Random observations of the narrator.
A trusted confidante who knows me well enough to make such a statement once asked “Do you realize you have spent most of your adult life trying to get yourself out of your head?”
I thought about it for a minute…she knows me well enough to realize that the parameters involving my personal vision quest have not been adverse to the use of somewhat radical methods and materials in the pursuit of insight and enlightenment.
I might add that her question was not asked in derogation; she respects my sincerity and dedication to the pursuit of the occult, the unusual, and the cunning ways of Knowledge and Majick, the moon, Shamanism and sexual ecstasy.
At first I was tempted to take exception with the term “out of my head” because I could have countered with the remark that all the universe is inside my head, or rather, that it is created within the mind….
All I had to do was discover it.
I was merely an explorer.
Of course, in philosophy, the term ecstasy means “outside one’s self”….
Then I thought about the words of Zen master Seung Sahn Soen-sa Nim*: “…Inside, outside, put it all down!”
Labels can be dangerous because in naming something we claim to have prejudicial knowledge of what it really is, and that creates another layer of illusion between us and our world.
Nonetheless, my favorite muse also reminded me of my remark that I had never met a recreational drug that I didn’t like….now she had me there, but then again, although I used the term recreational in terms of common parlance, rather than as an exact term, nevertheless, if it is indeed recreational, then it is at least not professional…
Addicts are professional drug users; they devote their entire lives to the pursuit of their addictions, although there are many more addictions to things other than drugs that are at least just as dangerous, but ah! I do digress….
Seung Sahn was not adverse to the use of “special medicine” to be able to gain enough detachment (to see ourselves objectively from outside ourselves) to gain insight….
There we go again with the labels and the directions….
Put it all down.
We talk of higher consciousness yet we believe that only the most nominal version of reality is all that is real, finite, and measurable. Voices, phantom images, and revelations are commonly regarded as symptoms of psychosis.
A shaman, an explorer or an warrior knows the risks and experiences the fear just like everybody else, but because they aspire to be their own heroes, they embrace the challenge of the unknown.
Courage is the ability to overcome fear long enough to act, to continue, and to face the challenges.
It is indeed the journey, not the destination that inspires them.
Once that is experienced, there is such a thing as “Everyday Zen”.
It becomes everyday until something new arrives.
There is always more, and there will always be more until there is nothing…until there is something again.
For eons Man has sensed that we were not seeing everything there was to be seen or heard, felt or experienced and that there were other dimensions than time/space/distance.
Quantum physics confirms it by postulating that there not only is but that eventually it will.
Who will be ready, and who will make the cut?
And in the meantime, what will you do to pass the time?
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but with eight lives left, he’ll come back laughing and wiser.
If you want to imagine the difference between inside and outside, try to imagine the cat’s answer.
Namasté
नमस्ते
Chazz Vincent
04/20/2016
*Seung Sahn Soen-sa Nim: Koren Zen Buddhist Patriarch,
founder of the Kwan Um School of Zen
(….he’s worth the research…)
Sayonara Y’all!
…Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei….