Here's a chair, we call it a chair because that's the name decided upon it by a group of people involved in some situation in the past.
It doesn't so much mean anything to us intellectually as it does for us hold value. It's something we can rely on to bring us practical comfort and rest. So in effect the chair does have intrinsic meaning in the felt sense of things. As every chair we look at gives us the same feeling about it based on our experience and it's value to us.
Chairs don't really change so the meaning and value doesn't change much either, and if a chair breaks on us then we can replace it. No big loss or devastation.
Oh...here's some chairs and a big table too, what does this mean for us?
It means a little more now because other people are involved. Family dinners and social events. All of this physical material holds more value to us as it enables particular life experience. It can also tie into our sense of self. In having possessions of which we associate. Vanity can even creep in if we become proud of our possessions and of how we believe other people perceive us in relation to them.
Oh my God how many ideals can arise in our minds within just this little situation? A bunch of wooden sticks put together in a certain way. I see now the disputes around the table about healthy eating, wrongly cooked food, wine that doesn't taste right, people turning up late for dinner. The list goes on.
Friends sitting round the table debating politics and philosophy, oh my! Do we ever come to agreement in our ideals? It's just a bunch of sticks after all fashioned from trees.
So where did all the other stuff come from? In the minds of our dinner guests, wow there's tons of it. And it has little basis in reality. It's just a bunch of thoughts and ideals. Flavours of the moment. Beliefs and influences shared amongst a bunch of other people who any way see things different from ourselves. Unless of course they are us or have become very close, sharing similar culture and experience over time. Perhaps they watch the same news channel and TV shows as we do? Yes, then we can see eye to eye both in our pride and prejudice.
Now we've gotten so far away from the chair, never mind the trees from which they came. What if planet earth was to exact catastrophe upon the planet? Where would our ideals go then?
Our minds are so busy with all these ideals, how ever could we see what is true? Civilisation is created upon a bunch of sticks, and these sticks we've given names. And these names we've given meaning. And these meanings go to make our values and ideals. They have relative basis in our reality but it's not we who are in charge.
I tried to be a superstar DJ in the mid 90's. I had this ideal of being famous and doing things I loved to do. God knows where I got this ideal from. I think it was based on my perception of glamour and good times mixed in with my passion for music. But it was my passion for music that was real, the ideals surrounding it weren't. So my bid for stardom failed but my music lives on.
Later I strived in life to be a corporate high flyer in the technology industry wanting big cars, houses, money, and extravagant holidays. I got some of that but it wasn't real so it faded away quite fast. I'm just Ronnie, not Ronnie the executive high flyer. I know nothing about cars and feel just at home within a mansion as I do a tent. Those were lofty ideals based on how I perceived the world around me and the beliefs I adopted about what a successful life should be.
Then I found Spirituality and decided I wanted to be a guru. Because being an all wise guru meant instant validation of my levels of enlightenment. I still lived in the world and the guru's had it going on, they knew all the shit that I was learning and so were the ideal I sought to be. Do you see? I looked outside again, around me and thought "I'll have some of that". I had no home really inside my own heart nor reality of self.
Then there's relationship, tons of ideals there. How love should be and how the other should be in relation to my life and wants. Oh I've been such a needy featherweight, and overly critical too. How not could I have such ideals? Don't leave me for I have such a lofty opinion of myself that I too should be your be all and end all. You don't need your own life when you have me. I'm all of that and more. It's not all that's true but it's there. The fake ideals of relationship most especially built around our insecurities. And that can be said for all of it. Relationships, status, career, our children, society. It's insecurity and the unknown.
But we have and do do our best. Just that as a species we hope for someone else to pick up the tab of our destructive efforts it seems. Where's Mum and Dad? Irresponsibility is the devil of our life and one of the most important lessons for us each to learn about. How to take responsibility for ourselves. But I can't speak for you, that's just an ideal I dreamed about in reflection of my own sense of meaning and self worth.
Responsibility is key for me, and that doesn't mean always doing something to be something, to accomplish something or to gain something. Right now it means for me to seek what's true and to be with that. To sit with a pile of sticks, closer to the ground than any ideal could ever be. As imagination when used not consciously I find causes me to fly away with myself on whims of hope destined again for grounds of failure and despair. Building not from the trees, building not from the sticks, nor from the chair nor tables. But from the idealistic mind made up of cultural beliefs and the influences around me. The glamour and the hype.
That can't work for me because I'm not that. My life is just a product of that, so far. I live in it's convenience but that's all. My next step is unknown yet guaranteed and I trust it because I've had to. It doesn't matter what I think is right or should be. I can lend only so much influence to the world around me. To the relativities of mind. I'm not always on top of my game enough to see perfection, but I've experienced it so much and so far that I now have it's trust. And should I die tomorrow then at least I know that for a week or two I'll be remembered by those close to me. This gives me hope of the unreality of ideals. Nothing is forever so why then cast in stone our very own heart? The rigidity of ideals are there to be broken. Life itself can be surmised in these times as being the process of which human idealism is consistently obliterated.
From this obliteration may rise greater flight in the evolution of man, and woman. So as you see I've broken down the ideals and set fire to the chair, to the sticks, and to the furniture. And in my heart now I feel the freedom of this bird in the transformation of our time. Knowing that freedom comes eventually to all of us who strive in the acceptance of our weakness, failures and defeats. In the destruction of ideals.
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