This isn't normal
“Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.” ― Meister Eckhart
I realise that my writing is angst-ridden.
It’s not so much I feel it my duty to joust with and pick apart the dominant narrative, it’s the way my soul is configured. I know that sounds a little preposterous and not the best get-out-of-jail card but it’s true.
What do I mean?
Simply this. My soul isn’t fooled by much: it knows that to be human doesn’t mean to live as an in-animist, remote and distant from all sentient life, or to ignore our ancestors or to live as if there was no tomorrow.
Weave into the brooding mythos my obsession with death and dying, grief and elderhood, and I’d be the first to admit that I’m not great company.
As my wife would say: it’s way too deep.
But, my Dark Night of the Soul in March 2010 forever changed me – as it must do. It was, as they say, my wake-up call from the anthropocentric hubris, narcissism and barbarism that I hadn’t noticed till then and it began, what has turned out to be, a volte-face my predilection for the blood and guts of the workplace and all the trappings of success to a very different person, one cloaked in a deep, brooding melancholy who cannot help opine on the dominant cultural narrative.
If that sounds like fighting talk, I don’t mean it to come out that way. Then again, I have been known to lose it in the face of another specious argument about why humanity is the Crown of Creation and is hell-bent on wrecking this beautiful planet.
Could I change tack and write about something a little more hopeful? I could but I won’t. Hope to me is a shell game in so many ways, even though the way it's proselytised you’d think that with enough of it, anything is possible. Having been around for nearly 57 years, I can tell you I’ve heard the same hope-obsessed message repeated ad nauseam and things haven’t changed, not really.
Will I keep going?
Yes.
In fact, I’ve been at this blogging game for a long time now and whilst I know I’ve got something book-length in me, for whatever reason I’ve never got down to business and have been more content to write these pith posts – on Substack or wherever else I’ve shown up.
Do you have any reason to read my stuff?
Probably not if you’re looking for another 7-step programme to improve your lot. But then again, if, like me, you feel in your bones that something’s gone desperately wrong and there might be another way to see the world, then I’ll do my very best to be troubled aloud in a true and faithful way.
In any event, thank you for reading my material; it means the world to me.
Blessings,
Julian