Existential Crisis

One side effect of devising this movie has been to challenge the grounds for my knowledge in all life’s arenas, pushing and pulling at extremes to test the foundations.  This leads to anxious frustration, or a tick of rabid glee, or can activate an engine of maniacal drive.

Judging by the past few posts it is evident that I have been a bit frustrated with the universe of thought, although equally thrilled.

Attempting to be fair and objective can be extremely trying and many roads are misleading.

Today I was hit by a revelation, one that I have attempted in the past, but surrendered to appease “normalcy.”  To cope better with the world and accept it, I thought, but truly to gloss over my shortcomings.

An example comes from J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey.  The two titles characters are the youngest of the brilliant Glass family.  Franny is enrolled at a rich prep school on the East Coast.  She feels disillusioned by the charade and insincerity and returns home, heartbroken.

Although her problems stem from more profound origins, ostensibly the reason Franny is so upset is that she is incapable of reciting constant prayer – this is her way of remaining close to enlightenment and escape our disingenuous world.  Her brother lifts her out of her funk by explaining that prayer can be observed in many different forms, and even somewhat belittles the need to be in a state of constant reverence as detached from our functions as mortal beings.

It seems that in my own experience the voluntary progression into a nebulous perception of reality was accompanied by an involuntary detachment from constant prayer.  Now, this is not bad, or unnecessary, but at the same time lacking.

I just had to recall a focus that rolls like the pilgrimage of water, bending never breaking.

Now, my prayer in and of itself is not a eulogy to a deity.  It is an acknowledgment of presence.

It is akin to remembering that not only am I alive, that I exist within a system or many, but that I drive my own essence.  That my choices are my own.

To be lost in a deep philosophical journey is a detachment from self, which is true and not.  The not is easily forgotten.

I don’t know if this happens to other people or not: I am performing a task and suddenly shiver, as though in a wisp of air stirred by a languid ghostdance.  The mind expands to take hold of this realization of control.

Oftentimes it feels that months go by without this understanding of the will.  It can sometimes manifest out of the blue, like a bird that spies a clear path only to smash into a window pane.

The soul returns to the first thought: I live.

It is a residual meditation, whereas meditation is an active dream.

My aim is to perpetuate appreciation of space-time, through a sort of thought-ritual, generating a slow feedback or loop, and remain in a state of infinitely satisfied calm.  Compare this state with becoming comfortably numb and you see the difference between active philosophy and the old way of confronting the mal du siecle.

The demands of the world seem far less importunate.  Destiny more malleable.

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