Disclaimer:: I would like to begin this blog entry with a few words to stipulate (as usual) that this entry is merely my feeble and blind wanderings through the desert of existsnce. I feel this subject may actually be possibly more inflammatory than some of my earlier ones (I have natural desire not to unhinge people). Therefore, let it be said that everything in my blog and in my poetry (this post and all posts before and after) are merely what I have found within myself. They are in no way what I feel should be applied to other people. The reflection I see in the mirror is my own, not yours, or yours, or yours.
Prologue:
Now, let's see... to be perfectly frank, the threads of this web of thought are so complex and numerous, I am currently at a loss how to construct this stream of consciousness. Which thread to I grasp onto first? I suppose the easiest way to approach this problem is to begin with simple facts.
1. I post my poetry on http://deathforgets.deviantart.com . A while back (some years), I received an email from my mother containing a photo one of her friends (the mother of a childhood friend of mine) had found, scanned into the computer and emailed to her. My mother had forwarded me the photo.
2. I do not have any photos on my person (where I live away from my childhood home) of myself as a child. I may well be the only person who lives like this, or perhaps we are the vast majority. I never presume to be special or presume that anyone else is like me -- either. I am merely myself, and you (every person reading this) are yourselves each.
3. I posted this photo on deviant art, as I had shown it to my muse. She had suggested I use it as a profile photo, and I generally trust the sage advice of my muse.
4. I have never, until tonight, posted a childhood photo of myself on Facebook. Firstly, note number 2 (above) -- I just don't have access to said photos. Secondly, I was simply never motivated to do so. I had no concept of why people tended to post photos of themselves as children. I did not understand any relation to dwelling on the past.
I do not believe I have as yet posted a blog entry on the metamorphosis I have undergone. I will need to do to address the changes I have undergone in life, with particular examination of my most recent reincarnation, in a future blog post. Suffice to say here, in this post, that about a month ago -- I was reborn yet again through one of the more radical alterations to my psyche and existence. I know this sounds like the mutterings of a madman -- and I fully embrace the diagnosis as a madness of individuality. Again, we'll discuss this in a future blog post.
Why did I mention the bit in the italics? Even before this rather strange occurrence in which I changed, I still did not tend to dwell on the past. I was always desiring to strive forward. In fact, if anything, I was so focused on striving forward I was going the opposite direction of posting photos of my childhood and reminiscing. I would daydream and panic about the future. A common malady I know. More widespread than the cold.
I have subsequently lost interest in panicking over future or regretting past events (stay tuned for a detailed explanation in a future blog post). Why, then, you ask: why did you post the photo of yourself on Facebook? It was to serve as a bridge for this blog. This will sound egotistical, but it is not: I glanced at that photo as I was passing through my deviantart account, and had this sudden odd sensation of gazing upon a Bodhisattva, or enlightened soul. That really does sound terribly arrogant and self-aggrandizing, but it is not at all intended in that fashion. It could have been the photo of someone else I saw at that moment. It just happened to be the photo of me. It is not at all important or relevant that it was a photo of me, ideally. All that matters is that it triggered a stray series of possible realization.
Analysis:
That realization was thus: in the photo, I look like an enlightened soul. I have no memories from this age (I think this is a photo of me when I was four). I humbly submit the postulate that a lack of memory is indicative of no separation between conscious mind and subconscious mind -- and that the state of such a being is in the true bliss of natural thought and existence. This would suggest that true "innocence" might be defined as an existence in which there is no distortion of the natural state, the unity between conscious and subconscious. It is the overwhelming seduction and trauma of the world around us that pulls us from our state of bliss and tears a delineating line through the brain to create a definition of conscious and subconscious. In the moment that we become self-aware, we are pulled into the gravitational field of sansara (the world delusion). I humbly submit for anyone reading this post that the manner by which we enter this world does not have to destroy us from our true selves, but it is something in our upbringing or something that we are subjected to, that breaks the whole.
There are definitely many flaws in the last paragraph, and inconsistencies that I have toiled to no avail by which I might connect a bridge with no missing or damaged planks. Instead of spending an eternity upon trying to repair the infinite microcosm of the ever-expanding sub-cosmos of the fractal of life -- I will let this stand as a "hand waving" statement, and attempt to offer other qualitative observations:
1. I have long noticed the statements "I wish I were still a child, life was so much simpler then", "I miss the slow pace by which life passed when I was a child", and "look at the happiness in this child's eyes."
2. I have long observed the fondness by which people treasure items from their childhood, images from their childhood, and symbols of a time before memory.
3. Children who have not as yet gained self-awareness, have been repeatedly documented for their propensity for observation that might well go eons beyond the average person's ability to perceive themselves or the world around them.
All three items, I submit for you, as shadows that dance upon the wall, hinting at the possibility that we are not initiated into life as torn from the divine and divided from the greater reality -- but rather are surgically altered and brutally mutilated into something else other than as what we first appeared upon this physical plane. I am not saying this is an illness or an avoidable change. I am not condemning the passage from "innocence" as defined in the confines of this blog entry, into less innocence and onward into adulthood. I am merely attempting to reconstruct something that is highly evasive and incredibly radical in theory (radical for me to theorize about). When I say all of these statements, they are only mine, only me.
Whatever it is that I am seeing now, saying now, typing up now (whomever it is that I am becoming) -- all of this feels cyclic to me, as though I have this sensation that I have managed to build a connection back into my subconscious and more readily complete the whole me. I will never desire a loss of self awareness. I treasure, perhaps foolishly, my link with "the great world delusion", and I do hold to the postulate that in the perceived existence of contrast and duality and dichotomy within the perceived existence we share, these are the things that allow for our interaction. I cherish interaction with the world around me, the ability to experience sensation, and the tremendous gift of conversation with other souls.
I had contemplated posing different hypotheses as to why or how we are altered into this state of suffering and desire, but there are far too many variables to account for. Instead, I propose an image of a child at rest inside the womb. The process of birth is a violent and brutal one, but upon the child and the mother. I, as a member of the male gender, can only attest to second hand knowledge (hearsay). I have experienced the process of being birthed into the world, as have we all -- but I will not ever go through the experience (wondrous and violent and horrific and beautiful) that a woman does every time she brings a new life into this place we share. If we are tossed into this world so violently, severed from the deepest connection a child may know (the umbilical link to the maternal origin), then it is the first human who was the first domino in civilization to experience trauma -- and in so doing, passed that trauma exponentially on to others as they emerged from wombs. A domino that caused a cascade of a domino rally. Or, if you do not like dominoes, perhaps the following works better: like the first pebble to fall into the calm pool of water, causing a ripple. The more people brought into this world, the more pebbles dropped into the same pool.
We go from a population of a tribe of humans first evolving from earlier hominids, to an explosion of 7 billion souls individually dropping into the same pool, and it is no wonder that as time has passed, sansara has become more and more and more concrete.
And I offer for you, in all humility, the thought that people are drawn to their childhood images and childhood objects because subconsciously they yearn to find a way to heal their division in their mind, or perhaps it is more accurate to say: we crave a more direct link between conscious and subconscious. A return to that innocence of clarity. By extension, and by all amusement, one could say that when we begin to lose the agility of spirit, and we begin to sediment into a concept of self (the whole idea that the identity and personality are established around the age of 25), we commit spiritual death. In so committing to an abstraction of existence, we are essentially severing the flexibility and fluidity of natural living, and once and for all stating: "I am this, forever". It is like saying a stone will forever be a stone, and that erosion by wind or rain or water or oxidation or other processes, will have no effect. Even that which we perceive as inanimate, changes. Volcanoes erupt, the seasons change, the earth cycles through ice ages and more warmer periods of existence. Ice caps shrink and grow. To assume that our personality for even a split second is truly not a dynamic thing, is truly feeding the beast known as ego.
Though it is easy to crave what we have lost, to dream of a return to innocence -- it is not possible. There will never be a method by which we can time travel. Alright that's presumptuous of me to say -- we know technology overcomes unexpected obstacles. Nothing should surprise me, and nothing should be listed as 100% impossible. Let us say it is technologically improbable, particularly at our current state. Since, from what we understand of existence as a collective species, that time and space are dependent variables that cannot truly be separated, how can it be possible that we might simply program a little wind-up box to move us through time. Surely, we must also account for space. In my mind, in order to be capable of time travel, we must be able to know precisely the extent of the universe and the location of every particle defined at the time to which we wish to return to.
Science has show thus far that evne the particles we perceived as the smallest, are composed of smaller pieces. That which we state as having no mass at all (photons) still are said to possess a wave-particle duality. I say to you, anything that is said to be a particle must have mass. To be particle and be devoid of mass is to say that the sun is a star, but produces no light. It is a nonsensical statement. I wish to say that I believe photons merely have an imperceptible mass that we cannot detect, because we are too large in comparison. If we were the size of an electron, we would perceive the mass of a photon. However, if we were the size of electrons, we would have no concept of anything outside what we define here as molecules or large structures. How could we? We would have no method to detect where the "universe" ends, just as we cannot now. I state from personal desire, and practical complication that time travel would not only take us to a place we remember only vaguely with great distorted sense. I have drawn the conclusion that, for these reasons and so many more that I could list endlessly -- we should not ever time travel. Story tellers have tried to warn us of the arrogance and ego we are making in saying we could correct or fix history. For, every fine detail, down to the number of water molecules you drank a few on that day, are critical to the fractal that is the most incredibly wondrous thing we call life.
Conclusion:
Therefore, since I am here in this moment, as defined as an adult -- I do not wish to be a child. I do not wish to be anything other than what I am, right now. Here I am, humbled by the change of a breath, the movement of my own flesh and blood. I am grateful for all that this name "Wesley" has known throughout its passage through time and space. Every person I have known, has helped me to find where I was not -- so that I could be here, now.
And people call me egotistical for thinking I have a right to write a blog, or egotistical for owning a pair of pants. I exaggerate ever so slightly, of course. A good story lends itself to the act of embellishment. I apologize that if my madness has offended you, I will still refuse medication. I love who and what I am. I am sorry if that is disturbing. I am sorry if it appears as arrogant. I am but a man whose mind is muddled by incoherent jumbles from a few things I once read about Zen. Having read a few random passages, I thought perhaps I might misinterpret everything, and give you this jumbled, broken puzzle to decipher.
Enjoy.
EDIT: How blissful it is to realize that I was in error to state that I had not already written something that addressed the beginnings of my new self (the reincarnation I reference to people in blog/poetry/conversation). That entry is this
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