So perhaps we reach a point in our lives... and many modern people do... where everything seems so very fucked up and maybe we start thinking that we could have made so many different choices... and avoided this wasting, this careless spending of precious time. We may reach this point but only destroy our lives further by lingering in this forest of already fallen leaves. And so we might get stuck on the forest floor.
All we can really do is gather the remaining good things and move forward... whatever skills we have learned, qualities we value in ourselves, lessons we have learned... especially this lesson of reflecting back... for the future us is also, presumably, looking back...
And we have essentially traveled back in time... right to this particular spot... to transcend ourselves... and if we stay awake and are bold enough, perhaps we can choose wisely, differently.
Perhaps we can transcend our own rapidly beating hearts, even as they pulse through us. We may lack the foresight of our future selves, or logically know where to go, but, if our future selves are anywhere close to being on point, our future selves are likely in a state of being aware, which is something available to us right now... difficult as it may be, if our bodies are bent and our minds are distracted, still it is there...
If, however, we do fuck up... or even if we do what the best of what ourselves ask... and we still fuck up... there is this protection... Life has both meaningful and meaningless aspects. So from this angle, the fuck up is taken with a grain of salt... and no one can really fuck up, not really.
When one strikes things in accord, the meaningfulness may be apparent, but if there is a fuck up, the pointlessness is suddenly apparent... the falling of leaves... the place where everything meets in decay... but also eternalness... as here everything is perhaps all the same...
We seem to be more than the story, despite having lived as a character in it. Destruction is a part of life, at least right here right now, in this context.
There is a video of a group of monks making a very elaborate piece of artwork, carefully laying multi-colored grains of sand to make a picture... a sand mandala.
Upon the very completion of this, they blow the entire piece of art away... every piece of perfection... every imperfection. Still, they made it, they lived it.
What makes children make sandcastles on the beach knowing that they can not take these with them? This art is also play. And it is also work.
Dancing is also an art... and the fact that one can not hold onto one dance move does not negate that. Still one may be satisfied upon completion of a dance... it being at this point something akin to a rest in the grander musical piece.
The ending scenes of Birdman are interesting, because without fame... or perhaps true accomplishment, Keaton's character was tortured... but nor could he reach stability with the fame.
If one is simply part of a dance, the serious becomes not very serious at all. This is not to say that we should live without purpose or to say that we have to live on the air... as we are here standing on the ground. Our forms are solid enough for us to dwell in them. This is all part of the meaning.
When we accept both... that means when meaning leaves, we may expect it to return. We may entertain the idea, the feeling of meaninglessness. However, when we find ourselves without purpose, we need not toss ourselves away.
So if we find ourselves on the forest floor, we may, in a sense, transcend ourselves, get up, stand in the circling leaves of meaninglessness... and gather up what we have... moving forward... perhaps to rendezvous with meaning, but also perhaps moving forward into forgiveness... and into the story of being more than human, b/c life is more than flowers and decay, and the story does not presumably end with these things... but is, at the very least, part of some mysterious cycle... within something else... that is intangible, ungraspable...
Who knows what we might wake up to next? And if we were not to awake, still we have nothing to lose and can only embrace transience and the dance of life.
The great challenge lies in the shadow the past leaves over us... the body one is left with, the programming, the life we are still within and reinforced by... Here, the framework of the past is still alive... if awake, maybe we can fall from it, by breathing, to untangle & to let the fire of anger,bitterness, resentment, from essentially past lives, burn down to embers.
Now, to step out of the easy fairytale of words, and into what might be a very uncomfortable body and a very uncomfortable life... we may find modalities in the world to help us unwind, restructure... perhaps if the body is tight, we seek out bodywork, muscle balancing practices, and chiropractic alignments.
Perhaps if we experience mental imbalance, we seek out an optimal diet and herbal approach to help with that... Perhaps we harness the placebo effect, and the apparent mind-matter inseparability to our advantage. Perhaps we leave a destructive relationship. What if we feel unable to leave a relationship?
I don't think the point here is to pretend that there is an easy answer to everything... only to point out this dual existence of both meaningful and meaningless.
We may approach ourselves with less judgment and lighten the load, stop carrying an 80 pound pack down the trail, enabling a better negotiation of what is before us rather than behind us. It is to encourage awareness... potentially to wake up and ask 'how can I enhance my life today? but also to accept what we perceive as failings.
Still, it is easy for those who are in state of complete ease (and this is by no means myself that I am referring to) to deliver quotes to those who are in a painful states. It is no secret that discomforts of the body can distract, make it difficult to ease into the meditative state that a fluid individual has access to. Perhaps the body must be treated, in a physical manner, to integrate these possibilities.
Nonetheless, it comes down to awareness and being able to make choices outside of the past and outside of the pain, so that we can treat ourselves well.
For the perfectionist, who is in danger of mental paralysis, treating one's self well may be simply to move in any direction... to transcend a decision that has become so stuffed with meaning that it has to be moved past to save one's own life... a risk must be taken. We can get stuck in the uncertain future, as well as the past.
We may cry over dead leaves, and perhaps we should cry over them, but not for too long... as the forest floor is alive and new things may grow. Flowers growing out of compost.
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