The Memory Condition

It's an interesting human ability to be able to live in the present and dream of the past. I think that word dream actually describes it quite well, the more i think about it. It seems like the more time that passes, the more dream-like a memory becomes. Not that it loses it's vividness or potency, but it starts to seem like something that happened to someone else, or something you saw in a movie.

I was talking to someone from my past yesterday - the girl I'd moved to Illinois for, in fact. I didn't really start full-on reminiscing until today when i was getting tired and had a lot of quiet time where introspection couldn't help but creep in.

I started thinking about how much I wanted to re-experience my life. How I wanted to just do it all over again. Not to change anything, mind you, but just to re-experience it. I have a very firm belief that I am in the best place that i could be. Seems a bit egotistical, but i honestly think that i have lived my life the way i've felt is most correct, and i've come to where i am because of it. I cannot imagine any way that i could be happier or more fulfilled in my life.

But wouldn't it be incredible to be able to re-experience it all?

Maybe that's why one of my first beliefs about deja-vu was that it was just you remembering seeing that same thing in a past life, because you keep living your life over when you die.

I used to think that there was a kind of catch, yknow? Live your life over and over till you get it right. But really, what then? Disappear into the ether? Move on to some other plane of existence? Join some cosmic force?

Maybe all our lives we are only experiencing the moment before our death when our entire history flashes before our eyes. Maybe all we see or seem is just a dream within a dream, right?

I was also thinking about how different things feel in my memories than they do in my day to day life. I was thinking specifically back to my time in New York, and my time in Paris. How looking back on it, I feel so much energy and potential in the life I once had. I started trying to extrapolate that feeling into my other memories and determine when exactly i had lost it.

I look back on those times and it's almost as if the world was brighter and i was capable of anything ... so when did the world become rigid and impossible? When did i lose that infinite energy of endless possibilities?

I started placing memory after memory in the best chronological order that i could.

APO Nationals at the Mall of America? Infinite energy and possibilities.
Walking the streets of New York? Ditto.
Rollerblading in Paris? Yep.
Taking part in the Habitat for Humanity "Shack-a-Thon"? Si.
The night before i left Illinois? Still there.
Running laps around that park in Guadalajara? Yes.
Meeting LuAnne at the party. Most assuredly.
Playing XBOX in our apartment? Uh huh.
Moving into our house? Yeah.
Hiking up the Mongollon Rim? You bet.
Surfing in Maui? No doubt.
Going to the Brazilian meetup today? I can't believe it, but yes!

It's amazing, but that feeling that i've always attributed to being solely a part of my memories because it was an intangible (but memorable) piece of my youth is in reality something that i just take for granted on a day by day basis.

The world is so incredibly full of infinite potential, yet while i can feel it in my memories of just a few moments ago, i can't feel it in my perception of current time and space.

To me this boils down to two possibilities:
a) i'm adding this perceived energy to my memories. Altering them slightly to fit both my desired recollection and my current outlook.
b) my perception is accurate in my memories but is impossible to hold on to in the present.

I guess it's kinda like surfing (now that i'm an expert har har) in that when you're riding the wave you're thinking about where you're going, how you're positioned, and the feel of the board under you and the wind in front of you. It's not until you look back or see a picture of yourself later that you comprehend or can appreciate the force that was pushing you forward.

If there's one lesson i can take from all this, it's that my memories are just that. I wasn't better or more capable. There wasn't anything more available to me in my life then than there is now.

Now i just need to learn to appreciate the infinite potential of my present like i do the infinite potential of my past.

Rockon.

here to change the world

I'm writing this on the night that Michael Jackson died. It's weird even to write a sentence like that, but there it is.

I won't dwell on his death, or even his life, but i thought it important to open with that.

On the way home i heard a song i'd long since banished from my library, Man in the Mirror. It was being played as a kind of homage. As i listened to the song, i momentarily stopped hearing it through the gauze of my adulthood, and suddenly found myself experiencing it with the same intense wonder it had inspired in my youth.

It was a plea for kindness and consideration by a man whose voice seemed to resonate with such earnestness and conviction that i couldn't help feeling compelled to his cause.

This was the moment of my definition. The culmination of all my thoughts about the world and what it meant to be a person. The joining together of disparate inspirations destined for the self-same goal of human salvation through belief in a cause greater than one's own gain.

Every song about those with less, every speech about equality and love, and every moment of comprehension immediately following every painful and hope-shattering event ... they all crystallized into a diamond of guilt and shame for all the things that every person had ever denied another out of greed or pride.

That diamond has rested under my skin - buried inside my soul. It irritates and frustrates me when i ignore it, and makes me feel complete when i obey its desire.

I am man. But what does that even mean? The goals of the masses could be one, but they flounder on the surface of possibility as dying fish will vainly struggle for breath in a fisherman's net.

What are we destined for? Does it matter? Time forces change, but who's to say what that change will be or why?

The firm belief that so many have that a coming apocalypse will forever modify the lives and ways of all of humanity is simply an excuse. They are looking for an external force to act upon the whole of creation in a way that they themselves are unwilling to do.

Give me your sick. Give me your poor. I will give them back to you and say "Do as thou wilt. I am no greater than you."

I want to change the world. I feel something is wrong with it - something that needs to be fixed. A broken bone under the surface of an otherwise normal looking joint. A bone which was never set properly, and aggravates through weakness and pain.

I've considered reaching out to the great minds of the world. Asking for their help and their influence. So many people want more for this world. I feel as if the challenge is not finding the threads, but weaving the tapestry. The question is not how to find those who would make the world a better place, but how to bring them together and give them a common mind.

Jung speaks of a collective unconscious. I posit its extension into the realm of the conscious mind. We are but reflections of our inner selves, and our inner selves are more alike than we could ever guess.

I've decided to spend some time away from my life - a month of silence and solitude. I can't tell you with any great certainty that anything will change in me. I know what i hope to achieve, but it is something that is hard to explain beyond its simplistic veneer. I'm looking to find myself, but that's really not a good way to put it. I guess you'll just have to believe that i think i know what i'm doing. And whether i'm right or wrong, I intend to find out for myself.

The details of my retreat will come out with time, I suppose. There are plenty of folks who already know them, so i'm not quite sure just why i would hide them here. Suffice it to say that's how i feel at the moment, and i'm just kind of going with the flow on this post.

I've become involved in a project of small magnitude but large aspiration. LuAnne and I and 4 others have decided to try to create a moderately sized urban community using existing real estate and resources. Greatly inspired by the considerations of Paolo Soleri, i only regret that I cannot convince him to secure funding for a urban center in Phoenix that might inspire the world.

Our community will grow organically, but we intend it to be a model for life in a manner which does not require the subjugation of one to provide the promotion of another. It will be a place for sharing and life, learning and growth. Edible landscapes, central gathering areas, geothermal resource generation, and consideration for others as part of consideration for self.

It's not here yet, so don't ask for too many details. The community will have a home soon, and will grow from there. The more interest and helpful intention we find around us the better - so please feel free to ask and suggest as you wish.

The butterfly effect may apply here ... who knows? Who knows.

We are here to change the world.

Global Believing and a Spoonful of Sugar

My interest in world religions was sparked during a gen-ed class at Bradley that I took because a friend of mine signed up for it.

I'm not sure, but i believe it was a class on the religions of the western world. Essentially it was an overview of the three biggies: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Maybe i'm wrong - maybe it talked about Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. It doesn't matter.

What matters is that what I think pulled me in was this window that i saw into the cultures and strictures of societies around the world.

I started understanding that at its most fundamental level, a religion is a set of rules and regulations designed to protect a society from itself and from others. It wasn't until i started listening to Joseph Campbell that another aspect which drew me to such study crystallized in my mind: Religion doesn't just protect a society physically, but spiritually as well.

I mean yes, i'd thought about it, but i hadn't thought about what it meant. The fact that people needed spiritual protection in the first place.

Now keep in mind that i'm not talking about hocus pocus spirituality. I'm talking about your spirit. Your hopes and dreams and fears and desires. I'm talking about the beliefs that help you sleep at night, and the ones that give you something to fight for in the day.

These things vary from person to person, certainly, but if you study world religions you notice a trend in the morals of the stories, and a recognizable cast of characters that may vary in name, but are the same in purpose.

Did you know that there is a Native American legend about a great flood? The legend is said to predate any European contact, and when you read it it is clear that there really is no connection to the biblical flood in terms of Moses or the Jewish/Christian/Muslim God.

That's just one example, but there are many myths throughout the world that share a thread without their cultures being connected.

There are theories that range from the completely mundane: the stories had a common root in pre-history and spread as humans spread; to the spiritual: people have experienced the different faces of the same ultimate reality; to the psychological: there are common needs and wants throughout the psyches of people world wide, that coalesce into a kind of "collective unconscious".

I'm not presumptuous enough to claim that i have the answer, and I'm sure there are even more explanations than the ones listed above, but I do think that there is one very important thing to point out.

These shared beliefs have never stopped existing, and our capacity to share these underlying experiences and thoughts with the entire world is still very much alive today. What's more, those experience and thoughts are evolving.

There are people around the world who grow up with and foster their own set of beliefs (no matter how small they may be) in addition to the ones they are taught by their parents and their society. What's really amazing to me is that i think that people would be surprised if they compared their "side beliefs" to someone else's. Because i'm positive that they would be extremely similar.

So i wonder if there is something that can be done with that. An analysis and understanding of the way that human belief and faith which is shared around the globe is shifting and evolving.

I dunno - seems like an interesting idea.

The Hero Myth

I think we're all waiting for someone to show up and tell us that we're destined for greater things. According to Joseph Campbell, the basic hero myth starts off with the hero longing to do or be something else. But doesn't everyone reach an age or a point in their lives where they wish there were more? Or that they were living an almost entirely different life? Or maybe feel that there is something else they're destined for?
Maybe that's what the hero myth really does: provides us a story that we can relate to, and feel like we get sympathy, compassion, and self-motivation from it. In essence, it's telling us "You're not alone! This happened to someone else! This is that person's story ..."
So where do we find our mentor? Our change agent? Where is our Obi-Wan to lead us from Tatooine? Our Jack Sparrow to bungle us forward? Our coachman to show us death, poverty, and infermity? Our Morpheus to provide us with a red pill? Are we to provide our own impetus for change instead? What about the catalyst which occurs that jars the hero from the grooved path and throws him onto a path of trials and tribulations which will lead him to his destiny? Are we to create that as well? Is that what these stories are for? What happens when there is no mentor? No change? No trials? No destiny?
What happens when the hero has no story?