hour.
The juiciest source of misinformation, I’m afraid, comes from our endlessly creative minds that make up stories as costumes for our emotions, particularly our emotions of fear and pain. Oh, the things we think!
I am not making a case for repression of any kind. Repression doesn’t work. It stifles the pressure we need for self-organization, self-integration. If there are only two things to choose from then you choose one, or none. When there is a galaxy of things to choose from, and that galaxy is part of a universe made up of a multitude of galaxies, then either you figure out what your priorities are, or you are washed away by a tsunami of options.
The immediate challenge we face in life is what to do next, from moment to moment, and ‘choice’ is not the right word to describe how we figure that out.
Choice implies a conscious decision and yet the real choices we make are not choices; they are directions given by the body and heart, which can just as easily lead us astray as lead us to our heart’s desire. Fear is often misleading; quiet and solid as the ground gets better results.
For me to feel the interior groundedness to create, I have to go within. I have to spend a serious amount of time surfing the cosmic ether on the iPad within (my thirdeyePad?).
It’s not surfing as we think of it on screens — meandering around, trying a little of this and a little of that, getting one’s attention hooked by headlines that say some variant of 3, 5, or 11 ways to feel less afraid and get what you want (including forgetting your troubles by looking at pictures of celebrities with botched plastic surgery). Or whatever...
I’m using the term “surfing” in a way that is closer to the actual sport of surfing. I may or may not have a board to stand on, but the waves are what they are; I can’t turn them on or off. I just have to be there and pay attention with my whole body.
This is where I find Good Orderly Direction and/or Genuine Objective Data, the kind that gives me the information I need to go forth and do something other than watch cat videos, or whatever else I use to distract myself from the constant heartbreak of my own potential.
That information is critical to knowing what I want. And knowing what I want means, at best, feeling a direction. Because in the world of things, things are not what they seem. Yes, a breadbox (which if you are under a certain age you probably have never seen) is a breadbox. A banana is a banana. And so forth. But the things I think I want are often only symbols or smokescreens for what I really want. There is a reason why so many ads that sell deodorant, cars, life insurance, floor cleaners, etc. promise joy, enlightenment, and cosmic bliss.
What I’m saying is that discrimination (the good kind) comes from within: from a heart that hears the song it wants to sing over the cacophony of squawking tin whistles. Not once and for all, just minute by minute. That’s what we get here on planet Earth, a minute-by-minute system. I can have goals, responsibilities, values and desires up the wazoo, and I can only move towards their fulfillment moment by moment.
The iPad within is more than a GPS (God Pleading/Pleasing System?); it is meditation, stillness, awareness, feeling up and down the spine, that guides us gently towards being quiet and solid as the ground, from which lowly position it is sometimes possible to speak the low tones of thunder.
You had me with "surfing on the iPad within," and its wonderful illustration.
I like the thought of "interior groundedness to create." Is "grounded-ness" a word? It is. Now. It's more than a word...it's a state of being-ness and creative-ness. It has to be interior and come from within.