I can’t find my way home…

I think I said the other day that in an esoteric way, we are all diasporic, having been ejected from the womb, where it was warm and safe and we didn’t have to worry about foraging for sustenance. There are, of course, problems in some experiences when mothers are beset by illness or unexpected circumstances, or make bad choices for us even then. But, in any case, it’s quite a shock to find ourselves…here. But so we do. Perhaps everything we do, every move we make, every breath we take (yeah, that’s The Police, but I’m a child of the 70s, so it is what it is) is part of the effort to go back there, to that safe and warm place where all is well. Or mostly well.

I am thinking we can’t ever go back there, exactly. We’ve seen too much, we have a frame of reference, we have agency, we have choice. And therein lies the rub. Once Eve tasted the fruit of the forbidden Tree of Life, she couldn’t go back. Eden could not take her back. She knew too much. And we know too much, too much about power over others, about how to run, about how to hurt each other, hurt ourselves. We can’t go back. Ever. We have no choice but to move into the light. Most descriptions of “crossing over” advise travellers to “go into the light”. Maybe it’s the other way around…maybe we’re coming out of the darkness and THIS is the light, and we are crossing over into even more light, even brighter, a state of higher vibration and more pure energy. Maybe. ALl I can do is imagine, since I’ve never been there.

This is what is in my mind’s eye at this point, for some reason. My vision is based on the fact that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it merely changes form. First law of thermodynamics. Universal law. No matter how many buildings we blow up or bodies we deprive of heartbeats and blood flow, that energy changes form and goes elsewhere. We don’t understand that, and I suppose we shouldn’t. We’d probably figure out some way to manipulate that, attempt to assume the mantle of the Divine. We’re pushy little beings, that’s for sure. So better that we can’t quite get our arms around this after-life stuff. Some of us just deny there is after-life, and that’s fine. I don’t think after-life implies that we maintain our unique consciousness or identity, but the pure energy has gone to some other place, to be interconnected with the Universe in some other way. But, it is not destroyed. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, so the energy remains.

I once had a conversation with someone, who occupies a higher rung on the socio-economic scale than I do, and I told her that some of the social justice efforts I saw were simply about money, not about the energy of inclusion and change. She responded that money was equivalent to energy. This particular individual was the recipient of a trust fund, and did not work in the traditional sense. I make no judgement about that, since her circumstances were derived from loving ancestors who wanted to provide for her comfort and survival. That’s fine. But she in particular contributed no energy to the money she might contribute to causes or projects. I suppose one could argue that her ancestors worked for the money, and so their energy is part of the equation, but the flow of the energy is somewhat diluted.

Energy is equivalent to power, and there’s an imbalance here. Or so I see it. Our society has valued money as power, but money is merely a derivation of energy. That might work if those with large sums of money had actually worked for it, but in so many cases others’ energy has produced the financial income. It’s a multi-level marketing scheme in most cases. I’m sure that is tremendously over-simplified, but the point is…human societies have contrived infinite methods of separating each other from their work products, and the end result is classism and wealth inequality. That’s been done since ancient times, since the earliest recording of our lives together. I’m not sure we can get out of that, but apparently we’re going to continue fighting over power and the distribution of resources that power dictates. We are going to find more and creative ways to simply eliminate the least powerless among us, since they utlimately consume more resources and cause more friction than is tolerable for … us. Hmmm.

We have this imbalance in how we allocate societal power, and for the most part, it doesn’t work for us. We don’t like it, don’t feel warm and safe with the system as it stands, but it’s a live wire and we’re holding on to it and can’t let go. All of our nerves and instincts and reactions are on fire, and we’re bound to them. If we have money, we’re obsessed with it, wanting even it to “work” for us, constantly looking over our shoulders for bandits and someone who is going to take it from us. If we don’t have money, we’re obsessed with it as well, wanting more of it to provide for the basic systemic functions that have been engineered – food, shelter, water, clothing, etc. The system is ours, and we can change it, but we don’t. As long as value is determined by the economic system, we are still holding on to the live wire, being electrocuted by our own devices. It may once have been exciting, thrilling, but now it is painful. We don’t do pain well. Or death. And we’re feeling that we’re dying, because ultimately, we are – whether we have money or not. We have no power over Death, and as John Donne said many years ago, Death be not proud. It will come, no matter what, and no matter who you are – aristocrat, king, pauper. It will come.

So, we are trying to get back to something, but you can’t go back. On some level, the job before us is to create the destination, to create the future. If we refuse to move forward, and continue to maintain status quo, or some form of homeostatis, where are we to go? I believe we simply build layer upon layer on top of a temporary and unstable foundation; it will eventually crumble, and we can feel it. I was having a discussion about earthquakes, and a friend was describing her experience in an earthquake in Oregon some time ago. She said it felt like her insides were dropping out, and she likened it to being in an elevator descending from a great height very rapidly. She found that sensation terrifying. I found it exhilarating, freeing. The feeling of being separated from my conscious body excites me; the closes I have gotten to this in my life is being on nitrous oxide at the dentist’s office. I go places, I travel, I have incredible journeys of the spirit and much is revealed. It is amazing, much like LSD was amazing when I was in college. Those are the only times I have felt that I was free, not encumbered by this hulking body, these annoying physical laws of gravity and mass. I can understand that if I truly felt that my physical life was in danger, the experience might be different, but I truly crave the feeling of weightlessness and feeling untethered, just floating. I’m that kind of girl, always looking to be so far out there I’m not bound to anything, but always able to get back. That’s a tall order, and yes, I want my cake and to eat it too. That’s a tall order, but…something to dream of, for another lifetime maybe.

I am having a good morning, since it snowed just a little but enough to see it on the ground. I have not cussed anybody out, I have not spoken unkindly to anyone, I have not popped the balloons of small children or taken candy from any babies, have not cut anyone off in traffic or shot the bird at little old people in large cars driving in the fast lane at 30 miles an hour. But. In a second, I’m going to have to get out of this bed and leave this apartment and go out in public to let the dog take care of her morning constitutional, and then all bets are off.