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Message |
| Posted By: |
Uncle Tantra |
| Date: |
11-Dec-2005-16:08:59 |
| Subject: |
A Sense Of Wonder |
I often find that you can't fully grok what a particular Road Trip was about until it's over and you're back home. That has certainly been the case with my recent pilgimages to Amsterdam and New Mexico and Paris. All three were wonderful places and all three were full of wonderful people, with whom I had many wonderful conversations. I use the word 'wonderful' three times in the previous sentence not as an exercise in sloppy writing :-) but because the nature of the word 'wonder' seems to be the thing that has been most revealed to me as a result of this Road Trip.
"From wonder into wonder life will open."
Lao-tzu said that.
"I'm grateful to be turning 60 and not have lost my sense of wonder about life."
I said that.
In each of the places I visited, I had the opportunity to sit and have long conversations with friends and fellow spiritual seekers from my past. During these conversations I tried to pay careful attention to the ways in which these friends had changed in the time since I'd seen them last, and to the ways in which they hadn't seemed to change at all.
The catalyst for the things that I've been thinking about during this Road Trip, and afterwards, is that too often the latter far outweighed the former -- most of my friends were more the same than they were different. Only two of the ones I talked with seemed "on," happy, and full of a sense of wonder at the ever-new and ever-exciting nature of their everyday lives. The rest seemed, sadly, in a kind of karmic "holding pattern," still talking about the plans and dreams they talked about two and a half years ago, but still only talking about them. There was a sad kind of stasis to their lives, a distinct lack of wonder. Everything was familiar; everything was boring.
By comparison, the two friends whose lives just screamed wonder and whose faces radiated a strong inner light had been *doing something* with the plans and dreams we'd talked about when I last saw them. One of them, a pretty famous Santa Fe artist named Orlando, had thrown himself into an art project he'd dreamed of doing for years. Orlando loves music, but has never been trained in it. He knew nothing of musical notation or its theory. But he wanted to paint the music that he hears in his head, so he invented his *own* musical notation. Pitch was indicated by color, tempo by other visual cues, etc. He was "flying blind," making it up as he went along. And then he showed his work to a friend, a fellow Santa Fean who is a trained musician and a Julliard graduate. The musician just *flipped*, and offered to translate Orlando's visual music into auditory music. He did, and they recorded a CD of the results. It's extraordinarily beautiful.
The other friend, Richard, has been busy being an activist. He feels deeply about the direction America seems to be headed, and feels that it's a wrong direction. And rather than allow that to bum him out, he's been actively working to try to move things in what he feels is a better direction. He works with the poor and underprivileged; he sponsors forums in which people can exchange their ideas for positive change; he's even made a film, which when I spoke to him was being considered as a pilot for an entire TV series by HBO.
Both of their faces were ablaze with light when they talked. The faces of my other friends seemed worried and cast in shadow by comparison. It made me think long and hard about the difference, and what had caused it.
I think the difference is that both Orlando and Richard have *pursued* their dream in the time since I saw them last, and my other friends have only talked about theirs. The latter haven't fogotten their dreams -- it's like they gaze at them fondly from time to time where they sit on the back burner, but they never move the dream pot up to the front burner where it might catch a little heat and actually begin to perk.
So I've been thinking about my own life, and my own dreams, and whether I've primarily had a "back burner" relationship with them these last few years, or whether they've been bubbling away towards the front of the stove. And I've decided that it's a bit of both, but more front burner than back.
Possibly as a result, I returned from my travels to my new home in the south of France with my sense of wonder renewed. My birthday is coming up soon, and I look forward to it with a smile and a sense of anticipation, rather than dread.
Sixty fucking years on this rock. Whoa...what a concept!
Years in which I have had amazing adventures and amazing setbacks. I have sat with the enlightened and have been harassed by the minions of darkness. And both were necessary and both were interesting in their way and both have left me with my sense of wonder amazingly intact. I wake up each morning with a big grin on my face, looking forward to finding out what eternity has in store for me next. I don't know whether this silly attitude and shit-eating grin has any relationship to having pursued my dreams or whether it's just dumb luck. I'm just grateful that things have turned out this way.
Think of the alternative. I could wake up in the morning and have the feeling that I know in advance what the day is going to be like. There would be no need *to* wonder about what it's going to be like. After a while, the wonder would go away, because the need for it has gone away, replaced by stasis. Ick.
I *like* not having a clue how my day is going to unfold. I *like* being in a constant state of surprise and wonder as it does. And I *like* realizing that Rama had a great deal to do with me still feeling this way at my age. Thanks, dude. I wouldn't have it any other Way.
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