ArmsMerchant
2007-07-06, 19:09
Ahem. Now that I have your attention, by "boner," I mean as in goof--error--floater, if you will. And Bono refers to the highly-esteemed Irish musician, not the late mayor of Palm Springs. Now that we have that all sorted out, let me continue.
Bono recently wrote the end-of-issue Time magazine essay, and what a corker it was. He displayed the sense of history and mastery of the King's English that the Irish are justly noted for, and when I got to "Our humanity is dinished when we have no mission bigger than ourselves," I was captivated. I almost stood up and cheered, but that would have disturbed the calm and serenity of the Mr Lube waiting room I was occupying at the time, my beloved Mazda MPV being in need of liqufied dead dinosaurs. But I digress.
Sadly, I read a bit farther and hit "Looking inward won't cut it. . . . We discover who we are in service to one another." He lost me there.
For one thing, in my philosophy, looking inward will, indeed, "cut it." All the love and compassion and strength and hope we need now and shall ever need are within us, right now--we have only to go in and find it, own it, and use it. Verily has it been written--if you do not go within, you will surely go without. But wait, there's more. . . .
Discover? Sir, Mr Donne noted that no man is an island, and Grace Slick pointed out that he is, in fact, a penninsula--but he is not some sort of Lost Continent. We do not have to discover who we are.
We create who and what we are, and having created ourselves according to our greatest and grandest conception of who and what we can be, we express and declare this to the world. Then we love ourselves for the wondrous and spiritual creatures that we are, each of us being an individuation of the divine. The next step is to love our neighbor as we love ourself. The step after this--and it is a biggie--is to grok that at the Highest reality, our neighbor is ourself. This is what Jesus was getting at, when he said that however you treat the least of men is how you treat Him.
Eividently Bono has not evolved this far. He still seems to think that "we" are separate. Ironically, this notion of separateness is at the root of much of the mischief in the world. (You know, stuff like wars and pogroms and torture and rape.) It is still another manifestation of the dualistic fallacy, which ignores and/or denies the highest truth--unity consciousness.
It has been pointed out, again and again and again through the years, that we are All One. Every shaman and mystic and guru and mad holy man who ever drew breath knew this. Among the Christians, the Gnostics knew this. Among the Jews, the Hassidim, and the followers of Kabbala knew it. Among the Moslems, the Sufis knew it. And pretty much ALL the Hindus know it.
And now you know it, too.
And now, what do you do?
Bono recently wrote the end-of-issue Time magazine essay, and what a corker it was. He displayed the sense of history and mastery of the King's English that the Irish are justly noted for, and when I got to "Our humanity is dinished when we have no mission bigger than ourselves," I was captivated. I almost stood up and cheered, but that would have disturbed the calm and serenity of the Mr Lube waiting room I was occupying at the time, my beloved Mazda MPV being in need of liqufied dead dinosaurs. But I digress.
Sadly, I read a bit farther and hit "Looking inward won't cut it. . . . We discover who we are in service to one another." He lost me there.
For one thing, in my philosophy, looking inward will, indeed, "cut it." All the love and compassion and strength and hope we need now and shall ever need are within us, right now--we have only to go in and find it, own it, and use it. Verily has it been written--if you do not go within, you will surely go without. But wait, there's more. . . .
Discover? Sir, Mr Donne noted that no man is an island, and Grace Slick pointed out that he is, in fact, a penninsula--but he is not some sort of Lost Continent. We do not have to discover who we are.
We create who and what we are, and having created ourselves according to our greatest and grandest conception of who and what we can be, we express and declare this to the world. Then we love ourselves for the wondrous and spiritual creatures that we are, each of us being an individuation of the divine. The next step is to love our neighbor as we love ourself. The step after this--and it is a biggie--is to grok that at the Highest reality, our neighbor is ourself. This is what Jesus was getting at, when he said that however you treat the least of men is how you treat Him.
Eividently Bono has not evolved this far. He still seems to think that "we" are separate. Ironically, this notion of separateness is at the root of much of the mischief in the world. (You know, stuff like wars and pogroms and torture and rape.) It is still another manifestation of the dualistic fallacy, which ignores and/or denies the highest truth--unity consciousness.
It has been pointed out, again and again and again through the years, that we are All One. Every shaman and mystic and guru and mad holy man who ever drew breath knew this. Among the Christians, the Gnostics knew this. Among the Jews, the Hassidim, and the followers of Kabbala knew it. Among the Moslems, the Sufis knew it. And pretty much ALL the Hindus know it.
And now you know it, too.
And now, what do you do?