Auguries of Innocence
by William Blake
To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage. A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeons Shudders hell thro' all its regions. A dog starv'd at his master's gate Predicts the ruin of the state. A horse misused upon the road Calls to heaven for human blood. Each outcry of the hunted hare A fibre from the brain does tear. A skylark wounded in the wing, A cherubim does cease to sing. The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight Does the rising sun affright. Every wolf's and lion's howl Raises from hell a human soul. The wild deer, wand'ring here and there, Keeps the human soul from care. The lamb misus'd breeds public strife, And yet forgives the butcher's knife. The bat that flits at close of eve Has left the brain that won't believe. The owl that calls upon the night Speaks the unbeliever's fright. He who shall hurt the little wren Shall never be belov'd by men. He who the ox to wrath has mov'd Shall never be by woman lov'd. The wanton boy that kills the fly Shall feel the spider's enmity. He who torments the chafer's sprite Weaves a bower in endless night. The caterpillar on the leaf Repeats to thee thy mother's grief. Kill not the moth nor butterfly, For the last judgement draweth nigh. He who shall train the horse to war Shall never pass the polar bar. The beggar's dog and widow's cat, Feed them and thou wilt grow fat. The gnat that sings his summer's song Poison gets from slander's tongue. The poison of the snake and newt Is the sweat of envy's foot. The poison of the honey bee Is the artist's jealousy. The prince's robes and beggar's rags Are toadstools on the miser's bags. A truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent. It is right it should be so; Man was made for joy and woe; And when this we rightly know, Thro' the world we safely go. Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine. Under every grief and pine Runs a joy with silken twine. The babe is more than swaddling bands; Every farmer understands. Every tear from every eye Becomes a babe in eternity; This is caught by females bright, And return'd to its own delight. The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar, Are waves that beat on heaven's shore. The babe that weeps the rod beneath Writes revenge in realms of death. The beggar's rags, fluttering in air, Does to rags the heavens tear. The soldier, arm'd with sword and gun, Palsied strikes the summer's sun. The poor man's farthing is worth more Than all the gold on Afric's shore. One mite wrung from the lab'rer's hands Shall buy and sell the miser's lands; Or, if protected from on high, Does that whole nation sell and buy. He who mocks the infant's faith Shall be mock'd in age and death. He who shall teach the child to doubt The rotting grave shall ne'er get out. He who respects the infant's faith Triumphs over hell and death. The child's toys and the old man's reasons Are the fruits of the two seasons. The questioner, who sits so sly, Shall never know how to reply. He who replies to words of doubt Doth put the light of knowledge out. The strongest poison ever known Came from Caesar's laurel crown. Nought can deform the human race Like to the armour's iron brace. When gold and gems adorn the plow, To peaceful arts shall envy bow. A riddle, or the cricket's cry, Is to doubt a fit reply. The emmet's inch and eagle's mile Make lame philosophy to smile. He who doubts from what he sees Will ne'er believe, do what you please. If the sun and moon should doubt, They'd immediately go out. To be in a passion you good may do, But no good if a passion is in you. The whore and gambler, by the state Licensed, build that nation's fate. The harlot's cry from street to street Shall weave old England's winding-sheet. The winner's shout, the loser's curse, Dance before dead England's hearse. Every night and every morn Some to misery are born, Every morn and every night Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night. We are led to believe a lie When we see not thro' the eye, Which was born in a night to perish in a night, When the soul slept in beams of light. God appears, and God is light, To those poor souls who dwell in night; But does a human form display To those who dwell in realms of day.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence"
William Blake's famous poem.
The ground for conscious being
It is both fascinating and frightening how lost we can be in the world of apparitions due to subtle contractions and attachments of our psyche—the phenomena of which we tend to be unaware. We get used to a limited perspective on ourselves and on others; we develop some basic agreements with the world during the process of growth and interaction with the other, we co-create the worldspace where we live that includes our thoughts, things that we say, things how we say, our memories, visions, sensations, body movements, chronic energy fixations, and the totality of it all is our self which we present to the loved ones and the hated ones and the world at large.
It is dramatic that our self, as it constantly grows towards more maturity and embrace and experience and becoming more aware of itself by including more and more entities into its space of being-in-the-world, at earlier stages can learn and adapt to the world, construct the basic sets of its elements in a way that in the future would become self-evident as self-contractions and subtle attachments that hinder liberation and hide essential qualities of one's own human being, of one's own profound truth under limited adaptive masks or personae of which we are not aware for initially and genealogically these masks were developed in order to comply with the requirements and agreements that the other and the environment told us, showed us in the days when we were just starting to make first steps towards self-consciousness and conscious liberation. And these masks of which we are not yet aware, the shadow patterns of our co-existence contaminate our whole life and communion with the ones we love and prevent us from being fully and self-recognizably who we are, radiant blissful fluctuations of the Spirit's meaningful, passionate, unlimited unfolding, the unfolding that is personally embodied in the Soul, the ego, and the bodymind.
The Spirit is always present in our life as the very fact that we are aware. In fact it is the space of awareness, of consciousness that is aware of us and all our life right now. In this space the wisdom and compassion grow and stabilize as structures, as fractals, as flowers. Giving space to yourself the way you fully and deeply are in your true embodied nature means grounding yourself in awareness and putting everything that exists in life into this ground, washing with its liberating rain the basics presets of your tetra-constructed¹ being and knowledge of the world and how to engage with it. In the space of awareness the spontaneity occurs that breaks ice of the old and allows novelty to emerge, and the novelty brings new excitements and flow of life and the conscious awareness always liberates them from attachment, for the attachment per se is something of which we can become conscious in the space of awareness.
The names of attachments, fixations and repressions are Legion. They hide everywhere in your private and public worldspace and they cause you to develop a false concept of the self, a false self. You get used to move in a certain way and not the other; and you unconsciously consider these movements to be the boundaries that divide the territory of your self from the foreign land of not-self, the unknowing land that brings anxiety by its very existence. Thus, you get a limited perspective of your self embodied in movements. You get used to have certain sensations and feelings in the body; and you may not even be aware of the fact that these are only sensations and feelings that emerged in the process of growth; and you just take them for granted. Thus, you get a limited perspective of your self embodied in how you feel your body. You get used to have certain thoughts and preconceived ideas in your mind; and these ideas are always more limited than the mystery of the world and your self. Thus, you get a limited perspective of your self embodied in how you think about yourself and existence.
You get used to hearing a limited spectrum of sounds, seeing limited things, enjoying limited moves, experiencing limited emotions, playing limited roles, having a limited diapason of dreams, and living a limited range of possibilities of life. And all of it in the totality of who you are you present as a total message of your existence to others. And others respond, both consciously and unconsciously, to this message as a whole with their being. Of course, you are responding to their message as well.
If I am so attached to these things that I don't even let them into my awareness so as to let go of them, how not to get lost in this vortex of apparitions and how to finally arise above the process of recreating the suffering, the suffering that is constantly shared with others? If there is nothing in my self that I can ground myself in, for it all is essentially a fleeting and constructed experience, what is the way to freedom? How can I free myself to being fully embodied and yet unattached? The ultimate way is to ground yourself in something that has no content and yet is always already present, in a presence that constitutes the basic undeniable dimension of the being-in-the-world that is closer to you than your self.
That which is always already present and yet has no content is the silent awareness, the very framework of attention, the very space of consciousness in which everything you are reading right now as you are sitting in a certain posture, feeling certain sensations and thinking ideas and making various micro- and macro-movements is arising moment to moment. This awareness is your best fucking friend forever. Ground yourself in awareness and allow yourself making new moves, approaching people in new ways, playing new roles, having a fresh taste of feelings in the body, no matter how silly you think those are, for these very thoughts of silliness are just temporary clouds in the sky of your awareness that come and go, come and go like flowing waves in the ocean cradled by the wind which is the Spirit whispering.
Ground yourself and help your beloved to ground themselves in awareness and then look into their eyes and make funny faces, scream and cry and move and liberate and dance together and give the full space to feelings in the body and suffering in the life for this is the path to healing and redemption and underneath suffering you can find profound happiness if you actually follow this advice, this practical injunction. Constantly remind yourself and others of this translucent awareness and the power of the present moment and the glory of all-pervading silence by being a living example.
The quietude is the Spirit smiling to you.
¹ Tetra-construction is the term that points to biological, psychological, cultural, and social factors of development and evolution. See, e.g., Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 2006.
It is dramatic that our self, as it constantly grows towards more maturity and embrace and experience and becoming more aware of itself by including more and more entities into its space of being-in-the-world, at earlier stages can learn and adapt to the world, construct the basic sets of its elements in a way that in the future would become self-evident as self-contractions and subtle attachments that hinder liberation and hide essential qualities of one's own human being, of one's own profound truth under limited adaptive masks or personae of which we are not aware for initially and genealogically these masks were developed in order to comply with the requirements and agreements that the other and the environment told us, showed us in the days when we were just starting to make first steps towards self-consciousness and conscious liberation. And these masks of which we are not yet aware, the shadow patterns of our co-existence contaminate our whole life and communion with the ones we love and prevent us from being fully and self-recognizably who we are, radiant blissful fluctuations of the Spirit's meaningful, passionate, unlimited unfolding, the unfolding that is personally embodied in the Soul, the ego, and the bodymind.
The Spirit is always present in our life as the very fact that we are aware. In fact it is the space of awareness, of consciousness that is aware of us and all our life right now. In this space the wisdom and compassion grow and stabilize as structures, as fractals, as flowers. Giving space to yourself the way you fully and deeply are in your true embodied nature means grounding yourself in awareness and putting everything that exists in life into this ground, washing with its liberating rain the basics presets of your tetra-constructed¹ being and knowledge of the world and how to engage with it. In the space of awareness the spontaneity occurs that breaks ice of the old and allows novelty to emerge, and the novelty brings new excitements and flow of life and the conscious awareness always liberates them from attachment, for the attachment per se is something of which we can become conscious in the space of awareness.
The names of attachments, fixations and repressions are Legion. They hide everywhere in your private and public worldspace and they cause you to develop a false concept of the self, a false self. You get used to move in a certain way and not the other; and you unconsciously consider these movements to be the boundaries that divide the territory of your self from the foreign land of not-self, the unknowing land that brings anxiety by its very existence. Thus, you get a limited perspective of your self embodied in movements. You get used to have certain sensations and feelings in the body; and you may not even be aware of the fact that these are only sensations and feelings that emerged in the process of growth; and you just take them for granted. Thus, you get a limited perspective of your self embodied in how you feel your body. You get used to have certain thoughts and preconceived ideas in your mind; and these ideas are always more limited than the mystery of the world and your self. Thus, you get a limited perspective of your self embodied in how you think about yourself and existence.
You get used to hearing a limited spectrum of sounds, seeing limited things, enjoying limited moves, experiencing limited emotions, playing limited roles, having a limited diapason of dreams, and living a limited range of possibilities of life. And all of it in the totality of who you are you present as a total message of your existence to others. And others respond, both consciously and unconsciously, to this message as a whole with their being. Of course, you are responding to their message as well.
If I am so attached to these things that I don't even let them into my awareness so as to let go of them, how not to get lost in this vortex of apparitions and how to finally arise above the process of recreating the suffering, the suffering that is constantly shared with others? If there is nothing in my self that I can ground myself in, for it all is essentially a fleeting and constructed experience, what is the way to freedom? How can I free myself to being fully embodied and yet unattached? The ultimate way is to ground yourself in something that has no content and yet is always already present, in a presence that constitutes the basic undeniable dimension of the being-in-the-world that is closer to you than your self.
That which is always already present and yet has no content is the silent awareness, the very framework of attention, the very space of consciousness in which everything you are reading right now as you are sitting in a certain posture, feeling certain sensations and thinking ideas and making various micro- and macro-movements is arising moment to moment. This awareness is your best fucking friend forever. Ground yourself in awareness and allow yourself making new moves, approaching people in new ways, playing new roles, having a fresh taste of feelings in the body, no matter how silly you think those are, for these very thoughts of silliness are just temporary clouds in the sky of your awareness that come and go, come and go like flowing waves in the ocean cradled by the wind which is the Spirit whispering.
Ground yourself and help your beloved to ground themselves in awareness and then look into their eyes and make funny faces, scream and cry and move and liberate and dance together and give the full space to feelings in the body and suffering in the life for this is the path to healing and redemption and underneath suffering you can find profound happiness if you actually follow this advice, this practical injunction. Constantly remind yourself and others of this translucent awareness and the power of the present moment and the glory of all-pervading silence by being a living example.
The quietude is the Spirit smiling to you.
¹ Tetra-construction is the term that points to biological, psychological, cultural, and social factors of development and evolution. See, e.g., Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 2006.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The all-pervading duḥkha
The following is an excerpt from a letter I wrote to my dearest friend a few days ago. I thought it's precious enough to share with the world:
Last night, when I was going to sleep I had that time when everything in life seems... feels sore. All the dreams, actions, responses, goals, memories, the entire manifested realm seemed impermanent and sore. This feeling was reminiscent of duhkha; and, indeed, it probably is exactly what it was. I felt duhkha in my body, its movements, in my mind's thoughts, ideas, concepts, in the world around, the world that strives for something. I felt duhkha in the dreams we share and in the moments we try to stop. I felt duhkha in my research paper that I write and in the hundreds of books that I read or will have to read so as to make the research more or less accomplished. I felt duhkha in my desire to be richer financially. I felt duhkha in my desire to be richer spiritually. I felt duhkha in the way the world was presented to my awareness at the moment. I felt duhkha and a desire to die and to arise liberated and reshaped in a different form. These were the precious moments of realizing at least for that period that there is virtually nothing to personally cling to, to want, to desire, to force oneself into. I fell asleep and had dreams and as I woke up the duhkha unveiled something beneath its sheath, something mysterious and yet blissful, something ultimately joyful and knowing.For those interested, a very detailed and yet simply-written article on duḥkha can be found in Wikipedia.
While there is always duhkha in the relative world of living, beneath it there is ultimate joy of participation in the constant co-creation of the manifested realm. And I realized that the thing I want the most at this moment, even though wanting itself is duhkha, is transforming myself to be able to always already be connected with the vast universe of different magnitudes of experiencing- and being-in-the-world. Life as it is in its unknowingness is nothing compared to life that is enriched with knowingness, jnana, and energies of the Kosmic creativity. I humbly pray to my innermost being to realize my deepest potential and to transform the utterly familiar into a completely different world of the mysterious. To realize my supreme identity and liberate that of others is what my living is for. To have fun surfing the waves of the ocean of primordial awareness. No amount of gold in the world, no amount of traveling, no amount of lesser experiences can overbuy this awareness which turns everything into gold and the most profound experience of being by leaving it perfectly the way it is now—a changing manifestation of the Unborn.
And, perhaps, the most painful and joyful is to let go of these words as well as of their opposites for giving the space to actual reality beneath them.
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