This morning, the little leprechaun that I live with, a 61 year old man from Birkenhead, tells me he’s off to the gym across the way, presumably to swing his shoulders and kid himself on that he’s getting fit. I’ve told him in no uncertain terms, cardio, cardio, cardio, but no, it’s too much of a chore, so he swings his shoulders and deludes himself in the process, in spite of the fact that no-one has ever died from shoulder-itis (or cancer of the shoulder). It has been a revelation living with the leprechaun (by the age of fifty we all deserve the face and body we have), if only to instil a sense of self-control in my tolerating his agitations and vacuousness. If ever there was an example of a man who has been led down the merry path of convention, it is the little leprechaun from Birkenhead. He admits it later when I press him and he tells me, “It was all there, so I took it, we all did”, when referring to the gluttony, the money, the excess of the 70s and 80s. ‘So, you just went along with the herd?’ I ask him. After a pause, he reluctantly says yes. He can’t say no, he more or less just told me as much. I can see that I have rocked his boat (of delusion). He had previously told me that he worked for Heinz as a process manager, and taster, and that’s how he got fat (actually obese). But he’s constantly back-paddling as he tries to retro-fit his thinking now to his actions then. I can see that there has been little discipline, little thought of any future consequences, no consideration of karma. Indeed, with his extremely limited intellect, a result of no reading beyond the likes of crime fiction, and of following the herd and donating all his available hours to developing macaroni cheese sauce, I very much doubt he knows what karma is. But now, of course, having neglected his body-mind for so long, it is karma who ineluctably comes calling.
Unable to think for themselves anymore, people have to be made aware of their problems by ‘professionals’, but shouldn’t we be capable of diagnosing our own problems, of listening to that inner teacher who goes by the name of intuition, and sorting it out ourselves? Are we not our own doctors, priests and metaphysicians, who, by the absurd nature of capitalism and progress have been told to outsource this innate vital talent to someone external who cannot possibly know what we feel or how we have lived other than what we articulate, and thereby cannot adequately prescribe a treatment? But no, the absurdity of progress continues unbridled and out of control, and we (careering) along with it.
Insanity is surely this 'careering' and devoting your best hours of the week over a period of decades to developing a macaroni cheese sauce and 'making a living' whilst foregoing the opportunity to actually live in and for yourself. In a word, insanity is working 50 hours a week for 40 years until you are told to piss off, like our little leprechaun, who now at the ripe old age of 61 thinks of becoming an EFL teacher, perhaps to indulge his love of tourism (as a sort of one-upmanship on his well-travelled friends), or to delude himself further into thinking he’s making a contribution. It may seem a little harsh to say it, but what can he possibly contribute to these fresh young minds other than delusion, having spent his whole life in delusion?
Insanity is this and more. Remembering that ‘sanity’ means ‘health’ and health’ means ‘wholeness’ and ‘wholeness’ means ‘holy-ness’, insanity then is neglect. Neglect of the sacred. Neglect, first and foremost of your own body and your own mind. Oh, the excuses I’ve heard you would not believe - more delusion - but if there is one thing humans are exceptional at (asides from deluding themselves) it is adapting, and no matter how many slipped discs, or sciatic nerves you have, no matter how bad your asthma or brittle bones, there is always a way to keep yourself healthy. Our reliance on modern comforts, however, have seduced us into insanity, have created that matter of 'out-sourcery' that means tendering out our own vital energies to the lowest bidder (often for little more than the minimum wage)… or to escalators and elevators or desk-jobs and sedentariness.
Neglect and negligence, let’s not forget, is the anti-thesis to religion [neg + ligio, to unbind from; re + ligio, to bind back to (kosmos: the beautiful whole)], and today within an increasingly anti-religious and sacrilegious westworld, vacuous and satanic (where satan can be defined as those who exploit the earth and others, and prey on the weak and the wounded), neglect is everywhere.
It is the great tragedy of man that he has forsaken his humanity, sold it out, and that as a consequence he has to redeem his self, and that, as is invariably the case, he always leaves it far too late. There is no redemption when there is no negligence. As I often say, believing in ‘God’ is irrelevant What is relevant and of major consequence, is that you are religious (or if that word hurts your head, then pro-contemplation and anti-neglectful). The recipe to wholeness is actually quite simple: first, get rid of any dogmatic and authoritarian versions of religion you've thus far been hit over the head with, and then start investigating. Read the great theologians, the great priests and masters, philosophers and metaphysicians, transcendentalists and poets: Merton, Picard, Pannikar…Takahashi, Seung-Sahn, Aoyama.. White, Watts, Whitman... Thoreau, Berry, Olson... the ones who write for and from the heart and not for fame and fortune. Stop working for outfits that have little to do with your living. Realize the significance and opportunity of being 'unemployed'. Makes use of libraries and their treasures! Develop and expand the self, instead of allowing it to be shrink-wrapped and vacuum-packed by the pernicious figures of profit and power. Especially question those who need to decorate themselves with awards and costumes and titles, and who need to put letters after their names.
Bind the self back to the universe. Meditate upon your ligatures and the flowing open nature of the self. The human is not just present in the context of man, but in the context of the cosmos. Existential incest and metaphysical inbreeding is a form of dementia. Your relatives extend far beyond your own kind. Reconnect with silence and solitude. These will be your true friends. Not possessions, power and profit. With the disappearance of childhood, the greatest travesty of them all, adults have become as infants who need molly-cuddling and constantly looking after, but, really, who, in their soporific acquiescent states, should be battered over the head with a great big meditation stick!
It is only through slowness, which leads to stillness and contemplation, that we will ever be able to question critically and independently all the claptrap that a picnoleptic society violates us with and shoves in our faces. It is only through slowness that we will be able to reconnect with the sacred and critically appraise the systems and conventions we are expected to follow. Society, with its over-reliance on science (and corresponding lack of conscience) simultaneously negating other ways of knowing, with its arrogant and single-tracked view of progress and civilization, with its social imperatives that distance the self from the non-human (effectively splitting the self in two), with its epileptic state of self-consciousness and overall small-mindedness that sees relations stopping with its own kind instead of with the cosmos as a whole, is clearly mad. The anti-contemplative nature of business (busy-ness) is the road to ruin, and yet it is the backbone of economic growth and by extension of society. So, what does that tell you? It tells you that there has to be another way of growing over and above GD bloody P. And there is: it’s called work on the self, through self-study, solitude, silence… and space. No human is an island to be sure, but we all need a little breathing space to live fully and sanely.
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