Welcome to the last chapter of a novel which had a
pre-ordained end; such a shame we have to get to the end to find out what the
end is. Maybe I should have planned the end better by envisaging it more
clearly. Undoubtedly the subplot, the Day of the Dead, took over. As a creative
endeavour it worked, in as much as the final creation more or less reflected
the vision. The flaws, not enough people attending or helping and far too much
money spent, were almost unavoidable. Both could have been better but the
result would have been much the same - I think. I did discover, or realized I
had discovered once my eldest son pointed it out, that I had a talent for
curating a festival of the dead.
If I had achieved the goal of the novel, for the hero
to establish himself as a writer before his 60th birthday, then the ‘self-help
reality’ part of the novel would be justified, i.e. marketable. (In theory, I
mean.) As it is, it will join the cyberspace dustbin, as forewarned by the
veritable Writers Year Book.
A reader may ask, but what about next year? The future
in general? Why not just change the title to 61 or 62 or 92? Don’t you still
want the things you wanted? Didn’t you enjoy the doing of it?
I have enjoyed writing the blog and it has been good
to have that focus and discipline and to keep it going however many excuses I
could have come up with for abandoning it. Also, the various influences in my
life have all had a chance to express themselves and stunning books such as
Peter Carrol’s, John Lash’s, and Wilberg’s, have been given a chance to be
acknowledged and remembered. Of course I’ve never had a problem about writing
about my own life and thought processes and I have to do that to get them moved
on in my mind.
The idea that I could earn my living as a regular
writer seems untenable. It doesn’t really appeal to me. Also I have to admit
that I’m only a ‘good’ writer in patches. This doesn’t mean that I don’t think
that either Boggy or Sam could make me money; in fact I’m sure they could. The
reason I have long periods when I stop trying to be a successful writer is
because I run out of things I can do as well as become reluctant to keep
flaying the same dead horse. Admittedly the Day of the Dead took all my energy
for the best part of sixteen months. But what else would/could I have done to
become a professional author when even the articles I wrote about the day of the
dead and death failed to elicit a response?
I do have a mind another novel although I only know
the title and the theme. Hopefully some stories will come along that will hang
it all together. What I don’t want is for my life to be disproportionally consumed
by yet another creation of limited response. Nor do I want to depend on tea,
THC, and tobacco to sustain my efforts and, perhaps, hinder the process that
they appear to inspire.
Maybe it is time to stop striving. Having always
thought of myself as lazy, I now see that I’m always trying, always driven, and
when I’m not I’m becalmed rather than calm. Before Terri died her big complaint
was ‘the moments’. I am reluctant to face the moments, the slowness of eternal
time, and do everything to escape that awareness, most especially by thinking;
thinking is my prime diversion. When I don’t smoke, I complain that I can’t
think properly and that I feel my body too much. Maybe these are the issues I
need to address before I make any decisions about anything. I have to enter the
moments and wait.
---
This week I have been reading tons of Peter Wilberg. I
read through at a great pace, looking for exactly what, I don’t know. Yesterday
I read so much about consciousness and awareness that my mind began to scream.
I’ve been reading this stuff for forty years and still would flaff if asked to
define anything. The day before I read a 300 page dialogue of letters between
Peter and a female follower. Much of it was about her experiences and
realizations. It reminded me of how frustrating I used to find ‘sharing’
sessions after meditations when people would tell of spectacular visions and cosmic
journeys - none of which happened for me however ‘hard’ I meditated. Then, as
now, I would just sit and think. Of course it isn’t really extraordinary experiences
I seek, just the ability to perceive all experience as extraordinary.
The disadvantage of hurtling through Wilber’s work is
that I make mental notes to go back to bits but rarely do because I can’t find
them again. Sometimes I scribble something down on a scrappy piece of paper
(why are there never biros when I need them) and then can’t read it. I did get
these two down because they reminded me of what I realized in my last bout of
insight;
We are
forever unborn and already dead
Deepest
reality lies in our unborn nature.
---
It has occurred to me that I should actually read this
blog as homage to the effort I’ve put into it. I will do at some point. I am
surprised that I kept it up and am proud of myself. Over 80 weeks, there has
been birth and death to record, a catholic priest to expose, a day of the dead
to create, books to extol, hidden agendas to be hinted at, ideas to try out, a
non-career to mourn and a whole lot more that I’ll remind myself of. My
thoughts today, however, have been about feelings and feeling and the felt
sense because when it comes down to it, it seems to me that these are ‘key’ to
expanded awareness.
It is 15-20 years since I came across Focusing and
Gendlin. Wilberg has been there too.
A felt sense
is a bodily felt, implicitly rich “sense of some situation, problem, or aspect
of one’s life.” It is “the holistic, implicit, bodily sense of a complex
situation”
(Gendlin,
1996, pp. 20, 58).
When I originally read that, I understood it to mean
to refer primarily to the physical body, and I saw the feelings as the feeling
element of words as reflected in the body/mind organism. The Avatar materials
took me to a new understanding of feeling and of extended awareness, the ‘touch’
(sparsa) of awareness. (I so wish I could find a way to teach the Avatar
materials because in essence they are remarkably good.) Reading Wilberg this week
has reminded me of this crucial point, the need to ‘feel’ rather than think one’s
way into awareness.
…You know what? I should stop here. I have fulfilled
my contract to myself. From now on it is
a different story.
THE END.
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