On turning eighty, Henry Miller,brainpickings.org, quotes, Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, quote, notes

 On turning eighty, Henry Miller

"....If you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you’ve got it half licked."..

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.."Perhaps it is curiosity — about anything and everything — that made me the writer I am. It has never left me…

With this attribute goes another which I prize above everything else, and that is the sense of wonder. No matter how restricted my world may become I cannot imagine it leaving me void of wonder. In a sense I suppose it might be called my religion. I do not ask how it came about, this creation in which we swim, but only to enjoy and appreciate it."..

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..."Perhaps the most comforting thing about growing old gracefully is the increasing ability not to take things too seriously. One of the big differences between a genuine sage and a preacher is gaiety. When the sage laughs it is a belly laugh; when the preacher laughs, which is all too seldom, it is on the wrong side of the face."...
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personal note:

I like him to say 'if you can fall in love again and again".
Somebody important in my life keeps saying it is not important to be in love
and it is a stupid thing to fall in love.

i feel this so different, so very much.
i can fall in love with a flower, a stone, a tree..and i can fall in love with a woman,
it is the moment of total presence and  the recognition of essence ,it happens, 

and to do this with the mind alone is not the same as falling into a moment of seeing.
the longing for union with the essence is not born in the head.
to be in love and to fall means an act of falling, of opening to vulnerability,
it means soft knees and a readiness to give your blood.
it is something going totally beyond being 'adult', beyond controlled behaviour,

it has nothing to do this moment with love as an idea, it is love, it is still innocent and
untouched by conditioned gates of perception as far as this can be possible for a human.
because to fall in love with just this one may have roots we never knew nor ever will know.

without falling in love with a woman or the sea or the sky or  music life would be boring
and depressing, wings grow out of this, the moment of true seeing, still out of all  wanting.

to love is another kind of human experience and more so doing, it does take real blood and work and patience. 
and sometimes i ask me why falling and rising is such an act, and i see love as the
overcoming of gravity, as release into kindness and as the composition of a long song. and  yes, i cannot say that i like the music to stop. and somewhere somehow it never will.

so i will never say all is nothing but all is no-thing.

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Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet:

"I.

I was born in a time when the majority of young people  had lost faith in God, 
for the same reason their elders had had it
-without knowing why.

And since the human spirit tends to make naturally judgements based on feeling
instead of reason, most of these young people chose Humanity  to replace God.

I, however, am the sort of person who is always on the fringe of what he belongs to,
seeing not only the multitude he's a part of but  also the wide open space around it.
That's why I didn't give up God as completely as they did, and I never accepted Humanity.

I reasoned that God, though improbable, might exist, in which case he should be worshipped; wheras Humanity being a mere biological idea  and signifying nothing 
more than the animal species we belong to, was no more deserving of worship than
any other animal species.

The cult of Humanity, with its rites of Freedom and Equality, always stuck me 
as a  revival of those ancient cults in which Gods were like animals or had animal heads.


  And so, not knowing how to believe in God and unable to believe in an aggregate of animals, I, along with other people on the fringe, kept a distance from things, a distance
commonly called Decadence.
Decadence is the total loss of unconsciousness, which is the very basis of life.
Could it think, the heart would stop beating."
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note:
why to follow up Henry Miller and my last notes with Fernando Pessoa?

i understand this 'decadence" well, it is a distance to oneself and others
in a cultured estrangement from the roots of life itself. It is a way of staying
thinking non-stop, it took him several personalities to keep it up, 
and i cannot see Fernando Pessoa with a belly laugh.
would i have liked to meet him? yes, for curiosity,
not for a real conversation as i couldn't have known who is talking and who is listening.

he is profoundly honest-"Humanity being a mere biological idea  and signifying nothing 
more than the animal species we belong to"- i really appreciate this.
The idea on worshipping ´though appears irrelevant to my perspective.

Less observation and more falling and meeting may make all the difference.

when we observe, we judge , classify-and we all know how conditioned 
the observer is and how the results of his or her research and opinions depend on herself/himself. observing is not living. we end up with a collection of  dead butterflies.

Pessoa and Kafka appear not so far from each other in some ways,
but they are totally different. but both share and give the experience 
of honest fight and truthful stress of soul in the quest for freedom.

What is freedom there?
Is it freedom they achieve? 
or only a strife for freedom from patterns and the sharpening of the saw
to cut bonds and false perception? i hear the saw shrieking.
i heard it for so long.

give us a break, a laugh.
give us not only blood , give us a heart to find.
can i do this?
i don't know.

"Letter to a neurotic"

Dear friend,
maybe my story here will help understanding our relationship with ourself ,
with us and with each other in another light.

I begin not with the story  but with talking about neurosis, a term no longer used in psychiatry and psychology. It can mean various ways of behaviour originating in a failure of adaptation to whichever mostly early environment, a regressive way of being going along with fear and the all present defence of an ego which doesn't really exist. 
The methods of this defence are invariably not allowing much change nor communication which could at any deeper level touch one's vulnerability. One can not find this vulnerability because without any balance points one is always vulnerable, and each opening will at the same time be a closing. 
It equals a flower which cannot open.
Such a person will always prefer the safety of unhappiness to the charge of joy and to the exposure to the sky, to life. But he or she will see it another way. They will always only see "I cannot". 
Besides, neurotic persons will always ask what to fear and whose fault it is.
Deeply inside,they mostly know it is their own closure to suffering which makes
them suffer even more: another reason to be even more unhappy.


It is quite clear that each such hurtful accumulation and willful continuation 
of unhappiness will lead to an organic presence in one's life, to so called symptoms, to psychosomatic disorders.
Unfortunately, even if our neurotic friends know it is themselves causing their own stomach pain, heart pain, asthma attacks, 
they see no way to change for feeling better-
simply because they don't really want to.

My story shows that the aim of neurosis and psychosomatic illness
is death itself. 
Obviously one can reach a point where illness and death are preferable to memories of pain and to monotonous circles of fear, defence and retirement.

Psychosomatic disorder is not a perpetuum mobile, it will end  with death:
the afflicted person knows but doesn't wish to know. 
Death is present all the time,
it is the greatest healer and it is the very secret of change.

Apart from this, psychosomatic suffering is a continuous creation, 
a human fertilizing the ground, life, others with unhappiness, 
leveling down all experience to one's own prison, 
meeting each moment fearfully with the always same fixed solution,
one taking human experience out of presence, into unreachable hiding. 
No, a neurotic does not want to change.

Others cannot influence this, they can only try to bear it with tolerance,
empathy can only exist in understanding the root of  the other's
individual trauma.

And whatever you do for or with a purpose will not result in a flow of a kinder, richer, happier, conscious and mindful life: 
nobody should stay a patient. 
I read this somewhere, and it is true.
So much about therapy....

Carl Jung said(on politics): 
"Our world is, so to speak, dissociated like a neurotic".

In this, all of us show strong traits of neurosis, of being fixed in unhappiness 
and defence of illusionary egos. 

Why? Because our culture taught us behaviour 
from inside the cruel cooking pot of family and school. 
It taught us to be unkind to ourselves, to carry our own mask and prison, marked us with violence. 

And most of all, it rewards us for our distorted functioning
with attention, with consumption, with poisoned sweeties.

Each step out of long ago inside fixed solutions is liberation.

And believe me or not, no religion will take us out, no leader,
no guru, no other fixed way. All will be only false relief, 
harden our wrong ways and possibly bring on fanaticism,
create the illusion to be saved or to be able to develop into a super-being.

Meditation can help to go out of fixed ego bubbles, it is the best way for this-
also it will bring temporary relief like drugs, as a side effect only. 
You cannot gain a higher self: this would mean still staying inside your 
ego-trap and in splendid isolation, just feeling superior.
You should not be be so blind as to imagine a way towards that purpose 
will make you happier. 

You still have to consciously change: 
and first of all you have to want
to do so.

You have to gain your self, step for step, with a new kindness,
meeting your fear,  with mercy, grace, compassion, consolation and embrace.
When you cannot be kind to yourself, you cannot be kind to others.


The neurotic person is stuck, defining impossibility and unwillingness
to change as a first rule to control fear and preservation of integrity,
the integrity of a tinned fish.

All starts and ends with death.
Unlike dolphins, we breathe even when we are unconscious,
but to be alive consciously is an act of human choice, 
a human on a sofa is very unlike a cat on the very same sofa.

Now, with a bad end, the story:

Now i am old, but i remember my first job as a pre-registration
medical house officer in a  hospital in the borders region of the UK.
We had long shifts, many on-call duties. The area had a high
unemployment rate for young people nearing 50%. There was a dense despair amongst people, a palpable ghostly unhappiness. Throughout the
nights we were always busy, in-patients with difficulties, 
many normal emergencies coming in with always 2-5 suicide attempts in between, sleep was mostly impossible.

On one ward we had an in-patient constantly complaining about chest
pain, he had been kept there already for near to four weeks. He had
gone through all at that time possible examinations, nothing could be found
physically wrong with him. Our consultant had kept him on  half for
the fear of legal problems following discharge, half for curiosity.

He for sure was an unpleasant person quite obviously used to terrorize others, 
always complaining, demanding, unkind, throwing tempers, insulting carers and staff. 

One extremely busy night in between treating patients with
suicide attempts i had been running there the third time, 
already having been called for the next emergency. 

It was the third Electrocardiography i did on him this night, 
and all on-calls had previously been like that for every doctor. 
I run there, sweating, looked at his face, into his eyes, i didn't see fear 
but only a man trying to terrorize me. 
All he immediately knew to do was to tell me that nobody ever has time for him.

Applying the electrodes to his arms, legs and chest , 
me being stressed and my hair rising, i told him off, clearly and
not with a soft voice at all, that he is only complaining about chest pain
so people come running for him. 
The ECG was about finished already, all normal.
He reacted, stopped to breathe and turned nearly blue as if to explode any moment with rage at me. In this very moment i really had waited for just this,
wondering what to do.
Then - he was just dead, from one moment to the other. 

The emergency team was with me within 2 minutes.
There was nothing to do. 

The next day he was on the table, cut open: 
there was nothing, nothing at all. No cause for death. 
No blood clot, no coronary artery which didn't look completely healthy,
a normal heart and good lungs.
He could have decided to live, he preferred to die with a spectacle,
the last scene in a final act.
My guess was and is a temporary coronary artery spasm 
caused by rage imploding. 

A black magic kind of death.

The patient who got the most attention on the ward
was the one who just wanted to die.


I had been unkind, reacted, he reacted. He was dead. I was alive.
Nothing to add.


Dear friend, excuse my lengthy letter, but when i talked to you here
i had to talk to me first. Mind you, following this incident i had some bad dreams,  i learned that to lose my temper could kill somebody. And though only possible if they want to die anyway: i had to look into me and face
my own ways.

Do the same, and my story has reached.

i read yesterdays thoughts...now on music and water

it is not the one sound of the flute nor the sequence or composition of notes nor the rhythm which makes music music.  it is ones mind listening  to the flow and it is the  life and spirit in what you hear taking you on from now. "good" music is undefinable, it is an entrance to development, change, blossoming out and into inner life and death at the same time. it can be  resonance of  mystery, revelation, inspiration. it is life and it is timeless. each moment in music is now, and one now follows the other: this is life. music can make you discover life as being there now, and it always is.  music takes you out of your day for day experience of time, it contradicts your concept and imagination of time as it is always there only now. when the music stops and if you loved it and you had given your complete awareness to it  owing to the spiritual quality of "good" music, you will always feel a moment of sadness as if  life had stopped for a moment and death would approach. often i feel a vague but intense desire for some place i cannot remember or i do not know, yet.

when i sit next to a river and watch its flow i tend to go into meditation. the flow takes me away, the reflections of light and shadow, the eddies, whirls, curls, the small places of hesitation or restlessness, the back current near the bank, the way of the water around obstructions, dead branches, stones, the leaves dancing on the surface, sinking, coming up again, the gurgling, the sound of the birds and the water, the scent of just this place where i am now.

the deep quality of the river is direction of flow.
even seeing the  whirlpools and the backwaters, the flow is one way.
when the path is narrow it will flow faster, when the river's bed is large it will glide more slowly.
but it is always the same flow.
water will meet water, another river, a lake, the sea. it will always reach the ocean.

one drop of water does not make the river nor the ocean
but it will always be a a part of flow and life.
this can be one spiritual core of  a meditation on water.


"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."
A.Huxley

i read another man's thoughts

i read another human's thoughts today.

it is quite clear to me that there is no relief without pain, no joy without suffering and no other way than to meet the core of one deepest sorrow and go through there if you ever want to see light.

there is no love pouring out if you cannot have real compassion for your own lost inner child.

in my mind this life is not about finding a way how not to be reborn but to live here in kindness and acceptance of uncertainty and with the deep knowledge that our being here is perishable. we are on a journey through the universe, a rich adventure and highly educational in itself. i do not myself believe in simple rebirth here on earth as a frog, a horse or a human being. i do imagine a travel through the gates of life,birth and death into another kind of being and travel and into other galaxies and spheres.

i am a messenger of stars and the distant unknown, a particle and a dance and a song and a wave and a ray of light longing for home wherever this may be. many people call it god, but this is a misused word.

the certain presence of death is a part of life, not the opposite. one makes the other valuable and possible.

all of us are connected, good and bad, soul and non-soul, plant, animal, man. we will all meet  in the sea of nothingness where we will not know each other, and from there we will be sent out again to travel, to meet, to experience and learn.

there is no nirvana in the sense that this is a place where we can live in holy detachedness.

it is not an aim of life to be detached in eternal happiness. life shows us death and death shows us life.

in nature one grows out of the other. we open our eyes walking through a forest, a desert, we open our mind and we see.

analytic thinking and even meditation can do nothing but open our gates of perception and show us a way, outside the thought, inside the meditation.

mind you, there just is no easy way. happiness is a gift, not a goal. 

if it is not a way of the heart it will be wrong, wrong only meaning it will not lead us out of confusion and

we will not listen to music when we stumble.

it is all the same as for oneself and as in the beginning of this text when two people want to learn to sincerely love each other, howsoever they start meeting. they will know  when they can reach each other through the brain, the skin, the heart, the soul, words and touch. they have to see the inner child in each other, feel not only attraction but feel the complete other being as a part of the spirit of our cosmic entity. if then they manage to truly meet each others's deepest wounds and sorrow , undress masks , penetrate shells, share pain and suffering without running away , then they may be able to trust and love. it takes persistence . a precondition for it to last is to be open to astonishment and wonder, to work on non-judgement and non-expectation, to use rather rituals than routines and to see each other as the wonder he or she really is.

and for this it is a pre-condition to see oneself as a wonder of creation , 

not just to go back in analysis, but to give each day a chance for a surprise.

i see no other way.