When I was 11 my father allowed me to sit in his lab and steer the car. My mother and my three sisters were also in the car.
On a long straight path he stepped on the speeder, and while the car was going faster and faster, he calmly told me to hold my focus on a point as far ahead as possible.
As the needle moved past 140 km/h my mother and my sisters became more and more anxious. At some point they were really scared and shouted to him to slow down. He ignored them, and I did my best to do the same.
Mixed emotions running through my body, while my white knuckles were clenching on the steering wheel. My father had his own demons to fight like I had mine.
Three years after this experience I was riding my bicycle with my then 4-year old sister in front of me, both of us holding the handlebars: Me steering, her for support.
‘Would you like to steer the bicycle while I close my eyes?‘, I asked her.
‘Sure!’, she said.
I closed my eyes and let go of the handlebars.
A few seconds later we crashed.
Her foot was entangled in the front wheel, and from the way she cried I could tell it was painful. Carrying her home I felt ashamed. How could I be so thoughtless?
Here as an adult reflecting on these two childhood memories, did they have any similarity? And what is the underlying mechanisms? What is this longing to let go of control?
Something in us is seeking liberation. Or alleviation to use a word my father used to describe why he was drinking alcohol.
I certainly have had the feeling of being trapped for the most part of my life. And maybe you did also. But we should not feel trapped.
Why?
Because ‘it takes something trapped to make a trap‘ as Alan Watts say.
So lets understand why we are not trapped, and in doing so, gather our wits. We need them.
Getting to the root of this matter and weeding out what needs to go, holds the promise of liberation. Satyrfying our mighty expectation of relief.
The journey towards these roots are no less challenging than the journey Odysseus made to liberate – and re-unite with – his family, but it is well worth the effort.
The first obstacles on this journey is the observation that the very faculty, we use to understand what is going on, is itself deeply entangled in the matter:
Our mind using language and concepts.
This tiger, when not proberly disciplined, have the power to drive humanity full speed towards a cliff. And currently it does.
Our children are in the car. Some are shouting and crying.
Like in the taiga, the adults in the car (you?) who realize what is happening falls into two categories:
One gets scared and then starts thinking.
The other one starts thinking and then get scared later.
To think about this matter takes a certain amount of courage, because in what we call ‘reality’ something has happened that is equivalent to being attacked by a tiger.
We learn of tigers that “the impact of an attacking tiger can be compared to that of a piano falling on you from a second-story window. But unlike the piano, the tiger is designed to do this, and the impact is only the beginning“.
Let that sink in.
To turn the odds in our favour we need the strength of the tiger to gain control of the car. And because of this we have decided to face it.
Remember?
Keep breathing.
After all this is just a story about cars and tigers, right?
Stories have always been here and are sometimes dug up from beneath the desert, like it happened in the last century. We call them the dead sea scrolls :
In the Beginning You Knew,
Then You Pretended to Forget,
Then You Pretended to Forget that You Forgot,
Then You Forgot You Pretended.
Remember?
The sea is not dead yet, so lets keep going.
At some point in our life something entangles us: The consensus-based meaning.
And we enter into a state of forgetfulness. A shadow seizes us and we start to think that this shadow is us. It is not.
It is ‘the Proud Angel driven forth from Heaven‘ as the druids taught us.
When meaning that can be passed on from generation to generation occurred the teeth of the tiger tightened on its prey.
“When you teach a child the word ‘bird’, the child will never see a bird again.”
Increasingly the child will see a concept, based on thought and memory.
We begin to live in thoughts, not in reality. The change from the liveliness of a toddler to the deadened facial expression of a youngster is evidence of just how potent the grip of the tiger is.
The plant- and animal kingdom uses different means of communication. Electrical signals. Gestures. The whales are singing.
We were once dancing around the fire. Then using vocal sounds with intentionality. And then words with specific meanings came as the cherry on the cake.
The push in creation towards meaning is evidence of its fallen nature. IT is fallen until we manoeuvre US from between the teeth of the tiger onto its back where the AIr is much more refreshing.
Lets do that.
Until the next chapter in this story, you can prepare by reading about symbolic generalizations (concepts), ponder what message the movie ‘invasion of the body snatchers’ have for us and also do not forget Alan Watts and Terence McKenna.
Until then …
Peace, Love and Joyful will,
Johan
(former captive)
Spicy Chocolate 