‘Happening’
When minds can’t, or won’t, change
My big sister, brother, and I were seated together up front at the South Hills Theatre. It would have been in the 40s, though hard to pin down because all I remember of the movie is that we were kids, it featured what sounded like “Saylum Alley,” and I was sure I didn’t want to go there. When my sister gave the signal: “This is where we came in.” Meaning that, as usual, we’d headed off to a double feature with no concern for timing, whether we got there at the beginning, the middle, or the end. For my part, I was as oblivious to the meaning of anything inside a theatre as I was inside a church. Except that the commotion on screens was far more gripping than droning from a pulpit.
Meaning also that nothing more was to be gained by remaining in our seats. It was time to leave. After so many re-enactments holidays bring with them a similar feeling, that this is where we came in. Nothing more to learn and it’s time to leave. This one in particular since its meaning has been worked over, and even if there’s more work to be done enough is enough. But if you’re hoping you’ll be spared my droning this time around I can’t promise it. Not so much because there’s more to be learned from a holiday – there always is — as there is to be learned from meaning. From wondering about it, questioning it, and reflecting on what it’s telling us.
Whose defining attribute seems to be staying in our seats for another go-around. Somewhat like “Groundhog Day,” when figuring out what to do differently will reverse the clock back to forward. In this case figuring out how to think differently. Otherwise meaning won’t go forward. Leaving the furniture in its space just the way the last occupant left it, preserved for all time under a sheet. Never more to be disturbed and precious space never more to be used. The fate of ‘Christmas’ and ‘meaning’ both when minds can’t, or won’t, change.
The magic of impossibility
Leaving to fate the appearance of change when the stage is taken over by another generation. New owners as resolute as the old in scripting the plot to suit themselves. No more inclined to question themselves or the way they’re going about it than their predecessors. Uninterested in meaning because fixated on ‘results.’ That they’ve willed into being, when nothing happens that’s ‘willed’. When without meaning there can be no results. Only appearances. Make-believe. The theatrics of no Change. No Movement.
It’s in the nature of Movement forward that it doesn’t go from A to B in a straight line. It doesn’t meander either, but it will come to a question and worry with it. Like a situation that doesn’t reveal its secrets until one or more minds take its meaning under their wings. Until they’ve taken however many looks it takes to get down to bedrock. To explore the implications of an idea that’s alive with Movement, alive with possibilities. Because that’s the nature of ideas and the Mind thinking them. Living and moving with meaning. With purpose. And it can’t reveal itself to answer disguised as question.
To willfulness. “Herd mentality.” Whose opposite is Spontaneity. Both characteristic of our species but only one is Mind capable of changing. Only one capable of questioning meaning and Movement forward, while the other is decidedly not. Set in place from the beginning, when the first stirrings of Movement that led to Creation triggered an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s law, implicit where Movement is real, explicit in make-believe where anything goes. A magic kingdom of reversals and appearances, contradictions and provocations. The celebration of ‘possibility’ by the magic of impossibility. By the manipulations of entertainment. Life on Earth.
When we do it all over again
Whose meaning is to be found in a psychodynamic: something always going on in the theatre of the absurd. Mortal combat between Titans on Mount Olympus: Movement responsible for all of evolution and Creation, boundaried and Ordered. Mindfulness driven by the inexorable forces of Spontaneity and Growth, Character and Free Choice. Taken on by its challenger: herd mentality. Willed by the immovable forces of wildness to defy all boundaries of Order, to resist even the limits of Definition. No choice.
A Titanic clash between Freedom and Order on one side, the wildness of animal instinct and self-centered willfulness on the other. Corruption with no integrity. Both claiming prior rights to the ideal of Freedom, only one entitled to it. The issue to be decided in the ultimate test of strength: winner-take-all. Uncontested rule over Mount Olympus and bragging rights to the Lombardi Trophy. Until next season when we do it all over again.
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Movement and the Power of Attraction
Uncle Sam Wants You
The animal in human animal, limited to one perspective, is fated to get it wrong. When the meaning of anything requires more than one. Coming back to it as though to a multi-faceted object. Like a revolving dance hall mirror, until the shapes and colors of all of its reflections figure in what it is. A statement with meaning. That can now be understood and appreciated for what it’s trying to tell its questioner. That, being multi-faceted, having a story to tell, it has a gift to share. A reward for being understood: the gift of meaning. That can then be put to use. To put matters to rest now but later too, when things change and, once again, the gift of meaning calls for questioning.
Movement at the beginning brought the gift of questioning along with it. One might wonder why if it was of good character and its intentions were honorable. But if its meaning is to be understood, Movement can’t be acceptance of the way things are forever. Of a particular perspective on the way things are and then done. Evolution brings itself to one situation after another, each consisting of a different mix of ingredients. Creation mixes them to fashion Worth of many-splendored things. In different ways from different perspectives, to fashion many Worths of integrity: the Beauty of Character that could have gotten it wrong.
That didn’t, because, like its antecedent Movement, it came with questioning. Understanding with the gift of meaning, that one perspective alone isn’t enough. That Guidance can’t be one all-purpose answer from a know-it-all, much as the animal in us would like it to be. One-dimensional and one-sided like itself. Once and done, like a call for patriotism left behind from a war fought long ago. Uncle Sam forever wanting you when nothing but questioning is forever. When meaning is questioning Uncle Sam, you, and the war, until antiquation yields to change. Until the poster wall is refreshed and we move on.
The fox in charge of the chickens
The animal in us can’t get it right if one perspective is all it has. Unable to differentiate with empathy. Unable to move, and so put to the task of self-preservation the only way it knows how. By resistance to change. Working from within Movement forward to move it back. The flip side of self-questioning that’s self-defeating. Not to be demonized if that’s all it is: an idea shaped by its circumstances. Movement that can’t originate or co-exist with an impossibility: paralysis impervious to questioning. Self-deprived of self-awareness. Herd mentality inaccessible, unapproachable, and impenetrable. The know-it-all big answer of Olympian religious myth.
Demonized and demonizing. Because of the nature of ‘idea’. That it’s of Mind and Mind is all things living. Relationship. Spontaneity with Order, Energy with Creation. Always in motion forward with questioning. Evolved and evolving toward ever fresh takes on the story of Mind and Creation. Of interactions among lives each with their own part to play in the freedom of Character with Choice. Each with their own story. Functioning together in harmony while minds open to questioning get it right, but free also to get it wrong. When ideas, living and interrelating flip. Turn inside-out and upside-down.
To re-emerge in another world. In every way the reverse of the way things are in harmony. A stage performance of appearances, the reverse of reality. With its own narrative, demonized and demonizing. Herd mentality conspiracy-theorizing. Turning every movement into a reflection of itself: wild beasts that can’t be managed unless forced to do its bidding. A per-verse idea of ‘harmony’: living ideas of Creation interacting freely, under the protection of Order, rounded up and put into cages by chaos. Specimens for exhibit in a zoo. Life on Earth. ‘Evil’. The fox in charge of the chickens.
Farce that it is
A lesson in management. For us chickens to learn if only we knew how. If only we could get its meaning right when herd mentality is everywhere in the way. The animal in us. Unchanged and unchanging. The bull in the pasture that can’t stop being what it is, forever warning us to keep our distance. Forever on a rampage, putting its victims in cages, daring them to do the same to it. The image in the mirror that naivete can’t leave alone, certain that behind its façade unrelatability is Relatable.
I don’t think so. Is anything to be gained by making nice with the know-it-all big answer? The invention of herd mentality: ‘God’ the ‘supreme being’. By doling out the same treatment as to any tribal warlord: a mixture of fear and flattery, placation and ‘loyalty,’ all dressed up to look like ‘love’. Its value not the mistaken idea of answer but what it implies about question. That it’s not for self-debasement but for Self-Worth. Not to beat ourselves down but to build ourselves up. By standing up to its act. The farce that it is, of our own imagination.
That nothing can deny
How does one stand up to ‘God’? Even if it is a mistaken idea, the armor-plate of ‘invincibility.’ The pose of herd mentality always in our face, always in the way. The animal within at the base of the brain and top of the spine. What does an event like Christmas have to say about it? The birth of Jesus.
Meaning handed to questioning in the form of an infant. Movement in its infancy. A re-enactment of Movement at the beginning, when two functions of Mind attracted to one another formed into one Self. The idea of Relationship. The Ideal of Loving Friendship. Of Life and Love, Learning and Laughter, that set about to Grow. Because that’s the nature of Movement, that it has to grow. Love mated with Logic, Spontaneity inseparable from Order. All brought together in the Now of Self-Awareness. The activation of Mind. The ignition of evolution. The motivation behind Creation.
None of it accessible to negation in any form. To wildness in denial of definition; willfulness in denial of any other will or voice but its own; self-centeredness, entitled to absolute freedom and power by self-unawareness and therefore entitled to will its make-believe into being. The façade that Jesus brought down with ease because of who he was. Relationship with Guidance from Definition. The way things are. Movement empowered by attraction between functions completing one another instead of personality types competing with one another. A role model for questioning that would follow his example, by finding in Guidance a partner in Movement. That nothing can stop. Nothing can deny.
For Life that’s dear
The answer to managing the wildness of willfulness can’t be a facsimile of a facsimile. Retaliation in kind. Returning provocation for provocation, because that’s all it is. The flip side of an infinite flow of Mindful ideas naturally fitting together: incessant provocations from mindless manipulation. Re-enactments of its “triumph of the will,” of theatrics over the substance of meaning. The answer lies in getting it right: the meaning of Movement at the beginning. That it was two functions not one. Two perspectives not one, whose coming together into one Self brought Life into being. Possibility for which the impossibility of the beast has no answer. Herd mentality. The perspective of an animal claiming exemption from the way things are, whose nemesis is the Loving Friendship behind Movement.
Between us and Guidance. Personified by Jesus, the subject of Christmas, whose identity is whatever the identity of any Psyche makes of it. The idea and Ideal of ‘Person’. Personable no matter who we are or what our beliefs. Relatability. To which individuals holding out in the storms of chaos can attach but not for long. Not if they overlook the gift of meaning. In every situation: the force of attraction that enabled Movement at the beginning. Obtainable by holding on when our manipulator, the animal within, would have us bow to its “unshakable will.” For Love that’s dear and Life that’s dear.
Where this chicken is at. Not fearing the might of herd mentality that’s not really there. But accepting the inevitability of its appearance. The necessity of it, since without the questioning it requires I can’t make it across the road. Dismayed nonetheless when I look into the mirror hoping to see blond blue-eyed perfection and see, instead, the face of a duck: playful and funny. Engaging with irresistible charm. Or a warthog: resistibly menacing and foul. Horrifying. The face of the human animal. Me. Putting myself off-limits to the Love that I crave. Holding on to the Loving Friendship of Guidance. To the Love I sense in you. For Change. For dear life.