Fire-works Went Off in My Head...

There is a funny bit that goes on around here. I often proclaim  that something, a book, a movie, a record, a food item, or some activity that I have newly taken up has "changed my life." It often sounds silly when I announce the latest example. It often elicits laugher from the peanut gallery. But it's true. My life changes, sometimes majorly, sometime minorly, often, from a multitude of influences and experiences. I mean, isn't that the point?

Examples? From an early age to now...

Meditation. Running. Bike-riding. Sam Shepard's one-act plays. The Who's "Tommy." The Beatles on TV. Frozen-yogurt, Everything Bagels. David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest," Melville's "Moby Dick," Wes Anderson's "Rushmore," all of Kurt Vonnegut's novels, Dylan's "Highway 61," and every other Dylan album too. Sigur Ros' beautiful music,  Roberto Bolano's novels, Patti Smith's "Horses," acting, writing, directing plays, playing guitar, playing in a band, writing songs, singing, etc.

Experiencing/doing/taking in all those things altered me forever. Changed the trajectory of my life, my thinking, my understanding of my self. I am still on the hunt for life-changing influences every day. Yesterday it was a series of sentences that I found on this post from Brain-Pickings, about reason & emotion.

I had a series of "aha" moments reading this post. 

"We ourselves are events in history. Things do not merely happen to us, they happen through us."

Well... right... exactly... and...

"The strength of our opposition to the development of reason is measured by the strength of our dislike of being disillusioned. We should all admit, if it were put to us directly, that it is good to get rid of illusions, but in practice the process of disillusionment is painful and disheartening. We all confess to the desire to get at the truth, but in practice the desire for truth is the desire to be disillusioned. The real struggle centres in the emotional field, because reason is the impulse to overcome bias and prejudice in our own favour, and to allow our feelings and desires to be fashioned by things outside us, often by things over which we have no control. The effort to achieve this can rarely be pleasant or flattering to our self-esteem. Our natural tendency is to feel and to believe in the way that satisfies our impulses. We all like to feel that we are the central figure in the picture, and that our own fate ought to be different from that of everybody else. We feel that life should make an exception in our favour. The development of reason in us means overcoming all this. Our real nature as persons is to be reasonable and to extend and develop our capacity for reason. It is to acquire greater and greater capacity to act objectively and not in terms of our subjective constitution. That is reason, and it is what distinguishes us from the organic world, and makes us super-organic."

Holy Shite! As read all of this I kept thinking: OF COURSE! I mean, I suggest you read the whole thing too. Yikes. Feeling super-organic this morning. We don't just reason the world, we experience it with all our emotions on high. It's not easy. It's a hard thing to be so open and sensitive to all phenomena. But that is what living is about. We are living history, and Universe is flowing and actualizing thru us. We must remain sensitive to everything, even if it seems that the hardness of life will crush us. It's the only way to live: heart/head/soul as one. Open-hearted, open-headed, arms held wide, ready to embrace everything. And what we experience is unique to us, but is not unique. We are just being human, we are the instruments that the Universe uses in which to play and to manifest.

Reading that post yesterday, well, I mean, fire-works went off in my head, my doors of perception blew wide open.  Yes. For sure. Changed my life! Amen Brothers & Sisters!