Three Ways of Wisdom

by Markus Posted on May 10, 2013

622px-087.King_Solomon_in_Old_Age

When I was six my life was in turmoil. My parents were grinding through the angry preliminaries of divorce. I struggled in school, finally failing the first grade. As my friends moved on, I wondered what was wrong with me? The question remained an unwelcome companion for years.

I remember escaping to the backyard that summer and lying hidden under an arbor of grape vines my father tended. I watched the clouds drift by through the wide, fluttering leaves wondering what would happen to me, trying to understand the events churning around me. I was afraid, hurt and angry, but more than anything I was frustrated. Why? Why? I didn’t understand.

Soon after, I recall a single clear moment in the fog of childhood memory that likely set the course of my life. I was in a bible study class with a group of children sitting on the floor. The young man teaching the class read bible passages and explained them to us. We went over the usual bible stories that introduce children to biblical principles of faith, obedience and morality. I was bored and distracted, paying little attention until the bible teacher started reading from Proverbs. I remember his white shirt and black tie of as he read about wisdom. Reading Proverbs years later I recognized the passage.

Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not; neither decline from the words of my mouth. Forsake her not, and she shall preserve thee: love her, and she shall keep thee. Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.

- Proverbs 4:5-7

I asked our teacher who was wisdom. He explained to the collective children that wisdom wasn’t a person. Wisdom was being very smart. The answer confused me.

“How could you get smart?” I asked. “You were born smart or not.”

“Wisdom is a special kind of smart, it can grow your whole life,” he answered.

That answer, at that time, set the stage. Wisdom was the first adult thing I remember wanting. That desire grew in strength becoming a passion that guides me still.

Solomon valued nothing more than wisdom. He knew it to be the single greatest asset to living a great life, be it the life of a king or a peasant.

Wisdom is the art of integrated intelligence. It employs a range of cognitive tools to tease out the subtleties of truth and shape rich fields of comprehension. Reason, experience, intuition and knowledge all play a part in its art. Wisdom is broad and deep enough to hold patterns and realizations that more limited kinds of intelligence miss. Wisdom is the freedom to understand without the constraints of convention. It is the precious perspective of a disciplined, artful and liberated mind.

Spinoza said wisdom was understanding sub specie aeternitatis – in view of eternity. He understood the usual context of human understanding was limited to the material, personal and immediate, while wisdom looks deeper and farther. From mountain peaks of transcendent perspective wisdom, the humble sister of enlightenment, surveys the eternal.

Yet the world has largely forgotten the disciplines of wisdom.

Wisdom traditions and teachings were at the core of most religions. Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Sufism and Taoism were built on similar, now obscured foundations of wisdom. The classical mystery schools were promoters of wisdom practices as were the contemplative practices of Buddhism and Vedanta. The schools of classical Greek philosophy, the writings Plato and Aristotle were explicitly dedicated to the development of wisdom.

The Cynic, Epicurean, Pythagorean and Stoic schools each promoted rigorous disciplines and practices for the life-long development of wisdom and a life well lived. To the ancients, a wisdom practice was as necessary for a good life as a compass was to sailing. A man lacking such guidance was little more than a child.

The human capacity to think and reason was sacred to the wisdom schools. It was also the key to developing wisdom. Strength of mind was the only human attribute comparable to the Gods. The life-long development of virtue and wisdom guided the course of life and fed the flame of human divinity.

Knowest thou what a speck thou art in comparison with the Universe? — That is, with respect to the body; since with respect to Reason, thou art not inferior to the Gods, nor less than they. For the greatness of Reason is not measured by length or height, but by the resolves of the mind. Place then thy happiness in that wherein thou art equal to the Gods.

-Epictetus – Golden Sayings – XXIII

The old disciplines of wisdom were vanquished by the wheels of history, religion and the growing seductions of prosperity. We have advanced in wealth and capability, but lack guidance. We lack the insight and vision of wisdom.

We need wisdom but it comes at a cost.

Unlike a quick wit or raw intelligence, wisdom is not inborn. It‘s earned through the effort of an examined life, through experience, mistakes and triumphs, joys and pain. Wisdom grows slowly, unfolding over a lifetime of practice and development.

Confucius identified three broad categories of practice.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

-Confucius

Reflection

… The wise and intelligent practice attaining self-knowledge.

-Vivekachudamani – Advaita Vedanta

Reflection requires a subject; for the cultivation of wisdom the subject is a broad and thorough study of self, the human condition and the changing panoply of life. The merit of reflection is arriving at wisdom by your own evaluation, an earned wisdom that reflects your individual mind and perspective. Such creative reflection adds unique, individual elements to the collective heritage of human wisdom.

The self is always the starting point of wisdom. Experience and judgment will always be filtered through your particulars of mind, emotion and experience. Wisdom starts with an honest understanding of self that acknowledges strengths and weaknesses. Truth is beyond self yet only known through the sieve of self.

The wise man is one who knows what he does not know.

―Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

I studied anthropology and religion in college to understand humanity, but meditation and contemplation taught me much more. Inner truths proved more universal and instructive then any academic pursuit.

When we know ourselves, reflection can grow to the world beyond. The habit of honest self-evaluation will foster an appreciation and greater perception of truth. Wisdom will grow, rooted in the deep soil of self-knowledge. This approach, free of illusion and seeking truth, embodies the ideals of Confucian nobility.

Imitation

Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery, it’s the sincerest form of learning.

–George Bernard Shaw

Imitation can be a direct and clear path to wisdom. A previous master has already blazed the way, clearing the path of confusion, and missteps. Imitation offers the fruit of another’s efforts early in the wisdom seeker’s journey. That fruit can sustain you through hardship, adversity and the more difficult parts of life’s journey.

Imitation requires belief and trust in the subject of imitation. There have been many great and wise teachers, each with their own perspectives and hard-earned wisdom. At the same time, many teachers are less than they seem or unsuitable to the seeker. Let caution and intuition guide you.

The way of imitation should not preclude reflection or developing an individual perspective. You may walk a well-trodden path, but what you take away, the perspective you find at your destination is your own creation. Every monk in a monastery may chant the same prayers and walk the same halls, but the wisdom they find over a lifetime is the individual expression of their mind and soul.

From the time I was a child, I held the image of sagacious Solomon as my model. Solomon became an ever-changing, ever-growing symbol of what I was to be. Others sages, masters, philosophers, scientists and prophets supplemented the model, but my imagined, wise old face of Solomon remained. I never settled on an established path or master, but Solomon always offered direction.

On the path of imitation, you may only watch a finger pointing the way, or immerse yourself in a complete and codified practice. Committing to a matured practice requires less exploration, less uncertainty and less failure. It is the easier, most reliable path. It can also lack the fruits of exploration and failure.

Experience

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

- Aeschylus

There is merit to each path identified by Confucius and I have taken from each. I meditate, reflect a great deal and attempt to imitate the best in others, but I walk the path of experience.

Much of my life has been unconventional and even adventurous. I’ve never been afraid to try, to act and live boldly. I’ve reaped a wonderful harvest of memories and lessons and I’ve suffered the consequences.

I’ve failed, I’ve lost and I’ve cried, earning my scars and earning my wisdom. Through difficult times, wisdom has provided perspective, insight, understanding and more.

Wisdom sees the beauty of pain – it understands its necessity in growth. It knows that comfort is often the enemy of life, that privilege can be a curse. It sees wonder and purpose in the hidden cycles and currents running through our lives and well beyond. Wisdom knows the good is not simple, not neat and never free of cost.

Unlike the noble path of Confucian reflection, experience happens on the ground, in the dirt, sleeves rolled up, fists held high. Experience is the way of life, unbounded and pushing the limits. For me – that’s the point, that’s why we’re here. We were made to experience life.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The eternal part of ourselves is shaped and formed in human experience. Our lives become unique and enriched expressions of the absolute, apprehended in wisdom. As the painter needs the spectrum of his pallet, we need the spectrum of experience to give depth and texture to our souls and our wisdom.

The wisdom path of experience is wild and overgrown. You’ll walk much of it alone without light or compass. The way is filled with hazards, obscuring smoke and the fires of passion, destruction and creation. You’ll earn your wisdom every step of the way, but it will be the genuine expression of your unique soul.

Wisdom was the first serious thing I ever wanted. The child I was struggled through life, and craved understanding. Experience, attention and the work of steady evaluation presented the seeds of understanding that blossom now.

My image of Solomon grew distant and unattainable as my wisdom matured. While my emerging wisdom sees sweeping vistas of truth, it also sees the oceans of my ignorance. That doesn’t trouble me like it did in the past. I’m more comfortable with unanswered questions. I’ve also learned that where wisdom goes serenity follows.

From lofty perspectives wisdom knows its place, it knows truth and it knows the face of mystery. Wisdom banishes the shadows of fear, anxiety and insecurity in its growing light. Beyond the shadows, waiting in bright clarity, is contentment and serenity – perhaps wisdom’s greatest gift.

Whatever path you choose, embrace wisdom. She will care for you, ease your mind and open the way to the sacred in your heart.

I reached in experience the nirvana which is unborn, unrivalled, secure from attachment, undecaying and unstained. This condition is indeed reached by me, which is deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand, tranquil, excellent, beyond the reach of mere logic, subtle, and to be realized only by the wise.

-The Buddha

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Work As Love

by Mark Posted on April 16, 2013

Image of Stone Sculptor

I was re-reading The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran tonight. Wikipedia tells me Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao Tzu. There are many excellent passages in this book, but here is one of my favorites. He expresses much the same idea I was going for in my post The Way of Soup, but so much more compactly and beautifully.

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God. And what is it to work with love?

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,

And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Often have I heard you say, as if speaking in sleep, “he who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is a nobler than he who ploughs the soil. And he who seizes the rainbow to lay it on a cloth in the likeness of man, is more than he who makes the sandals for our feet.”

But I say, not in sleep but in the over-wakefulness of noontide, that the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;

And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

You know the cliche: “Do what you love…” It is often misunderstood but Gibran clearly understood the truth this phrase can reveal:

Somewhere in your heart and mind, body and soul, is the capacity for some kind of work that you can do with love. As love, in fact.

If at all possible…Do that.

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The Open Secrets: A Strenuous Life

by Mark Posted on March 26, 2013

Image by Caroline Grannycome from Flickr.com http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgranycome/7963147624/

So many of the deepest, universal, and timeless truths of human existence are things we all know, yet none of us really believe.

These are truths that have been repeated so many times in so many ways that they fade for us into the background noise of life. We develop defenses against them–bulwarks of rationalization, habits of denial–supported greatly by the fact that so many other people share those defenses.

Can anything new be said about them? I wonder. But they must nevertheless be repeated so that they can be renewed in us.

One such truth that we all know but disregard in practice is this: a strenuous life may or may not be a good life, but a good life is a strenuous life.

It takes sustained strenuous effort to grow, improve, and even to maintain health.

  • For the body: strenuous exercise, and careful nutrition.
  • For the intellect: strenuously challenging one’s capacities to keep learning; rooting out long-held beliefs and perspectives that no longer serve us.
  • For the psyche: strenuous effort to overcome patterns of suffering; struggling with obstacles in the never-ending path to greater maturity.
  • For the character, the soul: strenuous effort to choose the right path, make the right choices, instead of the easy and popular ones.

So this great truth is “life sucks,” then?

No. But that is one of the most common disguises this truth wears. Life is inherently difficult and challenging whether you live well or poorly. The specifics of the kinds of suffering are different for enduring the cost of virtue vs paying the price of life without virtue, but either way you cannot successfully avoid suffering.

The difference is that when you live well, the inherent, necessary, unavoidable suffering of life is almost utterly eclipsed by the satisfaction of doing it right.

In other words: If life sucks, you’re doing it wrong.

Life is supposed to be good. It is supposed to be amazing, wonderful, awesome, excellent, beautiful, brilliant. To be these things, it has to be strenuous. It has to be strenuous because building strength requires strenuous effort and without strength, very little of value can be accomplished.

You must use strength to build strength. And it takes strength to grasp the gifts life offers, and make them yours.

Strenuous effort is particularly painful when you are weak, when you are just starting something. But as strength builds, effort becomes not-so-bad. As your body, mind, and soul adapt to a strenuous life, it becomes natural and intuitively right–never easy–but at times joyful, even ecstatic.

Because we live in a finite world, with finite time and finite resources, we do have to exercise diligence in choosing what to spend our strength on. To live well, we must choose to spend it wisely–not wastefully.

If you are surrounded by people who dis-courage you, who dis-empower you, from diligently applying your strength in the ways that seem wisest to you, solitude may allow you to begin to self-correct and heal.

For the long term, it is important to make and cultivate connections with those who en-courage you and empower you to keep coming back, keep building strength, keep fighting and working toward making your life, and your world, better. That may include mentors, teachers, coaches, but it also includes good friends.

We cannot choose the culture of our time and place. But we can, and must, build our own personal  microculture–the part of culture that touches us most directly, our immediate circles of influence–to promote our ability to live a strenuous life.

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Big Sky and the Spark of Serenity

by Markus Posted on March 16, 2013

Image by Joe Philipson on Flikr http://www.flickr.com/photos/jphilipson/5819186083/

Many years ago I had been surveying petroglyphs and shrine sites in Arizona’s high desert. Miles from anywhere I made a hasty camp for the night. I cleared a spot for my sleeping bag and settled in for the evening. I was tired, dirty and had to remove two stubborn ticks from my legs.

There wasn’t enough wood to make a fire so I ate a cold dinner fantasizing about hot coffee and a long bath.

I grew up in northeast Ohio, a part of the country where cloudy days are the norm. We would endure weeks without seeing the sun through a gray haze of drizzling clouds. The air was usually thick with humidity and the night bathed in the foggy glare of city lights. The moon, Venus and a handful of the bolder stars pierced the sky, but often there was little else.

The high desert was different. The thin, dry air let the heavens shine boldly over the open land.

As I cleaned my dishes the stars opened their eyes, winking and shining in the unrolling blanket of night.

It had been a long day. I’d covered miles of rough ground through hard country. I watched the night sweep into the moonless sky as I laid on my bedroll, my pack a rough pillow.

Fatigue set upon me, heavy and dull. I closed my eyes letting my mind drift, wandering from work, tasks and deadlines waiting, to dreams of distant places, foreign voices, spicy perfume and the taste of summer skin.

I must have fallen asleep for a time. When I opened my eyes again, the neon universe lay before me. The Milky Way spanned the arch of night, a river of countless, shimmering stars. The effect was so intense that a moment of vertigoes had my head swimming in the celestial sea.

It felt as if my mind could glide, dive and turn through the eternal depths, racing around blue and red and yellow suns. Exhilaration filled me with every breath and my fatigue faded like the evening light.

A single falling star painted the darkness with a silent, masterful stroke of light. Then was gone.

I wondered about that tiny bit of the cosmos, falling and ending before my eyes. How far had it traveled? How many eons had it known like falling leaves? That bit of sand may have seen the birth of the sun, the formations of the planets and every age of this world, mere moments passing.

I was falling so much faster.

My life would only span a grain of time, a flash in the eternal darkness. Then, like that fallen grain of unearthly sand, I would be gone.

Suddenly my mortality seemed to reach up from the earth and hold me to the ground with cold, dark hands. It was so achingly beautiful out there, wondrous and eternal, while I was distant and earthbound, living out my little life in the dirt with the ticks.

I was small and inconsequential before the blazing wonder of the desert sky.

Melancholy and self-pity whined and moaned in my heart as I kept watching the sky, brooding.

Then another streak of burning sand.

“I saw you and I’ll remember,” I said aloud, feeling a sudden kinship to the fallen.

“Kinship, kinship – that was right,” I said to myself. My life would be short, but I had been thinking about it all wrong. Like the falling stars, I was a child of the cosmos. I was part of it and it a part of me. My blaze of life would become part of something greater.

Like the falling star, all that I was had taken over 13 billion years to come to that place, to burn bright for a moment unique in the darkness. The iron and oxygen coursing through my veins were the inheritance of elder stars bequeathed in fierce and fiery cataclysms.

Vital elements and energy blow through space like the breath of God. Life and mind, as natural as the moon and the uncountable stars, stir before that breath.

Like clouds or rivers running their course, life flourishes until minds flower across the bright, pinwheel seas of the cosmos.

Awakening from a trillion worlds, untold beings perceive and create, stretching, enriching and awakening the whole, bringing beauty and purpose. All of us, from the smallest living things to the totality spanning the universe are symphonies of parts, complete and components of greater things, greater minds and greater beings.

Something marvelous, beautiful and real was rising from the cradle of stars. Our lives are the spreading fire of a magnificent awakening. The role we play in this is essential.

All value, all beauty, all good is the product of thinking, feeling, creating beings. Without us, reality is meaningless, worthless and dead. We are the hearts and minds of the awakening universe.

Falling stars inspiring wonder and contemplation – their beautiful burning gives birth to greater things.

My sadness drifted away, small and forgotten. In its place a profound calm, a sense of serenity formed in my heart, fixed and crystal bright as the sky above me.

I was home. Home in this desert, this life, this world and I was home in the luminous living universe spanning the sky before me.

I was home.

 

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The Highest Excellence

by Mark Posted on March 7, 2013
Photo of Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein

Bear in mind that the wonderful things that you learn in your schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labour in every country of the world. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honour it, and add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in the permanent things which we create in common.

-Albert Einstein (to schoolchildren) in 1934

 

The greatest treasure of the earth, of our solar system, is the living edge of human history: humanity.

It must, with great effort, be re-created with each generation.

Everything else in life that we do, ultimately we do for the maintenance and improvement of this sacred treasure that we are a part of, and take part in.

We understate the importance of family, and especially of parenthood, when we say that it is the most important thing.

It is the only truly important thing.

If your family extends beyond your immediate bloodline, and you cherish the potential within more than just your children; if you give your best to see that potential realized and celebrated, then you have achieved the highest excellence.

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A Treasured Moment by Winter Trashcans

by Markus Posted on February 24, 2013

Image by Sean Dreilinger on Flikr http://www.flickr.com/photos/seandreilinger/3122720017/After dinner on a typical workday, I pushed an empty milk carton into the kitchen trashcan. Full.

“Oh yeah it’s trash day,” I said to myself.

Tired, I retrieved a new bag from under the sink and began the process of purging the household of trash. I approached the task on autopilot, just another chore eating a soon-to-be forgotten moment.

But the moment had other plans and another witness.

Watching me move from trashcan to trashcan, like a lumbering bumblebee collecting industrial pollen, my five-year-old son asked what I was doing.

“Taking out the trash.” I mumbled without looking up.

“Out to where?” he asked in that please-explain-the-world tone children master with their first words.

“Well, you know, to the trash cans in the garage. Then I’ll take the cans to the road.”

“Why do you take the cans to the road?”

“So the trash men, who come in the middle of the night, can empty the cans and take the trash away to the recycling center.”

“In the middle of the night – like Santa?”

“Sort-a like Santa in reverse. But the trash men don’t have a sleigh and reindeer, they drive a huge garbage truck.”

Christmas had been a few weeks before and it was oddly refreshing to tell my son about real things that happened, almost magically, in the middle of the night.

“Wow,” he said in perfect amazement.

“But I have to do my part and get the trash to the road.”

“Can I help?” he asked hopeful.

I mulled it over a moment, rubbing my chin, looking him up and down.

“Well I suppose you’re big enough,” I said in pretend seriousness.

“OK!” he exclaimed, jumping up and down.

We finished collecting the trash, then dressed in boots, coats and gloves. The boy stood excited, holding a repurposed plastic grocery bag of used tissues, empty soapboxes and Q-tips. I opened the door and, like arctic explorers, we pressed into the freezing world of ice and snow.

It was already dark but the sky was clear and the moon bright. Large, feathery snowflakes fell gently through the crisp, windless night. The boxwood, holley and lavender were covered in thick white comforters of winter weaving.

The moonlight had a sparkling silver quality on the snow. The snow was soft, fresh and thick.

When it snowed like that, the snowplows buried the end of the drive with dense, icy barricades of frozen slush. So, the first order of business was clearing a spot for the cans.

I unhooked my heavy snow shovel from the garage wall and handed my son his red plastic shovel. Together we marched bravely down the drive and faced the mound.

We picked and chopped at the slushy ice, slowly clearing space for the cans. My son tossed little shovels of snow my way, laughing uncontrollably. I threatened retaliation and he fell backwards with a yell into the snowy ditch. Regaining his feet, he ran off like a mini Yeti into the night.

I finished clearing a suitable alcove in the frozen slush and started dragging the cans up the drive.

An ambush befell me from the yard. Small, hastily formed snow balls flew wildly through the air. Miraculously, I escaped by ducking behind the cans and returning fire. My attacker disappeared into the yard.

I set the trashcans in their niche and turned down the drive. The boy ran wildly up and down the yard, making crazy animal tracks laughing.

“Have to go in now,” I called. He ran up to me, plastic shovel in hand, face red as fruit punch.

“Can we take more trash out tomorrow?” He asked hopeful.

“Trash men only comes once a week.” He was crestfallen.

I bent down close. “Thanks for the help.” He wiped a sleeve under his running nose.

“Dad, it’s nice the Trash man takes care of us.”

Then as if the crisp sky above opened into my mind, I had a moment of clarity. The kid was right.

I didn’t appreciate it enough. I looked across the road into the night.

People were out there in the cold and dark taking care of us. People stood guard over us, manned emergency rooms, repaired utilities and roads and bridges and every manner of thing that serve us. Dependable people people did their jobs – some of them, very hard. And with the first morning light all our trash is gone.

It is nice, damn nice.

“I’m glad you know that Buddy. It’s important for us to appreciate it. The trash men are cool guys and they have a very important job.”

“OK Dad.”

Then looking at my boy, red faced, nose dripping in the cold air, I was struck with how good it was to be there. How good it was to share that moment with my kid, to look beyond the chore and find something magical.

I’ll never forget the look of his face at that moment, his quick puffs of breath, the snow on his hat or the moonlight shining in his wide hazel eyes. That moment will always be with me.

It’s important to appreciate everyone who does their part and takes care of us. But even that is drained of meaning if we don’t appreciate the moments in our life.

Every moment is a treasure but we blind ourselves to their beauty with habits, work, worries and empty things that steal our time.

Now and then the scene before us is so striking, so poignant that it reminds us of that treasure – the beauty unfolding in the passing seconds.

I try to remind myself to shake off the day, open my eyes and see those moments. Those tiny, gleaming gems of life anchor your soul to good and beautiful things. Those are the moments that shape you with life’s mystery, depth and magic.

Appreciate life, those who share the journey and every moment you can.

Like a still winter night and a little boy by the trashcans.

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A modest proposal, with apologies to George Orwell

by Mark Posted on February 18, 2013

I agree with President Obama’s proposal for universal pre-school from the age of four. But he has not taken this good idea far enough.

Any reasonable person will have to agree that education is a critical ingredient in the perpetuation of a society, and of it’s flourishing. The more education, obviously, the better. Well over two millennia ago, Aristotle noted that “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” Nothing has changed in this regard–this is simply not in dispute.

The younger education starts, the better it is. Science has established that babies start learning the moment they are born–that would be the perfect time to start education. But parents vary greatly in quality. They can’t help it, they are the product of our current terribly imperfect and unfair system.

What we really need is a standardized system that raises children from birth. What power exists that could create and manage such a standardized system? Only government.

With a government child-rearing program in place, every child would be guaranteed the best chance of a standardized, controlled education. An education that would remove all traces of sexism, superstition, false ideas and ignorance from the populace. Only trained government employees, following strict dictates, would be allowed to interact with the young citizenry. The children would grow up without ever worrying about their nutrition, housing, medical care, or any economic or racial inequality. All citizens would be equal from birth.

Don’t need colleges anymore–government. Don’t need all those redundant libraries and confusing websites–government. There will be a branch of government that makes sure people are not confused by falsehoods. There will, in fact, be a war on falsehood, and we will root out the offenders and prevent their intellectual violence.

This would solve all the social problems associated with youth crime and misbehavior. And with these problems eliminated from children, it would not be long–a generation–before they are eliminated from society, and soon this society would see to the elimination of these unnecessary imperfections from humanity as a whole.

If having schools care for kids during the day is convenient for working families, how much more convenient for people to not have to bother with raising children at all?

Since the government would raise citizens from birth, the archaic and outmoded, highly unworkable institution of marriage will no longer be needed, or even permitted.

The whole “reproduction thing” is such a hassle anyway. Who has time for all this mate selection crap? No. Single citizens are the most productive citizens, though of course women of childbearing age would need to carry to term the fetuses that result from government conception labs where genetic profiles allow the government to optimize the population. I mean garbage in, garbage out, right? We may as well apply the technology at hand for perfecting the raw material of which society is fashioned.

With no need for marriage, finally society can be rid of the ills of sex. Think of it! Gender itself could be erased. Yes, people have slightly different anatomy, and some people are tall and some are short–so much the better for fulfilling the needs of society.

And society would become perfect. Not a stray thought would cross a mind. The will of the scientific government–what sane person disagrees with science?–would simply pass into manifestation as people would simply have no idea how to disobey or resist. Perfect order. Perfect equality. Perfect peace, security and tranquility. The end of every social problem that has plagued humanity since we first stood upright on the ground.

Utopia, at last.

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The One You Feed

by Mark Posted on February 17, 2013

Wolf Image with text of cherokee legend.

This short telling of the legend, within the graphic above, strikes a deep chord within me. It’s merit is in the simplicity of the mental image, and the ease with which it illustrates a concept that is very easy to forget or miss: every act, every thought, every choice feeds some aspect of ourselves. And starves others.

We’re not just beings, we’re becomings, and who we are becoming flows from every choice we make, whether consciously or without consciousness. Every choice is self-creative and self-destructive at the same time. For me, the wolves are symbols of virtue and vice, behaviors that are in some way natural, but may be healthy or unhealthy.

For example, it is difficult for me at times to remember that every news story I read makes me aware of more things I care about, yet are totally outside my control. This is a potent way to feed worry. And feeding any worry gives power to worrying as a general feature of your mental life.

I have come to regard worry as a personal vice. It is natural to worry, but it is not healthy.

There is, of course, a corresponding virtue, called conscientiousness, both natural and healthy. This is being concerned about, mulling over, staying conscious of, even obsessing a bit at times, over things we do have control over–this is how we successfully live in accordance with our values.

When I worry, I’m using that capacity to seek solutions to matters of concern on things I do not have control over. And so the capacity is deprived any opportunity to add anything positive. It’s completely frustrated, and so it does not wind down. It keeps running. Each additional worry of this kind uses additional mental resources in unending and futile searching.

So I treat news a bit like a person on a diet might treat chocolates: an occasional indulgence.

Being aware of the distinction in my life between healthy conscientiousness and excess worry is a key to managing the naturally anxiety-prone nervous system I brought with me into this life. If I’m feeding worry, then it is as if unattached, psychologically pure energy becomes colored by that worry, and it takes the form of anxiety. If I’m instead feeding creative awareness, that energy is colored by creativity.

It’s the same energy, it will energize whatever is going on in your mind.

When I notice the feeling of worrying, I take a moment to consider how much control I have over it, what can I do about this? Can I find a productive approach to resolving this? If so, I take a moment to do so, or make a note to take some time to further consider the matter. If not though–and it is often the case that it is something I cannot, no matter how I would like to, control–I practice once again at the skill of setting that worry aside, of defusing it, letting it go. In this way, I try to feed the wolf of virtue and starve the wolf of vice.

This approach is applicable to a broad range of becoming. As you practice becoming more conscious of what you are thinking, choosing, saying and doing in the course of each day, you may find it helpful to think about what you are feeding in yourself, and what you are starving. If this thought or action does not reflect your values or desires for yourself, exercise your veto.

The cumulative effect of this has the power to completely change your mind, your experience and your life.

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A letter about science

by Mark Posted on February 14, 2013

This is a letter I wrote to Cara Santa Maria, a science columnist at the Huffington Post. I thought it might be of some interest to readers of Forging Soul.

Cara,

I watched your talk with Joe Rogan and you’re obviously a very intelligent and articulate young woman. I disagree with your conclusions on some things, but I understand why you are where you’re at. I’d be willing to bet there is no way I could change your mind, and I have not read your writings so maybe I am off base here, but I would like you to consider something.

At no point in the development of science have humans been right about everything they thought they knew. It is unscientific, and in fact irrational, to believe that people 100 years from now will not look back on the science of today as not just incomplete but frighteningly naive, in some cases foolish and destructive.

The idea of bleeding people as a medical practice goes back to Hippocrates and was practiced into the 1900′s before being abandoned. Ignaz Semmelweis, the doctor who discovered that washing your hands after dissecting corpses, before you delivered babies saved lives…he ended his life in a mental institution and was ridiculed and ruined by his fellow physicians. You see, at the time there was no theoretical basis for accepting his finding–germ theory had not yet been developed.

The history of science is filled with examples like these.

Perhaps you think we’re somehow different now than we have been for every moment of our long human history. It’s a common enough belief. I’d ask you to be wary of this belief.

You’re young and smart. As you get older, I trust that you will learn that science is advanced as a result not only of filling in ever tinier gaps in existing knowledge, but in discovering things that are in contravention to what had been established science. I may not know much but I know that this will continue to be the case, and will always be the case.

The leading cusp of true science is a turbulent boundary zone where skepticism and honest, unprejudiced inquiry are inescapably mixed with the a lot of science denial and things even I would consider woo woo. In your vigor defending the established science, vigilance against unthinking acceptance of scientific orthodoxy will serve you well, and serve science and thus humanity.

I was prompted to write this by your obvious reverence for Carl Sagan, someone I deeply admire as well. Look into the meetings Carl had with The Dalai Lama, and you will see Carl Sagan being what I consider to be a role model for a scientific–and yet intellectually humble–mind. That humility is the place in which new growth can occur instead of just growth into the gaps. It may not fit with your image of the power of the intellect and reason, but humility–the willingness to consider the possibility you might be wrong–is the actual source where the power of reason originates.

If we all had a bit more political humility as well, we might actually see more of the fruits of working together instead of just dreaming of them and lamenting their absence in our world as we fight over every detail.

Best Wishes,

Mark Kenski

Update 2/15/13: I think this letter stands on its own, but if you are interested in another 1384 words on the subject, you can find them here on my personal blog.

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Pain and Transcendent Beauty

by Markus Posted on July 29, 2012

  How a Master Helped Me See the Fruit of Pain

Photo by cjeremyprice on Flikr http://www.flickr.com/photos/superclops/1262311790/I haven’t written in months, too dark, too unsettled and wounded to thread the words together.

Enough.

Time for clarity and direction. Time for a walk in the woods.

A cardinal called over the dry crunch of gravel as I pulled into the wide, empty lot. I locked the car and slammed the door harder then I intended. Cell phone abandoned on the passenger’s seat, I slung my day-pack over a shoulder and began to walk. A familiar trail-head guided me through reclaimed farm land and fields. The fields soon gave way to young, sapling forest as I turned down the smaller trails, seeking the distant, older forest beyond the range of casual walks.

I fumed through the fields, anger and hurt rumbling in my heart as the swish and sway of sapling limbs and reaching branches whispered calmly to me.

I love the forest. Another world, calm and patient, waits beneath the cool canopy. Shadows and filtered day fill the space beneath thick limbs and sunlight hungry foliage. It’s a world comfortable with the play of living grays and sprinkled light.

Step by step calm filled me. I took it in, breath by breath, until the logjam of emotion began to clear.

Disappointment, failure and loss had blinded me, burdened me and crushed me with its emotional weight. I couldn’t see beyond the walls of that pain or remember who I was free of its prison.

My eyes adjusted, discerning a thousand shifting shades of gray moving with the wind and slow breath of the forest. Moving through perfumes of fallen leaves, moss and moist dirt, I followed footpaths to their eternal source.

And I started to remember me.

The miles stripped away pain and bleeding emotion from me, leaving me strangely empty and alone. I had accommodated my pain, embraced it and welcomed it into my heart. How much had I relied on the pain as a crutch, a shield, an excuse?

I didn’t like what I was becoming, what I let the pain make me, bitter and paralyzed. It smelled of death.

Finally, almost unexpectedly, I arrived.

A Black Walnut tree rose like a rough-skinned ogre from the forest floor, wide and dark. Cloaked in an air of brooding power, it ruled the forest before it. Roots, hard as stone, held the earth tireless and sure. Its long twisted limbs, knotted and arthritic from centuries of disease and raging storms held a thick, distant canopy of fresh, flickering leaves.

And the burls. The old walnut was afflicted and long suffering, covered in dozens of large, angry burls like bark-covered medicine balls bulging from its stout trunk.

Fantastic.

In the fork of two high roots, I sat with my back to the old tree and drank from my canteen, thinking about the tree.

Black walnut is valued for its strength, color and grain. Burled walnut is a treasure. Every scar, knot and burl leaves its mark in the wood, adding natural strokes of color. Beautiful, organic patterns in cocoa browns, dark reds and buttery hues sweep, turn and flow through the old, hard wood.

All that beautiful wood shaped through centuries of suffering. Looking up at the tree, the gnarled mass of knots and open wounds, I felt as if I was seeing the mirror of my emotions.

I knew my pain wasn’t special. Life has always been hard. Pain, loss and suffering have always shadowed our days and hovered in the darkness of our nights.

Why? Why is this our lot I wondered for a long time beneath the walnut tree.

The wind picked up, I heard it move through the forest until the old giant creaked behind me.

Some of the finest furniture in the world is made with burled walnut. The dark old giant is worth a small fortune because it has stood naked to centuries, making it’s heart a wealth of warm, rich beauty. Beauty born of adversity.

Life is a risky enterprise, the child of conflict. The good is defined by the bad. Joy is wedded to sorrow and life is the sister of death. The place between existence and annihilation, is the torn, blood-soaked ground of life. From that unlikely ground grows transcendent beauty.

Simple beauty is fragile, untouched and unmarred. It exists sheltered in memory or in a thin slice of time. It is the illusion of a moment. But transcendent beauty is something else.

Transcendent beauty is the beauty of scars and broken bones, of hardship endured, challenges faced, and taking another step after love is lost and dreams are crushed. It is the best part of us digging deep, tapping eternal strength and struggling on. It is shaped by time and adversity like marble of hidden wonders before the sculptor.

Transcendent beauty spans a lifetime and beyond. The attributes of endurance, the virtues of standing and pulling through settle in your soul. As weakness and illusion fall away, you are left with strength and the kind of beauty that carries you and defines you.

Soon I smell a change on the wind. The forest moans as the clouds roll in and the shifting stars of sunlight on the forest floor dim. In moments the canopy shudders under the first drops of rain.

The sum of your character, your soul, is the one thing, the lasting treasure in your possession. No matter what you face in life, what losses of fortune, social standing or love you suffer, your soul can grow in strength, depth and beauty – transcendent and eternal. That part of you will make its mark on the universe and carry forth in the greater ecologies of mind beyond the confines of this life.

I dug my jacket from the pack, stood and planted a palm on the walnut’s thick, rough bark to say good bye. Above me, limbs stirred the sky and the wind played a symphony of leaves. As lightning flashed through the clouds, I felt the old tree vibrate and move–alive under my hand.

How many storms had it faced in its long life? How much disease, how many insects eating its heart, how many storms and long winters had it endured?

I felt a sudden, deep connection to the tree, a bond of struggle and perseverance. A bond of life. The wonder of that moment illuminated the wonder of living, the wonder of my life.

I was done with the anger, done with the pain. It was time to heal and push through.

I looked up into its massive branches and distant leaves dancing in the storm until the rain poured into my eyes.

What a beautiful thing it had become.

I sat back down between the walnut’s roots, sheltered in transcendence and smiling.

We would face this storm together.

 

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