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hubris Tag

Breathe In Breathe Out

images5AQUIGD8“I am not afraid of death I just don’t want to be around when it comes,” Woody Allen once famously quipped.

Each one of us has been or will be touched by Death. The death of someone close to us. The death of someone we may  identify with, someone we admire from afar. Eventually, the finality of our own dying.

When someone famous dies, death enters our lives in a way that seems to resonate through the Collective consciousness.  I received the news of the death of Robin Williams and felt a wave of sadness. This gifted actor  who wore the mask of the magician in the roles he played in his movies, inviting us all to collude in the mystery and magic of play.  I didn’t “love” him. I certainly didn’t “know him”. I am aware that the characters he embodied were cartes blanches for my projections.

Amidst the plethora of eulogies and anecdotes for this man I never knew, I wonder if  it is the dying of someone we relate to that is unsettling, or is it our own death that we fear when a  star that shines so brightly is extinguished. When a god becomes a mere mortal.

There has not been the same public outpouring over the death of 89 year old Lauren Bacall. Men, women and children die every day, pawns on the chest board of war, the thread of their lives cut by accident, disease, or brutal murder.

Donald Clarke writing for the Irish Times, says  “millions of strangers found themselves “devastated” and “bereft” at the news. A random sampling of Twitter drags up a surprising number of users who “can’t stop crying” the advent of social media only increased the metaphorical rending of garments. Everybody wants to be seen to care. Expressing implausible grief is a way of communicating your great sensitivity…What on earth is going on? The manufactured sorrow at the death of figures such as Princess Diana or Robin Williams is, to some extent, connected with a need to celebrate one’s own life. Your dad may have taken you to see Aladdin. You may remember sitting exams when the princess’s wedding was taking place (as I did). A little part of your life has just moved away…”

Vladimir Nabokov wrote that   “Life is a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness …” and perhaps when an icon or a “star” dies we are reminded of the brevity of our own existence and that Death walks with us from the moment of our birth.

Do you recall these words spoken by Robin Williams in  What Dreams May Come… the story of a man who dies and seeks his wife’s soul in the afterlife to rescue her from hell as she has committed suicide … It’s about not giving up. And yet in our death-denying society there will come a time when the light dims and the glare from the sunshine becomes too harsh, perhaps it is time to surrender and give up. To acknowledge that death is part of the cycle of life.images1UQ3E4EY

The Romans kept Death in mind at all times, especially at Life’s peak when we may lose our remembrance of the necessary part of the cycle. So when a military hero triumphantly entered Rome, hailed as a  god, standing tall in his chariot, a man wearing the costume and mask of Death stood at his shoulder, saying, “Man, remember you shall die.”

In our hubris, our fear of ageing, our terror of death, we perhaps must remember that our lives are cyclical, like the seasons, the orbits of the planets… and with each in-breathe, each out-breathe, we are moving irrevocably closer to our dying. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BC) taught his disciples that in all our human suffering and misery was the omnipresent fear of death. Epicurus advocated a belief that our human death anxiety is not conscious but with us all the time, and it may come thinly disguised by restlessness, accumulation of wealth and power, or excessive religiosity. He embraced the mortality of the soul. With death comes the end of body and soul and mind. In death we dissolve into the blissful tranquility of oblivion, merge  into an eternal and boundary-less universe. Socrates who lived a decade before him, believed that after death we pass on to a better life, freed from the shackles of the body. A belief which has become entrenched in the Christian view of something better that awaits us (if we are good) beyond the Pearly Gates. In living we must prepare for  death. Perhaps this is the gift in the grieving of the death of a public figure like Robin Williams.

 

beautiful_photographs_of_rain_01In safety and aliveness dwell loss and isolation, confusion and unspeakable sorrow. Nothing is static or linear. So whether we believe in an impersonal universe and the sweet oblivion of death, or an afterlife amidst loved ones or hierarchies of angels, death is our life-long companion. Death is our Dark Angel bearing gifts under His wings. Death “itches all the time” says existential psychologist Dr Irvin Yalom. And Lillian Hellman wrote that “it’s a sad day when you find out that it’s not accident or time or fortune but just yourself that kept things from you.”

When we cross the narrow isthmus of fear that links the life we live now with the life we would love to live, the acceptance of our own death “can save us”. When we acknowledge death as our companion, perhaps we can live more authentically, discover how to be alive, how to be fully present, deeply grateful for what we have right here, right now.

Matt Kearney’s Breathe In Breathe OutRobin-Williams.-006

 

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Give Me Love

john_lennon_yoko_ono_rolling_stone_kiss_17pju56-17pju5cI chose a TV-free, news-less diet many years ago. I have no idea what’s trending, what’s new, who’s saying what on Facebook, because in the shrug of human evolution the fundamental challenges stay the same.

We still struggle to accept each other’s “otherness”. We still sink into the oblivion of psychological fusion with something or someone who mirrors our own version of our own story about the world. We are anesthetised by a monochromatic life where everything fits with our version of “reality” our belief in what is “right” and “wrong”.  We react to the bits that niggle and jar us out of our somnambulant complacency with outrage or distain. “Love for ourselves, despite our imperfections, can come alive only when we also risk loving others – accepting their imperfections. And then we understand how starkly our attitude to ourselves, and especially the presence or absence of a feeling of self-worth, is mirrored in the larger society we are collectively creating,” writes Stephanie Dowrick.

“Boundaries” like “Co-dependence” are words that have lost their conflagration. The Sun is now in the boundary-less sign of Pisces, where it meets a line-up of planets, transiting at this time through the silent darkness of the heavens. The Piscean quality of beatific new love feels, tastes and smells so sweet because we see reflected in the eyes of our Beloved, our own Divinity. We breathe in his essence through diaphanous hearts; we invite him in through our transparent minds. We rock him gently in the soft bosom of our in-breath and our out-breath. In his gaze, we greet ourselves.

Love, like Life, is a tight-rope walk that requires vigilance and balance. There is no “right way” or even a “wrong way” to place one foot in front of the other on this eventful journey, and we are all travellers on the same road.

A friend, recently returned from a month in Pune, in India, was shocked to discover that not all Indians are “spiritual”. And that in contrast to western individualism, the general view in that industrialised, polluted, over-populated part of our world does not embrace her values of sanctity of life, gentleness, cleanliness or even common courtesy.  In the hologram, we see what we want to see, until it morphs into shadow. Beneath the immaculate robes of the guru, behind the altar of the priest and within the troubled heart of a golden-haired celebrity or sportsman, we find our own self-doubt and hubris that haunts like a hungry ghost. And yet we are so often shocked and saddened, outraged or betrayed, when our idol or loved-one must inevitably topple and fall into the salty soup of humanity.

We live on a binary planet with an illusive Moon that appears to be much bigger than the Sun when she is in her ripe fullness.

It is within the dappled shallows of contrast that we experience our duality. It is within the interplay of intense passion and the insecurity of possessive love in adult relationships that we discover our suffering. It is within the net of psychological fusion that scoops us like flapping tadpoles, confused and dying, unable to breathe alone. It is down the dark depths of our own narcissism that we draw up muddied water to discover the Lotus Flower of our soul’s beauty.Photograph by Eiko Jones TADPOLES SWIMMING

“The cure for narcissism,” writes Thomas Moore “is to move from love of the self, which always has a hint of narcissism in it, to love of one’s deep soul.” It is in this place of quiet stillness that our differences become obsolete, that the chitter-chatter of our self-protective questions crackle underfoot, a carpet of russet autumn leaves in the sunlight. It is in this place of quiet stillness that we need no longer struggle or strive. It is in this place of quiet stillness that we discover Love is all there is.

Tadpoles Swimming – Eiko Jones

Ed Sheeran –  Give Me Love

 

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If not now?

Behind the proscenium arch of the Greek stage, a tragedy of calamitous human suffering is enacted as government officials quaff cognac and puff at phallic cigars. In this modern day drama, the chorus are ordinary men and women. For many, suicide is the catharsis to loss of livelihood, shelter… and hope, as bloated politicians overstep legal boundaries, and machismo businessmen arrogantly avoid tax payments. This is not really a play about inflated subsidies and debt bingeing of the last decade. Behind the curtains of the euphemistically-named “austerity measures” which darkly ripple across the landscape of so many lives is a far more sombre enactment of a terrible crime.

To the ancient Greeks, Hubris was the greatest crime of all. The outcome, when mere mortals challenged the gods and their laws, overstepping the boundaries, was never without repudiation. There was no escaping the fated denouement. The ancient Greeks had two phrases that encapsulated Greek thinking, and are still relevant today: Know thyself. Nothing in excess.

The glare of the spotlight illuminates the Greek stage, yet in countries, boardrooms, factories, schools, and homes all over the world, misuse of power is a fatally flawed fractal design.

Today, the word Hubris is imbued with a sense of over-confident pride. Only with quiet contemplation and vigilant self examination can we acknowledge where we overstep the boundaries in our ignorance or self-righteousness. Only with scrupulous honesty can we hollow out behaviours that arrogantly assume our entitlement to friendship, or love, or money, or recognition, when it may be we who did not fulfil our side of the bargain. Can we truthfully claim we are owed something when it is so often we who were not present, diligent, honest, or loving?  Can we slouch flaccidly in the hammock of our own self-absorption, meting out judgements and criticisms that make others wrong, ourselves right?

All cultures have a code of ethics for thoughts, words and deeds that do not violate ourselves or other living things. In Sanskrit, for instance, Ahimsa means kindness and non-violence towards all living things. In Latin, Primum non nocere means first, do no harm.  Some codes take time to crack, and the best we can do is to cultivate the humble awareness of our connection to all living things and to do no harm. “An authentically empowered person is humble. This does not mean the false humility of one who stoops to be with those who are below him or her. It is the inclusiveness of one who responds to the beauty of each soul… It is the harmlessness of one who treasures, honours and reveres life in all its forms”- Gary Zukav.

Since late 2008, when Pluto entered Capricorn, financial and business structures have splintered. We have not yet seen the full trajectory of the Global Recession nor the full implications of misuse of power in government and big business. Recovery will be excruciatingly slow and desperately jobless. The irrevocable sweep of trans-formation (changing form, which always implies a dying) will impact the lives of each one of us in some way. Sombre Saturn, slowly retracing its orbit until October in ethical, judicious Libra, is a stern celestial marker pointing our attention to the necessity for responsibility, realism, and reason, and maturity in our personal lives, in our communities. Austere times require the wisdom of new governance, new law. If not now, then Uranus (until May 2018), dancing a gypsy dance through the sign of Aries (the incendiary energy of rebellion, uprisings, or self-immolation), will shake the flimsy foundations of “civilisation” as we have manifested it.

The fatal flaw in our society is our inherent arrogance. Our collective hubris that has brought Homo sapiens and the plant and animal species on our home planet to the chasm of annihilation.

Bullies and tyrants hold a convenient hook for all that is unacceptable and shadowy, too appalling to own in our personal lives and collectively. Be vigilant for the convenient human tendency to seek a Sacrificial Scapegoat… heavy-handed autocrats, the captains of sunken ships, the boss, ex-husband or wife, the querulous neighbour.  It falls upon each one of us to commit to acts of kindness that expand our capacity for love and generosity that open our awareness to our interconnectedness as living creatures on our beautiful  home planet. If not now, then when?

Tracy Chapman,If not now, then when?

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