LoveSolution

Dig the well of love. Find the spring of wisdom. Nourish the tree of peace.

One O’Clock

I can’t sleep regularly these days.  My eyes become like little deserts, dried and pained from the day and my body aches for sleep and yet my mind will not quiet itself.  I read and I think about writing and I read and I wait for something to write and I read.  During the day I prefer to walk around my side of town.  This town that I cannot call my own, this town that embodies for me only temporary refuge.  My walking is without aim.  In and out of markets and coffee shops, or sometimes just straight down the road.  I am in love with walking.

I have read Gandhi’s interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita, some kind of epic poem and Hindi scripture which is surely ancient beyond my comprehension.  The story is of a man (a leader of men) on the cusp of violent battle, granted an audience with the almighty in a moment that seems to transcend time, between the opposing armies.  The man’s question: “is it right that I take the action of violence?”  Gandhi lovingly dissected the text for the reader, and I was overwhelmed at the revelatory meaning found therein.  The concept of love for a fellow human saturated every line.  The ideas about imposing austerties upon one’s body in order to allow the spirit to flourish were inescapable and transcendant.  That is, they would have been transcendant had I read it one year ago.  Reading it now, though, I found myself nearly moved to tears because, rather than feeling as though my knowledge of my own spirit had been pushed forward, I felt simply that the nagging feeling inside of my heart is less crazy than some call it, and closer to truth than even my ego gives it credit for.  The work was validational to me.  The words were as neon beacons screaming from the page: “Keep digging.  You’re getting closer!”

This is not to say that I have transcended, in the realm of the physical, much of anything.  I have adopted some measure of austerity in my life.  I have taken to fasting, but have not become adept at it.  I have relinquished many redundant or luxurious posessions, yet many remain.  I am fixed and bound to the dollar and to the state against my will.  Most of all, my ego remains.  My pride, the bitch.  But this direction in which I can feel myself flowing certainly appears to be aimed at transcendence, and the Bhagavad Gita seems to give my direction some credence.

Immediately upon finishing the Gandhi interpretation, I began to read the New Testament for the first time in my life.  The book sits there, nestled behind the much thicker Old Testament, in a Bible my parents gave me for Christmas some years back.  The construction of the book itself is fine, the pages perfectly thin and lightly golden along their edges, sandwiched between firm black covers.  Upon commencing this reading, I found myself quite literally moved to tears on a number of occasions.  I’ve only as yet completed the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and the story held within is not one that is necessarily new to me.  Rather, I should say, that the arch of the story is not new to me.  However, the meaning of the story of the life of this man Christ seems completely new to me, reading it now.  The prescriptions of this one they called Christ seem so similar to those found in the Bhagavad Gita that I would say that an objective summary of both of the stories might read almost identically.  Having only read this small portion, I am immediately taken aback by the fact that the rhetoric of the average modern Christian (particularly the average “American” Christian), is very clearly in direct opposition to the very words of this man that they call God.  I find in the Gospel, now, and particularly in the words specifically deemed to have originated from Christ’s mouth, a great solace in the ideals of peace, unprejudiced love for all people, and physical austerity.  I can only wonder how it was that this man’s message became so diluted over the centuries that his self-proclaimed followers are generally recoiled from, as from a hot flame, by the intellectuals and thinkers of today.

I am not Christian nor Hindu nor do I subscribe to any religious beliefs.  This will not stop me from voraciously consuming the loving message that seems to be at the root of these writings.  

I am waiting for a certain spark to set alight the kindling that has been built up around my heart and my mind, but I am becoming increasingly patient in that waiting.  I wait for the thing that I am supposed to write.  Those words that will allow me to explain in a single resounding shot what I think and feel about love, peace and the nature of the universe.  As I wait, with increasing patience, I become also increasingly aware that my waiting may merely be a manifestation of ego, and that I may be no writer, and perhaps that I am only to labor over this land quietly, making my minimal keep, and allowing the salt in the sweat off my brow to comingle with the salt of the very Earth beneath me.

I have no longer a concern about my future ability to provide myself with a lifestyle of wealth, and I am not convinced that my life will be particularly long.  Still, the whisperer inside of my skull who has been there since I was a boy says that I will write and that I will change the world, but I will be content doing neither so long as I may read and type out a poor poem now and again and afford a small measure of food and shelter.

A robust biography of Tolstoy founds itself cracked in my hands this evening, which I will read intermittently as I complete my reading of the New Testament.  Tolstoy, by all accounts, was a genius as a writer, and in the final days of his life renounced all posessions and went out to wander the land in thought.  Some call him a Christian-Anarchist, and his study of the Sermon on the Mount led him to believe many things about the nature of the world which I now have come to believe myself.  He believed, as he found in Christ’s words, that pacifism was the only justifiable mode in which to live, and that the presence of a state would always create more war in the world than would a group of humans acting freely in the absence of a state.  Tolstoy wrote to Gandhi personally about such things.  Gandhi was also an anarchist, and for the same reason, although the Bible had not influenced him as much, in this manner, as had Hindu scripture.  And all things seem to be connected in this way.

I am still not tired now, in my head, and I begin to wonder if I shall ever tire fully there.  I am thinking about fasting more.  Considering giving away or selling more of my things.  Pondering the meaning of sexuality in my life, and the connection between sex and the monstrous ego that compels me to collect and consume.  I crave sex at the wrong times, and don’t crave it when I think I ought to.  I am awkward in my skin, at times.  I hope my partner can understand this.  I hope my having a romantic interest in my life now does not lead me to cause her pain later in my life through my increasing austerity.

Tolstoy’s wife didn’t like it when he ceased caring about making money.

Tolstoy had many children, though.

I don’t know where I’m going with any precision.  I can feel the ill of the world and I worry for her, with her face spotted with nuclear weapon silos and military bases.  I see no meaning in the election year.  Whether our President stays or goes is of no consequence in the grand scheme of things.  We drive headlong into war and our own demise as a species, even as I drive headlong into a nearly silent place in my heart where love exists and flourishes, ever in combat against my ego.  

I feel connected to the men I am reading and reading about.  I feel connected to my friend who fasted for 40 hours a few days ago and lives in a trailer with his dog.  I feel deeply connected to others, at times.  Presently, the connection to the super-conscious quantum unknown feels strong.  The connection exists, and my ability or inability to sense it in any given moment doesn’t make it any less real.  Resolutely, I think that I am connected to all human beings, and all human beings to one another.

I start school again tomorrow.  The tedium promised there frightens and unnerves me, and I think that I will find my time being ill used between those walls.  But I am going to put it to the grindstone and hope for something interesting to happen.  I will labor, as the Bhagavad Gita suggests, without attachment to fruit.  School is easier than fasting or relinquishing worldly things.

Perhaps a professor who has something relevant to say will show up.  I’ve known only a few, as such.

Longing for my childhood fades as staring into the dark abyss before me gets easier.  

Perhaps I am wrong about all things.  This would be the greatest thrill.  To relearn my perspective all over again is that thing that is simultaneously most painful and most joyous.  Through a thin veil of apprehension I stare down this prospect without legitimate fear.

Love to anyone reading this, and to anyone not.  Love, and perhaps more so, peace.

  1. humaxion said: It’s always good to see more people like you in the world.
  2. trehiphop4hlth said: love too you as well. You and I are on the same wave lengths, and for that I find solace. Most days I wonder what will become of people like “us”. I’ve yet to be satisfied by my material life and the sad part is i’m only 18. good luck man. good luck.
  3. lovesolution posted this