Colette Obrien

Every adventure is begun by the fool, every treasure discovered by risk, there is no reward without consequence–good or bad?

How many fools headed across America, through unmapped territory inhabited by millions of angry displaced original inhabitants, unheard of mammoth predators, limitless mountain ranges, killer weather, barely anything to eat  . . .  in search of what? Opportunity; gold in California, land for farming and raising livestock, freedom from oppression . . .

All at a risk I’m happy to say I did not have to take.                                         

                                                                                                    Ship Of Fools

 Of the hundreds of thousands of fools on that ship who risked everything for the slim chance of finding Gold, what percentage were rewarded positively for their efforts, and how many, by the end of the arduous journey, felt at best foolish, and at worst were ruined?

Those many unfortunate souls would have certainly believed a cruel April Fools trick had been played on them.  Isn’t that why we have an April Fools Day; to celebrate and hopefully laugh at the times when our foolish leap has ended in our having been tricked?

I have 3 younger brothers and this particular holiday was a favorite of ours growing up. None of us ever missed an opportunity to play a trick, and because it was sanctioned on this day, be forgiven. 

However, being tricked by the fool is difficult to forgive when the trick costs us more than a little loss of face.  The fool does not intent to hurt but only to prick the ego’s bubble when it has become inflated.  (Reference yesterdays essay on the importance of the fool in the courts of kings.)  Losing face is an important side effect of the fool, for his purpose is to prevent us from  thinking too highly of ourselves; his tricks are meant to keep us humble.

What if the Big Bang were the first kiss?

Aphrodite’s favorite child is Eros, or as the Romans named him, Amour. What does it mean to be the child of the goddess of Love but that he is her messenger? When that powerful goddess chooses to unite 2 objects by sending her son with his quiver of arrows, union is assured. Eros is the connecting force sent by the essence; Aphrodite.

The planet we inhabit revolves around a sun in a spiraling galaxy. On earth, the constant creation of life depends on a cycle of seasons; each one following the other in a continual round.  For life as we know it to endure, there must be a time of birth, growth, and destruction.

Aphrodite/Eros assure creation. Without the attraction of objects to one another there would be no new life.  The earth would stop spinning; the sun, having lost an admirer, would wobble out of control in dark despair and lose its place in the galaxy; with the loss of one of its members the billions of other stars would also loss hope/connection, and very quickly, what began as a first kiss, would end in a rout of unconnected atoms.

Thus spoke an incurable romantic. 

But seriously, love connects everything– it is a force–and maybe what physics calls the electromagnetic force is what we call love. Maybe the reason that we as humans cannot resist Eros’ arrow is because it’s correct to be so humbled; to realize through the experience of inescapable attraction, we’re being moved by a greater force than our small wills, and that that force is benevolent.

Wikipedia:

• In physics, attraction may refer to gravity or to the electromagnetic force
• Interpersonal attraction – the attraction between people which leads to friendships and romantic relationships.

At the level of physics, attraction describes a force that draws 2 objects together; is that the same thing as 2 people being attracted to one another? In other words, is there volition in the apparent choice to befriend another, or is it fated ? As human beings we believe we’re choosing when we relate to another, but is that a fact, or our ego’s claiming power when it, like a leaf on the wind, is being moved by something outside its awareness? The proverbial can of worms; fate or free-will.

When shot by Eros’  arrow of love, choice is not an option; we Fall in Love.  Most of us have had the experience of that trickster character and his mischievous arrows; even the Greek God Zeus trembled at his name.  The individual ego is flooded with love/attraction for an object, and cannot stop thinking or feeling about that special other.  What suddenly made that other so attractive? We call it mystery, chemistry, projection of our idealized lover, meeting with the soul-mate, but by whatever name we call it, we are helpless to resist and like the moth to the flame, we go. Burning with desire, we becoming fools for love.

The last time Eros shot me, I determined, resolutely, that never again did I wish to be so wounded.  Though painful in youth, the experience of being overwhelmed by the need for another as an adult was excruciating.  Like body-surfing an ocean wave,  it was exhilarating but when the wave pulls you under and twirls you around and around and won’t let you up for air, it is not so much fun.

 I love to love but do not enjoy being in love.  Like Zeus I know better than to believe I can prevent Eros from shooting me, if he will, but what does that mean, and what is the difference?

Do we really ever choose who to befriend, or is it all fated, karmic? And like the extreme of Falling in Love, is all love/attraction a kind of given that we experience but do not ever actually have a choice about?

Who the heck is Eros anyway? More tomorrow.

Because love is defined by Webster as; a deep and tender feeling of affection for another, and continues for a long paragraph only to describe the same thing over and over, it is no wonder we’re confused.

Many cultures have several different words for the kinds of love; intimate/sexual love, love of parents, love of children, love of siblings, love of animals, love of objects, love of ideas, love of country, etc..In English there is only one and it is woefuly inadequate.  Webster would have us believe that all kinds of love are a FEELING.  

One usually has a feeling asociated with the experience of loving, but is that what love is? What if we looked at it as a verb; not as a feeling, nor limit it to the kinds of love there are?  As a verb it connects.  What kills love is disconnection; the executioner.

As a verb, love is the action of connecting two or more objects–of any kind. We are seldom, if ever, aware of the fact that every atom in the universe is connected to every other, and that applies to everything in existence. It is, we are, ALL ONE.  And since love is connection, how is it possible to kill love?

Fundamentally we cannot, but what we can do is break the conscious bond.  The unconscious bond is there all the time no matter what we do, but as humans with choice–with consciousness–we can choose to make a connection to an other that is beyond the fundamental law of the universe. 

Most of us wish to do that.  Most of us love to love and to love in all the ways love can be experienced. We enjoy caring, of having an object matter to us, and of mattering to another. 

1. The first and fastest way to kill love is to care more for the feeling than for the object we’re connecting to; self centeredness or basic narcissism.

2. Another useful tool is to strangle it by gripping the object tightly; fear of loss, another form of narcissism.

3. Then there is the tried and true ax of jealousy and possessiveness; need I repeat–narcissism.

4. Neglect works well; self-obsorption.                                                       

Love’s executioner is one’s self.  Like an ax, self-centeredness in its myriad forms separates one from the love object and breaks the conscious bond.  Love is dead.

Rejection is defined as; to throw away, to refuse to take. To reject something is to attempt to exclude it from the whole.

A popular idea in modern culture is that “we’re all one”.  Assuming this to be the case, it follows that to “exclude something from the whole isn’t possible.  We can wish it wasn’t so; we can try to throw it away, but where is away? Everything that is, is.  If it isn’t possible what actually occurs when we reject?

Rejecting physical objects isn’t too problematic. I throw away garbage from my house to the recycle bin, and it’s taken away to the dump.( A great word for the place where rejected objects end up.) The objects are still part of the whole but are no longer in my house.

When I reject a person the trouble with rejection begins to show itself.  If I’m someone who’s aware of responsibility to other’s feelings, I will experience guilt with the rejection of another and that creates pressure on my mind.

The trouble is even more obvious with mental objects; ideas, beliefs, concepts.  When I reject an idea where does it go? The great dump in the sky? No, it goes to the personal unconscious. I may no longer be conscious of the idea I rejected, but because it’s still part of my psyche, it still has influence.  As with guilt, pressure occurs. We might even say that the consequence of rejection is guilt.

Every person, place, thing, idea, concept the mind has rejected causes a judgement to form which is the pressure to constantly reject that object; to keep it in its place in the unconscious.  When an object has been pushed out of the house– out of our conscious awareness–it is still part of the whole, since everything that is, is.  But like the physical dump, we can smell it. Everything rotting in that dump is perceived by the environment, and like the state of the earth today, on the verge of disastor, our individual psyche’s become unhealthy dump sights.

Acceptance has the opposite effect; the conscious mind has no pressure from an overfilled unconscious–the dump. It is open and free to observe without judgement as judgment derives from the rejected objects.

Acceptance is not a passive state but one of inclusion that, when necessary, discerns if an object is garbage and needs to go to the dump or if it can be tolerated and remain in the house. More later on acceptance.

Following up on yesterday’s post about intimacy is the old; if a tree falls in the forest conundrum.   If no one hears it, did it fall? If no one sees me do I exist?

At around 2 years old children must work through the developmental issue–the conundrum– of whether they’re special or not; whether they exist as a unique entity.  Every other sentence, is “look at me . . .” As parents, it’s exhausting however, if the child isn’t adequately reflected he turns inward to see himself- and like Narcissus in Greek Mythology, he’s forced to hold up his own mirror to realize his existence. He now lives in his own eyes but lacks an ability to see others.

If the child is seen by his parents the conundrum is resolved in an ability to know he’s the only one, but he’s not the only one who’s the only one.

Held in solitary confinement or being stranded alone on a desert island, will drive anyone mad. The ego cannot hold  it’s grip on reality without support from the environment. Like the child unreflected, the solitary human will turn to the unconscious for validation which is the definition of madness; the boundary between the ego consciousness and the vastness of the collective unconscious is broken and the ego is drowned in archetypal images.

Psychological existence is dependent on visibility. If, like the tree that falls in the forest, he falls and no one hears him, he doesn’t exist–to himself.  And since no one else is there to see him fall, to anyone else either.

Whether physical existence is dependent on visibility is a question for tomorrow.

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