CONSCIOUSNESS CONFERENCES convene scientists to compete over dueling theories of source and refuse to use the word soul meanwhile to describe their search or purpose! I’m reading Michael Pollan’s latest, “A World Appears,” with a bit of impatience; I didn’t sign up for a boxing match when I borrowed this book from the library! So much “science” sneaks into existence as an excuse for men to argue.
To defend the deeper mysteries, let’s hold out for the unknowns. If the mind is a theater and consciousness is what appears on stage, it still begs the question of audience—who’s watching and chatting through the dream time of intermissions. Merton talks a lot about dreams and prayers overlapping in terms of intent and outcome. Dreaming and praying both demand a reaching toward and beyond the self for some kind of magic.
In elementary school, the only cards I collected were not saint cards but Garbage Pail Kids cards and Michael Jackson Cards, you could buy a five-pack with gum at the local 7-11 and sometimes I bought them with babysitting money but I also stole some on a few occasions and I don’t regret those transgressions as it gave me a true boost in dark times! Yes, the kids have inner worlds and we’re tending to them daily even as we must answer to the demands of public adults.
On a snowy Saturday in January in 1989, I became a bat mitzvah, a daughter of the commandments. I memorized my torah portion—exodus and moon time—learned to sing the sacred songs. But what do I remember most about that day? The way my rabbi stood there between my parents, placed his hands on my shoulders, looked me square in the eye, and told me I had to forgive the two people who had ushered me into this world. This holy man with a thick brown mustache knew of our familial strife and tried to stage a gentle intervention near the ark!
In the middle of my ceremony, the rabbi leaned in to whisper this commandment into my ear. I winced and gave him the side eye. I was bleeding for the first time in my life that morning and I had no patience for men and their commandments, even if he was someone I thought I respected until that point. Rabbi, please, I implored with my eyes. Leave me the fuck alone and get me out of this itchy wool dress.
I continued to jump rope all through middle school, in-out-side-by-side-on-in-out. I continued to devour books like the Boxcar Children Series, giving me some kind of blueprint for radical independence—a world without adults of any kind to mind our minds, hearts or souls. We could do it! We could survive without interventions like school or synagogue. I realize now this was the rogue vision of a young poet and not a common refrain that ran through the brains of most young ones.
There’s a reason why priests and poets primarily concern themselves with consciousness and not scientists or psychiatrists. We speak to majestic magnolia trees; the deer come running toward us for communion when we’re in the woods; we let the mind flow like a river toward a single source—an ocean orientation—the illuminated path of utter awe.
School starts the minute we wake up and begins again with dream time.
To defend the deeper mysteries, let’s hold out for the unknowns. If the mind is a theater and consciousness is what appears on stage, it still begs the question of audience—who’s watching and chatting through the dream time of intermissions. Merton talks a lot about dreams and prayers overlapping in terms of intent and outcome. Dreaming and praying both demand a reaching toward and beyond the self for some kind of magic.
In elementary school, the only cards I collected were not saint cards but Garbage Pail Kids cards and Michael Jackson Cards, you could buy a five-pack with gum at the local 7-11 and sometimes I bought them with babysitting money but I also stole some on a few occasions and I don’t regret those transgressions as it gave me a true boost in dark times! Yes, the kids have inner worlds and we’re tending to them daily even as we must answer to the demands of public adults.
On a snowy Saturday in January in 1989, I became a bat mitzvah, a daughter of the commandments. I memorized my torah portion—exodus and moon time—learned to sing the sacred songs. But what do I remember most about that day? The way my rabbi stood there between my parents, placed his hands on my shoulders, looked me square in the eye, and told me I had to forgive the two people who had ushered me into this world. This holy man with a thick brown mustache knew of our familial strife and tried to stage a gentle intervention near the ark!
In the middle of my ceremony, the rabbi leaned in to whisper this commandment into my ear. I winced and gave him the side eye. I was bleeding for the first time in my life that morning and I had no patience for men and their commandments, even if he was someone I thought I respected until that point. Rabbi, please, I implored with my eyes. Leave me the fuck alone and get me out of this itchy wool dress.
I continued to jump rope all through middle school, in-out-side-by-side-on-in-out. I continued to devour books like the Boxcar Children Series, giving me some kind of blueprint for radical independence—a world without adults of any kind to mind our minds, hearts or souls. We could do it! We could survive without interventions like school or synagogue. I realize now this was the rogue vision of a young poet and not a common refrain that ran through the brains of most young ones.
There’s a reason why priests and poets primarily concern themselves with consciousness and not scientists or psychiatrists. We speak to majestic magnolia trees; the deer come running toward us for communion when we’re in the woods; we let the mind flow like a river toward a single source—an ocean orientation—the illuminated path of utter awe.
School starts the minute we wake up and begins again with dream time.
