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The mysterious Word Master, Plato the younger!

(Seriously? I asked him what the title of this post should be. He said THAT. OR, if I’d rather: “If you’re working hard you might be heading the wrong way.” He is so bloomin’ incorrigible!)

Ok, so you all know me. I’m a Seeker at heart. I think I was born that way since I’ve had “wanderlust of the soul” all my life. Because of that, Plato (the younger, from over at Plato’s Groove) and I have had some interesting and informative discussions in the past about things of the heart and soul. This morning we had another one…

We got off on the subject of blogs and what he feels his is about. He said: “I was thinking the blog is kind of a description of the death of my ego. Or maybe an awakening of a type. Especially those (poems) which deal with the need for solitude and the grief and pain involved. The raw grief needs to be understood as normal. I think we have to experience utter aloneness at some point in order to begin to know ourselves separate from our ego.” I haven’t done my post for this week’s Sandbox, but I can tell you loneliness is a problem for me. I’m not sure about aloneness. That’s something different. He went on to say, “I think we try to get to the sweet beautiful part (of our inner selves?) that makes sense before breathing the ugly unknowing of being undone. 

“Just been thinking lately that the times when we feel weak or lost or a failure is actually the very path we have been seeking but don’t recognize it for what it is. What we do so much is try to rearrange the same stuff differently.  Maybe its only when that stuff completely fails that the new can come.” I asked him how you know when THAT happens? Besides never getting out of bed! I felt like it would put me in free fall. Then what do I do? “Nothing. Just sit. The doing and thinking and figuring out is motion and flailing about from fear. When everything we thought we were is recognized as temporary and passing away, we begin to discover we are much more. Its about losing control or the illusion of it we have hidden behind. Its not something we do. Its done, it happens.”

Needless to say that idea made me a bit nervous. But he explained it like this: “Got to do the first thing first. That’s like an acorn fretting about making new acorns before it is a sprout. So they never put down roots and grow. The growing and rebuilding is in the hands of the creator not the seed.  The seed must first die in order to become an oak tree. Until then it remains an acorn with potential of becoming an oak, wishing to and writing about what it might be like. When it dies it becomes what it always was. It does not figure it out. In a dream of falling it will never be resolved till you let yourself hit the ground. You can’t rebuild till the ego or old is destroyed. Fear is ego rebuilding, is mechanical and ego. The soul is organic and is not built. It grows and unfolds according to its nature.” 

We went on to discuss the part reasoning plays in our remaining where we are in our old habits. “Reason won’t do it because it lacks all the information about us. Reason was used to establish our defenses. One can be very logical and schizophrenic because some of the foundational assumptions are false.

“I used to think I knew a lot but I am gradually unlearning it.  I think we need lots of meaningful humans.  But that is the trick.  What is meaningful and what is not? So many of our relationships are not meaningful on deeper levels.  They are fear ‘need’ based almost addictions.  I think we project our needs onto people and sort them out based on whether they meet one of them or not.  If I need somebody then I will also need to control them and protect my supply.  The romance is internal the Beloved is within. I have begun finding some new contentment within me that is not dependent on anyone.  And when I am less needy I am more free to actually see another for who they are not who I need them to be.  If I never see them as separate from my needs then all I am seeing is what I am projecting onto them.  I end up just loving myself.  I understand some better about the Soul and the romance in my writing. For the most part I truly was writing to She who is me.

“Most relationships are to some degree an illusion anyway.  We remain solitary and hidden behind our defenses unsure and unaware sometimes of who we are, what we desire, why we are here.  If I don’t know me how could someone else know me?  If they don’t know me how could they truly love me?  We study other people from behind our walls seeking glimpses of them from behind theirs.  We spend tons of emotional energy and time studying others many times cause we need them not to hurt us, or use us, or leave us.  I think we have it backwards.  The one I need to know best is me.  I don’t think it ultimately matters whether we have people in out lives or not if our relationship with ourselves is out of whack all our other relationships will be too.

“I don’t know how it will be for you but those little insights or realizations will come at times when we are still and not engaged in the addictive trying to figure everything out mode.  They come slowly and quietly and unannounced.  Those small seemingly simple things are what we need to reconnect with the self or soul or god.  Our ego seeks out the grand things or the ‘right’ clever answer when actually we have known the truth all along.  Recognizing and accepting it is the thing.  It feels too easy, too simple to be the way when we are habituated to the business and fretting and effort of our false sense of self.  For me I am trying to just become better at recognizing when I am fretting and simply breathing in response.  The old way would have been to subject it all to analyzing it to death.  Which only left me more anxious and powerless because I was moving away from the source of healing which is stillness and simply to breathe.”

Well, he just described me in that last paragraph. I over-analyze everything in my life. And he’s right, it does leave me feeling more anxious and powerless because I can’t control anything in my life!

I just thought this was an interesting discussion this morning and wondered if anyone else would find it so. If you do, don’t be shy. Leave your comments and maybe something interesting will turn up! (And, btw, I DO have Plato’s permission to quote him.)