Friday, August 13, 2010
before theorizing authentic happiness
Simplicity, heartfulness, no presumptiveness, no veils, no masking, transparency without question of fidelity because the Flow is me, because I’m where I can be so, letting go, without fear, accepting
what happens, easily laughing about what I should have learned
and learning it—easily crying when that’s happily evinced
(e.g., giving in to a sappy movie—good release)....
But “normal” life doesn’t easily afford unguarded opennes,
so veils defend against veils, veils reflecting veils, appealing to me
for some theory of genuineness in the drama of being “social,”
because I hope for dissolutions (veil as entrance, prelude) and then happily learning from what happens in the Open of simple presence.
I knew that, going into a related movie (film? entertainment vs. art?)
this afternoon—a movie which caters to the market, thereby necessarily veiling (through simplistic, accessible drama) within a common audience’s patience, what there’s to avail of our enduringly valid humanity: finding love of one’s own potential to live well, truly happily, along with love of family and partner.
I already felt I was in paradise before going in. (Recent days have been very nice.) Coming out, the mid-afternoon was dazzling: strong and pure blue sky (thanks to last night’s ethereal fog) containing cool breeze, happy people in cafés and restaurants.
On a backstreet of darling houses, an old woman was standing at the streetside end of the little walkway from her steps. I said “Good day!”
as I passed, and she raised her arms, “good day,” motioning her hands downward toward the walkway in front of her, as if introducing me to her piece of sidewalk (really), welcoming my passage by her space,
which had chalked pastels of flowers, probably drawn by a young neighbor. I avoided stepping on any petals. She’d also been there
when I walked to the movie, so maybe she’s a little luny in caring
for her beautiful, redwood-shingled house. I wanted to go back and meet her. I almost did it. I imagine her dear partner dead too many years,
so she loves the days as best she will and looks for a welcomed stranger to enter into her pretty dwelling, which she will give away.
Elsewhere along my walk home, people warmly greeted in passing—feeling too, I guess, a perfect day.
Any question of the validity of what I’ve done the past couple of years,
I can face, because I know how to begin again. I know the Zero Point
of intrinsic value in empathic Self realization, cultivating curiosity, creative adaptivity, valuing through honest feeling, Flow beyond
“well-being”; fulfilling happiness beyond ephemeral pleasures—yet
abiding the validity of all that; self-absorption in good relationships;
and mindfulness fueled by real love which is the heart of extended family.
I’m not a religious person, but I know what people mean when they say (as Elizabeth Gilbert does at an ashram in Eat Pray Love) that “God dwells within you as you.”
Long, I’ve lived the resonance and mystery of developing, evolving truth in the “As”.
I am with you truly as myself—self (non-capped) born from oneSelf alive, still growing, performing truthfully—performing truthfully
in being with you, attuned enough (I hope).
You should know Ana: so good at losing herself in a Flow of being with what draws her—for example, reaching to delicately savor young leaves on a lime tree as we walk, as if, in that moment, nothing else exists because savoring is intrinsic to her. Or at least, thinking of this, remembering her expresses something intrinsic to me.
Why not find in another a living art?—seeing artistic bearing in improv-isations? The point isn’t to validate overbearing possession of her in my Idea, but to find overriding sense in so beautifully losing oneself in her flow of elated, elating play—how the better angels are reborn innocent of their genius, merely living.
Now gone away into the happiness of her own futuring, I’ve been wonderfully validated by her beautiful example of the gifted Innocent making her own way, thus misread easily (my sin), but unwittingly teaching me, just by her being, what I needed to learn.
“All gone,” a toddler says to me. But I’m happy, and love knowing that
she is, too.
I have psychological philosophy romancing literary psychology—badly, maybe. Yet, the mind! What an emergence of nature, what growth human life may unwittingly give way to: poetries and sciences, the whole array of artfulness he portends (or pretends) to someday tenably embrace wholly through meantime prospecting of concepts.
“Eat Pray Love” has in its soundtrack the beginning of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold,” which feels so trite now, but was first-run popular when I was living my early ‘20s...
I’ve surely been a miner all these years—brought back to me by her—
all gone, unforgettably.
So, his quest continues: How may one’s mindfulness grow to authenti-cally inhabit a high sense of humanity that’s efficacious without being overbearing? When may a mindful selfcentrism be overriding (but not overbearing) while staying attuned to lovely dailiness, real love for others’ Simple heartfulness, and having real empathy for what others differently live?
If the selfcentrism of creative vitality is not an egoism (and it is not), how then does it validly go? How may the sometimes-tragic results of creative life be reconciled as honest mindfulness learning to quest smoothly, while asking for rocky challenges that learn much, but unwittingly at others’ expense too much? How goes empathic self-absorption, balancing good Relationship with creative discovery, weaving into a real happiness: fulfillingly shared, as well as richly pleasurable? What may be the basis of creative individuation that does not play harmfully, yet often plays critically (risky but necessary) for the sake of discovery?
Clearly, I’m not seeking to comprehend mere “well-being” as that’s normally rendered in health care and clinical psychology. I’m in a quest for something highly elusive that somehow begins in smart childhood,
even infancy, instilling capability for valuing adventurously through
a cultivated love of learning way beyond adaptivity, born somehow through intrinsic appeals that stay renewably alive in desire to explore across the lifespan.
Or so his story goes. Recently, he played out this kind of lovely quest
in his own way, improvised as writing which was often excessive,
by design: “candid,” inasmuch as he didn’t shy from saying where he terminologically is, fool or not, casting his mix of mundanity and obliqueness to whatever ends.
