(no subject)
A while back I (a year ago?) I sent a letter to my high school English teacher.
His response ended with a question: What have you been thinking?
That question stumped me for at least a year. To be honest, I still don't really know the answer.
Dear Sir, and I use both words with full import:
Your question had me stumped for a very long time: what have I been thinking? For a long time I've been not thinking; that is to say actively not judging, just accepting. Speaking in relation to Nietzsche's explanation of Zarathustra's parable of the Camel, Lion, and Child... it feels like I have a fear of not being a child in the quest for knowledge: I can't allow myself any beliefs.
That being said, one thing since I passed through your classroom has stuck with me more than anything else: a story told to me by a Hasidic Jew I met while on a train. I asked him what the word Shekhinah (the female aspect of God) meant to him and after some dialog, he told me the Second Story of Creation:
"When God created the world he created Earth and Man, giving Man dominion over the Earth. After giving Man the gift of Life, God saw that man was lacking in one area: Thought. So God built a clay pot and placed his golden Essence in the vessel and gave it to Man. Man, unable to bear the full import of the essence of God and dropped the vessel, shattering it into millions of fragments. Man picked up one of these fragments and carried it with him for all time."
This man on the train looked at me and told me this: each Person, and even all the other people, have a bit of this golden vessel inside each of them, and as Humans it's our goal is to rebuild, to the best of our ability, that golden vessel. We can't do that using just our individual shard, so therefore we need to collect the shards from every person we meet.
Using this as a way of life, it seems to me that finding people, learning from them, obtaining their shards and rebuilding the vessel feels natural and good. What I'm not exactly clear on is how to find my own shard, it feels like it's always been missing. For most of my life I've felt like an imaginary friend -- to this day I don't exactly feel real, not exactly sure how to explain that any better. However, it feels like at this point I can't progress until I find it, which honestly I have no idea how to go about doing.
So what am I thinking? I'm thinking about how to start. I'm trying to figure out what I'm starting. Somehow I think I'm beginning the translation from Child to Camel, something I've always looked down on but I think I'm beginning to understand how important it is.
~James
His response ended with a question: What have you been thinking?
That question stumped me for at least a year. To be honest, I still don't really know the answer.
Dear Sir, and I use both words with full import:
Your question had me stumped for a very long time: what have I been thinking? For a long time I've been not thinking; that is to say actively not judging, just accepting. Speaking in relation to Nietzsche's explanation of Zarathustra's parable of the Camel, Lion, and Child... it feels like I have a fear of not being a child in the quest for knowledge: I can't allow myself any beliefs.
That being said, one thing since I passed through your classroom has stuck with me more than anything else: a story told to me by a Hasidic Jew I met while on a train. I asked him what the word Shekhinah (the female aspect of God) meant to him and after some dialog, he told me the Second Story of Creation:
"When God created the world he created Earth and Man, giving Man dominion over the Earth. After giving Man the gift of Life, God saw that man was lacking in one area: Thought. So God built a clay pot and placed his golden Essence in the vessel and gave it to Man. Man, unable to bear the full import of the essence of God and dropped the vessel, shattering it into millions of fragments. Man picked up one of these fragments and carried it with him for all time."
This man on the train looked at me and told me this: each Person, and even all the other people, have a bit of this golden vessel inside each of them, and as Humans it's our goal is to rebuild, to the best of our ability, that golden vessel. We can't do that using just our individual shard, so therefore we need to collect the shards from every person we meet.
Using this as a way of life, it seems to me that finding people, learning from them, obtaining their shards and rebuilding the vessel feels natural and good. What I'm not exactly clear on is how to find my own shard, it feels like it's always been missing. For most of my life I've felt like an imaginary friend -- to this day I don't exactly feel real, not exactly sure how to explain that any better. However, it feels like at this point I can't progress until I find it, which honestly I have no idea how to go about doing.
So what am I thinking? I'm thinking about how to start. I'm trying to figure out what I'm starting. Somehow I think I'm beginning the translation from Child to Camel, something I've always looked down on but I think I'm beginning to understand how important it is.
~James