Thinking About Doing

In addition to whatever actions I’ve taken to serve my self interests as I perceived them from time to time, I have historically acted and made choices out of some sense of desire and obligation to be of service, to save the planet and protect future generations, to end suffering, to end war, to protect threatened ethnic and cultural minorities, to seek justice, to make sure “Never Again” meant Never Again for all.  Now, at 70, I see my most significant self interest as being to act in a manner that is of service to my highest self, that really “goes for it” for myself.  What the planet needs from me may be no more than that. 

As you know, I have historically protected myself from my fears and feelings of rage, from my abuse and humiliation, from my almost complete absence of safety and comfort, with a “who gives a shit” attitude, which while protecting me, was also part of what stood in the way of my caring fully about myself, and, because I was imbued with the sense that I could more or less be anything I wanted to be or get anything I wanted to get, I believed that for whatever loss I might experience there was always another more or less equally good option available behind it.  And there was.  But what is it “I” really want to make me happy, given that I know at 70 that every option, every woman, and every situation will always have its disappointing aspects built in.  And what do I do when the hot love dies?   And how do I sustain my excitement.  And most of all, who is this “I” who thinks about these things?

So while I will no doubt “act,” and do, and make personally significant choices, there is another dimension that has entered “my” consciousness and that has assumed as much importance for me in realizing/attaining my goal of world and personal peace, of world and personal enlightenment, and that is an intense awareness, beyond anything I have known before, of the potential impact of what I actually “feel” (as opposed to what I do) as one who both emanates and receives/absorbs “feelings.”  Now I suspect you will laugh and say, “Feel? You feel all the time and are very sensitive to your feelings.  What are you talking about?”  And I agree that on an “emotional/mental/psychological/gut” level I have always been aware of my feelings, and occasionally aware of their impact on others, but I have had no awareness of what I would call the energetic and spiritual impact of my feelings, no awareness of what I absorb and what I radiate out on an energetic and spiritual level.  And that subconscious energetic and spiritual impact has come to have immense importance to me. 

I believe for example that if you seek peace with hatred in your heart you are assured of failure.  So too lack of compassion, rage, self righteousness … 

So what will I do in light of that?  Much less PDA, although not none.  Much more yoga.  Much more communing with nature, feeling it, even more so.  “September 1, 1939”: “The windiest militant trash/ Important Persons shout/ Is not so crude as our wish:/ What mad Nijinsky wrote/ About Diaghilev/ Is true of the normal heart;/ For the error bred in the bone/ Of each woman and each man/ Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love/ But to be loved alone.”

Circa 2010