Feasting Friday (Sept 16, 2022)
Humans are stupefyingly magnificent.
As I sit to meditate, I begin to slow my breathing and tuck the entirety of my awareness along the inside curve of my nostrils.
Like psycho-electric-grasshoppers, my attention sparks and crackles away from my new nostril home for a few minutes.
But soon, the hoppers become soft, purring, nestled nostril companions, and I drop into myself.
For me, dropping in is to come home to The Show.
Meditation is a returning to the symphony at the center of my Psyche.
The room is lush - think Wagner lucid dreaming his own performances mixed with Ken Kesey and his acid head family.
I notice the violins first - singing songs of sacred union, living together, starting a family, being a father. The smell of home moves through me, my breath slows more. I feel nourishment in my core.
Then the cello comes in to remind me of food shortages, supply chain breakdown, ecological collapse. Fear begins its electrochemical crusade through my world tree. The cats turn back to grasshoppers and my mind runs away from the breath into planning pantries, fantasies of training gun skills, up and through Civil War, World War III, nuclear fallout...
Oh right, I'm meditate.
Back to the breath.
Grasshoppers to nostril huggers.
As the fear settles, I'm back.
The choir begins to sing; the multitude as the singualr, the choir reminds me of Dharma and Daimon and Grace and the unrelenting whisper from the unseen corners hiding in horizons that all is supported, and that we’re all okay…deeply, profoundly, existentially liberatingly okay. I begin to spontaneously remember the many moments in my life where synchronicities of undeniable luminosity baptized my skeptic like Arjuna before Krishna's true form. I being to laugh. I remember.
With the temporary safety the choir provides, the pianist wants his turn. He wants his solo, his monologue, his chance to show the audience how brilliant he is. Yall know this guy, he's often on the podcasts, in these newsletters, and in your face in person. He's sweet but sometimes he doesn't listen.
So the Conductor has appointed a sacred cow bell dinger. The cow bell dinger wants jokes and tricks and questions instead of answers. He has been given explicit permission from the conductor to chime in when the pianist stops listening to the moment and begins to force his keys into ears.
Ol Cowbell is the newest addition to the symphony, and he is the crowd's favorite.
The drums wanna flex, fuck, make money, lift heavy shit, and practice fighting. The drums historically haven't gotten much love, we haven't known how to incorporate them into the performance, but we're learning.
The harp vibrates to the melody of molasses days in bed with our lover, writing poetry, watching sunrises and sunsets, savoring every moment, stretching it out as long as the thread of the now will bear our attention.
And while all these parts unfold into each other, creating the song of my daily existence, a young operatic singer sits quietly to the side.
All the players know her song is the pearl, and that they are shell. They know when their music stops, her song starts. And although they know her song is the most important, they don't like to hear her sing. Because when she sings, their eyes fill with tears and they can't read their sheet music. When she sings their noses snot from the tears and they can't play their instruments.
At the core of this lavish, extravagant, electric, ecstatic symphony, there is grief so large it stops the show.
It is the song of the parts of the human condition we rather not see; that we die, that we fall ill, that we will know hopelessness, that pain will overwhelm our faith, that cruelty and evil can touch us, that we lie, that we fear, that we each bare witness to ecological genocide...
But her song also carries the parts of the human condition that shine so bright we often look away too - that people can change their minds, hearts, and actions; that people forgive, that people help, that people make art, invent; that the human spirit is able to make imagination material; that we just will not fucking give up, that we love, we share, we cuddle, and we believe.
Humans are stupefyingly magnificent.
All of this is happening just under my conscious awareness...and somehow I can still sleep. I'm somehow able to read a book, listen in a meeting, take a nap, or plan a trip. I feel peaceful and aligned with my life.
How the fuck does Psyche do it? How does this symphony work? By any standard lens, I’m insane…we’re all insane…and yet, it works.
Burning Man, unlike anything I’ve experienced in Western Culture, highlights this stupefyingly magnificent coherence arising from chaos.
I’ll share my Burn in a podcast, but the main dust-covered gem I’d like to share here is;
I believe in the human pantheon of creativity, cooperation, kindness, service, bravery, innovation, forgiveness, and love. We are stupefyingly magnificent adapters. We alchemize chaos into coherence. We literally manifest ideas into form.
The Man that burned on the final day represented, for me, my sneering adolescent cynicism of the human condition.
We're in chaotic times...and a symphony is gathering.
Your being, your life, your actions, your art; you are one of the instruments.
I look forward to hearing your song next time we meet.
And god bless your radical unique insanity.
We need your song.
Song on Repeat This Week:
Bruh the song on repeat this week was created by my friends:
SATURN - JUST LIKE YOU IMAGINED
Quote I’m Dancing With This Week:
"Jung said that at the bottom of every depression, and there is always a bottom there, one will find a task, the addressing of which will take one's life in a new direction."
-James Hollis
My Favorite Journal Prompt This Week:
"What symphony is playing me today?"