Journal Entry
Am i a widower? I guess so. It happened over a month (37days!) ago, but the word did not come to me today. I was a spoise; it was my most important role; it was who i was. Then, in a few minutes. i wasn't that any more. But still, in my mind (in my bones?) i was that, i continue to be that. If i were to say aloud, "i've got to fix Dianne's lunch," anyone hearing me would say i am fantasizing, that i am deluded. Of course, i believe that if i were to actually prepare a lunch for her it would just sit there on the table until i ate it myself. If i live in an illlusion, then parts of that illusion seem more elusory than others. Arjuna, having learned that the world is an illusion, is instructed ty Krishna to continue to perform his traditional role in that world. I have never understood Krshn's advice nor Arjuna's ready compliance with it. Yet i know that refusal to take the illusion of reality as reality can lead to madness. The pull of illusion on the corrupted mind and on the ego is so strong that efforts to live outside the illusion literally pull one apart. Or maybe being real requires a skill or gift (or both) that most of us have not yet acquired.
I wanted to write here about a tradition out of Judaism that posits several levels of realit. Between God (real reality) and the social and symbolic construction of reality (illusion), there are other levels of reality: "emanatons" like the soul are less real than God, but more real than "creations" (nature) which are, in turn, more real than what we can percieve with our senses (or their extensions through technology and science). But my ignorasnce is so great that more thought and research is needed to see if i even want to begin to explore this line. Sorry.
I wanted to write here about a tradition out of Judaism that posits several levels of realit. Between God (real reality) and the social and symbolic construction of reality (illusion), there are other levels of reality: "emanatons" like the soul are less real than God, but more real than "creations" (nature) which are, in turn, more real than what we can percieve with our senses (or their extensions through technology and science). But my ignorasnce is so great that more thought and research is needed to see if i even want to begin to explore this line. Sorry.