I remember the first night our pet dog stayed in our house. I can still hear the plaintive wails of the puppy prematurely parted from its mother. She has never made any such noise since that first night and now resides comfortably and completely within the bounds of her own vitality.
It strikes me that, for human beings, the time after birth is, in many respects, the after life. And our lives are merely the continuum between the warm, aquatic connectedness of the womb and the cold, earthy integration of burial. The (uterine) heaven is behind us, not in front of us.
A psychic river flows from the birth canal away from integrity and inexorably towards an increasing separation from the source. Thanks to the curse of self-consciousness we feel this dis-integration as a primordial pain of loss. The resultant, incessant scream of the ego – the human condition – is merely exacerbated by shoddy parenting and the alienation from others intrinsic to industrial society.
There are a number of nostrums on offer for this condition: not least culture, self-gratification and god. All three are typified by a feckless search for the sublime, which is a disingenuous way of characterising the narcissistic hunt for our own reflection in ‘reality’.
I’ve been reading a lovely book called ‘Nature Cure’ recently which posits that the benevolence of nature can be healing to the broken mind. More narcissism of course – to believe that nature cares one way or another.
But maybe only proximity to nature, and silent, non-analytical acceptance of her flow, can quell the howling within.
It strikes me that, for human beings, the time after birth is, in many respects, the after life. And our lives are merely the continuum between the warm, aquatic connectedness of the womb and the cold, earthy integration of burial. The (uterine) heaven is behind us, not in front of us.
A psychic river flows from the birth canal away from integrity and inexorably towards an increasing separation from the source. Thanks to the curse of self-consciousness we feel this dis-integration as a primordial pain of loss. The resultant, incessant scream of the ego – the human condition – is merely exacerbated by shoddy parenting and the alienation from others intrinsic to industrial society.
There are a number of nostrums on offer for this condition: not least culture, self-gratification and god. All three are typified by a feckless search for the sublime, which is a disingenuous way of characterising the narcissistic hunt for our own reflection in ‘reality’.
I’ve been reading a lovely book called ‘Nature Cure’ recently which posits that the benevolence of nature can be healing to the broken mind. More narcissism of course – to believe that nature cares one way or another.
But maybe only proximity to nature, and silent, non-analytical acceptance of her flow, can quell the howling within.
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