Influences
Interesting reminder. Malcolm sent me off to "Taken In Hand" and Violence in the Garden by Polly Peachum. I'd read it years ago in the very beginnings of my submissive searchings and learnings. Words from a time in her life that was powerful and true, reaching across time and distance, speaking to me and my yearnings. Her words did speak to me, to something that I desperately wanted -- to something that sang inside of me. But then, in those days, I read everything and everywhere: Born Slave, and Internal Enslavement, and I can't even remember all the other places.
I don't know Polly Peachum except through what she's written. Don't know how her slave walk evolved on days other than the one chronicled in this piece. Don't know how it went as her Master sickened and eventually died last year. I know he and I butted heads. I found him difficult and abrasive and unyielding. I found his views extreme. I know I wasn't alone in that assessment. On the other hand, he did correctly assess my true nature and predict my future trajectory with almost uncanny accuracy. That we clashed does not change that fact. Were we able to speak today, I would be glad to tell him that he contributed to my growth.
Much goes into shaping our thinking. Many touch our lives and mold our hearts. There is much to learn for one who will seek to follow this path. The culture does not offer up much in the way of models. Those, like Polly, who offer glimpses into their lives give us inklings of what might be.
"
Today, from here, I can find questions to ask about Violence In The Garden, because to me it seems inconceivable that life could be as glowingly happy as is painted in this piece. But perhaps, I am the pessimist. Who knows? Theirs might have been simply a charmed life. I hope. If so, what a gift they had.
swan
posted by Sue @ 10:48 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
sue,
going back to your "Million Dollar Baby" post, I said I would post something on existential crisis. I cannot express my thoughts better than Eckart Tolle in his intro. to "The Power of Now", ao I append here part of that passage:
THE POWER OF NOW intro (part)
'THE ORIGIN OF THIS BOOK
I have little use for the past and rarely think about it; however, I would briefly like to tell you how I came to be a spiritual teacher and how this book came into existence.
Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody else's life.
One night not long after my twenty-ninth birthday, I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread. I had woken up with such a feeling many times before, but this time it was more intense than it had ever been. The silence of the night, the vague outlines of the furniture in the dark room, the distant noise of a passing train — everything felt so alien, so hostile, and so utterly meaningless that it created in me a deep loathing of the world. The most loathsome thing of all, however, was my own existence. What was the point in continuing to live with this burden of misery? Why carry on with this continuous struggle? I could feel that a deep longing for annihilation, for nonexistence, was now becoming much stronger than the instinctive desire to continue to live.
"I cannot live with myself any longer." This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. "Am I one or two? If I cannot live with myself, there must be two of me: the 'I' and the 'self that 'I' cannot live with." "Maybe," I thought, "only one of them is real."
I was so stunned by this strange realization that my mind stopped. I was fully conscious, but there were no more thoughts. Then I felt drawn into what seemed like a vortex of energy. It was a slow movement at first and then accelerated. I was gripped by an intense fear, and my body started to shake. I heard the words "resist nothing," as if spoken inside my chest. I could feel myself being sucked into a void. It felt as if the void was inside myself rather than outside. Suddenly, there was no more fear, and I let myself fall into that void. I have no recollection of what happened after that.
I was awakened by the chirping of a bird outside the window. I had never heard such a sound before. My eyes were still closed, and I saw the image of a precious diamond. Yes, if a diamond could make a sound, this is what it would be like. I opened my eyes. The first light of dawn was filtering through the curtains. Without any thought, I felt, I knew, that there is infinitely more to light than we realize. That soft luminosity filtering through the curtains was love itself. Tears came into my eyes. I got up and walked around the room. I recognized the room, and yet I knew that I had never truly seen it before. Everything was fresh and pristine, as if it had just come into existence. I picked up things, a pencil, an empty bottle, marveling at the beauty and aliveness of it all.
That day I walked around the city in utter amazement at the miracle of life on earth, as if I had just been born into this world.
For the next five months, I lived in a state of uninterrupted deep peace and bliss. After that, it diminished somewhat in intensity, or perhaps it just seemed to because it became my natural state. I could still function in the world, although I realized that nothing I ever did could possibly add anything to what I already had.
I knew, of course, that something profoundly significant had happened to me, but I didn't understand it at all. It wasn't until several years later, after I had read spiritual texts and spent time with spiritual teachers, that I realized that what everybody was looking for had already happened to me. I understood that the intense pressure of suffering that night must have forced my consciousness to withdraw from its identification with the unhappy and deeply fearful self, which is ultimately a fiction of the mind. This withdrawal must have been so complete that this false, suffering self immediately collapsed, just as if a plug had been pulled out of an inflatable toy. What was left then was my true nature as the ever-present J am: consciousness in its pure state prior to identification with form. Later I also learned to go into that inner timeless and deathless realm that I had originally perceived as a void and remain fully conscious. I dwelt in states of such indescribable bliss and sacredness that even the original experience I just described pales in comparison. A time came when, for a while, I was left with nothing on the physical plane. I had no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity. I spent almost two years sitting on park benches in a state of the most intense joy.
But even the most beautiful experiences come and go. More fundamental, perhaps, than any experience is the undercurrent of peace that has never left me since then. Sometimes it is very strong, almost palpable, and others can feel it too. At other times, it is somewhere in the background, like a distant melody.
Later, people would occasionally come up to me and say: "I want what you have. Can you give it to me, or show me how to get it?" And I would say: "You have it already. You just can't feel it because your mind is making too much noise." That answer later grew into the book that you are holding in your hands.
Before I knew it, I had an external identity again. I had become a spiritual teacher.
THE TRUTH THAT IS WITHIN YOU
This book represents the essence of my work, as far as it can be conveyed in words, with individuals and small groups of spiritual seekers during the past ten years, in Europe and in North America. In deep love and appreciation, I would like to thank those exceptional people for their courage, their willingness to embrace inner change ...' (snipped here)
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