Mystery, Telemachus, of mystery I write, how a god took me down into unknown depths, into darkness and chaos, among fragments of time in a void of space, there to find the meaning of man beyond all meaning, a stillness beyond all stillness that allows each thing to move, an opening that never closes but is ever closed for men who walk the earth dimly, an emptiness that is the fullness of every flower and every star. May the muses guide me as I write, and may the god keep his word that these scrolls which I seal into jars of clay will find their way to you, floating on the wine-dark sea, washing up on the shores of Ithaca long after my return . . .
Telemachus, remember this if you remember nothing else: Until you become what you are, you will remain what you have become. So then, my son, you will have to ask yourself: What am I?
In matters of the soul, where the disease is most severe the cure must be most subtle, which means radical. One confuses heavy but momentary force with what counts as truly radical in this case. Radical means a sustained, subtle shift in one’s gaze, a dedicated and vigilant quieting of reactions, an opening for something to enter–something already there.
We cannot understand Life from the outside in; we MUST understand it from the inside out. Yet every IDEA we have is an attempt to pin Life to the wall like a wondrous butterfly we have caught and killed. Understanding must come from the heart and the gut, from the bones and muscles.
When I was a boy, my father told me the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx. He probably told it to you as well. I have realized something important about that story, Telemachus: it fails to convey the tone of the answer to the riddle. The Sphinx asked each contender, “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, then three legs in the evening?” Do you really think the greatness of Oedipus lay in his knowing the ostensive answer? Any yapping puzzle hound could have gotten it, any bloodless thought monger, any squinting bean counter. But they would have stood on the meniscus of the fundamental fluid of Life, a surface created in part by the tension of words and their logic. It took Oedipus to break through that flimsy skin, plunging toward a groundless ground. He stood tall, and with a tone of tragicomedy replied, “We do that . . . we humans . . .” The Sphinx devoured anyone who did not see that they were already devoured. When Oedipus answered, the Sphinx threw itself off the cliff–laughing.
To know it is made of copper and tin does not unriddle the sword. Why, when copper and tin come together, do men pile up like grapes cut from a vine? Whose harvest is this? What wine will be made from the blood of such grapes? Upon whose table will this bounty be laid? Who will eat and who will drink, becoming intoxicated with the wine and moved to dance to the strummings of an eternal lyre?
When I do such reaping on the battlefield, there may be great commotion, such that no one is certain who has fallen. No one mourns the man. Not his comrades, not his wife or his children. How long will that moment last? It seems it could go on forever. Eventually wails and moans break the silence, men pound their chests and women pull at their hair. My own men rejoice at the victory. How long will it be before the rejoicing ones become mourners? How long before those mourners find themselves rejoicing? They will laugh again, enjoy a hearty meal and delicious wine, sigh with pleasure as the evening sky fills with moonlight. Life is a veil, continually rearranged.
We exactly fit the situations of our lives, my son, and the energies of Life move around us because of our shape. If we change our shape, we change the structure of our situation, and we change the whole of Life. We no longer fit the vehicle that has carried us so far. Another ship will take us.
Many men will claim to know what is right or wrong in a given situation. Whether in the case of managing a battle or managing a household, running a race or running a kingdom, showing reverence to the gods or showing respect for one’s friends, everyone has opinions. It matters little if you think you know the right from the wrong, it matters little how sophisticated your thoughts or your speech on the subject. What counts is what you can bring forth from yourself in the moment. One might then say right living is a matter of action. But never forget: it is not only what you do. Even more important is HOW!
The gods of every thing on earth engage in an endless conversation. We can either join the conversation, or be handed its resolutions. There is an irony in this, because the gods take offence at our refusal to be with them at every moment, to converse with a warm heart, and so they read each of our gestures, without exception, as communication. They ask questions and tell jokes, and if we do not answer consciously, they accept the unconscious answers without missing a beat. They take everything we do as reverent communion. If you want to enjoy your life, accept that this is the way things are. By means of will, we do this deliberately at first, and with great skepticism. But in this way we come to love the sounds of the discourse, and the reverence becomes real, a felt thing in the heart-mind.
Truth is nothing more than putting your hands on life. Touch and be open to touching. The whole thing is like a ship: an arrangement, a coming together. If some piece of the ship suddenly decided it didn’t want to touch the pieces around it, the ship would fall apart. We are like that sometimes. We don’t want to touch what is there and don’t want what is there to touch us. We fall to pieces and drift or sink. But if you touch and remain open to touching, everything is there for the journey of the moment. You are steered as if by invisible hands, blown by wind sent by gods and goddesses, rowed by an unseen crew. Your only job is to remain awake.
Don’t make yourself into an Ilion. I see clearly that human beings will build walls against Life. Even in sitting down to eat, they do battle with the sitting, with the eating, with those who have joined them in love and friendship. We cannot win such battles. You cannot defeat even a three legged stool. As a servant of Life it will have its revenge on you. You have to stand with your gates open at all times.
When you lift a veil, something is uncovered while something else is covered. Wisdom is not the covering and uncovering. It is opening to the covering and uncovering. Man is an opening between Heaven and Earth. He dwells in the between, open to both. Heaven and Earth enter him, joining hands, embracing, coming through him in a dance that is his life.