On a late-afternoon bike ride I spotted the unmistakable flight pattern of a kite falcon, the first I’ve seen in a couple years. Given all the recent “development” into the fields around the periphery of town, I thought they had become extinct in the area.
But there one was, hovering over an as yet undeveloped patch, slender white wings flashing in the last direct sunlight as the gracile hawk held its position. When it spots prey, this type of falcon doesn’t dive but tucks its wings and parachutes to the ground in a graceful arc. I waited until that moment of timeless splendor occurred, and then continued my ride.
Back at the house after sunset, the sky became intensely white, with a slight pinkish hue. As dusk deepened, the bare, fractal branches of deciduous trees to the southwest evoked a deep sense of life’s mystery.
An ineffable blessing comes when all-inclusive, non-directed attention ends the movement of thought/time, and one is directly and acutely aware of the beauty and mystery of the earth.
As it grew dark, a hummingbird took its last long drink at the feeder. There was non-personal affection for it, for the last light upon the land, and for all the things of the earth, even man.
The death of day came gently as the light faded, and the self died with the day. The self is nothing but memories and images, and dies when we die anyway. One saw that the self’s fear of death doesn’t allow us to see that death and life are inextricable, and that we cannot truly know life without experiencing death while fully alive.
As I went in, that insight contrasted with lines from the oft-cited Dylan Thomas poem: “Do not go gentle into that good night,/ Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
What foolishness that is, given that “easeful death” is palpably present every day at the end of day. Indeed, if one allows death to draw near and be present within us, one finds that death is the ground of all energy, matter and being.
If we directly come into contact with the ever-present actuality of death, and the self dies with the day, what happens when we expire?
Clearly, there is no continuity of thought, which is the essence of the self, but paradoxically, if the self dies when one is vitally alive, does a flame within us keep burning? And if so, is that what immortality actually is?
It has become a common refrain among therapists to say things like, “I believe that your whole, true self is your key to everything you desire for your life and society.”
However, I question whether there is any such thing anymore as a healthy self, much less such a thing as the “whole self.”
Of course, some therapists may be referring to the totality of a person — mind, emotions, body and spirit. It isn’t just a semantic problem, however.
To my mind and meditative experiencing, there is no such thing as a whole self. One is only whole when the self recedes, and thought, which fabricates and continuously sustains the self, is completely quiet.
In short, the self is inherently a fragment, and a fragment cannot become whole. When the fragment ceases dominating the brain, wholeness is.
In psychology and neuroscience, the self is taken as a given. That’s a main reason why psychology has fostered the rampant and frankly pathological individualism so evident in American culture. And it’s why neuroscience is stuck on the supposed “hard problem” of consciousness — “how does the brain give rise to subjective experience?”
Individualism leads to narcissism, and we recoil at what that has politically produced. And equating subjective experience with the self, and viewing the self as the cornerstone of consciousness, is very problematic.
For example, mystical states are undeniably subjective, but they have nothing to do with the self and aren’t a matter of personal subjectivity, since they only occur when the self recedes, if not dissolves.
Some of the confusion about the nature of the self has been imported from the East, like the nonsense about a “higher self.” In New Age lingo, one hears things like:
“In essence, connecting with your higher self is about remembering who you truly are beneath the layers of your everyday self, aligning your authentic purpose, and living from a place of love and wisdom.”
The entire treacly edifice of a higher self collapses around the inanity of “remembering who you truly are beneath the layers of your everyday self.”
Necessarily, therapy involves remembering childhood and adulthood trauma. But meditation flows from undividedly and non-reactively observing what is as it arises within and around us in the moment.
Taking the time every day to passively watch one’s inner reactions in the mirror of the outer movement of nature and the world allows one to leave the polluted stream of content-consciousness, however briefly.
Given what society and the world have become, doing so keeps the mind young, the heart growing, and the brain vital. It also allows one to reengage with society afresh. As the saying goes, “love and do what you will.”
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