2006-08-06 - 6:56 p.m.
My father has been on my mind a lot, lately. This may because he is the one remaining parent, but a more important thing I should say about him at the outset is that of all the people living today, he is the one person I know who knows the most. We in the family, and certainly people outside of the family, have always disagreed with his opinions--a lot. But ever since I lived with my parents as an adult for three years in the early 90s, my observations of him had been knocking the pins out from underneath those disagreements one by one.
What always made him different from the bulk of us was that he wasn�t what he called �political,� and by that he meant that he wasn�t like a public relations spin artist or a salesman or a marketer. With him you got him pure, plain, and outspoken, no matter how shocking, off-putting, seemingly irrelevant, or apparently bizarre. He didn�t care about your feelings on the matter, what he cared about was the truth as he understood it. But as time went on, his opinions were more and more being revealed as being right on and always completely relevant.
I realized the other day that he was much like a guru in that respect, perfectly willing to strike your view of the world right across the head with a two-by-four if that was what it took to wake you up. I don�t know how fully awake he is�I mean, what was that statement either about Jesus or by Jesus, that a prophet is never accepted in his own home? I think that�s what it was. As a child, of course, you view your parents as gods, but when adolescence hits, you may go through a rebellious phase and many never get back into a position of respecting and honoring their parents. Instead, they simply become adults on their own and sometimes sit back amazed at how much like their parents they are. For me, whenever I have experienced that, it has been a glorious revelation instead of a horrifying one.
What I have said as the final summation of my mother�s dying was that the Universe had now changed. There never was a time in any child�s life when both their mother and their father weren�t there in the world�until they no longer were. Parents were as constant as the heavenly bodies. After my mother died, it was as if the moon were now gone from the sky. There was a huge void in the world. But I realized that what I did, what I had to do, was to expand myself in my own life to fill up that void. I feel as though I have never grown as much as a person as I have since the last week of March 2006. I feel that I am becoming more awake, and more alive, like a new-born colt just expelled from the womb, realizing that his hooves are now touching the ground.
For too long now, our family�s orientation was toward our father�s potential death. He was eight years older than my mother, and in failing health. And our mother was totally dependent upon his care, so the loss of him, besides being a crisis of the loss of him as him, himself, would have been a crisis in everybody�s life due to the loss of him as the essential caregiver of our mother. So his death would have been a truly destructive double-whammy.
We never thought of her dying, it was always him. But we were fooled�she was the one who died and he is still alive.
No one really knows what his feeling is about her death; he really won�t talk about it, or if he will, what he has to say is so far from what everybody else is thinking and feeling that we can�t even carry on a conversation. It�s as if we no longer have a common language. Also, we�re confused as to how to �fit him into the world�, now. He was a branch of the �them� that they were, and now what is left of that whole is unbalanced. We�re not sure how to have a relationship with him without her, and I�m not so sure he knows how to have a relationship with himself without her�but I do think he is discovering how, just as we are.
Ever since Mom�s death, Dad started mentioning a little about his own death, not much, but some. This was something he never discussed before, but now it's in the vein of that may be all that remains before him. If he ever mentioned his own dying in conversations before, it was in relation to our worry about how Mom was going to be taken care of without him, but he negated those fears by saying that he would always take care of her. And he did. Most amazingly so, he completely fulfilled his own pledge, that he would always take care of her. Was that luck, or some kind of amazing spiritual skill? In all honestly, I tend to think the latter�that this was an achievement, not just a rolling of the dice of fate.
Many great people in history have had control over their lives in such a way�three I can name right off the top of my head were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Emanuel Swedenborg. Should I not think of, or recognize, my own father as also being a great man? Of course he is, a very great man, of whom there have been many throughout history, very few of them recognized. Greatness does not have to be �famous� or recognized in the history books (in fact those who are famous or historically recognized most likely really weren�t great, but instead somehow stand in as a symbol of something that could have been great) and anyone who thinks fame or recognition is required is by that very false opinion already stuck among the lowest portion of humanity, not only unable to achieve greatness themselves, but also unable to recognize it in others. Those nefarious forces that seek to enslave the minds of the massive �mobocracy� are those who underscore and promulgate such an opinion, and those who buy it are the losers.
My father never bought it, and therefore he was never harmed or stalled by it. He knew that greatness was often a hidden and individual achievement, recognized by a very few. But there are those of us who know of it and recognize it when we experience it, although putting together the words to point it out is sometimes difficult. It's as if there is something in society and culture that seeks to keep it hidden and unknown. Maybe it's like lifting weights...you don't develop muscle without external resistance.
Anyone who ever genuinely and open-mindedly works with a classroom full of very young children knows clearly how true it is that greatness resides within each and every being. You can see it as clear as day. But greatness in the world, instead of being an unstoppable force and power as one might think, is as delicate as a soap bubble or a snowflake; so easily burst or melted. Or maybe it is like a helium balloon, like what our school gives to each child after they have completed their admissions testing. They carry their own greatness at the end of a very thin string. If they don�t watch out, that balloon will float away from them so fast, or get burst by one of the many sharp tree branches that luxuriously shades our beautiful campus.
One of my self-created jobs during admissions testing days was, instead of simply handing a string with a balloon on the end of it to each child like the others were doing, to ask each child if I could tie the balloon�s string to his or her wrist. So sweetly and trustingly they would proffer their tiny arms, and I would carefully and respectfully tie the strings around them, tight enough to keep the balloon held in place, but not too tight that it hurt their wrist. I felt as if their own bodies reflected that very soap-bubble delicateness of greatness that I am discussing here. Then I�d point out the dangerously sharp tree branches and caution them to watch out! �Pull the balloon down close to you when you walk under those trees, okay? That way, your balloon won�t be popped by them.� What else can a caring adult really do? Give them some of the tools they need and leave them with a few cautions�then the rest is all up to them.
It was so cute to see those who would obey my warning and watch where they were going, some of them holding the balloon carefully nurtured at their side like a precious animal. They, at least, got as far as their car with that balloon�maybe even managed to get it home. Then there were those others who�d forget what I said almost immediately upon leaving my side. Not paying attention, they�d hardly go ten feet before I�d hear the sound of their balloon bursting. Fortunately, I�d be able to offer a replacement, and maybe that, too, is another of life�s principles. Although multiple chances are rare and you don�t know from where they might come, they do exist and one shouldn�t give up on them. Joseph Campbell used to repeat an aphorism, �Beware the passing of Jesus, for he may never come this way again,� meaning that if you miss him, there might not be another chance, but I know that there is a whole corps of angels out there working, so you ought not ever close the door against their possibility.
My father was one who never lost his helium balloon, but always made sure that at least one track of his mind was paying attention to what was happening to that string, and he kept his eyes open for the sharp tree branches in the world around him. That�s what he always referred to as �paying attention to the details.� Without paying attention to the details, your great big plans have no chance of fruition, or else they blow up like a Space Shuttle with faulty O-rings. Who was that king suddenly thrown down on foot in a raging battle who called out, �A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse?� For want of a nail, the horseshoe is lost, and for want of a horseshoe, the horse is lost.
I reflect upon how it is almost impossible to really know as certain knowledge anything heard from without except from a very few trusted souls. There are so many forces out there competing for our attention and acceptance (and our votes and our dollars and our allegiance) that it is impossible to ever securely take a step forward; instead, we�re left struggling in a slough of uncertainty and half-truths. Government-approved knowledge versus conspiracy theory. Official history versus question and denial. Scientifically approved theory versus individual anecdotal experience. And on and on it goes. Jews vs Moslems vs Christians. Socialists and Communists versus Capitalists. Statists versus Libertarians. Science versus Religion. Creationism versus Evolution. Who killed JFK? Martin Luther King, hero or villain? Should the South have been allowed to secede? Was Lincoln the greatest president the country ever had, or the worst? The Holocaust versus holocaust deniers. What really happened in 9/11? Is Peak Oil real? The Federal Reserve Board and collapse of the dollar? Should you invest in gold, or will the government just take it away later? Global warming, truth or hoax? New World Order, NeoCons, Dominionists, the Bilderberger Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Illuminati, the Zionists, the Skull and Crossbones, and many others? The HIV virus explanation for AIDS? Low carb or low fat? Sunbathing causes skin cancer or necessary for health? Can you really throw your glasses away? The coming (or already existing) Race War, or the rainbow of Diversity? Meat eating or veganism? Medical experimentation of animals, necessary or an abomination? Is the Internet and your neighborhood riddled with sexual predators?
The list just goes on and on and on so that sometimes I feel like I�m in the middle of The Grapes of Wrath. I woke up one day, only to find that my whole farm blew away in the dust and now I have to pack my flivver with all my possessions, only to manage to make it to California and find it isn�t the promised land after all�we were all led astray, like those in the Donner Party.
After way too much of this, I just have to cry �STOP�! There is virtually no outside knowledge and guidance that I can truly count on�it is all distorted and manipulative and incomplete and not necessarily what I need for MY life anyway. It�s all about SOMEBODY ELSE�S life, not ME. I can only find the answers from within myself. I pray that I still have the string of that helium balloon tied to my wrist. And I think I do, I honestly do. Isn�t that what I feel gently tugging on my wrist?
I�m not my father�s son for nothing.
There�s no death here, or even an expectation of death. Where did we get the idea that existence was all cut up like the �Don�t Tread On Me� snake? It�s all a unified whole, a complete path. Sure, the path maybe jumps across a fold in the dimensions that we can�t see, or at its most simple, is like a Mobius strip. One moment we are on this side of the strip, and then the path makes a twist and then we are on that side of the strip, but it�s still the same path and, in fact, still the same strip.
So, I�m not comfortable with the idea of consigning my father to the position of �nothing remains before him but death,� or at least no more for him than for anybody else. The wisdom that comes from within me says that that is crazy, irrelevant, and meaningless and one shouldn�t even waste a nano-second of time on it. Instead, there is still an infinitely valuable treasure, waiting there to mine. Dad�s path will continue as it always has, with exploration, achievement, success, and knowledge, and, very importantly, knowledge to share�what else? The path, however it twists or turns, will remain the same, and with him securely on it.
The one person I know who knows the most is too valuable to be viewed any other way. He must be viewed as eternal, and always living in the present. Any other view violates the verifiable laws of physics and spirituality. May he long remain where he can be seen, heard, and touched. But within that, he is also absorbed and incorporated deep within the inside of us. Always, he remains there, and therefore truly never ever can be gone.
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