I\u2019ve had it easy. No, Uncle Bud says, You were given the stresses and challenges you could handle, precisely calibrated to your talents and potentials. A small part of this judges\u2014erroneously\u2014and compares myself to the cultural ideal of the courageous and stoical Marine who takes on stresses of the training and the battlefield that would perhaps leave me depleted, if indeed I could cope with such stresses. I\u2019ve been tempted to be ashamed, comparing myself. It\u2019s like a hard life is masculine.<\/p>\n
But my guardian angel\u2014my name for him is Uncle Bud\u2014says that I need my limbic system within my brain quiet so I can access the richness of the transcendent realms and channel and process them as creativity and art and insight. I admit I like doing this, and I\u2019ve become gradually aware that I\u2019m pretty good at it.<\/p>\n
Occasionally I encounter others whose mental agility and complexity and\/or openness to insights and the beyond clearly outdo mine. Tempted to be envious, I relax into loving what they do and loving what I do at my level. It\u2019s my dharma and I accept it. Thinking that I \u201cshould\u201d be different from who I am is a fruitless exercise. <\/p>\n
Contemplating my life, as I do, let me affirm that my tastes are not extravagant. Sometimes I feel guilty that I desire comfort rather than the aforementioned soldier\u2019s level and type of challenge. I feel pampered, and worse, I feel I want it, I need it, and I further suspect that I could cope with less than optimal, but then I\u2019d have little psychic energy left for contemplation. I like a life of pleasant ease: It liberates me to do my thing as best as I can. <\/p>\n
So I accept my good fortune with the rationalization that it frees my nervous system to turn and open to creativity, and my makeup is such that I work well with what inspires me. Not to get too big a head, I don\u2019t assume that I channel creativity perfectly. I have no doubt that I impose personal neuroses as well as cultural world-views on the source-flow, but then again, it must be that way\u2014at least at this point in evolution. Perhaps in the future there will be less and less of such imposed contaminations, and that itself is part of a vision of the future.<\/p>\n
I restate my life myth as it takes on greater coherence: God-as-Universe at least in this realm we call reality must create through us. There is a gradient of positivity, but it\u2019s not imposed; it\u2019s co-created, or not, and evolves through many sad, tragic, foolish side-ventures and blind alleys, evils as well as saintly sacrifices, bumbling towards progress. There may be only one step forward, a fifty-first, beyond fifty steps forward and fifty-steps back, or to the side.<\/p>\n
Another balance in my myth is the joy of play, of adventure, of experiment, of letting go of control, and the side-effect is, as the Indian Chief says to Peter Pan, \u201cSometimes you-um win; sometimes we-um win.\u201d I allow that beyond the rules of a game, the game seeks sort-of-equal playing skill, or at least a handicap. The image of God in total control, of willing this or intending that, seems to me to be a bit of an anthropomorphic projection of a king\u2019s power. It doesn\u2019t include the archetype of a kid playing a game, a willingness for there to be the aforementioned values of adventure and thus surprise.<\/p>\n
I confess my ignorance but also am pretty sure that others who claim to be more certain are equally ignorant, so my own myth-making stays in the running, as far as I\u2019m concerned. Others of course will think they\u2019re right and I generally have no objection. Doesn\u2019t hurt me none. <\/p>\n
On a slightly different note, dare we recognize the inevitability of our becoming aware of the individual twists we impose on doctrine? It\u2019s like recognizing that there are germs. What I bring from depth psychology is the awareness that the mind is inescapably complex and we cannot help but imposing our own blend of temperament, interests, cultural conditioning, and other variables. I suspect rather strongly that no two people experience reality in precisely the same way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve had it easy. No, Uncle Bud says, You were given the stresses and challenges you could handle, precisely calibrated to your talents and potentials. A small part of this judges\u2014erroneously\u2014and compares myself to the cultural ideal of the courageous and stoical Marine who takes on stresses of the training and the battlefield that would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,15,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-favoritethings","category-wisdom-ing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1818,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions\/1818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}