To thine own self be true

The most important connection, first of all, would be with oneself. One needs to be relatively familiar with and in tune with oneself before one can significantly connect with others in adult life. Often, we see and meet people who are chaotic, ‘lost’, merely role-playing, and living on surfaces. I think one has a better chance of avoiding these limited/limiting, distracting types if one knows oneself, is relatively organized and focused, basically connected with oneself. We are, each of us, entitled to know ourselves–to be our most authentic selves in the contexts of society and nature. In that, a significant responsibility to self and others.

Family, of course, is our next most significant connection. They are with us from birth and in and out of our lives when we are adults. Family works best when it is mutually respectful, somewhat nurturing, and without imposed personal agendas. To parents, one owes the most, since they raised one and invested a fair bit of responsibility, care, and love to one’s development. With family, one can usually/optimally most be oneself. With children and grandchildren, there is also a special teaching-learning experience that brings parties closer together. And even with serious illness and death, there is much to be learned from parents and other family members, too–basic lessons of connection and love.

A few good, close, true friends emerge and remain true over the years. The closeness of connection and intimacy draw people together when there is kindness, trust, and mutual disclosure. Betrayal of one kind or another and agendas test friendship. It is always best when people are and can be themselves with friends, exchanging the basic gifts of self. Humor is often the glue of friendship, as is sharing in areas of mutual interest. It is truly enjoyable to be with friends with whom there is that common interest and free type of exchange and giving.

Then there’s that something we might call love–perhaps the most mysterious connection of all, the one that even bring two very different, strong individuals together. How does one describe or even begin to make sense of deep inner feelings? What is it like to trust deeply, accept, know, understand, appreciate, and savour another person as up- close-and-personal as one can get? (And vice-versa–pretty rare stuff.) In that, the mystery of love–a very powerful ‘drug’ and experience that often heightens purpose and mutual freedom. If one has only had a single, very deep exposure to love, one has come much closer to understanding others, to general empathy, to personal fulfillment/completion, and to a natural, sublime free state that opens up special meanings and purpose, as well as all of one’s inner resources. In many ways, love embodies heightened, soulful, spiritual living–a major, transcendental expansion of self, possibilities, and consciousness.

And so it is the individual who decides on and chooses what significant connections to have. Sometimes individuals like Mother Teresa or Walt Whitman even open up themselves to the multitudes. More often and typically, there are simply the people of one’s immediate circle/day and oneself. Again, the latter being the person that one lives with every day inside. And that is never a bad place to start with any choices or consideration of significant connection.

What the average Canadian family pays from their income for federal, provincial, and municipal taxes per year. Apparently some middle and upper families pay over 50%. Now that’s servitude, baby. (info: Fraser Instittute, 2013)

The return of winter to Edmonton calls for a prosier reprise of this title.

Winter garden

Cogito, ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.)–Rene Descartes

We all have our starting points, influences, and processes. My daily latter is: I am what I am, therefore I think.

Consciousness has long been of interest and just about anything that still signifies for me has to do with consciousness and awareness-raising (which is probably why I have been a musician, a 30-year-teacher, and finally a writer.)

About two years ago, consciousness reinsinuated itself in my life and writing. I began to record page-length meditations. Central and underlying themes began to emerge and beg for personal expression. I obliged on such topics as love, freedom, gifts of self, and so forth. Call it a mental clearing-house and summing up, and finally, this blog–an idea garden as it has turned out, largely, to be.

I suppose I also wanted to go on record in a new and different medium–one which had a 24/7, quasi-eternal quality to it. Although I have recommended this blog to friends and interesting people I have met along the way since last year (some notion of audience has given additional purpose), the blog has been mostly a self-expressive process in which I have given my opinions and thoughts, in a Montaigneish way, about ‘what occurs to me’ or arises in daily consciousness.

Consciousness is, of course, broader than simply ideas or opinions, and this blog has expressed memories, recorded older writing which I wanted to preserve and share, and often simply written itself when a mood or theme suggested itself. Very process-oriented through and through.

Frequently, I have shared and expressed feelings, moods, and much of this process reveals deeper inner workings of soul and my essential spirit. Looking back at much of my poetry, I realize a transparency and windows quality to that soulfull-ness and spirit. That was probably a deeper cause or motivation for many poems. So much of who I deeply am and have been can be seen in the poems.

As I mentioned several entries ago, sensibility and its development have always been of interest, particularly in my own case. I have long opened myself to the world and as much of the best of what has been expressed by others, especially by the greats in the arts. Recurringly, my life has been informed and enhanced by information from the arts.

Language, too, has been a very basic preoccupation. I have explored and analyzed it, but I have also played with it, and used it to say and do what I most wanted, especially in cases where a person or project truly mattered. To a large extent–as witnessed by this blog–words are mainly who I am and how my sensibility interacts with others and the world. Words come easily and they have brought me enough success, happiness, pleasure, fulfilment, and satisfaction in life.

As always, these entries write themselves, often in first-draft form. I am a writer. For me, consciousness and experience have been the great personal trips, along with family. We are each of us every day living in/with our consciousnesses. And there is always a limited/limiting aspect as well as a potentially fulfilling/realizing aspect to that process. Consciousness is something that is basic and constant and gets in early–as my remarks and observations about my grandson have shown. It is also what we take to the grave with us or until downsizing dementia or unconsciousness sets in.

Consciousness is our opportunity to realize, express, and share who we are and how we feel about and see the world. It defines us, finally.

I thank you for wandering around in my idea garden today. It is actually a consciousness garden of a large, sensitive sensibility. If ever you care to know who I am and was, it is pretty much here, so to speak. Enjoy and feel free to make a connection, or pick up an idea or inspiration.

most successful male endeavors is a helpful, supportive, often sacrificing spouse.

We start with whatever routines–cleaning up, making beds, having breakfast, reading the news, etc. Aspects of regularity–illusions of temporary permanence. For the most part, though, there is always new or changing incoming information that we have to process–changes involving self, family, relationships, work and so forth. Change and process remain the main constants each day.

A lot of our lives have to do with processing the information of seeing family off, driving to work, planning what we are likely to encounter in a day. “The readiness is all”–definitely. Certainly if one has backup plans and imagined responses. For there is likely to be the unexpected anyway–a lane blocked off suddenly, gas running low, a cyclist zipping across in front of your car, coworkers who don’t show up. To some extent, the longer one lives, the less one is surprised by how much randomness and arbitrariness there really is in one’s day despite whatever best-laid plans of mice and wo/men.

I am never surprised at how little many people ever get done or successfully accomplish. (This tends to be the rule rather than the occasional exceptions.) Our fates, especially in urban life, depend largely on others and our various social relationships. We cannot do some things without the will or cooperation of others and predictability–the latter which is hard at best to even guesstimate.

A lot of the above led me to ‘dropping out’ to a large degree and charting my own course. The simpler one’s life is and the fewer people one needs or is dependent on does remove much of the stress and confusion typically encountered by overly-connected people or in the lives of those, say, who see hundreds in a day. How much noise, madness, negative attitudes, and other people’s unchangeable problems does an individual need?

I always come back to self. One has to live with oneself. One has to be good to oneself in order to be good or helpful to others, ironically. That’s just the way it is. And what about one’s own life, one’s missing pieces, and the responsibility to one’s own soul, spirit, mind, body, development, and learning?

I think we often miss the big picture and what’s important especially when working with others, working in any front-line situation–whether nurse, teacher, or receptionist. Too many others–especially those we don’t really want to have anything to do with–obscures the clarity of our own lives and purpose. One must never confuse one’s job or role with being anything resembling deep, long-lasting personal satisfaction, the ability to innerly cope, or the possibilities of significant personal growth. These are not automatically compatible, mutually overlapping aspects.

But, hey, only one’s deeper self, soul, or spirit could ever provide the requisite answer to such questions and the necessary thoughtful self-examination to fare forward and move on to more fulfilling living.

–the average cost to purchase 1,000 fake Twitter followers.

(first published Oct 31, 2012)

*I decided to republish this piece after watching the CNN coverage of the capture of the second Boston terrorist and the president’s speech about information-gathering. We are all information creatures, as this piece pointed out. Every day we seek info of various kinds on various levels. That search is ongoing and often coincides with our other exploration of the missing pieces in our life. Think about the information missing in your own day and life that you yourself search for. As metaphor, the information quest covers a lot of our experience and lives.

………………………………………………………..

“Infinite possibility is good, not bad.” –James Gleick, The Information

What do you know? What do you want to know or need to know in a given moment or situation? ‘The Information’.

You could be an executor dealing with a parent’s estate and phoning various people and companies to get information. You could be a parent telling a child how something works or why something is the way it is. You could be the same child learning what happens when you topple building blocks. You could be a student taking an evening class on intuition, trying to learn more about how it may work.

But always the quest to know, to get, to use, or understand some kind of information.
I think even the quest for relationships or a special someone who might be your ultimate partner in life falls along the same lines as another kind of information we seek. Getting to know someone, find out about someone, getting close/r to them. In our relationship choices, we want to know what makes that person ‘tick’. We want to see if they sync with us in attitudes, behavior, values, and tastes. ‘The Information’, the lowdown on them.

So much then, simply comes down to the information about something, someone, some process, some area. Our perpetual and restless curiosity that keeps us searching daily and over long periods of time.

Some of these information quests are themed as in the case of say an image or adopted totem, such as owls, that seems to ‘take over” our interests and sometimes become passions, even obsessions. And, in turn, the information we seek tells us much about ourselves–who we are, what makes us ‘tick’, what motivates us, and what makes us unique as individuals. The information that defines us.

A day in the life. I need to begin it by writing this blog entry about information, a topic which has emerged early in my morning coffee consciousness and ruminations. Information that bubbled up. Information to be recorded. Information to be shared. Like all the other info of this blog so far…

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Many thanks to my writing partner and friend for his timely Christmas 2011 gift of a book, The Information by James Gleick, which has continued to resonate and produce more awareness of how much of our lives and life quests center around information. The author’s bent is historical, scientific and mathematical, but the potential spinoffs from the thesis are potentially astounding and downright epiphanic. It is no wonder that information technology and e-information have become so central to our age. I believe there is a power and application well beyond the book’s initial intentions which I have tried to articulate in this entry above.

Our minds, bodies, sense, feelings, spirits, and souls are constantly processing information from a world of sources. Life and whatever understandings we arrive at are not just one thing but a multiplicity of layers and levels of experiential information. I believe that once we understand and appreciate that we are receiving and sending information from many sources that we will better understand ourselves and how we might become more attuned to that wealth of information which many times threatens to swamp us and literally boggle our minds. (“I am large… I contain multitudes.” –Whitman)

To adapt an old quotation (“The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your thoughts.”), The quality of your life is determined by the information of/in your life and an understanding, appreciation, and expression of that information. In that, potentially–Maslow’s “self-actualization”, personal fulfillment, happiness, and the potential for true, significant connections.

ps/ Of course, whatever incoming information has to be filtered, sometimes critically questioned, examined for truth and personal usefulness and positive applicability. In much the same way, whatever information is expressed requires that it be beautiful, true, honest, heartfelt, or necessary in some way.

The matter of what information becomes personally meaningful, knowledge or wisdom is finally left to each individual. In the end, personal choice and the limits and limitations built into each person come into play. And so many other factors including such qualities as imagination, empathy, sympathy, and love.

1159

Great Streets of silence led away
To Neighborhoods of Pause–
Here was no Notice–no Dissent
No Universe–no Laws–

By Clocks, ’twas Morning, and for Night
The Bells at Distance called–
But Epoch had no basis here
For Period exhaled.