Food for thought from a friend I have never met

Introductions

Sunset as seen from the front yard looking out over the Indian Ocean. What is marvelous is we have one of these everyday about the same time.

One of the great things about the world we live in is that we can become acquainted with people thousands of miles away and develop friendships. I have more friends that I have never met then ones that I have, courtesy of our communications infrastructure, whether it be VOIP, telephones, blogs, substack posts or emails. There is a dark side to this, people can be devilish and hide anonymously and make demeaning and hostile statements. Some good with the bad. I have experienced both sides of this.

The current world situation has people popping up, especially on substack that are doing marvelous things. Creating posts that are evocative, interesting, enlightening and with lots of food for thought. One substaker, Tonika that writes Visceral Adventure has a new song she produced that for me is a must see. The musical group is called Spike Girls and the video is great. She was kind to me and had the words subtitled on the video, my hearing is not so good, missing about 1/2 of the sound spectrum and this made it very enjoyable for me. You could even do karaoke with this one if you are so inclined.

I have had a few different businesses in my life, my motto has always been “Good business makes good friends.” It is through business that I have many friends, almost all I have never met, yet even when the business is closed my client/friends and I still correspond. One of those is Jonathan Seiber. He introduced himself as a writer, but I never knew exactly what he wrote, and now I have found out, he writes beautifully.
We have been corresponding via email and telephone calls for about 4 years now. Jonathan is also an artist, when he lived in Portland OR, he would paint and then reproduce those paintings and post them around Portland and they became quite the collector’s items, to the point that there were a couple of newspaper articles and web postings about the art.

In our last conversation, during which I learn much from this man, I encouraged him to start writing again, and he has. The following is his latest, just a few days old and with his permission I reprint it here. I recommend reading it slowly to get a proper digestion of the food.

September 27, 2022

The soft fall breeze is gently landing upon the islands of the Salish Sea that I am fortunate enough to call my home at present. I could watch the seasons turn throughout the infinite duration of time and space and never lose the sense of wonder that I am filled with when the leaves drift down to the warm earth or the blossoms begin to reach beyond the threads of raindrops woven through the sky. Each moment is held by a quality of light uniquely its own.

Something changed in my thinking when I came to understand that absence is just as real, in a relative sense, as presence. Nothing doesn’t exist. It cannot be identified or rationalized in any meaningful way. It is a cul-de-sac that one can arrive at if emptiness is not comprehended—or embodied. Direct realization is probably more in alignment semantically. The mind actually resides in the heart and the divide between thinking and feeling is an abstraction at best.

Something changed in my living when I began to embrace time as art and not money, though I have never been one to allow materialism to direct me. I value beauty and meaning as much as anyone else but there is nothing truly valuable that is derived from the metrics of modern economics. This isn’t a philosophical stretch for most, but it remains the collective paradigm within which we are all expanding and contracting.

At some point during the past couple of years, I began to understand that the proliferation of information has actually reinforced divisive cognitive structures when I naively assumed that it would result in more synaptic bridges and ladders. We have been given every opportunity to find common ground in our shared humanity but we continue to choose polarization rooted in binary perceptions that have only born the fruit of isolation. It seems inconceivable to support any notion of modern civilization where there is little or no civility to be found.

History will not be kind to us. That’s not it’s job. Hindsight continually reveals to the beholder how primitive and unevolved much of what preceded the ‘present’ actually was. It’s easier to look back and see the blind spots of our ancestors than it is to see our own shortcomings with the naked awareness required for something akin to clarity. Maybe the compassionate act is for us to be kind to history.

Maybe our true struggle is the collective confusion around what kindness actually is? I’m not going to attempt to define it but I can confidently say that it’s not a quality representative of the times in which we live. We live in a world that still accepts warfare as a viable path towards resolution—as if that has ever, even once, been the actual outcome. We live in a world that doesn’t value the miracle of birth—doesn’t revel in the magic and wonder of a child’s mind—doesn’t address the widespread breakdown of mental and emotional wellness—doesn’t revere the wisdom of our elders—our ancestors. We live in a world that appears to value technology over biology—as if the two could actually be extracted from one another.

This, of course, isn’t the complete picture, but it is a relatively accurate portrayal of where the collective process of healing can begin. There must be a sincere exploration of honesty with regards to those things—which we can influence—that we don’t. There is no villain as nefarious as our own capacity for self-deception. We must be as critical of our own participation in this process as we are of others—especially those who we perceive to be at the helm.

The mothership is being steered by nature and traverses every conceivable possibility—every sequence in the sacred geometry of synthesis and unfolding. The hummingbirds dance in the sunlight enveloping my home, even as hearts break and dreams are eclipsed by the uncertainty that pulses within each moment. There are yellow maple leaves dancing with the wind for every prayer that has ever gone unanswered.