A MOSH PIT OF THE MIND

wooden rocking chair

It feels like I had an insight yesterday into what I meant the day before, writing about feeling like the passenger instead of the driver in my vehicle through life. I questioned if my apparent detachment was indifference or true letting go. The difference is great, though subtle. I had been invited to a big outdoor "party" of white middle-class people from Away. I knew a few of them. My car's battery was dead from a brake light that stayed on all night and half the next day. Somewhat down-hearted, I decided not to go to the party. Next door neighbor called and asked if I'm going to the party. They're going too, if I'd like to ride with them. Ok. Friend in passenger seat went to the back seat and left the passenger seat to me. I was sure he had not read what I had written the day before. Thought it odd he should do that when the subject of passenger seat was in the front of my mind. I decided to go, because suddenly it was so easy. Plus, I told myself I do need to get out into the world of others a few times a week to keep in touch with others. I could stay home all the time, but do need social interaction with others for the mental/emotional exercise, and possibly the comfort of feeling acceptable among others. I get terribly bored of myself. I sat in the passenger seat thinking this is odd, so odd it's like a cosmic set-up. It told me, if I want to believe my intuitions, the day is going to be a passenger seat experience. I received it as such, something to pay attention to at the party to find examples of the feeling, if they're there. I also could be misinterpreting and fooling myself to please self. I allow plenty of room for fooling self while interpreting self's thoughts and actions. It's easier to fool self than anybody else. 

tunnel in the woods

Riding down the road, I was thinking of the difference between sitting, looking out the front and side windows, how more relaxed it is not to be driving with focus on keeping the car on the road. I feel like driving is a good focus of attention. Even when we're doing it unconsciously, we are constantly in process of keeping the car on the road. Good mental exercise. I can't help but think the focus of driving, a kind of meditation, is necessary for everyone on earth in this time, as learning to drive is essential for living anywhere in the world. Within a half mile I'd settled into my new role of riding instead of driving, observing my feeling, the views out the windows beside the road. I've learned with a front wheel drive car, the front wheels follow where my eyes go. If I look off to the right at a remaining old wooden barn, the front wheels veer to the right. Same to the left. Front wheel drive has taught me to keep my eyes on the road at all times. It's a strange phenomenon that has something to do with gyroscopic effect difference from pushing and pulling the weight mass. I didn't like taking science courses in school, though I see often the benefit of learning at least the scientific method in everyday life. Those who don't have it don't miss it, but having it, I am grateful. I came out of a church that preached evolution was a communist lie. I'd never looked into it. Freshman biology in college brought the subject up. I wondered how an educated woman, like the professor, could believe both God and evolution. I knew she went to church. I asked her, person to person one day after class, how she can believe in both God and evolution. Her answer: Its easy. She dismissed me as a dumb shit, not knowing how deeply her two words resonated throughout my consciousness. It was the moment I started getting it. 

jenny

There is not a separation of God and evolution, like I don't anymore see a divide between science and art. I can see a divide between science and some kinds of religion. Religion is a fiction of the human mind. I feel it's credible to say science and what we call spirituality would be in accord. In my way of seeing it, true spirituality questions. Questioning is inhibited in religion, a sign of little faith. Reading a spiritual principle in scripture, instead of just saying, That's right, and going on, I believe the spiritual principle wants to be questioned and explored until I understand its meaning and its application in everyday life, by experience. Initiate an action, put it out in the world, and wait to see how it comes back. Make it something you want back. Every scripture that's ever been written includes something to do with karma: you get what you give, everything comes back. To a lot of preachers I've heard, this tends to be about winning souls to the Lord like it's an Amway pyramid scheme. If you browbeat and alienate enough people, some will come to the Lord. Your harvest will be acceptable. In my view, that is so not what it's about, the best example I know of. It means if you treat somebody like shit, you will be treated like shit immediately, soon or eventually. You'll have your own moment. Everything has its return. When I'm generous with others, others tend to be generous with me. When I'm mean-spirited with somebody, soon the same one or somebody else will be mean-spirited toward me. The evidence we all know this principle unconsciously is when something objectionable happens to somebody and the individual says, "What'd I do? I didn't do nothin to deserve this!" Maybe and maybe not. Sometimes, as far as I can tell, shit happens. Sometimes it is the other one sowing and I'm on the receiving end. I didn't do something to start it, then it falls to me to send the return. Like my friends who have been in prison tell somebody on their way in, first time somebody disrespects you in any way, knock him on his ass. You will get your ass kicked severely gang-style, but word goes around you'll fight and you will be left alone. 

elder rhododendron

At the party I found a place to sit on a step with a paper plate of food and beer in a freezing glass, fork and napkin. Spoke with a few people I knew. Every time I spoke with anybody for no matter how brief a span of time, here came somebody fulfilling their duty to interrupt any two people they see talking. This is why I don't like to go anyplace anymore. Coffee shop, too. I never had a conversation with anyone I talked with. We'd start talking about something; here came the interruption, like a cell phone ringing, totally unconscious of their rudeness. It's the American way. It's what Americans do. It is a duty to every living American to interrupt any two people you see talking. The duty is absolute. I knew this going into the gathering, was put off the first time it happened, reminded self this is America. It is not rudeness. It is someone fulfilling their duty. I settled into it and fell to my own code of behavior. I've made it a point with self when interrupted I consciously forget the subject we were talking about. Will not go through, "What were we talking about?" What the hell? It doesn't matter. This is America. It's against the rules to talk about anything with focus of attention that's about something, anyway. I was visiting another interruption fest. I said to self, Ok, this is what we're doing now. I found that through the time there, I was interrupted every time I talked with somebody. It was a mosh pit. Every interruption had nothing to do with our focus. Change focus. Change focus again. I found that when the interrupter engaged the other in conversation, I went back to sitting quietly, paying them no mind. Our conversation was over. It used to aggravate the hell out of me. I noticed yesterday I gently bounced from one interruption to the next, all by surprise, each from a different direction, keeping me reeling, upright, flowing with the momentum. Now, I allow. Why get aggravated when interruption is more American than apple pie? Not everybody likes apple pie. I say to self, This is what we do. Allowing puts me in the passenger seat. Like, don't sweat it, dude. 

hillbilly graveyard

photos by tj worthington

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BE THE CHANGE

 

donald roller wilson

We have heard a saying over at least the last forty or so years, Be the change you want to see in the world. First several times I heard it, I took it for self-evident sound counsel. It stayed in my mind over years, in the background where we store "truths" we never test or try out. We in the West have our own collection of such truths from various sources, like in China they have Confucianisms, truths that give guidelines to living in peace in this world, if that's what you want. It was about the same time the question about glass half full or half empty came about, the time of New Age books, New Dimensions NPR interview show, workshops galore on how to get rich by visualizing, how to grow spiritually, how-to, how-to. It was a period of about twenty years that the New Age discoveries from applying what had been learned in the science of psychology applied to everyday life, a time of American Confucianisms, something like searching for a new gospel or Confucius found empirically. Be the change you want to see in the world stuck with me as kind of an enigma, like what good is it if everybody isn't doing it? Then I check myself for such a limited vision. Why wouldn't it be good enough if I'm the only one who lives by a given principle?

donald roller wilson

The answer comes that if I live my own everyday life in the way I'd like to see " everybody" be, thus make the "world" that way, my own world becomes what I want the whole world to be. The only thing the whole world is going to do besides basic biological functions is watch television. If I'd like to live in a world without tv, I don't have to watch it. My world is without tv. That's all I need. I don't need for everybody or anybody besides myself to live by what I believe makes a good life. It works for myself. I treat the people around me the way I want to be treated, and in return everyone treats me the way I want to be treated. Because I extended it first, it comes back from the people around me, my world. My world is then a  better place. I don't like being talked down to, so I don't talk down to anyone. In return, no one talks down to me. Another of our truths, You get what you give. It's a natural law like gravity. It's invisible, but it's as certain as wind moving the leaves. Once I caught on that this law is infallible, then I saw it is a tool for creating my own world that I live in. If I want people to be friendly toward me, I be friendly toward them. A few times when I've had to shake off an acquaintance I found obnoxious, a noxious personality, all I've had to do was give one little dose in return of what they pour all over me, they're gone. I don't even have to avoid them after that. My world becomes a better place.

donald roller wilson

In the early part of the 1990s I went to a weekly meeting of a small group of people in Boone NC around Edgar Cayce. We would read a page of something from Cayce, then talk about it for an hour. The second hour we told dreams, talked about them, and thought up a "project" to experiment with through the week, try something and see how it works out, and report what we find, followed by discussion. My own most memorable project experience was consciously "putting something out into the world" (acting it out) to see when and how it comes back. I forget what it was I put out there, but it came back right away. I learned very clearly that this truth can be used consciously. Being aware that everything comes back, I can now see my own behavior something like throwing a rock into a pond. The rings go out from the splash all the way to the shore, then they return to the same spot. The principle works physically, mentally, spiritually. Cast your bread on the waters. Throw a handful of little bread chunks to ducks on a pond and the bread chunks they miss will move toward the shore and gather along the edge. Another good saying, It will come back and bite you in the ass. This principle observed makes a giant step toward self-awareness. Recently a friend said of something she'd done she regretted, "It's gonna come back and bite me in the ass!" Understood, this principle inhibits revenge just by looking at what comes next. Kids give back immediately or first chance.  

donald roller wilson

Less than a year ago a Yankee I used to call a friend told me in a rant about the deputy sheriff living a couple of houses down the street, deputy has a dog, the dog pinched a loaf in friend's front yard. So? Good fertilizer. He went to deputy sheriff and gave him a Yankee talking to about keeping his dog in his own damn yard. If my hair didn't already stick straight up, it would have. I said, "You did what? Man! This is the South! We don't do that shit!" I went into a kind of automatic lecture, this guy's your neighbor, may come a day you'll need him for your friend. You made an enemy of somebody who can fuck you up if he wants to. And you don't have any back-up. It was the same as talking to hear my head roar. He was indifferent to hearing anything but he was right. I never dropped in on him again, didn't want my car seen in the driveway. I happen to respect the deputy. And by this time friend had alienated me like he had all his neighbors and friends in under ten years. I heard last week he is talking about moving to California. Marsha Wagoner at Farmer's Hardware told me something her dad, Amos, said to somebody years ago, a summer resident, who was griping about the people around here and the way things didn't go to suit him. Amos said, "Nobody asked you to come here and nobody will miss you when you're gone." These are people who mess up their own lives over and over by regarding the people around them with indifference. The indifference comes back in the same forms it went out.

 

donald roller wilson

 

 

Basically, I believe the only "change" I want to see in the world is for people around me to get along with each other and lend a hand as needed. Seems like that's what it comes down to for me. So that's what I do as able. I don't want more money, more property, a new car. I've managed to bring myself to a peaceable way of living in a world of people I appreciate deeply. I value it with my life. One change I'd like to see in the world is that we abandon the rat race climb and the ongoing need for more, more, more. I have no power to make anybody do anything. It is hopeless futility to be frustrated that things aren't the way I might want them. I pull back from thinking the "world" of the international news or the Bible, and look more toward the "world" I live in, my immediate world of friends, neighbors, acquaintances, relatives, community. In my world of friends and neighbors I can make a difference. One difference I think I've made a little bit, is affirming to the mountain people in my world that their culture is valid and something to be appreciated. It is not as it is seen from the outside, but from how it is seen from the inside. I keep my hillbilly friends knowing I hold the hillbilly in them the highest. People on the outside don't know anything about the hillbilly culture or the hillbilly experience, nor are they interested. I affirm the culture for my hillbilly friends as one who came in from the outside, has the experience of both worlds, and prefers theirs with convincing reasoning. The only man I have known I'd call wise, and I mean wise in the biblical meaning, was a hillbilly, born, lived his life and died in Whitehead. 

 

 

 

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