((Non)Self)

I am barely beginning to understand a lesson from several weeks ago. There has been a long digestive break during which I chewed on, and exploratorily moved to, the notion of:

 Voluminous hip joints vs. delicate Kreutzbein (German “crossleg”) joint (at the intersection of back (up/down spinal river) and cadera (Spanish “hips”; horizontal and circling springs (of movement, energy, flow etc.). Both elements are crucial to a body’s centreline (i.e. balance). I continue to awaken to the acetabulum-ilium-ischium-pubo-sacral complex in new ways, thus triggering transformational body-consciousness and self-awareness. Of course, this is true of other areas of the body constantly on my mind as well. However, I’m not, at the moment, chasing those notions with the same devotion. I am clearly preoccupied with the whole body* all the time.

*I wanted to include the word mind. But I’ve come to the following conclusion:
Given that even the elusive mind must have a biological, a physical manifestation (the nervous system perhaps? though this is a perceptive system not entirely unlike other anatomical phenomena), the mind is body.

Am contemplating so many things, all the time. Thank God for Philosophy Sunday! I guard everyone’s sleep while I think in peace. Joy overcomes my wretched spirit. I listen to music and move words and body. Today I rest gratefully on my bed as I write. Had a bad night. The 48 hours of strong non-stop bleeding, the height of the bloody period, are upon me. This means probably two nights of interrupted sleep due to getting up every couple of hours to empty my menstrual cup, or change the tampon, pad, or rag.

I hate it when two notions cross like rivers confusing the mental landscape. It happens to me with languages, too. I get stuck searching for a word, an expression, a thought. Sometimes it is lost forever. Brain technology, what can I say? Totally organic. Thus, orgasmic. Thus, unpredictable and fleeting… There I go again losing track.

1. Surely bleeding females have had interesting ways of dealing with the moonthly flow of death all across herstory dating back eons. Before all the industry we know today there was fur. A useful piece of absorbent, washable animal fur cut small between the legs or larger underneath the hips overnight, or while sitting cutting stones; or, grass bound together, biodegradable; an other plants and natural fabrics assisted in cathing the unstoppable flow of female blood.

2. Sunday, Sabbath. A day of doing nothing.  On the seventh day: rest. A day for contemplation, for God to go beyond the binds of physics. Some believe that even flipping a light switch is too much work for a Sunday. Pray to God in darkness instead! A day to rest. Resting is a basic human necessity. This, humans have known for eons. Embedded even in patriarchal old testaments is wisdom true. Women must have come up with that. Anyone who cares for the young knows that hunger and fatigue greatly affect a child’s mood. It’s true for gown-ups, too. Nurture and rest are inescapable terrestrial necessities. It’s also what every woman requires at least once a month during the days of dying.

Two thoughts that now flow together separately.

At the same time that Father Richard (Rohr) was sending reflections about living with paradox, I was experiencing a lot of paradox of my own. Many more rivers of contemplation flow through my being simultaneously. I’ve been preoccupied with Siddhartha Gotama Buddha again, for example. A German book** which revisits the Buddha’s story as it’s told, makes it clear that Siddhartha had a singular goal of becoming enlightened. A singular goal of shedding, of overcoming all the suffering in the world, of living lightly*** to never incarnate again. But Buddha my love, you live on incarnate in me! And in the next flesh who thinks about you, too. Will you help us not suffer? Except, I know that he can’t. I must do it all by myself with my own pained effort, until it pains no more. Siddhartha took the physically hard paths of yoga and ascetism. He acquired countless techniques in terms of taming or regulating the body, nearly killing himself through starvation. And yet, all that rigor and near-death did prepare him for the sitting of his lifetime. He was able to endure the Asana that freed him. His body, breath, and endurance were trained. He performed the greatest art of perception ever. He attained something that is attainable to all. At what cost? At the cost of suffering.

On the dawn of my birthday, while being in a state between asleep and awake, I had the most singular sensation of non-self. I felt fully (my) non-selfness. It was the most beautiful, peaceful and happy (non)sensation I’ve ever felt. It was fleeting. It was a gift. And all I desire is to experience it again. But how? Following the Buddha’s searching path? 

Thus, I’ve been preoccupied with the notions of self and/or non-self. I am curious about the nature of a human species self. An individual self, or a singular creature, is already so very complex. But it is as complex as other individuals, or creatures, like it. And it is complex in very similar ways to yet other creatures that seem different. Thus, a collective kind of self must exist beyond the individual self, which is rendered non-self by that larger reality.

There is an idiosyncratic self (i.e. genetic body variation; individual experience; and so on). There is also a non-self, the reality of non-idiosyncratic biological (and particular) collective existence (species, material universe, and so on). What lies beyond that?

I’ve experienced another kind of non-self as a mother. I’m not sure what to call it. Co-self? Double-self?

Perhaps the self and non-self are kind of the same. There can only be a non-self (or any other variation thereof) given a self. For, what is not, cannot be denied. What can be transcended must exist. In this sense, to what extent can the idiosyncratic self transcend a collective, or species self, or a beyond or non-self? To what extent does non-self transcend idiosyncrasies?

Indeed, what is the nature of our shared humanity embedded in the biological and technological connections of a material universe? Who are we humans as a species?

Philosophy Sunday has run out for now. Worldly duties and other desires abound. There was more I wanted to write. Of course, hundreds of pages of notes hang in the making. My philosophical compulsions never cease. I’ll end with a note of gratitude. 

God bless the living! For, Nexistentialism enjoys great company. I get to experience some of my favourite contemporary philosophers live, for they are my teachers! The beautiful, intelligent, experienced, independent, and compassionate minds of great thinkers with loving hearts. Yes, philosophy is alive and well in the world. Of course it is! It always was. But more on that another time.

Image: "Calavera cósmica en el espacio exterior"
 de warzinx

** "Ein Mann Namens Buddha - Sein Weg und Seine Lehre" von Samuel Bercholz und Sherab Chödin (1994).

***to not suffer, for suffering is heavy and hard

Cumspotting

Obturator orgasm
never disappoints.
Longissimi involvement interesting . . .
Is this what "kundalini" is about?
The infamous snake?
An ancient wheel of joy and pain.

Yes, please!!!!
I'll reincarnate
countless times
just to feel
again and again and again
just to feel
that indescribable pleasure.

I'll suffer, wait and train.
No orgasm occurs in vain.
Give me five, give me six,
give me ten!

*of course, ovulation vibes

Avowed

In sickness and in health, the promise goes, that vow they told themselves and each other.

One was sick with hunger for mother's feminine touch and craved women's flesh aplenty. She saw him through it and does it still, his companion. And now he cares for her during sleepless nights of painful unrest, and every day while she struggles to move her tired body about the house. 

Another cultivated a radical understanding of freedom to flee a heart heavy with feelings never blessed to be expressed. Seeking refuge in fluid company, in drugs, dates, dancing. Leaving her at home to wait indefinitely for another moment's glimpse into his loving soul. She saw him through it. And he made sure she was adequatly, comfortably provided for when her vulnerable nature caved her mind into insanity. He never stopped returning to her and, in his way, loved her, though she would never say her love for him again. And to her grave he now brings flowers. 

Yet another was sick with anger and struck away both love and life with force. She took his charm and embraced, well past his better days, the fruits his seeds had born so reminiscent of the many ways in which she had loved him. He had fostered a legacy of unconditional unity despite the severity of his blows.

Togethter they tell tales of responsibility towards our kin. Our kindred fellows, yes, humans who rise and fall like me and you. Don't we all?

What is responsibility? What is the nature of our ability to respond to each other? How do we correspond to each other? And what is love? but the string that weaves together many stories on the spiral path of life.

The Billboard

She looked up at the billboard and admired the beauty of the woman depicted next to the symbols *alpha* *chi* *omega*. It was an ad for some sort of life insurance with the promise of benefits from the beginning to the end. "The beginning of what?" she wondered, "the beginning of life? At birth? in the womb? Can you even pick an insurance policy then? Didn't need one on the other side. Or, beginning from the moment of contract signature until death? What is death? The end of being able to pay for the service?" The answers to these questions weren't clear to her from this piece of advertisement. The woman's beauty though was to be admired for sure. Her seemingly unkempt hair framed a soft angular face with sudden curvatures accentuated  by the movement of her gestures over the years. Many, many years and countless experiences evoking a plethora of thoughts and feelings, unspoken responses and ideas expressed on the seemingly silent canvas that is her skin. And beyond that colourful surface laced with lines, some bold, others perceptible only to a fine-tuned lens and eyes aware of what it means to live a human life - beyond that surface structure, a body of flesh formed to the smallest of details. Acid muscle mass and sweet deposits of fat, symphonies of cells and sub-atomic particles all orchestrated to sing the song of an aged siren, a mature madame with something to show for the years on her back. Something to show quite literally and very figuratively on the face of her spirit clothed to bear the lessons chosen by an elusive consciousness disguised as matter of fact.

Nevolution

"Why does he call it the descent of man?" she wondered as she found her way back to him after having rejected him first, of course, long ago. It seemed to be in her nature: Zurückweisung, sometimes unüberlegt. Her path was paved with failures and rejections, with descending slopes. These seemed to precede upward swings. She pictured a two-dimensional line viewd from the side going up and down. She supposed it might be relative to the point of view. Then she imagined looking into a spiral from the center in which some points swung from left to right and vice versa; not straight, but rather in a roundabout swing, one that moves forward, not a circling in place like that of a carrousel, but rather a cyclical spiralling montaña rusa, Achterbahn perenne, roller coaster ride, existential russian roulette, cosmic tide, ebb and flow, hin und her around it goes: the nexistential carnival show.

"It's an ascent!" She'd proclaimed. "What would he know, so many a moon ago?!" For hadn't we evolved ever so upwardly, making sacrifices to hold our heads high on a pair of bipedal thighs, something we did with pride? And then, she learned of another one who spake of a great fall which rendered us back at square one in order to evolve all over again. A descent of man to reach new heights in ascending to other planes of awareness after retracing all the evolutionary steps taken thus far. She began to reconsider her previous judgement of the man. Perhaps she owed him an apology, she considered for an instant. No, she decided, for doubt was the way of her path-finding. She'd be true to her own steps.

Suddenly, she understood why she had rejected this one in particular, and many more like him. She'd done so with an innate skepticism. She'd pushed herself as far away as possible. She'd dismissed them on the premise of: "And how do his theories apply to me? What can they teach me about the ordinary struggle of my day to day?" After all, what could a man like that possibly know about being a woman at the turn of the twenty-first century, a man from over a hundred years ago or more?

spiritual science notes

The souls of this world bear many faces. Why pursue an earthy existance? For the beauty of living in a blue sphere of rainbow colors? To personify the human being appears to have become trendy. Why is being human so fashionable these days? When the wisdom of other earthy creatures remains unrivaled...

To incarnate an earthy body, or any body for that matter, is to become a physical manifestation of energy. A channel within a vessel. The human body, evolution's marvelous experiment, represents a fascinating potential for the expression of energy in the worldly dimensions. An all-powerful capacity to manifest. A bipedal structure, a voicebox and two hands with opposable thumbs launched the hominid to new planes of existance. The human being walks the Earth, speaks in tongues and acts without measure and leisurely pleasure, surefooted and insecure.

Biological programming is time-consuming and effective. The seeds of the spring are the autumn's bounty. Biological regeneration is time-consuming and effective, a modus supervivendi. The body falls ill. The human form is vulnerable. Ist es den Sinnen zugänglich, hat es eine Form. In einer Welt voller Illusionen, was ist Wahrheit? To seek truth enables the filter for illusions. Doubt is your friend. That humans control anything is an illusion. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not wisdom itself.

God did create humans in his own image and humans are creative creatures. However, they are no different than any other form of life, which flows through it all. Life creates life. Life has many forms. Forms are vulnerable. They can grow ill. Healing processes are time-consuming and effective. Suffering does come from desire. Desire is an illusion of control. Control is a misconception.

Life also takes destructive forms, self-destructing forms. In the human creature this manifests itself as ill-being, as irrational and destructive agencies, such as war.