The silent song of our self.
“If useless things do not hang in your mind, every season is a good season for you.” (Murnon)
The writer John Updike once said: “The writer of fiction, a professional liar, is paradoxically obsessed with what is true –what feels true, what rings true in the fabrication being assembled “. In other words, within the admitted “fabrication” of storytelling, we, the reader, are drawn into “what feels true” by skillful word weaving. All words, whether in “fiction” or “non-fiction,” are, at best, representatives or symbols of an underlying truth. They are concepts. In a word, fiction. When we tuck into our favorite fiction, at the same time, we know that what we are reading is an invented story about reality. We know that when we put the book down, we are then back in the real world, right? Is that true? Or is that apparently “real” world in our head possibly another invention? Now if that possibility strikes a cord, or “rings true” about words and fiction, we may close that book, sit back and think about it. That is, in our reflection about what is real and true, we enter, quite naturally, into thought about thought. Philosophy. Note the cycle here, and we may glimpse the wheel of Samsara the Indian sages describe as man’s eternal turning and returning, or Karma.
THE SONG OF SELF
Fortunately, there is a canary in the mind shaft, so to speak. Some of us hear it, some of us don’t. Its beautiful song is very quiet and gentle; it never insists, and yet it has all the power of that which persists – truth. And if we listen to this song of our self, we are transported out of mind and into reality, from the realm of virtual thought to this that is, this actual, thoughtless place way beyond words. And we see that there is no such thing as a “true” thought; that all thinking is virtual. Yet we can also know how lost we would be without words, how they can powerfully point toward the ineffable. There is even a word in Hindi that re-presents this:“gayatri”, which means “let me concentrate on that which illumines all “.
The great poet Walt Whitman spoke of his inspired word crafting as common to all:
“These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.”
Indeed, where would we be without words? What kind of world would we live in if we didn’t have our thoughts? Perhaps it would be the same mind-made one the poet Rumi observes and so eloquently expresses in Farsi, and which is translated here into English words:
Something good or bad
Always comes out of you.
It is agony to be still
while the spool turns
when the mind pulls the thread.
Indeed, in quietude, we may watch the machinery of the mind and its affections and recognize the timeless truth of our being THAT which is watching. We may wordlessly feel an easing in the spirit. And we may recognize that while we often think we know a lot, we may – if we allow it – also see we can have no conception about what’s happening in and around us in fact, in reality. In fine, reality is unknown, totally. All this is neither good nor bad of course, except that the mind thinks it so!
THE BEAUTY OF BEING
“Beauty is when you are not. When you, with your fears and anxieties are not, then there is beauty.” (J Krishnamurti)
Reality, like truth, is always and only HERE/NOW, in and as this thought-free awareness which we are. To respectfully paraphrase the beautiful words of Jesus:
“Let the dead bury the dead:”
..Let concepts bury concepts.
Let stillness bury the words.
Let the silence speak.
