There was a time when I saw her visage within the clouded drunken paranoia of the colonel,
When I heard her voice, affirming, harmony emerges above his anxiety
And her dark smile, behind the blinding fear of his nuclear bomb.
There was a moment when I found love in oblivion,
Oblivion love beyond the god of matter.
Yet, embracing paradox, returned to his strict tarot,
And dealt oblivion love games with the deck: and shouted down the voices of opposition, inner and outer.
There is a trap, there is escape, there is freedom.
But what does freedom taste like?
What’s it taste like now?
okay, okay, I’ll tell you. You can’t taste freedom. You are freedom.
There is no peace of mind.
There is only peace of no mind.
Don’t tell me to get a life.
I am life.
Interesting response – it is a kind of zen response I think, which is comforting.
Nevertheless, in my case, I lost my boyfriend and my girlfriend, and the three of us shouldn’t have done the things we did, in retrospect … It’s why our affair got so messed up … Zen’s the answer to eventually let go of all that happened, forgive myself, but I’m still surprised myself how locked in I got with the pretence of free love.
Well, let go of what happened and eventually forgive yourself if you like (though I don’t know what that means) but, more to the point, the response suggested to let go of your self. And what remains is freedom.
By the way, you can call that “zen”, but its only zen in the head when the head is still there. Or, as Tolstoy famously wrote in the opening lines of Anna Karenina <> or words to that effect.
Hmm. The quote got deleted. “Every unhappy family is unhappy for different reasons, but every happy family is happy for the same reason” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, St Petersburg, 1873
I think what you’re advising is to let go of the abusive relationships – along with the self. Which is good advice – I suppose common sense, in fact.
I guess you would assess me as not free yet, because part of me still misses the abuse.
If you’ve loved the colonel, it’s difficult to let go of him, at least the memory of that romance lives on. Maybe it just takes time? I’ve managed to forget a lot of things, which is progress. And discarded a lot of my previous attachments – to salat, to fasting, etc. Some echos remain though.
pfft. Blog comments sections always become this kind of misunderstanding fest. No, I’m not advising or assessing you in any way whatsoever. With regards to freedom, read my first post. And as far as relationships go – “you” can’t do without them, and only “you” know if they are abusive or not. Who am I to say? In fact, that’s a really good question. “Who am I?”. A good place to start.
Anyway, If the self has a thing for abusive relationships, let it. Letting go of the self doesn’t mean the self has to let go of its preoccupations. In fact, interfering in the self’s preferences is the opposite of letting go of it. The colonel loved that kind of thing, didn’t he?
It doesn’t matter about advice, I’m certainly open to it – and to assessment. It’s like my relationship to Quran – I used to read it poetically, musically, seeing Divine freedom flow in the metonymy between its individual ayat – without thinking about advice or psychological assessment – now I can’t help wanting to offer the guy who wrote it some advice (like, for example, “you think way too much about what other people think, your paranoia now to the extent you are now hearing voices going on about it. Who cares what they think?”).
The same with my poem – freedom could be read in it’s verses, freedom’s taste could be the moments of transition, from one ayat to the next – and have nothing to do with self at all! Self freedom would be a red herring – it’s the poem, and the energy flows between the orbs of the colonel and the daughter (who are known by many names, ranging from prophet and shekhina to samael and Lilith). The currents that run actively through the
poem/surah – they are freedom’s taste. Not leaving or letting go of the self – but the self, reading my divine word.
It’s the old Tailorite view.
The new view would be to do a psychological assessment of what motivated the poem – and, yes, to arrive at a solution – letting go – to help.
So, in your experience, what does someone who has let go of the self sound like? If they are still permitted relationships and attachments, preoccupations – then they won’t necessarily be under the bodhi tree. Is the free person, from the outside, a black box? And more importantly, how about from the inside – how do “you” know when you are truly free, when you’ve let go of “you” – or is it impossible for “you” to know?
You speak of freedom as if you know what it is. And I tell you that you do know what it is, otherwise you would not speak of it.
The only thing that stops you from being free is your belief that you are not free. You have expectations of what freedom should taste like, or sound like, or feel like – indeed, that it should have a taste or a sound or a feeling at all. When you fall into these sensory expecations you are tied to the senses. But who gets the report of the senses – the senses themselves or one who is free of the senses? Look into that.
One person sat under a bodhi and realised he was free. Subsequently, people judged anyone who does not sit under a bodhi tree as not being free.
Another person went to a cave in a mountain and found freedom. He found that that he to be bound again to give the message of how to be free to the people. Alas, all too often the message gets lost in translation.
“You speak of freedom as if you know what it is. And I tell you that you do know what it is, otherwise you would not speak of it.”
This is an assessment of me – a religious judgment. In the sense that a judgement begins with “you do not know X”. Nothing wrong with that – I respect religious practice – and the Abrahamic preoccupation with judgement of others. I’d be interested in the life story/experience that lead you to be able to make such an assessment with confidence.
As for me, I’m increasingly interested in the taste of freedom. This is different from the freedom you are talking about, because it’s something that is precisely defined (by me) – it’s a specialist term, I could also just call it “the doppleganger effect”, to avoid confusion. The tiferet/samael complex.
It’s a particular design pattern that occurs in poems – and has nothing whatsoever to do with the self – the self escaping something, the self being free by losing its self – or what we are allowed to say or are forbidden to say.
It’s just a geometric pattern found in my poem – that’s all. Not a judgement, just a pattern, one of many – there’s no compulsion to see it. I just happen to get enjoyment from documenting it.
Btw I hope you and the family are going well … On holiday in Turkey? It’s been ages since I was over that way. I imagine blue skies over the blue mosque.
“You DO know X” is what I said. If that’s a judgement, then so be it.
Sorry about the confusion about the word “freedom”. I’m not as good with words as the Tailor. I guess thats an assessment.
The Abrahamic preoccupation with judgement is nothing else than than the human obsession with story. Leave the story and what remains is freedom (by any name). It tastes vast, like unto it there is no taste.
Didn’t go to Turkey though – that was S’s project. Hope you are all well.
Yes, going well
Sorry for typo. Yes, I mean a judgement – in the sense that it is a “You know X” – not a bad thing at all. But do you think that Sufism and religion in general could be reformulated to not focus on a “pir” or. a “mureed” or a “you” or a “me”? Would they cease to be useful then? If they were just descriptions of patterns or were abstract arrangements of words, for example.
Thanks for letting me bounce some ideas off you – and for letting me into your views on freedom and letting go – which are helpful and comforting.
Really bad though, that you’re blogging with me instead of hitting the town with the wife in Constantinople