“All of us go off track now and then, in ways large and small. What usually saves us are real friends who won’t put up with our bullshit. . . . There’s a risk in becoming too attached to these fawning A.I.s. . . . Imagine a world in which the answer to ‘Am I an asshole?’ is always a firm, reassuring no.” – Paul Bloom, “Losing Loneliness,” in The New Yorker (7/21/25 p. 57)
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Into her clutches
What brings you to my humble abode today? A Sprite. Soda pop? No. And not a motel on the Strand either. A woodland fairy. Mirror Lake fairy. With healing power. A Mirror Lake Sprite with healing power has brought you to my doorstep today. How intriguing! Are you and your Sprite old friends or did she just show up today? She’s a hermaphrodite. Masculine if you’re female, feminine if you’re male. She for me, he for you. An imp who’s been hanging around for forty years I’m aware of, another twenty I was unaware of. Probably all my life because my first bad dream I was pre-kindergarten and it contained a detail that I only realized recently was a joke.
And, for sure, she’s a friend. Harry Truman said you want a friend in Washington get a dog. Obvious he hadn’t connected with his Sprite or he would have had his best friend. Delightful company. All about connections because she’s Connected. And responds to everything with what she is, a gift. Ah, philosophy! I’m developing a taste for it. Wonderful! If everything is Mind then everything is an idea or thought. And if every idea or thought is defined by what it does – its function – it does what it is and is what it does. She gives because she’s a gift. And you’re smart because you’re a philosopher. A female practicing saying anything to a male that will lure him into her clutches.
The gift that we need
We choose for the same reason, because we’re choice. Of course. Cool reflection and careful deliberation make today’s debonair girl. Excuse me, but that has to be the most ridiculous thing I ever heard (choke, guffaw). Women have ascended to the highest ranks of power. Yes, and they’ve earned it. Except for the ones who got there by fawning all over male self-imagery. If it weren’t for them . . . Please don’t say anything bad about Benito Mussolini and the NBC Orchestra. La crème de la crème! . . . Democracy wouldn’t be in peril.
Our metaphysical ancestor’s function in Creation is Free Choice. Some make out that things are the way they are and we have no choice but to go along. You don’t agree? No. It’s true that some stuff we get wrong can’t be our fault since we can’t be aware of everything. But not if we make ourselves unaware. Not if we avoid the truth on purpose so we can say Huh? when we’re shown the consequences of our behavior. As if we had nothing to do with it. When we had everything to do with it. Looking the other way on purpose while something not nice within us runs loose.
What not nice? The opposite of our Sprite. Willfulness. Wildness. Not spontaneous but calculating. Not giving but taking. Sewing distrust and misunderstanding with fear and suspicion. Disconnecting instead of connecting. Breaking up relationships. Breaking up families. Who hasn’t experienced it? I have. Lots. What I haven’t experienced I’ve learned from my Sprite who’s seen it all. From books and spontaneous insights as well as learning from hard knocks. She’s making us aware of what her opposite wants us not to be aware of: The treachery that it’s up to.
Sprite’s home is Mirror Lake. Tranquility and harmlessness. Joyfulness with the Spontaneity of fun. Filled with the Innocence of curiosity. Welcoming to all who come in innocence with questions. Ready to help with questioning when honesty needs answers. Truth instead of appearances. What’s her secret? She has no secrets if our minds are open to listening. She’s connected. The gift that we need more than anything.
Everything Good
Connected to what? To the cruise ship we were on before we fell overboard. In that case I don’t want to be connected. You’re right. It’s better that we fell overboard from an oil tanker. Whatever. Let’s just say Sprite is connected to where we were before we wound up here. And she’s here to help us navigate back. A life-saver. Forget it. We’re not looking for a “saver.” She’s the trail of bread crumbs Hansel and Gretl left behind so they could find their way back. To home? To where we actually are. “Home” will do.
What’s so great about Home? It’s where things are what they actually are. Not just a stage set like they are here. Where they make sense and have a real purpose instead of everything being make-believe and seriously crazy like here. I’m OK with being connected to your “Home” but only if it’s ruled by a sexy Italian fascist dictator.
Imagine that Home has a Roman Forum like when Julius Caesar ruled. Or an Acropolis when Alexander the Great was founding his Hellenic empire. Where there’s a kind of national archive with columns. Guarded by Vestal Virgins? What’s inside isn’t a flame that needs to be guarded by the original campfire girls. It’s the principles and values that went into the making of the way things are.
The idea of definitive. An anchor that centers everything. Immovable. Like our Constitution. A constitution with Conscience, because it has to stand for everything Good as well as for Order and Unity. A source of Guidance that applies to the specifics of every question, every situation, that are different. Constantly changing, So it requires judgment. Interpretation. Adaptation. Like laws do in courts of justice. Constantly evolving.
No storytelling untruths
“Definitive” is flexible? Definitive refers to the principles and values applied to changing circumstances, not to the way circumstances are arranged to align with them. The alignment is what’s flexible, not the rules guiding it. Sprite is our lifeline to the rules that govern the way things really are. To Guidance from Definition that can be applied to our specific situations so they make sense and serve a good purpose. Worth more than any form of material wealth when our situations are always changing and fraught. Our entire world, in fact, and we can’t survive without Guidance. Can’t make any kind of progress forward.
We seek with our questions to understand how and why we’re disconnected. In a world that not only makes it difficult for our own families to be together but for people of goodwill everywhere. To be together even when they get along. Sprite being connected can only be a “secret” in a world of willfulness and wildness that wants us to think we’re disconnected. Of appearances, when in Reality we’re all connected and it’s impossible for us not to be. Sprite’s role is “healing” that’s helping us correct an untruth. That we’re parts of a whole never to come back together again. Running loose and causing problems for one another beyond our awareness. When the most natural thing for you and me is to be friends together when we were never apart. No storytelling untruths can break the bond of Love.
The mistake
So, you’re parked on my doorstep spouting philosophy because your pal Sprite gave you a gift today. If it isn’t about money, hot romance, or power I’m not interested. Then you can go back to what you were doing. Sprites make terrible cashiers. Why? They’re money illiterate. Like me. Numbers and matter make no sense to them. All that material wealth is about, whereas Sprites are pretty good with Worth. Pretty good with Loving Friendships between masculine and feminine that don’t need bodies for hot romance. What about power?
Didn’t you say that Sprites heal? Power here is people rising above one another. Sprites relate, and relate heals. Who can relate and heal when they’re climbing all over one another to be on top? That’s wounding, not healing. “Losers” are the sacrificial offerings to the “gods” of religion that demand tribute to their supremacy.
So Sprites make happy with relatability, not power. Kanoodling between anatomically correct males and females doesn’t interest them. And they’re all broke, stuck in steerage, and they think they’re crossing in first class. You don’t sound impressed. They sound like chumps. First class for me! Helpful chumps if what you want is Worth and Loving Friendships. Without making a fool of yourself for romance, a few extra dollars, and being a big shot. Material wealth, romance, and being taken seriously depend on character to deliver the satisfaction they promise. On independent judgment and integrity that come first. They’re derivatives – derived from a source that it’s our responsibility to put and keep there before we think about its material rewards.
Thinking that character and conscience hold us back from having fun is a mistake. When Sprite makes us aware that this is where the fun is. The satisfaction of Loving and being Loved. Character expressing itself in Loving Friendship with a part of ourselves that that would never abandon us. The character of Mirror Lake: fun itself. A sprite. Spontaneity. Who has everyone’s interests at heart. Who can be trusted. How can it be otherwise when all she can do is give?
Never
You never left me? My Sprite and I had something to take care of that took me away. But yesterday I finished a big part of it. My Sprite’s project as well as mine. Helping one another, and she was so happy that I got this far that she healed me. Enough at least for one day. To finish with her trademark burst of synchronicity. On Independence Day, then two days later on my mother’s birthday and my christening. I’m a prickly pear. My Sprite and I both. Our earthly inspiration Socrates. The father of the Socratic Method: questioning. Part of what drew me to Harvard Law, famous at one time for using it to train minds in the theory and practice of a profession.
Aware that we have a job
The way my day went can be a help if it means what I think it means. Anything is possible if it’s not just me and my limited perspective. If it’s “us” – Loving Friendship with my Sprite. Which means with you, because she’s the gift of Relationship. Of connections with others who speak the same language. What language?
Of Spontaneity instead of willfulness. Relatability instead of hierarchy and obedience. Facts instead of making stuff up. Fiction, like theorizing about conspiracies. Who does that? People who stop trusting or never could. Who let weird explanations be their guide, putting their faith in distrust and the religion of the occult. All in with contradictions and negatives. Reversals of facts, thinking themselves more clever than the rest of us because they see what’s behind appearances. When all they’re looking at is another layer of appearances. Cloud cuckoo-land. Put there by their preference for freedom they think must be unlimited. By the boundaries of judgment and discipline. By definition.
A per-version of Spontaneity. Bonkers. Way off track because it’s hooked up with the wrong guide. Yours is the right guide? Plenty of evidence says so. But I can never be sure because judgment is part of the flaw in the circumstances. I don’t have the perspective, by myself, to be the judge. Nobody does. And that’s the problem: whether we’re aware of it or not we’ve all signed up with one or the other guide. With another perspective, one capable of Guidance, the other faking it. One keeping us on track, the other sending us off track. Keeping us from focusing on the same job or from even being aware that we have a job.
Never more than a thought
So difficult! The sales pitch of the wrong guide: saving us from difficulty. Telling us to leave everything to it. The path of least resistance. The path followed by people who wind up with more difficulties than they can handle. Material wealth has nothing to do with putting us on “easy street” other than creating false expectations. Professor Faust turned his fate over to Mephisto, who promised to put him on easy street and put him in a big mess instead.
There are no substitutes for Loving Friendship, the real thing. And it starts with Loving Friendship with our Sprite. Spontaneity that can’t be pushed around. That can’t be hurried or told to do things differently for our convenience. For individuals wrapped up in their priorities of the moment or by whole fields of study wrapped up in preserving themselves. Their self-image, which they equate with survival. Self-imagery, that doesn’t care about substance. Actually “winning” something, but only the appearance of it. By whatever means if appearances don’t require inner anything. Inner moral compass, when it’s all about externals.
Sprite and her Mirror Lake are all about where the action is in a world of superficiality. Of surfaces. The action here has been put beneath the surface by reverse-reality, not out in the open where it belongs in Reality. And so when a visitor shows up and looks into the mirror the Sprite wants to know Why are you there? Why aren’t you here? After asking who are you? Why are you wearing a mask? She’s asking why do you need help from beneath the surface? Beneath appearances? Because our world is a world of appearances, that’s why. We’re aware of what isn’t going on and unaware of what is going on. We need help. Today I looked at appearances and told myself I couldn’t do something. My Sprite looked within and knew that I could. I listened to her voice and, together, we did it. Spontaneously, because nothing about this day was “planned.” It was never more than a thought until she and I, together, made it a happening.
I saw a puddycat!
To be free of willfulness what happens next has to be spontaneous. I’d never done spontaneous before. Have you? I’m a girl. Everything I do is scheming and conniving to rule the galaxy. Mlle Francon wasn’t named Dominique for nothing. Indeed! Our lady friend appearing to admire Howard Roark, her superior architect friend, when he’s actually her captive.
All new to me. Like hiking the Prickly Pear as though it were for the first time. Don’t make it happen; let it happen. Attention on each step. One at a time and always forward. Everything Mind, everything spontaneous. Mind meaning thought plus feeling, Everything connected and in the proper sequence. Nothing willful getting in the way. Let Movement do what it does and move. Act when you’re moved to express yourself, communicate when and however you’re moved to so that willfulness doesn’t have a chance to interfere.
Your Sprite sounds like your bluebird. Yes. The bluebird flies away at the first sign of willfulness. Tweety Bird is the Sprite, Sylvester the Puddycat willfulness. Jerry the Sprite, Tom willfulness. A cat-and-mouse game, One part of humanity is fooled into thinking willfulness is stronger while the other part isn’t fooled. We understand that Spontaneity is stronger. Yesterday and today showed me that Sprite’s gifts can do amazing things.
Is this “religion”?
Is this your religion? I have no religion. Not Christianity? No. I’m not a “Christian,” though I respect the values of 19th century agrarian Christianity that served my ancestors. Exemplified by Abraham Lincoln and Henry Clay, to whom we are related. I’ve always been deeply moved by the example and teaching of Jesus, a personification of everything I admire in a person’s Character. Even though I’ve moved away from its religious context I’m still one with the character at the center of it.
What’s the matter with religion? When explanation leads with facts and Logic, Logic with Love, the mirror it holds up to us is unsparing. We’re astronauts in our space suits and celebrities modeling finery on red carpets. Statesmen declaiming from world capitals and moralists exhorting their followers from pulpits, altars, and shrines. But withal a species of ape. We’re animals and we behave like it. How? By carrying on the behavior of the apes that we are. Assuming not that everything is Mind but that it’s instinct. That instinct is hierarchy and bowing down to higher authority is how to adapt to it. Ape etiquette: smaller ape acknowledging the superiority of bigger ape. Humans thinking the way to relate to their “Creator” is bowing down to it. Physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, symbolically, and ritualistically. Debasing itself. Corrupting itself.
Not what my Sprite is all about. Bowing down to superior authority is an expression of a flawed premise, that the sources of Movement behind evolution and Creation are a herd of wild animals driven by willfulness, demanding obedience. Demanding that Movement reverse back to a mythical state that preceded it. And more nonsense.
This is what’s the matter with religion. Including Christianity, that it’s rigidly traditionalist. Hidebound. Rigidly hierarchical and therefore rigidly corrupting. Opposed to evolution that needs to take Sapiens beyond anything “animal.” Beyond hierarchy. Beyond needing “saviors” to do what its function, Free Choice, must do for itself.
I’m guided to hold a mirror up to everyone in our family, including myself, so that we understand that what divides us wasn’t meant to be. Isn’t immutable. We aren’t immobilized. Our personality types are preferences, not prisons. We can choose to change the way we look at things. To move forward instead of staying stuck in the mud. Stuck in religions whose “creator-gods” are fascist dictators. Arrogance. To remake our relationships as we see fit. We have choice because we are choice. And anything that says otherwise is a lie.
I am Sprite
You’re not a Jesus-freak Bible-thumping moralist? No. None of that is relatable. I’m for Loving Friendships among whole persons open and honest with one another. Role-modeled by my understanding of Reality and Creation that isn’t superficialities. Physical appearances. Sociability. Power relations among tribes. Entertainments. Fun and games. The life of Mind is fun and rewarding. The “action” of instinct is neither. The life of Mind is nicer by far and healthier. For Mind, Psyche, and our much abused bodies. The real example of Jesus, not the image dumped on him by Church hierarchy and “civil” society. The uninformed.
To be in Loving Friendship with Sprite is to be connected. To be connected is to be in some sense that with which we are connected. Jesus was – and is – a personification of the idea of Guidance. The idea manifested in the character of a sprite. If I am in Loving Friendship with my Sprite then in some sense I am Sprite.
No reason to worry
When friends don’t make regular use of their mirrors to question themselves, mistakes and misunderstandings pile up and their costs with them. Until either one friend or the other, who cares about the friendship, gathers them up, puts them in a mirror, and holds it up. A personality type won’t see any reason for this if it’s more interested in fun and games than friendship. If it’s more attracted to tribal competition than personal relatability, more motivated by instinct for action than by thoughtful reflection. The test may be whether they can recognize their type in the mirror and choose to be relatable. By adjusting their personality type preferences, that can only be done through a change in guides. The right Guide stands for learning and growth. The wrong guide against it.
Love and Logic fit together beautifully not because they’re identical twins. It’s because they’re opposites that complement one another. Beautiful too for the example they set if only we could follow it. Instead of being at each other’s throats because we differ. We complement one another in Loving Friendship. I’ve already learned from you by choosing you for the model of my Sprite. My imp, in my writing. For which you seem uniquely suited. A source of insights, humor, and questioning that fuels creativity. Still radiating the beauty of your indomitable Siberian tiger but also the Innocence, humility, and vulnerability of Loving Friendship. Independent judgment maturing into the strength of wisdom.
I hope you’ve noticed. If not, here’s your recognition and your thanks. No reason to worry that we’re not alike when it may be better that we’re not.
Where the story begins
Our Sprites connect us both to everything dear to us that resides where we all belong, at home in Reality. Not in a world of transitory appearances that can’t possibly be real. Where friendship is dogs and cats. House pets. The only beings in this world who can be trusted just to be who they are. The mirror has been held up. What remains to be seen now is whether we got it right. Whether, if so, anyone looks into it and sees things differently. So we can move forward.
Is there anything I can do to help? Allow time for reflection. Not just on how wild animal behavior can be domesticated but on how persons can stop behaving like wild animals. For Prometheus to bring light to humanity, the Tarot Hermit to shine away the darkness with his lantern. To personalize family with persons instead of not-personators. With relationships among humans instead of manipulations among objects. Holding up a mirror with explanation from another perspective isn’t where the story ends. It’s where it begins.