04 December 2009

Peace and Quiescence

14,763 more days, give or take. Meanwhile, the exchange of goods and services between members of my species slowly picking back up after the two-year shock in the awareness and negative effect of another overpriced set of emperor's new clothes thrown in the garbage bin. One more proof that not all the members of our species are well-meaning. Everyone looking for the next set of emperor's/empress' clothes to build an economy with. Futility versus utility. Form versus function.

Taking a different tack today. Looking at the life of a person who doesn't have to compete with others for the most number of interesting things to claim as definition of one's status.
  • No refrigerator.
  • No automobile.
  • No electric kitchen appliances.
  • No battery-powered clocks.
  • No central air heating/cooling system.
  • No water heater.
  • No house.
  • No land.
  • Not even this computer.
Affluence seen as what you don't have to tie you down instead of what you own - freedom of another sort.

Some call it frugal living. Some call it being environmentally-friendly.

I'm not ready to call it anything yet. I examine the life of one without things and wonder...

Repeating my thoughts to mull over them, picking through the scraps for any new insights.

Waste not, want not. Haste makes waste. A penny saved is a penny earned.

What state or condition of the body does such a life provide?

For years I have held up the idyllic life of the country gentleman as an escape, a dream, a fantasy, a way of life that is always there whenever I want to set myself completely free. A hermit who doesn't mind hosting the occasional visitor, regardless of species.

And yet here I am in that role, having slowly practiced the lines that my being this character requires.

But I still have things that use energy which requires payment to others to maintain and provide the energy source.

Do I eliminate the things or the outside energy source? If I kept the things and got off the grid, then what? Basement nuclear power plant? Rooftop solar panels? Intermittent wind turbine power? Creek-powered transformer? But all of these require a home and some land, don't they?

Is the nomadic life still possible? Can we carry our homes on our backs figuratively without having to pay for the privilege of living along the way?

==> bottom line: what is freedom? <==

I derive no pleasure from perpetuating a storyline today. My recent characterization has worn out its usefulness. I am not the person who will lead us to the realization that we are not individuals because I will not overcome our protests to the contrary due to our trained belief in freedom of thought and thus apparent existence of individuals. Just because I believe and know we are temporary vortices within a system of temporary vortices does not mean I have to convince people to join me in my belief. We tend to believe that the actions of our ancestors portend a future which builds upon the past because we usually do only what we know how to do and accidentally discover something new which becomes something old leading to others repeating what we did and discovering something new, etc.

These symbols, these words, these repetitions...do they provide any usefulness to me other than entertainment in the moment? I write for myself since I'm the only person I know who knows I exist and knows I don't exist at the same time. I have no past to overcome or future to achieve great accomplishments. I have this moment and this moment only. I enjoy this moment. I thrive in this moment. I am outside of time but firmly seated in place.

My thoughts are jumbled today. I am in a state of nearly pure meditation where thoughts and actions are unnecessary except to keep me focused on lining words one after the other across this imaginary page. I am without being but I am a being.

I have stood at the top of tall towers. I have watched tall towers fall down. I have looked at the ruins of towers of ancient civilisations that fell. Towers and civilisations inevitably fall. We repeat ourselves over and over, rediscover anew. Thus, what I do here will disappear, no matter if I find something new to say. I will repeat what others have said. Others will repeat what I have said. I am doing both now. I am doing both now.

I line words up with ease, sometimes harmoniously. I envy those who can pile up and line up musical notes into organized, harmonious sound sequences, their sense of wonder and invention beyond my comprehension.

There are no levels of being. There is no such thing as meditation. I am who I have always been; well, almost always, changing personalities slightly after an automobile accident at age 17 (amazing what a jarring blow to the head and 20 seconds of induced unconsciousness/coma/concussion does to one's understanding of the cosmos, waking up and asking, "Why am I here? Why am I on this treadmill of BORNMARRYHAVEKIDSDIE?").

I think out loud on this public electronic forum because it's a convenient place to store my written thoughts. By chance others will read these words. If I am to believe myself, to be true to myself, then I put these words down here without worry or concern about the pebble-in-the-pond effect because what I do does not matter. We will repeat ourselves in our personal beliefs and our civilisations will inevitably fall. We can build new societies and we can fall into anarchy. We can do both. My voice will be forgotten no matter how much I want to think my voice is worth hearing (if only to myself).

I state all of this seeing and being in awe of the wonders of the universe while having joy and happiness in this moment knowing I am a variation of a repetition of the temporary vortex I think of as a person in a species on a planet in the universe. The universe is my steady state, my foundation, my place of/for being. The universe is more than I can wrap my arms around or fully understand with my thoughts. In fact, the universe may not exist in the way I have been trained to think it exists but it doesn't matter. As a spinning top on the surface of this planet, I am all I know and all I need to know to exist.

At the end of this blog entry, it doesn't really matter what I do in the next moment but I will choose to do something that perpetuates my species' belief in manifest destiny because my set of atoms and molecules may be lined up to make me want to do something for my species while I want to believe I have not yet reached the point where I will fully disengage myself from the world of my species to exist in a permanent moment of meditation for the next 14,763 days.

I can find happiness in knowing that it doesn't matter what I do in the next moment just as much as knowing I am (you are) the most important person in the world that the world can't do without. The condition known as true freedom - being and not being, repeating and not repeating.

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