Spicing Up Your Life

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”  William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

My sophomore year of college was to be the time when my mind opened up to the question that started this process I am sharing with you now. My life to this point was about small things, personal things and I had not yet begun to ask the questions that would lead me to the beginning of life’s journey. I was about to begin to clean my own doors of perception and peer into the world of mind, spirit and consciousness.

It all began with my Intro to Philosophy course. All of a sudden I was whisked into a world of questions with no grounding into what was real. The ideas that first caught my imagination and seemed to make the most sense to me were found in the existentialist writings of Albert Camus and John Paul Sartre. I could feel their sense of loneliness and despair, but there was a deeper message that spoke to my inner being; that existence precedes essence, that I am an individual responsible for my own thoughts and that life has no meaning save the meaning that I give it. I grabbed on to these ideas and began to expound on them in my other classes, including these existential ideas into my writing for my Literature class for one, getting an A and special mention for my explanation of Ralph Ellison’s book “Invisible Man“. This gave me confidence that I was on the right path.

The next most important happening in my spiritual awakening came by way of my brother Roger. He gave me a book that opened my mind up and spoke to me in ways that I was unable at the time to fully grasp but that would begin me on a lifetime spiritual journey that is still in progress. The book was “The First and Last Freedom” by J. Krishnamurti. This was my first experience with non-Western thought and with a man who had a grasp on life that made sense to me but seemed just out of my reach. It did however fit right in with some of the Existential teachings I had been studying and I was caught by this quote in the introduction to the book;

“Clarity is not the result of verbal assertion, but of intense self-awareness and right thinking. Right thinking is not the outcome of or mere cultivation of the intellect, nor is it conformity to pattern, however worthy and noble. Right thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself you have no basis for thought; without self-knowledge, what you think is not true.”

As I am rereading this text now as I am writing this I can see why it had so profound an effect on me, but the words mean so much more to me today as I am listening from a different place. Get a load of this simple statement;

“To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine; because, however small may be the world we live in, if we can transform ourselves, bring about a radically different point of view in our daily existence, then perhaps we shall affect the world at large, the extended relationship with others.”

The whole idea of Philosophy was to know oneself and to that end I was beginning to ask the questions and to search for the meanings and as a result I changed my major to Philosophy. I also was interested in how man developed and who we are as a race so I made Anthropology my minor course of study and so the course of my college career was set. I had no particular destination in sight but I was on my way.

One of the first chances I had to use my new knowledge came in the spring of my sophomore year. The Vietnam War protests finally reached the LaCrosse campus and my new friends were eager to cut class and hit the streets. They tried to persuade me to join them but I had done that already and I saw the futility of trying to change the system before I had changed myself. I was now on a different path and where that path led I did not know nor could I imagine what people and experiences awaited me.

On my way

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With Christmas just 21 days away, the topic of love is on my mind.

We are constantly bombarded with ways to show our love, but not much will be said about what love is, so I am happy to give you my two cents on the topic.

From my perspective and life experience, most of what we call love is really just selfishness. It is mostly about us feeling good about ourselves. We say we love another person when they are behaving in a way that satisfies us. They make us happy when they fulfill our needs, but when that stops we fall out of love, or worse, we become angry and look for another person or thing to satisfy us. This kind of love is all about me, but love, real love, is never about what’s coming to me. It flows from me.

I didn’t come to this conclusion as an intellectual exercise but from a lifetime of trial and error. What I have discovered is when I looked to another to satisfy my needs I have ended up sad, disappointed and a couple times, divorced.

You see, looking for love in a feeling has led me to judge my relationships based on that feeling and that is not love.

So what is love? Love comes from within and flows out, asking nothing in return. Think of a flower in your garden. It gives off its beauty and fragrance to all who pass by without concern and without the need to be repaid.

Love is always in the present. It never asks “what have you done for me lately?”

If this is love, you could love anyone and everyone. Love is always in the present, never in the past. This is why I can love all three of my wives. I don’t need or want to be married to my first two, but I love them just because I choose to. They don’t even have to love me back, even though I think they do, because I am not looking for anything from them. I love them because I choose to love them. I love Sandy in the same way. I choose to love her. I choose to call her my wife and I choose her every day as the one I want to be with.

This is a love that flows from a knowledge that I am loved, not by some other person, but by myself, by God and by the universe I am connected to. This is a deep well to draw from and one that is freely available to all. So this day and every day, draw deep, open up the flow and you will look on everything with delight, just because you choose to.

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Let’s walk through the garden again as fall approaches.

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I think I was born with this question in my soul, perhaps we all are. Who am I and why am I here?

I came into a wonderful family. I was child number seven and son number five and I came forth knowing that I was loved. My mother told me more than once that I was very smart and could do whatever I wanted to do. I’m not sure if she didn’t do this for all of her children, but would not be surprised if this wasn’t the case. She was an angel in the form of mother. I know that she prayed for me every day and I am sure that the trajectory of my life would have been far different had she not been on her knees all those years and onto today.

I grew up in an upper middle class family that was coming into the prime earning years of their lives and it was 1951, the middle of the baby boom generation.

Mom was a full time mother and homemaker who loved her children and was rewarded with the opportunity to raise eight of them and do a great job at it the whole time. She made a point of doing little things that let you know that she loved you. She would darn your socks so they could be worn a few months longer, she would make your favorite desert for your birthday every year, and she would bring you a treat shortly after sending you to bed after a good spanking. There was never any doubt that I was loved and cared for.

I was an inquisitive soul. I love science, insects and plants. I loved being in the woods or along the Mississippi River growing up. When I was about 11 I decided I wanted to make some money but we lived on a county road along the river and were 5 miles from the nearest town of 600 people. Since the river was the only thing convenient I decided that I would set up a commercial fishing business. Now I had no idea that I was actually doing that but I bought the license and made 2 one hundred hook set-lines so I could catch catfish and sell them to Dad and his Grocery stores in Iowa.

My brother Stan and I took the boat out on a nice sunny spring day and found a couple of good looking spots to put our lines out and after getting them placed we, being true adolescents, were too tired to bother to bait the hooks. We planned to come back in the morning and begin the baiting process, but when we got there the next day we were surprised to find fish on about 10% of the hooks and were happy to haul them back home to clean up and put in the freezer. We were so surprised and happy that we didn’t bother baiting the hooks another day and for that I will be forever grateful. You see, when dad got home he was very concerned that we had stolen these fish off of someone else’s set-line and that was definitely not ok with him. We could only tell him the truth, that these fish came off my lines and we had no idea how we got fish without using any bait. He insisted that he come with us in the morning to check our lines and if there were no fish on our lines we would be up for some severe punishment.

Needless to say, this was my first serious night of asking God to intervene in my life and put some fish on those hooks. I knew that it had happened once and I was unsure if it was a fluke or something I could count on. I know that it was with some grave fear that we launched the boat the next morning and as we approached the lines I was more than a little afraid. To my great relief and delight we pulled up 4 nice catfish on the first line and another 3 on the second and Stan and I were in the clear.

I will never know if I manifested those fish or not but it was a point of revelation for me and an opening to the question that would attract me to the truth of life.

More to come…

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A new year and a new garden project. See what we have done for this season.

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