Category: truth

Denis de Rougemont “Love in the Western World”

Emotional in the sense an agenda is in control. I don’t know at this time whether he is promoting any particular point of view; whether it be Christian, which I suspect, or paganism. He alludes to but I don’t think he embraces Hinduism, Buddhism, Yoga, the issues of the Mahabharata, or for that matter Manicheanism, Gnosticism, Platonism and several others. He does seem anxious to resolve the “stresses” into a “grand unified theory” subsuming all opposing spirits. He seems to write knowing the conclusion is foreordained, thus making his purpose suspect.

We argue the known outcome in order to have something to say! Noise! “Sound and fury signifying nothing.” Which is not to say his scholarship is not of the highest order of professionalism.

But anyhow, its hard to ignore the comparison of this work to Kierkegaard’s. An audacious question: Is Tristan and Iseult (the opera) to Rougemont as Don Giovanni was to Soren Kierkegaard?

On Good/Evil he assigns human agency, the Christian view. This is common practice and, in my opinion, a fallacy. Personhood does not necessarily pertain to the divine or the profane but is a reflection that man only understands, or rather, has knowledge of himself so God and Satan must be measured in terms thereof. Its simpler to accept Reality evolved to the world we see, are embedded in and will ever remain a mystery that, also ever, engenders discovery. Why must there be agency at all? Sure Good and Evil are real even without the “myths” adopted in order that we can easily grasp them on familiar terms. It is not necessary that understanding follows always from measurement in terms of human metrics. To do so merely reinforces the fact that man is self absorbed, self centered and not interested in Truth in and of itself. Divinity is not “personal” [to a God Head]. Divinity is universal, not finite but infinite. A Lord, The Lord, taking on the cloak of divinity is leaving the “person” aside and assuming the infinite quality of the divine in the same way a rose assumes the infinite quality of beauty. It is full self-realization.

Again, the rose is not itself beauty but beautiful. Rather it participates in, is a manifestation of beauty. Likewise things manifest are not the universe itself, but the universe, the Real – G_d, if you like – is made manifest in them. Divinity is thus made manifest in [all] man, sentient life forms especially. The Word is made flesh and Life is a tool in his box.

How long must we mistake measurement for understanding?

Old Flames

I don’t think this is going to work the way I would like. Usually when I come here I have a fairly clear idea of what I want to write but today I have only the need to write. I am patient though, and will dwell here a little to see what happens. There is plenty to say but I just don’t know how to do it this time. I am not confused. I am overwhelmed. Life is so full of so many myriads of experiences and all need to be put to words. Doing so not only is an affirmation of those events it is also a validation and a way to immortality. Sort of. It is like having children and knowing with certainty that you live on in them and in those of their issue forever.

The landscape of my dilemma is vast and presents itself like a white dove fluttering in the featureless void. This is what I feel like. I pull back from the abyss, or I am pulled back by fate. Invisible strings? Fruits of intention? Answers to fervent petitions to a personal deity? I don’t know but it is certainly true that whatever your intention or petition the response when it comes will be rife with complexities unanticipated. Life is above all a kind of fractal. Recall E.E. Cummings, “Deeds can’t dream what dreams can do.” Knowing this, that discovery is the action of the unknown, vulnerability is my natural state. Risk is almost a metaphysical category in my life so I trust instinctively, and love. This is something I have long cultivated. Yet at this juncture there are no paths and I must pick my way carefully. Not that there ever were, though I imagined them. Here is a generous spirit, an incomparable beauty, and compelling desire but these are understood. Not as a measurement, not as something known, but as something intimately owned. A part of me that is a part of another, truly an apotheosis. Yet, it is an expression only begun, a running, tripping, headlong rush through the void. That plummeting, fluttering white dove suspended in darkness, no place to rest, find completion, no twig to grasp, none, nowhere. So vulnerable. So helpless.

We make our own light here in this fastness of the soul. I would shine and thus show a path for others but how to make a path through the abyss? What are the signposts? The dove? No, that is an aspect of spirit. Love? I think love is more. This is it. Love is a lot more. It is, in fact, the void itself. The abyss unrecognized. The unfathomable void. If someone asks you what you mean by love tell them that love is meaning capable of filling any emptiness whatsoever. Even if that emptiness is the whole cosmos. And with that the circle is completed and Beauty and Truth with Love shine like facets of the same jewel and their light penetrates any darkness whatsoever, any darkness anywhere. To be open to this is to share in everlasting, eternal joy and to make another see this is even greater because it is in reality the divine spark finding and kindling anew eternal fire, fire that burns everywhere and consumes everything. It is the annihilation we so earnestly desire, to be lost in the other. So, yes, I have looked into eyes and realized while I was falling, a white dove fluttering, that the darkness in the midst of our eyes was the same place, that we were one and the darkness is also the light universal, centered everywhere, bounded nowhere, an infinity to be discovered, not a mystery to be unraveled. I don’t want to know. I want to always be on the cusp of the new, discovering roads untrodden, lighting the way on an eternal journey. So, yes, I have and still do love. The words come easy. So right. So easy. “I love you.” Go tell someone in words, in deeds, even with a soulful look into their eyes, and if they ask what you mean, and that is natural, they are asking for what is said here. Choose your words carefully after a close reading of your hearts and the meaning they convey will be near the truth here expressed.