Manai'a Explorations
HC SVNT DRACONES

Yes LAG, the Hortons are famous in many ways.

So I am reading Willa Cather’s Song of the Lark and it is an absolutely brilliant portrayal of the puella aeternus , the female version of the puer aeternus , and I am gaining much insight into my self. The main character, Thea, has a talent for singing and the story is about her emergence as an artist. She has great disdain for bourgeois sensibilities and longs to be recognized for her special talent. Cather has fabulous paragraphs that nail the contemptibility of the bourgeoisie (I find myself cheering her on) followed by evocative paragraphs of the spiritual ascendancy of the puella that I initially identify with, but moments later think, “Thea is a delusional, condescending, arrogant, egocentric princess.” I used to know a mechanical engineer. I simultaneously admired and hated this guy. He was a free spirit, an adventurer, but he was also unbelievably arrogant. I could hardly stand to be in the same room with the guy, but I envied his travels and adventures. One day he and I went ...

Pics from my recent trip to Hawaii.

I have made some progress. The bourgeoisie want to be in the safe and comfortable middle preserving their self. The Buddha is in the middle, but has recognized that his self is no self at all, in that it is one and the same as everything else in the universe and that it is empty. The bourgeoisie avoid existential angst by distracting themselves with consumerism, materialism, gluttony, … The Buddha confronts the Void, the emptiness of all things, and is at peace with his ambiguous, paradoxical, meaningless role in the universe. The bourgeoisie are self absorbed, egocentric, selfish. The Buddha holds on to nothing, gives everything away, has compassion for others. I think my discontent is rooted in inaction. I need to be living my values in the world in some way. I used to have the church youth group as an outlet, but since I was dis-invited, I have not been active in the world. I think I need to find another way to give myself away for the benefit of others.

http://www.hortonmovie.com/site/index.html

I was standing in ankle deep water last week watching this honu foraging for tasty limu .

I had lunch today with beloved soul brother Lee and in the course of gazing into the Lee mirror, I came to recognize a source of discontent within myself. Hermann Hesse’s brilliant book Steppenwolf is about a man that is torn between two selves – a bourgeois self and an extremist self. Here is how Hesse sums it up: Now what we call “bourgeois,” when regarded as an element always to be found in human life, is nothing else than the search for balance. It is the striving after a mean between the countless extremes and opposites that arise in human conduct. If we take any one of these coupled opposites, such as piety and profligacy, the analogy is immediately comprehensible. It is open to a man to give himself up wholly to spiritual views, to seek after God, to the ideal of saintliness. On the other hand, he can equally give himself up to the life of instinct, to the lusts of the flesh, and so direct all his efforts to the attainment of momentary pleasures. The one path leads to the saint,...

I slept all weekend. I was exhausted. I literally slept 15 hours last night.

The natural (as in normal) condition of life is intense. Consider the beginning and the end - birth and death – very intense experiences; frightening, painful, traumatic, bloody, violent. For most animals, including most humans, life in between birth and death is intense as well; eating and not being eaten, finding clean water to drink, shelter from the elements and safety from predators. Their lives are filled by attending to their immediate needs, immediate as in right now. And while the niggers of this world Are starving with their mouths wide open What is it that turns the coins we throw at them Into worthless little tokens? – The Violence of Truth, The The Not so for me and my bourgeois culture. We have mild, stable lives of comfort, safety and security. Consider our consumption; our obesity, materialism, consumerism, waste, and pollution. We are gluttonous. We have more leisure, more opportunities and options in life than anyone else in the history of humanity and yet we are para...