Category Archives: Psychology

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Lord Have Mercy

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Gospodi pomiluj.  That’s Church Slavonic for “God have mercy”, same as the Greek Kyrie eleison.  I remember learning a setting of those words in High School choir.  The entire text of the piece was just those two words, repeated over and over at increasing dynamic levels.  The suffering of the world thrown high to the ears of God.  There were moments in the opera last night (Boris Godunov) where this poignant plea rang out and reached my heart high in the upper balcony, but unlike a Puccini moment, it didn’t take full hold.  Why not?  Well, I could bicker about the staging, pointing out that the chorus milling about in the background distracted from the Holy Fool’s aria downstage left in front of the floodlight.   I could point out that the composer wasn’t really a professional and didn’t provide enough scene change music to set off these important highlights.  Others came in later (Rimsky-Korsakov, for instance) and tried to make Boris a bit more theater-ready, but the Lyric staged the original version.  But perhaps the more intriguing discussion is about the way Russian suffering compares to Italian – or Buddhist – suffering.

photo credit Dan Rest

This iconic Russian opera includes a large chorus of peasants, children, boyars (advisers), soldiers and priests.  Russia’s suffering is peopled.  By contrast, Puccini’s operas often concentrate on the suffering of one or two lovers.  You feel the depths of their grief in soaring melodies, cry with them, and feel cleansed.  (Think Butterfly, Tosca, Boheme.)  Russia’s suffering would never be so finite.  It’s pervasive.  The czar embodies this and its relentlessness drives him mad.  Well, that and hallucinations of a child he supposedly murdered.  But he cares about his people; he tries to feed them, and they still blame him for every want.  How do you find peace?

Buddhism addresses peace from the inside out.  It isn’t a peace that you could pass on to a population as their leader.  The best you could do is find it for yourself and try to be a role model.  It would be quite a challenge to maintain it as the head of a huge, suffering nation.  Would that be the Emperor of Japan’s story? Or China’s and India’s story?  Actually, the Met is currently showing Phillip Glass’s opera about Ghandi (Satyagraha).  It was simulcast in theaters this past Saturday.  Missed it, but hoping to see the encore screening December 7th.

Here’s another thought about nationalism and identity: there’s Mother Russia and the German Fatherland; what parental figure do we have connecting us to American land?  Uncle Sam?  Does that mean we are orphans?

I have to say that exploring and addressing my personal grief and suffering through Art is like taking a bitter pill with a large spoonful of glittering sugar.  Costumes, twinkly lights, gorgeously rich bass voices and sympathetic violins really take the edge off.  I appreciate the genius and consider myself enormously fortunate.   Thanks for the grace and mercy.  Oh, and I hope Erik Nelson Werner wasn’t badly hurt when he fell off the set in a hasty exit.

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Affairs of the Heart

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“Sudden massive coronary events” are dominating my thinking lately.  I am reading Joan Didion’s account of her husband’s death in The Year of Magical Thinking and recently browsed the pertinent pages of Ekaterina Gordeeva’s book My Sergei while waiting for Steve to glean salable items from Good Will on Tuesday.   I am also writing my own memoirs of my husband Jim in a Continuing Ed course.  What struck me this morning was the role of the grieving person’s best friend as hero.  Not the knight-in-shining-armor type hero, but the simple, calming presence modelling a way to be.  In a moment when shock obscures all notions of how to act, having a trusted person exhibit some caring, helpful behavior is a distinct grace.

My mother was that hero to me when my sister was killed in a car crash.  She and I were traveling across country together, enjoying the freedom of being 20 and (almost) 17 when it happened.  My mother cobbled together connecting flights to reach me in Nebraska the next morning.   She got me discharged from the hospital and set up in a hotel with her while she went through all the details of bringing Alice’s ashes back to California.  We went to the mortuary the next day.  I was still rather zombie-like while my mother handled the business.  Then the director asked us if we would like to see the body.  “Absolutely,” was my mother’s reply.  For some reason, I hadn’t realized that was why we were there.  I hesitated.  Mom led me into the room while the director closed the door.  “Oh, honey,” she sighed as she approached the table.  “No, she’s not there.  She’s gone.  Look here…” she began to comment on Alice’s wounds, on her swollen face and how old she looked, as if she were a battered wife decades in the future.  My mom said something about all the suffering her daughter had been spared.  Then she tenderly bend down and kissed that pale, waxy forehead.  My mother has never looked more beautiful to me in all my life than she did at that moment.  Strong, compassionate, wise and incredibly beautiful.  I wanted to be like her, so I kissed my sister’s forehead, too.

My mom (photo credit DKK)

Gordeeva writes about her coach, Marina, prompting her to go into the ICU room where her husband lay.  “Don’t be afraid.  Go talk to him.  He can still hear you.”  She goes in and begins to unlace his skates, a normal gesture that helps loosen her words, her tears, her emotions.  I remember our priest asking me and two of my daughters if we’d like to anoint Jim with some olive oil, bathe his face, and prepare his body to be taken away.  It was a relief to excuse ourselves from the people downstairs in the living room and go up to him together, to say our goodbyes together, to touch him one more time.  I am so grateful someone thought of allowing us that right then.  We had another opportunity to say goodbye to his body at the funeral home later when my two other children came home.  By then, I could take the lead with them and encourage them to approach.  I can’t remember who started humming “Amazing Grace”, but we all joined in, musical family that we are, and swayed together, arms and bodies entwined.

In the aftermath of Jim’s death, my youngest daughter and I fought frequently.  I didn’t know how to talk to her, to listen to her anger directed at me and recognize that she wasn’t hateful, only grieving.  Steve was the one who suggested that she was hurt, not hurtful and agreed to sit by me while we attempted an honest conversation.  My instinct was to run away.  I was grateful to observe someone who could be calm and present, reasonable and compassionate in the face of powerful emotions that frightened me.  He is adamant about not rescuing me, but equally determined to be the best friend he can be.

I hope that I will have opportunities to be a great friend to someone in grief.  I would like to be a conduit of such grace.

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Getting Along

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Sundays will always prompt me to meditate.  How should I behave?  How can I walk in a good and gracious and loving and peaceful path today?  Contentiousness makes me squirm uncomfortably.  Much of it is social, but it can lead me to deeper awareness.  For example, who cares if you rake the leaves off your lawn and why?  I have had conversations about this topic with Steve, his mother, and my neighbors.  Each of them has a perspective on this, and they are not all in agreement.  Which of these are important to me?  What rationales am I giving for my behavior in this situation?  Well, finally I decided to rake the leaves up this morning while Steve was sleeping.  I had a dream last night that some teenagers were assigned by community service sentences to rake the leaves on our property.  I saw that they had done it, and I was relieved.  If I feel this relief in my dream, I figured I should just relieve myself.  So I raked and encountered my landlord during the process.  I feel I have a better relationship with myself and my neighbors now.  The leaf relationship with Steve and his mother is still a work in progress.

Our reading time with D.H. Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent reached a rather dramatic point.  Ramon, who is ushering in the age of Quetzlcoatl, removes the images and statuary from the local Catholic church and burns them in a big bonfire.  He exclaims through a hymn that Jesus and Mary have left Mexico and gone back to heaven.  Adios, they sing.  Quetzlcoatl is returning.  I can tell there’s going to be a religious war in the upcoming chapters.  Somewhere deep in my psyche a little voice is saying, “Uh-oh.  That’s really bad.  You are going to be in SOOOO much trouble for reading this book about de-throning Jesus!  It’s bad enough that you stopped going to church, etc.”  Wow.  So what is a gracious and peaceful path in the midst of a religious war?  How do we engage in philosophical exploration and practice peaceful co-existence when we’ve been taught to have red flags and warning lights go off whenever we venture into this dangerous territory?  Is it real danger or is the danger manufactured to scare us into our corners?

I feel estranged from my former church friends, and I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with that gracefully.  I was very active there for 20 years.  I haven’t been in communication with any of them much for the last 3 years, and I wonder about that a lot.  Were those true friendships?  It was a very social church.  Was it just about acquaintance and pleasantries?  Was the intimacy that sometimes arose merely circumstantial?  Today I got an e-mail from my dearest friend from there.  She is suffering.  I feel so moved that she included me in her update that I keep tearing up as I write this.

I have changed so much over the last few years.  I have stripped off a lot of familiar ways of being in order to try some newer, more open, more aware versions.  I still feel very tentative and emotional about it sometimes.   But I am really grateful to be in a place where I examine my motivations and actions more closely than ever.   It is a lively place, and I think I will see grace here.

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Winter Metaphysics

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Winter is setting in.  We had some flurries yesterday.  I spent a lot of time writing online, concentrating on ideas, thoughts, feelings, and other stuff in my head.  It made me feel restless and a bit dyspeptic.  I wanted to walk; I needed to walk.  The harvest moon rose full at sunset, and we walked around the wetlands of the county grounds.  The cold was sharp and stung my nose and ears.  I felt my thighs and feet going numb.  It was a welcome discomfort, inviting me to feel my body and feel alive, real and physical.

Winter can be a time of cabin fever when things feel insular and unreal.  There are so many ways to distract myself from the basics, ways I can move from one bubble to the next without popping up for clear air.  So today, I felt like working with my hands.  I took my tools out to the backyard and broke apart the CD cabinet that’s been sitting there for 11 months.  It was good to observe rot and rust and decomposition.   I put the flat boards back down on the ground to make a home for insects and their relatives.  Come spring, I know where I can find some specimens for my nature walks.  I took a few other boards to make a bird feeder station on the old wicker chair.  Later, I’m going to make some broccoli cheddar soup.

Work, things, tools.  How do you see your relationship to the world?  Are things merely static objects?   Are things actually doings or beings as Alan Watts would suggest (e.g.  this isn’t a ‘tree’, it’s a ‘treeing’ – a dynamic process)?  If I pick up a dishrag and begin to clean, I am entering a relationship with the rag, the dishes, the water, the soap.  I want to know more about each of these things, pay attention and appreciate their qualities and how I experience them.

Is it living?

Sometimes, this seems like an unnecessary complication.  I learned from Sesame Street that certain things are alive and others aren’t.   Does that mean that I can control those inanimate objects and do whatever I want with them?  Great.  That sounds simple.  But what if that’s just one way of looking at things and not The One Correct Way?  What would I learn or experience about life if I looked at everything as a being?

These might be good questions for next week’s Socrates Cafe meeting.   Meanwhile, there are some pots and pans in the kitchen sink longing for a relationship with me.

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Ordinary Business with a side of grief

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My finger is bleeding; I’m cold and frustrated, and now I’m crying.  Time to go inside and figure out what’s going on with me.

I still have occasional melt downs.  I am still grieving.

Today I went to the Wisconsin DMV to get a new driver’s license, car registration, title and license plates.  I am not exactly timely in getting this bit of business done, and I still have to figure out what to do with the other car that is in Chicago with my daughter.  I don’t relish going into “the system”.  I often feel stupid, pushed around, ripped off and helpless.  I try to do my homework and come prepared.  I cannot tell a lie and haven’t figured out how to find justifiable loop holes to save myself some money.  Steve says that I think in black and white, which is why the system loves me.  Fine.  I suppose that’s my personality, and I don’t think it’s so bad.  I will never be a shrewd iconoclast.  I’ll leave that to someone else.  I figure I did okay getting out in 30 minutes with new plates, a new title, and a new (temp) driver’s license.  I was kind of proud of myself for a moment for jumping through this hurdle.  I got home and updated my insurance info online and then went out with a screwdriver and the plates to do the swap.  The back plates are held on by a hexagonal bolt.  Fine.  I went to get pliers.  Back outside.  I couldn’t budge the thing, and the pliers kept slipping.  Fine.  I’ll go find a socket wrench or something.  I do have a handy array of tools, and I rather like solving problems.  I found a set of wrenches and selected one the right size.  It fit on the bolt, but I still couldn’t move it.  I needed more force, so I went back inside to find a hammer.  With the hammer, I decided to be more aggressive.  I wanted to move this stubborn bolt, but the rust resisted.  My knuckle scraped against the plate and started bleeding.  Fine.  I’ll go inside and wash my hand and find some gloves.  Back outside.  Final attempt, nothing’s budging, I’m cold and ILLINOIS is staring me in the face.  “This is Jim’s car,” pops into my head, my nose starts burning and suddenly, everything is blurry.

If this little operation had gone smoothly, I wouldn’t have thought much about it.  I still play the games inside my head that swing me from “This is no big deal” to “This is something important” and back again.  Denying emotion, repressing the thoughts and feelings that spring unbidden in an ordinary moment. Where is that Middle Way?

This isn’t an emergency.  There’s no need to be anxious, but something notable is happening.  I want to slow down and pay attention.  I am thinking of Jim, and I am sad.  I miss the way he took care of all kinds of “system business” smoothly and happily.  Knocking away at his plates with my hammer makes me feel like I’m dismantling something precious, and I don’t want it to be taken apart.  I can’t preserve everything, of course.  What can I keep?  I don’t need the plates.  I appreciate the car.  I want always to have the love.  I wish I could hang on to the security.

And that’s what it is all about.

I am grateful to have a partner who provides a safe, warm place for me to talk about this and arms to encircle me and fingers that can open a package of Band-Aids when I’m trembling.

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Memories

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What is a “legitimate memory”?  Does it have to be factual?  Is the emotional memory as valid and important as anything else?  If you polled the people effected by an event, would any two have the same memory of it?  I think that highly unlikely.  Everyone has his own perspective.  There must be thousands of different stories about the holocaust of WWII or about Sept. 11, 2001 in New York City.  What do we gain from a memory?  What is achieved by illustrating and sharing it?  With whom should we share our memories?  If you enjoy engaging in someone else’s memories, does that make you somewhat voyeuristic?  Does the sharing of memories help us to become more emotionally intelligent, more empathic?  Does that make it Art?

Andrew Lloyd Weber imagines cats have memories.

We didn’t really talk about these questions in class last night, but Steve asked me sleepily as he came to bed in the wee hours this morning, “So, why do you want to write memoirs?”  He is supportive, but he is much more interested in research and synthesis.  Also, he doesn’t remember much.  Names, anniversaries, directions and details get lost in a blur.  He will remember a holistic sense of something, an emotional reading.   I go the other way; I’m heavy on detail and can’t articulate an emotion.  Perhaps I am trying to teach myself to become more compassionate and empathic.  I typically repress a lot of emotion.  I am afraid of getting in trouble for acting out my passions.  Especially anger.  I completely deny anger.  I like to think this makes me a more pleasant person, but it probably just makes me more neurotic.

Theater, music, literature, art: they’re about communicating emotion, right?  They make us feel human.  We get connected to others and to ourselves through them.  They are marks of culture and civilization. They help us explore a kind of intelligence and understanding about the human condition.  The emotions in art can be immediate and raw or they can be seeds from the past grown into a living reality.  My son tells me that our brains also make memories when we dream and thereby prepare us to have some experience to draw on in a new situation.

So I’m working on remembering repressed emotions, pulling up experiences from the past in detail.  And I’m also trying to be present in the moment, in now.  Going back and forth is kind of a test of sanity.  One of the things Steve said he liked about me when we started dating was that I was “sane”.  There’s a short cut to sanity, which is to remain shallow and functional.  Then there’s the long route, which is to attempt to feel in depth and yet refrain from wallowing.  I want to take that long and winding road and share what I find on the journey.  I hope that results in a learning experience for me and a few others.

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Continuing My Education

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I’m rather innocent in the ways of the world, even though I’ve lived almost 50 years in it.  I married my high school sweetheart before I’d even graduated from college and left my parents’ care completely.  My husband was a fabulous provider and only urged me to seek full time employment after my 4 kids had reached their teenaged years.  So really, I’ve never supported myself entirely.   Well, come to think of it, probably nobody “supports himself entirely”.  Let’s just say that I still have much to learn.

So today, I’m starting a class in Memoir Writing through the UW – Milwaukee extension program.  I am so excited to be going back to school!  I have a BA already, so I’m not embarking on a long term degree program, but I am trying to get closer to a goal I’ve had for about 20 years.  I’d like to be a published writer.  When I was 30, I started writing poetry.  I self-published one booklet, and had one poem published in a magazine.  I didn’t receive any pay for these efforts.  I’d like to see if I can actually earn money with this proclivity to write.  Aside from a few curriculum guides commissioned by my former employer, I haven’t had any paying work since last December.  And now, my car needs repairs and registration plates.  It’s time to go out into the world and seek some income.

You have no idea how neurotic I could be about this.  My kids have much more work experience than I.  I have urged them out into the job market on many occasions with peppy confidence talks, and they’ve always had some measure of success.  It’s part of their skill set.  I kind of freeze up inside and whine, “But I don’t know how to do this!  I wasn’t brought up to do this!”  I’m sure some of you are incredulous.  Let me explain: my mother hasn’t had a paying job since she graduated and married in 1955.  She is a brilliant and accomplished woman with a BA from our nation’s most prestigious institute of higher learning (yes, that one, but the women’s version from the pre-co-ed days).  She’s worked on countless volunteer committees and made important contributions to many communities.  But she hasn’t had a paying job.  It’s actually possible to live without one.  I grew up thinking that employment was optional, not mandatory.  And I’m glad that I did.  I think it allows me to think outside a very pernicious box.  It also gnaws at my sense of security at times.

Many people believe that education is primarily a pre-requisite for being more competitive in the job market.  A smaller percentage believe that education is simply engaging with life; it needs no framework from society and no economic impetus.  It’s the joyful occupation of people with brains.  (That would be all of us.)  A Buddhist might look for a Middle Way between the practical and the ideological posture of learning.  That’s where I want to be.  I don’t want to be defined by my wage-earning potential.  I don’t want to be so high in an ivory tower that I can’t find a way to feed myself, either.   I am sure that I can use the skills I have, and new skills that I can acquire, to secure my basic needs.  And I’m pretty sure I can do it in a way that doesn’t enslave me to something I resent.

Maybe this is the meaning behind the statement made by the founder of my Alma Mater: “The paramount obligation of a college is to develop in its students the ability to think clearly and independently, and the ability to live confidently, courageously, and hopefully.”

All that, and they give you a coffee mug, too.

Corny?  Elitist? Profound?  What has your education developed in you?

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Living Heroically

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Discipline without coercion.  Is it possible for individuals?  For communities?  Dare we believe that without obligation, people will make efforts to do their best and work toward the common good?  Are people who do that “heroes”?

We dangle punitive measures and capitalistic rewards in front of the masses and hope that will encourage us to be model citizens, and then we have to deal with the greedy monsters that evolve wondering “What’s in it for me?”  If I am of the 1% and super-wealthy, what incentive do I have to share?  And what is the percentage of the 99% who hope that one day, they will become super-wealthy also and so feel no inclination to put restrictions on the rich?  How many people are likely to come to a sense that they have “enough” all on their own and turn their surplus over to others?  And when will that sense of “enough” kick in?  What standard of living do we feel entitled to?  What would it feel like to say, “This is all I need.  I am not afraid to trust that I have enough”?  Would it feel like freedom?

How do you discipline yourself without feeling a sense of obligation?  Do you eat healthy foods because you want to?  Or because some outside influence is holding up a consequence or reward?  Do you make music because some authority is telling you to practice or for the sheer joy of it?  Do you do what you do out of passion or fear?

On our first date, Steve played a kind of “twenty questions” game with me.  I was trying to guess his three heroes in order to get to know him better.  He maintains that each of these inspirational figures have a passion for something and demonstrate it joyfully.  The first one is David Attenborough of the BBC Natural History Unit, groundbreaking writer and presenter of nature programs.  The second is Julia Child, The French Chef.  I was in total accord to this point, and also loved that they are easy to imitate in voice and mannerism to add levity to any undertaking (and we do this frequently).  The third one was rather tough to guess, mostly because he wasn’t human.  “An athlete” was about as close as I got.  Finally, Steve led me to thinking about equestrian athletes, and I immediately thought of Secretariat.  I found that rather a head-scratcher, though.  How could a horse be a hero?  And then he showed me the youtube clip of the final race in the1973 Triple Crown.  It still makes him cry.

A horse cannot be coerced by the promise of fame and fortune, can it?  There was no whipping, no carrot on a stick.  Secretariat ran for the pure joy of running, it would seem.  Feeling the power of his legs, the wind in his mane, the freedom of doing what he was born and bred and loved to do that day.  Did he have a reward afterward?  Did he develop a taste for winning?  I suppose you could debate the emotions of a horse forever and never learn anything conclusive.  You could also debate whether or not his race was something that created “good”.  Many people were undoubtedly uplifted; just listen to the audio on the tape.  His grace and beauty are captivating.  And maybe a bunch of people were making money off of it, but the horse wasn’t.  For that reason, it seems rather pure to me.

So what would it mean for you and me to be the heroes of our own lives?  To be the best we could be not out of obligation or fear of reprisal or for monetary gain, but just for the joy of living out our own passion and interest, for the love of it?  What would it be like to allow that to be our reward, our life work, and not ask fame or fortune from it?  Would we share any surplus of our efforts?  What if we all lived like that?  Would we be able to balance the table top, enjoy sustainability and equality, as a community and perhaps as a planet?  Is this a utopian ideal and totally unrealistic?

Probably.  But I would love to feel the wind in my hair, too…

...like her. (My daughter, in France, living her passion.)

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Bravi!

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I just returned from watching the HD live simulcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s matinee performance of Wagner’s Siegfried.  After five and half hours in another world, I’m not really sure what day it is.  But it doesn’t matter.  I’ve been convening with the gods and had a ringside (oh, pun appreciated!) seat at a resurrection which left me breathless and sobbing.  Brunhilde (two dots over the ‘u’) is wakened from her 18 year slumber by a kiss from Siegfried.  It may sound like Sleeping Beauty, but with Wagner’s incredible score underneath instead of Disney, it is a much more transcendent moment.  Deborah Voigt is an amazing actress as well as a singer.  In due time, she rises and greets the sun with a smile that lights the stage and a melody that thrills you to gooseflesh and tears.  Have you ever felt dead?  Hopeless?  Trapped?  Futureless? Depressed?  “There’s got to be a morning after….” is the same sentiment with inferior music. Her salutation of the day and the realization that she is alive reminds me of the Suryanamaskar in yoga, not that she does the position, but the joy of it shows in her entire being.  The passion behind the resurrection in this story is her banishment by Wotan, her father, god of Valhalla and enforcer of all the rules.  That scene as well struck me in the heart and gut as I pictured my own stern father turning his back on his daughter.  Their parting was a wrenching and painful death, again reducing me to tears in the darkness of the theater…last June.  She doesn’t awake until Act III of the next opera, which is what I saw today.

Oh, life!  Light in your eyes, the touch of your own warm flesh, breath in your lungs.  What compares with realizing the richness of being alive?  We can barely endure a moment of this stunning gift.  Something of sentience crashes in on the sparkle like a sledgehammer on an icicle.  Now that I’m alive, there’s so much to fear!  Brunhilde quickly realizes she’s lost her immortality, her armor and shield, and her autonomy.  I know the place where my morning turns on a dime from sunny dawn to mental lists of obligations and anxieties.  It’s like the Easter let down after the trumpet recessional when you know you have to leave the church and the music and go back to your business.  Listening to Deborah sing those first phrases, I hitch my entire being to her joy and long to go with her into that rapture and never come back.

A human emotion, pure and powerful, captured in Art.  It seems simple enough but somehow requires genius…or open innocence…or both.  I feel compelled to become attached, to grab this jewel and hang on, to build a booth around this transfiguration, but that would be a strangle hold.  I let it go, grateful for its presence and passing, and hopeful that another day the sun will rise and I with it.

 

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Suspension of Meaning

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In the quiet hours this morning as Steve slept beside me, the maple tree performed a Wayang shadow dance on the south window.

My mind began to wonder: what is 7 billion?  Are there 7 billion maple leaves in this town?  Has my heart beat 7 billion times?  Have I written 7 billion words?  Are there 7 billion of any other species on earth besides humans right now?  Are there 7 billion ants or bats or mice?  If I am one of 7 billion, does my life have meaning?  Am I unique?  Have I produced anything of value?  Am I a “productive member of society”?  And failing to produce any anxiety about this question, I ask myself: does it matter?

I found myself in a rather peaceful state, suspended as any other late fall maple leaf, not very concerned if the next gust of wind should liberate me forever from my connective  capacity.  Steve stirred and asked me what I was doing.  “Just thinking….”  As he awoke more fully, he told me of his late night reading adventures and the existential anger it stoked.  We began discussing morality and deep ecology and meaning.  At breakfast, we listened to Beethoven and Charles Ives and contemplated the difference in the world of the 1800s and the post WWI era.  He mentioned Nietzsche and his mental breakdown and death.  He was an insomniac and took morphine and chloral hydrate; he also had syphilis.  I thought of my brilliant father’s last 7 years living with Alzheimer’s.  What is it like to be separated from meaning?  Steve finds it frightening.  I imagine that it brings you closer to the state of an animal in the wild.  Do they have need of symbolic representations that are recognizable and repeatable?  Do they need meaning to live their lives?  We would probably find it impossible to function for a day without it.  Perhaps in meditation we suspend it for a time.  Is that what Enlightenment is?

Without the blinds covering my window, the maple leaves are golden and bright.

  They dance as solid dark figures when the veil is lowered.  Are they the same leaves?  Why do we attach different meanings to different states of being?  What if we didn’t?

Just wondering.