As Faustus begins his bargaining for fame and gain, my scanner highlights a phrase of what Faustus sees as one gain of making a deal with the devil: to be resolved of all ambiguities. Hmm-m-m, goes the scanner. And suddenly I become aware of an evolution in how I see ambiguity. It used to drive me crazy. It seems that this tension has fallen away for me somehow.
Jim has been in contemplative mood following a visit to the theater to see a neighbour play Faustus. See his post Living Ambiguity.
On a personal note: I’m currently allowing myself time and space to have a cold. It is a rare treat! This approach comes highly recommended for those who have the time. Who would have thought one could be happy and content while sneezing and wheezing into tissues.
Nancy and I crunch our way down the gravel road on a late afternoon beach walk. A car rolls up, window down. Our neighbor Nancy, sister in name and mirth to my Nancy, tells us with a smile that her fourteen-year-old son, Jack, has given everything he has and everything he is to the devil. He’s made his pact with Lucifer and dies. It’s just a hard thing for a mother to witness even if it is a play. Neighbor Nancy is now in a hurry to bring Jack something to eat before he appears in the next Young Actor’s Guild’s performance of Dr. Faustus. Jack is Dr. Faustus. We really shouldn’t miss it.
As far as my Nancy and I are concerned, Jack is a local treasure. Actor, singer, raconteur, Jack is a member of a creative family that has brought laughter to the neighborhood. Jack has already helped us get reacquainted with Gilbert and Sullivan, so why not Christopher Marlowe?
Fast forward to the next evening: Nancy and I are sitting in the small theater of the Theater Arts building in the local university amidst the pre-show buzz and chatter. The man next to Nancy asks: Which child is yours? It’s a friendly crowd, here to witness and encourage.
Waiting to see Jack, I take in the stage setting. Angular, minimal, sharp contrasts between light and dark. As the play unfolds, a pattern of clever use of space and a smooth flow of complicated movements is established. Then there is Jack-as-Faustus: he acts with his whole body in a way that remains in harmony with his speech. And it’s a very physical part.
I also begin taking in the arc of the story. I came here because I appreciate Jack and Jack-as-Faustus, in turn, is bringing me back to the archetypal struggle between good and evil, right into the apparent separation between heaven and earth. That’s when I notice the scanner kicking in.
The scanner that I’m talking about here seems to lie below the surface of my self-awareness. I can’t describe it well, but it acts like a sort of software in my psyche that scans incoming data from all and any source. I can tell when it’s moved beyond an idle and is considering something more actively. This scanner seems to look for puzzle pieces, connections between things, perspectives that lead to wholeness; it has an inclination to look through to the Big Picture.
As Faustus begins his bargaining for fame and gain, my scanner highlights a phrase of what Faustus sees as one gain of making a deal with the devil: to be resolved of all ambiguities. Hmm-m-m, goes the scanner. And suddenly I become aware of an evolution in how I see ambiguity. It used to drive me crazy. It seems that this tension has fallen away for me somehow.
Hell, for me, is not an afterlife issue. I have a reputation with myself (and with Nancy and R.M. Mugo as well, I suppose) of moving in and out of hells on a regular basis. Hells of various depths and dimensions, from bristling to excruciating, come and go. And, likewise, heavens. I am trying, to the best of my ability in the moment, not to pursue or push away either. In that there is a contentment that reaches beyond both.
But there is a price, I find. Not a price that can be bargained for though, but a price that I have to live. Simply put: I must be willing to not know what is going to happen next. I’m not talking about paralysis here, this is not about fear. Well, it may, on occasion, require being with fear or insecurity but it’s not about being driven by fear or insecurity. Ambiguity has become for me an increase in possibility, a wider field of possible action. Life as one surprise after another, moment to moment to moment….
The scanner continues and notes a comment the servant demon Mephistopheles makes to Faustus: Hell has no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place…. All places shall be hell that is not heaven. Hmm-m-m, again. Sure feels that way when I’m mired in a hell realm. But there’s something else here: assuming the imperative to pick between heaven or hell as fundamentally real just might squeeze out any sensing of what is eternal in the present moment.
How can poor Faustus escape this split? Well, he doesn’t. And now I am back watching Jack-as-Faustus splayed on the ground in his death scene. He cries out to God for salvation and dies. A crowd of black-robed figures moves slowly toward him, the lead figure holding the contract Faustus has with the devil. The lights dim just as she reaches the body.
Please correct me if I am wrong however I believe these specimens are Fat Baby (Cyclanthera brachystachya) noted for their soft fleshy spines. Achocha is one of the lost crops of the Incas.
This post is for Julie. Thought these little critters might fit into your gardening plans. At home or abroad…
Just what is it that kicks in, when panic doesn’t? When something happens, as it did for me this morning, which might warrant slight panic, there’s a choice and it isn’t Do I panic or Do I not? Nor is it a matter of maintaining a cool calm exterior while running around inwardly screaming! The best I can say is that there are split second flashes of recognition of what’s happened, and what’s happening, and what’s to do next. Somehow there is, in these moments, enough backbone left, (the ability to keep body and mind cooperating), to respond to the flow of recognitions with confidence.
This is how it happened: I was out in Hexham with an American visitor this morning on route to deliver her to the railway station. Her luggage had been left in the monastery car while we had lunch together. At the end of the meal, preferring not to fumble for the key at the car door, I reached for it while she went to the loo. No key! Four pockets, one purse, a bag – all searched at least twice – still no key! And so the story unfolded, very quickly with very quick thinking. Thankfully my companion, who I’d only just met, seemed collected and confident, which helped.
Mentally clicking through my options I first found a cell phone signal outside of Boots the Chemist and called the local police to report lost property. Could you just pop into the Chemists to see if a key has been handed in? I asked my companion and off she went. It was a long shot however we had been in Boots before lunch. The police call was a protracted one, your name?, your name again is…? And while in the midst of the call, you guessed, the key appeared having been handed in at the shop. Signing off with the police with the good news I remarked Ah, the universe is cooperating today, and we proceeded to the car and the railway station.
By ‘the universe cooperating’ I’m not talking about magical thinking or such like. More that I was acknowledging, with gratitude, the roots of confidence. This evening I’d talk about the roots as that which one says Yes! to. A Yes response deep within, a reflexive yes, when no or I can’t or panic would be the habitual response to such circumstances.
Tonight, and it is getting late, I’d say the root of confidence is without limit. We just need to muster the where-with-all to allow confidence, on this level to kick in.
We talk about being still within conditions. It is easy to equate still with static when in practice it is a flowing still. At least that’s how it seems to me.
The other day I had friends over who, like me, enjoy being creative. The idea of our get together was to encourage each other by sharing ideas and teaching something of our own ‘specialities’. While the pumpkin soup was warming on the stove I went upstairs to fetch a quilt I have been working on to show them. This was duly admired. Then I remembered I had played with another medium – folded books. I had spent a happy hour making the said piece and wanted to share my enthusiasm with them. Although my friends seemed to want to see what I have been making, a further reaction made it clear to me that they felt overwhelmed and a little phased by my enthusiasm and confidence – I can be quite enthusiastic at times! Someone said something that pointed to a feeling of competativeness. The atmosphere changed, if only temporarily, and I realised that both of my friends were either measuring themselves by my seeming achievements and felt inadequate or they thought I was showing my stuff in order to feel better myself. The knowledge that I managed to ‘put down’ my friends, however unintentionally, keeps coming back into my mind. I feel disturbed to realise that my actions caused such a result.
I have both rationalised and wriggled around in order to avoid my part in their discomfort; they were both feeling disturbed by conflicts/inadequacies of their own, it’s their stuff, they misunderstood my intentions, stop stressing, it’s and not important etc, etc.
But the awareness and knowledge remains. What should I do? How should I change in order to avoid this reaction in the future?
I learned years ago about a piece of research in the field of psychology (sorry, can’t reference this at all) that demonstrated that when people were asked to notice and bring into their awareness a behaviour that they wanted to change this behaviour diminished in frequency, sometimes to the point of extinction. It was enough just to notice . So… no pushing away…… no necessity for rationalising, deliberate thought or forced behaviour change. To those of us that know Rules for Meditation this will sound familiar.
So I will do nothing. Or rather I am not going to get caught up in or dragged around by circumstances, thoughts, feelings and emotions. I will continue to be aware and notice what is going on to the best of my ability and trust my intention to avoid future harm in this way. And for now, I will just get on with the next thing. And along the line of next things, perhaps a simple apology to my friends.
