In the beginning was the word.
In the beginning of the story is the word; in the beginning of the world the story depicts - the world the story inadequately conveys, the universe that the story dishonestly embodies - is the spirit, the unmanifest, formless, unspoken, the unspeakable, that which simply is.
On this particular day God, or someone without a name, spoke into existence the form in which he would temporarily experience the spirit that hovered over the surface of the waters. The waters, it seems, are the conduit between the spirit and the form, the unmanifest and the manifest. The water is receptive and selflessly conveys messages between these two dimensions, often bringing spirit into form through life in the material world.
God is like us humans and his every motivation, his compulsions and his true nature is largely hidden by the incessant noise of the voice in his head, obscuring everything but its own insanity. Because of this no one remembers why God did what he did, any more than we know why we speak religions, wars and industrial economies into existence.
Often after doing something and not knowing why, God will simply wait for it to finish, knowing everything manifest is limited in time. Or he will use the time to figure out why he might have manifest such a thing and what lesson it could possibly teach him about himself and about he universe. At what point are we now in this process? I suppose we are deep within this lesson of God, anticipating the end but with no idea where the end might lie. It seems we've lost sight not only of the beginning of this process, we have lost sight of our present position, so desperately focussed on the end as we are.
If God can speak into existence the beginning, can we speak into existence the end, we wonder? Or can only God speak the end into existence? And if God can do so, why has he not yet done so? Surely he's figured all this out by now and can end it all and inform us of the punchline. Surely, we say.
So perhaps it is us who must declare the end, like we declare war. In so many ways we have already attempted to say the right words, to declare the end, to announce to the manifest world that the story ends here, or at the end of this sentence, this paragraph, this chapter.
In the end was the word, and the word was spoken by the species who suffered the most, and who caused the most suffering, and the darkness on the surface of the waters was permeated by light, and the light illuminated and revealed all the curves, all the rhythms and vibrations of the waters who make up the living systems of the manifest world on the Planet Earth. The waters know what time it is, and when the time is right the water will flow with an unrelenting momentum along the most gentle path to the vastness of the ocean, that of which we humans know so little, that of which we respect and fear much more than we would admit.
How can the beginning and the end be so close together? How can the beginning and the end be so far apart? Has this God abandoned us? Is he observing dispassionately? Does he love us and wish the best for us in some vague ineffective manner? Is he the image of our own distant all-too-human father who we project onto the dark panel of our forgotten? Is he the will and the intention and the powerful creator within us, obscured by the symptoms of our schizophrenia, falsely externalized and objectified to avoid the responsibility of manifesting our own necessary apocalypse?
In the beginning was the word, at least as I remember it, because I do not remember the beginning, my culture and my education have obscured the genetic memory that connects me to my ancestors.
In the beginning was the word, because all I remember is the story told about the beginning, made fully of words, revised and retold very recently. When I truly listen and try to comprehend these words that reverberate through my body as the rhythms in which they are spoken, I become very confused and disoriented.
These words, this story, are like a nasty paranoia, separating me from the world in which I was born with my own resistance, my own anxiety about my inability to resonate with the vibrations offered to me. I listen to this official story again, it is the same story, I notice, that is told in the schools, in the cinemas, in the speeches of presidents and parents. It is the same story told in 99% of our books, 99% of our conversations and 99% of our laws.
I am trained in the perpetuation of this story, so when I don't listen, when I do not notice the vibrations moving through my body, the vibrations which may or may not manifest the first cancer cells to consume my earthly form, I can correlate the story with all the buildings, all the institutions and all the expectations in my environment. Everything which does not correlate with the story falls into two categories: that of which we can deny the existence, and that which we can dismiss as "Nature".
"In the beginning was the word," I read in a weighty underrated overemphasized book that blatantly defies everything that is said about it. I feel strong and confident and I dangerously allow the words to reverberate through my body as the spoken vibrations which they transcribe. I am briefly confused by my inability to correlate the official interpretation with the intelligence innate in my body, my manifestation in the manifest world, my conduit between my home-universes. I realize the words I am reciting in my head, read from the pages of this exceptional book, tend to create an image in my mind, like a projection onto a blank canvas, and do not seek to acquaint me with the reality I experience through the conduit of my body, therefore there is no reason why these words should resonate with my body.
I breathe easier and the paranoia eases off, I relax and am able to perceive my environment more easily. I observe with my senses, create images and theories with my mind, and constantly try to place myself in relation to everything I find. I test everything against the body with which I experience reality.
"'In the beginning was the word'?" someone says. "What a crock of shit! In the beginning was genetic determinism." They tell the story of the determined Gene who made us all in his own image, who loves us and compels us to be fruitful and multiply and spread his good news around the world, subduing and repressing all other species in favor of the One True Gene, on Gene to rule them all.
In the beginning was the word remains because God must have used some word to speak this process into existence. The best I can come up with is AUM and I get together with hundreds of people in nature and we hold hands in a circle and chant our word long and slow, with a full deep prolonged breath as a single word. We focus and we respect the process and afterwards, in silence, we check the resonance with our body, with the sky and with the earth. We notice the calm, the peace, and the acceptance with which the elements receive this syllable.
But the dream from which so many of us are aware we need to wake, this unusual and unknown and now unconvincing process that God spoke into existence at the beginning, persists and we must continue to live within its bounds. We know little about this process or the reason for it, but we know that it is unacceptable because we are experiencing it as humans and the world we have culturally manifested does not promote human life. We notice our dependence upon and interconnectedness with all life on this planet and we notice the cultural process persist in destroying all life on this planet and the environments in which life flourishes. We notice the love we use to orient us, to stabilize and guide us in this world subjugated in favor of money as a guiding force and how love makes us feel beside love.
This world is unacceptable, we tell God, and he does not respond. We tell our peers and they stare at us blankly; they don't care. We gather together with others who have noticed and who care and we no longer need to state the obvious. We do, however, need to continue living in this world, and moving through this process.
In the beginning was the word and in the end will be the word, but they may not be the same word. We attempt various formulations and keep record of our closest approximations to the word that will finally bring about the ending that we're all anticipating.
In this world, regardless of the relationships we have with this or that deity, anticipation is not enough.
We are responsible beings, intelligent, creative, empathetic, adaptable, and we all must manifest this word in whatever form comes most naturally to us, that correlates with the innate responses of our body, our connection to the manifest, our connection to the unmanifest, the conduit for spirit and life and finally truth, that Holy Grail, that elixir which may just bring down this whole unholy edifice, this Babel Tower, this false god, this refuge from responsibility; the resonant realization that will release us from ourselves, from Jahweh and Allah and from the selfish gene, these demons who do not exist and therefore we cannot understand.
~
Don't tempt me with the few insidious myths that provide futile solace to my often overwhelmed heart.
When we breathe deeply we not only calm and centre our body and its modulating emanations, but we inhale the scent of our environment, we smell the hormones and the pheromones of each others' bodies, released via our pores. We inhale the particles of light that we cannot see surrounding each of our bodies and we learn a lot that we cannot necessarily speak or think about with the language of our birth.
We are present for each other and that's all that matters. I can feel the warmth and scent of your body and I feel love though I do not examine the conditions that accompany that love or the timeframe during which it is allowed to bloom and blossom. I do not cling to it any longer than necessary and if I do I simply experience slightly more pain before inevitably letting go.
2013-02-16
In the beginning was the word; in the end will be the word
Abstract connections:
apocalypse,
God,
human body,
language,
myth,
philosophy,
poetry,
religion,
responsibility,
The Gospel According to John,
truth
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment