These things, this writing cast off in my not knowing (in my deepest sense of knowing) are set adrift very much like messages in a bottle. This is in part, as I consider what motive is extant for their being, due to the considerations that have occupied and led me to the conviction I am, myself, just a message in a bottle. What then can I produce that is not “of me” or like me? Like you, I am no less consigned to some expression of being. As no less a neutrino, and as likewise, I am only set for the finding out. As I am in a container…even so any messages so sent out must be opened up (as I must be) to see anything of what is going on inside. Actions, behaviors, attitudes…even words come from a place disclosing who, and what we are. Here there really is no such thing as fiction.
As even, in some sense, the greatest fabricator of stories, the most skilled novelist or storyteller of yarns spun from what appears greatest fantasy…knows he is writing an autobiography. Unless he is too dense to yet see it. Even so called historians, or writers of non fiction show themselves by what history or subject they deem worthy of note. Yes…even scientific journalists. We all are always giving ourselves away. It has become for me, inescapable. I am, to whatever extent I am, surrendered to it. It is less saying “I do not want to hide”…than…”I simply can’t”. Whether shown (or believed to be) liar or as one approaching some truth, I cannot escape. And, yes, I do believe the same of you. Don all black clothing or the most screamingly vivid day glowing tie dyes…it matters not. Plaster a vehicle with bumper stickers or keep it showroom clean…it matters not. What may appear as the most trivial of choices to us are always some expression of who, how, and what we are.
And it may well be only the most destitute, whose choices have either been robbed (or surrendered to some extent) and are often the most easily identified, are as being the truest in congruence to their estate. Our only salient question may well be “Am I able to live by what I give off or give ‘out’ ?”
Can I live with my own poverty?
If I seek attention…how much can I bear? If I seek to be hidden, how much ignoring…can I bear? Many is the celebrity that laments being unable to now “be” without prying eyes everywhere. Yet, what did one think would happen in seeking to be a somebody? Oh! how we wish we could control consequence(s)! Make them conform in circumstance to the pleasures we seek in circumstance. “Yes, all eyes on me while on the red carpet, but please, when I want to go out and just get a taco…really?” No wonder the world becomes too small for some. They have made it so for themselves.
“What does it profit a man…?” someone said.
I have made no secret of being strongly moved by the persuasion of that someone. So much so He has persuaded me He is even as He said…once dead…but now alive. And surely…He was once dead to me. In truth, my recollections of that time of his being dead to me was fraught with far less troubles in any consciousness of consequence(s). What I mean is that…yes, there were many troubles but few, no actually none, that were by me attributable to not caring at all about His deadness to me. I was quite settled into being blind to Him, stumbling and bumbling through what I considered the most normal and natural of estates. I was no better nor worse off than any other except for what I might eke out by a native cleverness to try to control consequence. Yes, I really thought I could control for them, and by such thinking even control them.
But now, being convinced persuaded of His life, the reality of consequence(s) has not diminished…in many ways been heightened to a point where it is made too clear I surely do not, nor ever have had any control over them. Indeed, I must be told what they are.
How different are you and I?
Reaching for the brass ring, even desiring the brass ring by consideration of its glitter (in whatever form it takes) as something desirable, already puts a man in the circumstance of consequence. He will either press himself forward to overcome fear of falling and failure, or not. If he draws back, self loathing ensues. He may come to see (or will if enlightened to it) he is not what he wants to be.
If he reaches and falls, small comfort may be “at least I tried” in his broken estate. He, too, will lament his form. But if he reaches, stretches himself beyond all he thought his own limits…and succeeds…he may not know he has come to the most precarious place of all. For if one is at all keen to seeing by a grace not their own, here may be established in a man “I am and have all I want or need to be”.
“What does it profit a man…” someone said.
There are fellowships of the fearful, and of, and with, some form of cynicism. Likewise the broken who behold the reaching with a “better knowledge” of what can happen, also observe with a form of cynicism. But the successful to themselves? They become to themselves alone sufficient.
The world’s powerful achievers in leadership (of any ilk) may occasionally meet together, even be forced by circumstance to come together briefly, but each holds himself securely apart from the others. The pinnacle of success has isolated them. From whence they survey all others…as “other”. There may even be the grossest and transparent feigning of some camaraderie for a brief moment of conjured smiles and handshakes; a play performed for the underlings of fear and brokenness that “their leaders” are of a salubrious unity. But their deepest cynicism steeped in that cup of self sufficiency, and the accompanying conviction that all can be fooled but themselves, is most hardened of all.
“What does it profit a man…” someone said.
I have been often reminded, and am again of the trenchancy of this statement attributed to Nancy Astor:
The penalty of success is to be bored by people who used to snub you.
Is that cynical? Or does it more align with our motives for success as we call it…to “be” more than what or how we are presently esteemed (of ourselves and others) to grasp something to get us “over”.
I do not doubt, like any who may read, I have known fear’s force toward withdrawal, I have known some brokenness of utter failure and even some of the flushes of what a success feels like. That heady feeling of having made it in, or through some endeavor or circumstance; or shown some superiority to, or in it. How very rare is any knowing that all that is just a prelude to a fall.
What does it profit a man…?
To understand one’s self as on that continuum of brass ring chasing where contentment may be even lauded but is illusory, requires some form of intervention. For even that success, of what might be called achieving contentment, is fraught with no less danger to the soul than becoming king of the whole of the world. There is an unremitting lurking of “I have done it!” waiting to show itself in all or any motions of our own toward success, or what we would call it, see it as, or define it as to ourselves. It is a, or the worm in our goldenest of apples. The fall waiting in every success of grasping, and even desire for, that brass ring.
Call it consequence if you must yet see it as subsequent, call it an inclusion in that golden apple (as though worm and apple might or do exist apart) or know it is that worm itself giving the apple its only claim to glowing golden in your (our) sight. Without that “I have done it!” as inclusion, as part and parcel; not as thing separate or consequence to it, but the very thing itself inspiring all the glowing and thence reaching; there can be no exit from this merry go round, this treadmill, this hamster wheel of both self condemnation and pride securely stamped upon all the coin of this realm. They are the sides that make up the whole of it.
What does it profit a man…?
Again, it would be a lie of omission to not admit I am just as subject to shiny things as any other. Indeed in some ways I know myself as worse off as it has been shown to me. I like to pretend my shiny things are of a finer or more exquisitely subtle nature, and for, and of, a better refined palate. Yes, I hold court with myself and within myself and acquit myself every time of every fault I merely attribute to a slight miscalculation. I will “do better” next time…because now I know better, and… I am better.
Who then is showing me as the most craven liar of all?
Who is daring to humiliate me?
A me who is already king of all his own world?
Can I drag him to my court without He dragging me to His?
Oopsie.
This chewing through psyches, this finding of inclusions, this finding of what was described (in last section) as a great big hole through one’s center as resident there, but not identifiable as self and is therefore “other” to it, unknown to it, as a hole filled with all mystery to a self (is it hole full? is it hole empty?) is it even really there? Is it a fabrication where all blame can be dumped…where all ignorance for matters attributable to miscalculation (and therefore self justification) can be justified for dumping “It came out of my not knowing“. Out of that hole!
Well, as handy as it may be, it really is far more troubling than useful. It really does not submit well to utility, no not at all. Not when one stands at its edge…and not at some remove for blindly throwing over ones shoulder as into it. One facing it.
Not looking does not mean a thing is not there. As there is consequence in observation, there is consequence in refusing to.
And beyond what one might tend to describe as a silly or clever trope for a movie scene by which a man might stand accused as having a bumper sticker mentality for its presentation, or bubblegum understanding, or deeply steeped psychobabble-licious propensity; (all of which I am not unrightly to stand accused) one may find others have visited. How far from the edge each has or may come is quite incalculable, for the edge loses all definition once faced. It has no edge one finds. It is all and only of capacity to swallow. Consumer of all. It eats all in any beholding. It eats all refusing such beholding The refusing believing they establish their own edges in their own discrete-ness. Their own different-ness established of themselves as to themselves. The borders of their kingdom they believe secure.
“He has also set eternity in the hearts of men“…is written.
Is it written in you?
Another man answered this question posed above:
Can I drag him to my court without He dragging me to His?
in this way
“If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you”
Whether he himself, Nietzsche, discovered he was staring at a hole full, or a hole empty and was answered by emptiness or fullness is as moot now as ever was in the face of that abyss of all mystery. He only confessed to ascribing it some also “conscious looking” into a man looking into it.
Yes, the mysterious abyss has a face. And it is not mine.
For I am the liar.
And I am made to know difference. Of who is who and what is what. For I am no different than any other…but that one.
The Placer of eternity in the heart has put a face to that abyss of all mystery.
Look.
At all cost(s)…look.
See who reigns over even all a man would call his darkest fears.
And I turned to see the voice that spake with me…
And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.
There is no other response to the one responsible for all.
Turning is a gift.
Dying in turning, no less.
A gift from the same voice that says repent and believe the gospel.
The same voice that says to the dead
Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
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