The question that got me up and out to a little restaurant for a cup of coffee and a quiet place to write on a table, this Friday morning, is: How am I to live this?
My friends Stephen and Rich and I had come to Moab, Utah, visiting Dana Redfield — long-time friend, former Hampton Roads employee, and author among other things of three wonderful novels we published. Wednesday morning Rich and I had gone to Newspaper Rock, about an hour south of Moab. Then on Thursday the four of us went about half an hour north of Moab and saw some less well known petroglyphs.
Now, the Utah desert for some reason reminds me strongly of Egypt, or my idea of Egypt. In this lifetime, I have never been there, but apparently someone inside has, and experiences it as a mystical connection. The rocks seem alive, and one can almost feel the ancient presences that carved these flat-sided panels high in the mountains.
In the presence of the petroglyphs, however, the connection deepens significantly. In 2004 when I came to Newspaper Rock for the first time, I experienced it as a portal, at which one could communicate directly with the intelligences who created the possibility for interaction. They, in other words, are as alive as ever, outside of time and space. It is a matter merely of our going to them, altering our consciousness as required. In a shamanic journey a few weeks afterward, I had returned to that portal, and had experienced significant interactions which someday I will write about if I can, if the proper context appears.
This time, these two days, I am led to approach the portals in a specific way. It is as though a ritual spontaneously formed around me, or as if I remembered – or rather, as if my hands themselves remembered – a ritual from long ago. Holding my hands together, the three center fingers loosely interlaced, I looked at whatever figure was in front of me, then closed my eyes and remained open to an image appearing. Sometimes one did, sometimes not. When I felt the connection, I said, addressing the presences as “ancestors,” that I asked their assistance and promised to do the work I had come here to do.
And what work is that?
When the four of us talk about the political situation and I foresee (rightly or not) the dislocations to come, including the loss of freedoms especially, I despair of accomplishing anything by writing. And when I look in bookstores, I see so many volumes of trivia and otherwise, and it’s the same thing: How am I to make a dent in the complacent or terrified shell that is society’s ordinary consciousness? More to the point, when I return to my Virginia routine, I wonder how I can preserve my inspiration.
And yet –
I did ask the ancestors for assistance. I did promise to do the work. Part of the work may be to find the way. The process of finding the way ought to be of assistance to seekers, surely, as in Muddy Tracks. So perhaps a setting-forth of my perplexities and efforts would itself be part of whatever I have to offer. But we don’t need another account of seeking, so much as of seeking and finding.
Besides, I know that I can reach ever deeper levels. It is the living on a superficial level that I object to.
Curious to think of “objecting to” one’s own way of being. But it is as though I am several layers, many of which are somewhat contradictory and therefore are warring for position. So the layers that want expression war with – object to – those that express as a more superficial, distracted personality.
The guys upstairs have said that to them we appear less as individuals than as containers of threads. To them, the threads are as obvious as the containers. Various threads might include physical or mental or emotional characteristics, talents, interests – all the things that make us the bundles of possibilities that we are. From time to time, from choice or outside influence, we begin to follow different threads. Perhaps we lay one thread down forever. Perhaps we lay it down and take it up again years later. Perhaps we merely de-emphasize it for a time. We’re still the same bundle, but we’re emphasizing different parts of the bundle that we are.
This perhaps is not sufficiently stressed when we talk about self-development. It isn’t so much a matter of changing what we are, as of giving this rather than that part of ourselves freer rein. So in that sense it is an easier job than it often seems, in that it is a matter of deciding rather than constructing.
So, on this first day of July, 2005, sitting in the little outdoors café, I asked the guys for practical suggestions. They very fluently provide three.
“Ritual. As has been suggested more than once. Not an elaborate ritual, not a superstitious one. Something as matter-of-fact and taken for granted as shaving and showering in the morning. That way, you see, it reinforces that this is ordinarily you, not extra-ordinarily (exceptionally) you.
“Interruptions. Things in the course of the day to remind you which parts of yourself you intend to reinforce. This was one of the functions of periodic prayer in the life of priests and monks, and should be very familiar to many of your aspects..
“Composure. Continuous self-definition in this new way rather than in the old way, so that all of your ordinary interactions are now between the outside world and these selected parts of your personality. In that sense – only – it will be a new “you,” as is your wish.”