Dear Gillian
Thirty-years apart, or there abouts, my ability to ‘listen’ and to ‘hear’ has deepened. As I am now nearly 55-years-old – I cannot believe how long this transformation has taken to unfold – I would not say ‘complete’ as of yet. My interaction with you – has loosened the bonds of limiting conditioning. It is interesting how dichotomies that seemed so ‘real’ and ‘solid’ at one point – then are exposed as being entirely translucent and without the concrete ‘edges’ once thought to define their structures. In-turn, this process has led to a more profound awareness of a spiritual essence. This can have many descriptive names – but it is all-embracing and has the fabric of unconditional (and ‘non-boundaried’) love and compassion. It is an indifferent presence of total solidarity and togetherness that functions in its most ‘pure’ frequency whilst I am existing in a state of solitude. Right in the middle of ‘isolation’, there is a reality of complete totality with all that lives. No violence – just pure loving kindness for all beings.
There is a place where Marx, Buddha and God are all ‘correct’ and that all the contradicts form the cement that makes it so – and this reality is not limited to Marx, Buddha or God – that’s just my partiality. It is the mutual ‘pushing away’ of each ideology and philosophy that ultimately ‘pulls it altogether’. I see (or feel) no contradiction in even in statements that seem to diametrically oppose one another. It all gets ‘there’ in the end – whatever that ‘end’ might be. We are all on a dialectical learning-curve that has no limits and can have no limits if it is to be considered ‘legitimate’ rather than ‘superficial’ Although I feel a definite trajectory of ideological movement – I see no reason to ‘oppose’ this idea (or ‘state’ of being) over ‘that’ idea (or ‘state’ of being). This unleashes a great dialectical freedom that is multifaceted and not limited to narrow definitions of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. This is all the window-dressing for class distinction, lack of fairness and fundamental lack of goodness.
Hearing into the emptiness of the universe has been the key for me. When young, I felt the universe could be penetrated with strength of mind – but the universe also felt like a solid wall standing straight in-front of me – impenetrable and stoic. I spent a couple of decades ‘bouncing’ off the its façade whilst looking for the ‘fabled’ way through – and suddenly there you were stood by an opening and pointing the way! Even down to the size and shape of your hand-writing – this combined with your thought-processes and peculiar way of viewing the world. Empowerment of vision has to be a very important part of the path of transformation. Personal conditioning holds us back as individuals – and those around us together with the texts we read – serve to ‘loosen’ the bonds that holds us solely upon one basic and undeveloped level of psychological evolution. Perhaps it is all a product of ‘healing’ where we are one another’s ‘doctor of the spirit’.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 