I have friends who are Quakers, friends who are Unitarian Universalists, friends who Dialogue in the Bohmian tradition, friends who are Mystics, friends who are Poets, and so many other friends who live lives of wisdom and wonder... this is my account of the meeting with these friends...

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Comment on Where Paradox Meets Bedrock

I found the quote below by Edward Abbey on Forest Wisdom's blog- his post and his reader's comments called Paradox and Bedrock, led me to write a long-ish comment which I decided was worth cross posting here- but do go and see the whole thing on yonder page!


"Leading me away from the narrow dirt road, an alluring and primitive track into nowhere, meanders down the slope and toward the heart of the labyrinth of naked stone...looming over a bend in the road, is a balanced rock about fifty feet high, mounted on a pedestal of equal height; it looks like a head from Easter Island, a stone god or a petrified ogre.

Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and the filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow remains intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock." --Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire


my comment:

This quote (reflects) exactly where I came to name my own blog as the "meeting"... paradox and bedrock- its perfect! everyones comments are perfect!

paradox will come to us at the end of our measurements - if we understand this notion of measurements as a field, then at the edges of this field is where paradox appears - bedrock, naturally, is the ground beneath all... so to come to that meeting-place where all of our measurements can be held in suspension- our names, our positions in society, our history, our dreams of "future"- all of these measurements of "who we are" exist in time, past and future... so to be able to hold them in suspension, to not need to see everything around us in the natural world (of which the man-made world is a part) through these filters, but to meet it all raw- naked- without being clothed in "who we are"... this meeting place is easiest seen at the edges of the field of measurement... of course, it must be understood that the meeting place is everywhere, the bedrock is beneath everything- but its at the edges of our measurements where we come to the place where words will fail utterly- its there where form meets the formless- the ultimate creativity- the complete breathlessness of ones participation with that which discludes nothing, the Whole...

there is no paradox, when we come to where our measurements can see their own end... there is no paradox when words fail and we allow them to do so... paradox is a "mathematical" term, if you will- and since it is found at the edge of our ability to measure (the mathematical/grammatical mind) it is bound to frustrate- this will seem very brutal or "dangerous" indeed to the "who-we-are"... the who-we-are will be quite insistent on measuring out its "place", in order to stay alive... but the body-wisdom- the natural wisdom of our true selves, need not believe that these measurements are anything more than a ping- a tool to move about in the primordial soup that is still this living that we do...

we are "meeting" with the bedrock all the time- it is the ground of being- its all around, ever present, and utterly without time... time only comes into existence for us humans, with our measurements (past/future- if/then- I/other)... bedrock gives not a whit whether we meet it or not- its always there, its always supporting us... it is Love itself... it only knows itself... there is nothing that separates from bedrock- there is nothing that can exist separate from bedrock...

where paradox meets bedrock-

where the ending of our measurements meets that which cannot be measured ...

where a bird comes and alights on a branch, and the witness disappears in the event... this is the wholeness - this is the "mystical" (un-measured, mystery) - this is Love loving itself... ever present, ever available for our participation... no practice will come to this- no wisdom will "get" us this- there is no "having" of this... we already ARE this... fully, wholly, immeasurably... words fail, here in this, because this is before "we" are born... in every moment- reborn and dying to this...

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