Ruminations on Mysticism
I subscribe to several journals and magazines. Its not one of those nightmares that generates a new pile of unread pulpwood every month, but there are a few that go unread from month to month. My Foreign Affairs subscription gets consumed on a regular basis. The Newsweek seems to propagate at an alarming rate, but they are also digested before they pile up too high. It’s a third subscription that has me kind of distressed. I was cleaning out the magazine bin when I came across four or five issues of a magazine that I hadn’t bothered to read. The magazine name is Parabola and proclaims its mission as the search for meaning. Each issue has an assigned theme that is explored from a variety of faiths, with a variety of conclusions. The main discourse covers spirituality and the common ground that all practices of faith share. I thought that it might be good to get past the animal-vegetable-mineral view of life and explore some of the philosophical questions still open for debate. Unsurprisingly, I’ve found that many of the questions of life that I ponder have been pondered and answered by others before me. There are all sorts of parables and stories in this magazine from as many cultures, traditions and religions as there are unanswerable questions. Why am I here and for how long? What is this act of faith? I had hoped to broaden my knowledge of this subject with a subscription to this magazine. It doesn’t appear to be working.
I’m not real comfortable with the reality of faith lately. I’ve found it a little more comfortable to accept what you can prove. Recreate in physical reality. Newtonian physics, statistical process control, astrophysics. The universe is so large and so subtle. Not a juvenile rejection of the institutional infrastructure that runs through every society in one manner or another, but a reliance on myself and my fellow human beings rather than divine intervention. There can always be an argument made as to the exact number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin but there is little hope in providing any evidence that can actually resolve the question. It is not true that I don’t have a spiritual side; I just don’t see spirituality as a way to influence or explain events. It’s a means to find strength and solace as I try to get through the madness substituting for life in the twenty first century. Hence a subscription to Parabola, a magazine that can provide me with some knowledge on the subject of spirituality and mysticism. Parabola isn’t bias towards Christianity or Islam but provides interpretation of the theme from all kinds of sources. Parabola seems to fulfill the proclamation of a search for meaning. On a semiannual schedule, they publish an excellent buffet of answers to the theme of the issue and do a good job of providing a forum for those interested in exploring the spiritual facets of our existence.
Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. Interested in exploring my spiritual side that is. I’ve got a stack of issues waiting to be read and I’m not really motivated to do anything about it. I’m pretty satisfied with how I see myself and my place in society. It isn’t perfect and quite honestly, it’s fallen short of my expectations. On the other hand, there is incredible amount of misery just outside the door and my problems are small compared to most everyone else. I had hoped that the spiritual ruminations found in Parabola might give me a deeper understanding of how I should be reacting to what was going on out there. Am I missing some kind of state of enlightenment that can actually makes sense of the horror that occurs in the world? I thought this magazine was a good place to start looking for it. Sometimes it entertains and on occasion it informs. I’ve yet to come across any enlightenment. Maybe I’m old and already enlightened (hardly) or maybe, as hard as I try, I haven’t seen the value of all this earth-muffin crap. The whole meditation-contemplate-your-navel attitude has a really big geek factor built into it. For me, you got to make something, contribute something to the greater good not just bullshit people about getting in touch with their inner child. As I said, I don’t get it. Meditation can release the stress so your head doesn’t explode, but there needs to be limitations to the required dose of dogma on your way to rest and relaxation.
The Summer 2006 Issue of Parabola was dedicated to the theme of Absence and Longing. All of the articles, poems, essays and stories are these wonderfully poetic expressions of the reason for there to be absence in your life. It focuses on the spiritual yearning of the soul for completion, validation, and absolution. Parabola presents examinations of the nature of these emotions. What is the meaning, the need of this emotion? What are we to learn from what otherwise is described as agony and pain? There’s an interview with an old mystic of some kind, some Joseph Campbell wanna be, and the interviewer was doing most of the talking. The whole thing didn’t provide any insight into anything. The deranged ramblings of an octogenarian sorted into pearls of wisdom by an imaginative, new age bit of journalism. There was also this short story of a woman chased off by her spiritual teacher. This woman had lived and served this spiritual advisor for whom she proclaimed a great and deep love. The teacher told her to go off and live with her dog for six months then come back. She was shocked at first but followed her teacher’s instructions to find the lesson that her teacher wished for her to learn. There it was, in the middle of a Vermont winter that she found a deep and pure love for the dog. At the end of the six months the woman contacted her teacher. He was surprised that she would try to make contact with him and was informed that she could never come back. Then the dog died. Now she’s an office manager in some dense urban area and pines away for her teacher. There was neither resolution nor conclusion just this lost person. A castaway in society. Adrift without her spiritual center; the teacher or the dog. I finished this little gem and wanted to slit my wrists. Soooooo depressing. What kind of lesson are you to draw from isolation and humiliation? What was the teacher’s story? I mean what was this guy (or gal) thinking? There’s got to be more to the story. Doesn’t sound like a very healthy relationship.
Finally there was the essay about the loss of variety in New York apples. In the past, there were hundreds (?) of different types of apples. Now, agricultural industrialization has reduced the variety count to a handful. The author starts out to lament this tragic loss, for which it is, and then begins describing this lack of variety in the apples as an illustrative image of an apple. There’s this logical argument about how all these labels of Image and Object of the apple variety somehow makes the apples something other than apples. It’s really bizarre and I’m not able to follow. Actually, I can follow his argument, but I don’t understand the point he’s making. It all real vague to me. At the end he concludes that growing a garden somehow alters the universe in a manner that negates these extrapolations and metaphysical dissections he driveled on about in the preceding two pages. That’s what annoys me about this stuff. There is the assumption by everyone contributing these essays and articles, that magic is real. I’ll try cut through the other issues that I have in the magazine bin. It’s important to give these things a chance to grow on you. Perhaps there is some enlightenment in the other issues. As I said before, I’m not one much for faith, optimism yes, but waiting for thought to manifest itself into physical reality still leaves me skeptical. Or do I mean cynical? Whatever.
I’m not real comfortable with the reality of faith lately. I’ve found it a little more comfortable to accept what you can prove. Recreate in physical reality. Newtonian physics, statistical process control, astrophysics. The universe is so large and so subtle. Not a juvenile rejection of the institutional infrastructure that runs through every society in one manner or another, but a reliance on myself and my fellow human beings rather than divine intervention. There can always be an argument made as to the exact number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin but there is little hope in providing any evidence that can actually resolve the question. It is not true that I don’t have a spiritual side; I just don’t see spirituality as a way to influence or explain events. It’s a means to find strength and solace as I try to get through the madness substituting for life in the twenty first century. Hence a subscription to Parabola, a magazine that can provide me with some knowledge on the subject of spirituality and mysticism. Parabola isn’t bias towards Christianity or Islam but provides interpretation of the theme from all kinds of sources. Parabola seems to fulfill the proclamation of a search for meaning. On a semiannual schedule, they publish an excellent buffet of answers to the theme of the issue and do a good job of providing a forum for those interested in exploring the spiritual facets of our existence.
Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. Interested in exploring my spiritual side that is. I’ve got a stack of issues waiting to be read and I’m not really motivated to do anything about it. I’m pretty satisfied with how I see myself and my place in society. It isn’t perfect and quite honestly, it’s fallen short of my expectations. On the other hand, there is incredible amount of misery just outside the door and my problems are small compared to most everyone else. I had hoped that the spiritual ruminations found in Parabola might give me a deeper understanding of how I should be reacting to what was going on out there. Am I missing some kind of state of enlightenment that can actually makes sense of the horror that occurs in the world? I thought this magazine was a good place to start looking for it. Sometimes it entertains and on occasion it informs. I’ve yet to come across any enlightenment. Maybe I’m old and already enlightened (hardly) or maybe, as hard as I try, I haven’t seen the value of all this earth-muffin crap. The whole meditation-contemplate-your-navel attitude has a really big geek factor built into it. For me, you got to make something, contribute something to the greater good not just bullshit people about getting in touch with their inner child. As I said, I don’t get it. Meditation can release the stress so your head doesn’t explode, but there needs to be limitations to the required dose of dogma on your way to rest and relaxation.
The Summer 2006 Issue of Parabola was dedicated to the theme of Absence and Longing. All of the articles, poems, essays and stories are these wonderfully poetic expressions of the reason for there to be absence in your life. It focuses on the spiritual yearning of the soul for completion, validation, and absolution. Parabola presents examinations of the nature of these emotions. What is the meaning, the need of this emotion? What are we to learn from what otherwise is described as agony and pain? There’s an interview with an old mystic of some kind, some Joseph Campbell wanna be, and the interviewer was doing most of the talking. The whole thing didn’t provide any insight into anything. The deranged ramblings of an octogenarian sorted into pearls of wisdom by an imaginative, new age bit of journalism. There was also this short story of a woman chased off by her spiritual teacher. This woman had lived and served this spiritual advisor for whom she proclaimed a great and deep love. The teacher told her to go off and live with her dog for six months then come back. She was shocked at first but followed her teacher’s instructions to find the lesson that her teacher wished for her to learn. There it was, in the middle of a Vermont winter that she found a deep and pure love for the dog. At the end of the six months the woman contacted her teacher. He was surprised that she would try to make contact with him and was informed that she could never come back. Then the dog died. Now she’s an office manager in some dense urban area and pines away for her teacher. There was neither resolution nor conclusion just this lost person. A castaway in society. Adrift without her spiritual center; the teacher or the dog. I finished this little gem and wanted to slit my wrists. Soooooo depressing. What kind of lesson are you to draw from isolation and humiliation? What was the teacher’s story? I mean what was this guy (or gal) thinking? There’s got to be more to the story. Doesn’t sound like a very healthy relationship.
Finally there was the essay about the loss of variety in New York apples. In the past, there were hundreds (?) of different types of apples. Now, agricultural industrialization has reduced the variety count to a handful. The author starts out to lament this tragic loss, for which it is, and then begins describing this lack of variety in the apples as an illustrative image of an apple. There’s this logical argument about how all these labels of Image and Object of the apple variety somehow makes the apples something other than apples. It’s really bizarre and I’m not able to follow. Actually, I can follow his argument, but I don’t understand the point he’s making. It all real vague to me. At the end he concludes that growing a garden somehow alters the universe in a manner that negates these extrapolations and metaphysical dissections he driveled on about in the preceding two pages. That’s what annoys me about this stuff. There is the assumption by everyone contributing these essays and articles, that magic is real. I’ll try cut through the other issues that I have in the magazine bin. It’s important to give these things a chance to grow on you. Perhaps there is some enlightenment in the other issues. As I said before, I’m not one much for faith, optimism yes, but waiting for thought to manifest itself into physical reality still leaves me skeptical. Or do I mean cynical? Whatever.