Thank you, Eckhart Tolle

June 8th, 2010

With whatever spontaneous action arises out of presence,
an intelligence is then at work in the situation.

Whatever the situation, that intelligence is far greater
than the intelligence of the thinking mind.

Sounds like my theme of the last few months, doesn’t it?

At the major crisis of most films and novels, the protagonist gives up her thinking mind. I’ve often deferred to the mystics to explain the fallout of ‘presence’ that descends upon characters who find themselves in a dramatic cul de sac. The above quote – discovered in my in-box this morning – points to some kind of ‘higher intelligence’. It comes from the e-desk of Eckhart Tolle.

I’m inclined now to see a story as a unity in just two parts. They are separated by that all-important moment of presence. Call part one: Complications. Call part two: Resolution. They are really two separate stories. Of course, they’re linked by unities of time and space. But mainly by the hero’s deepest and truest yearnings.

No one operates from depth until they have to. No one functions from truth unless their delusions fail to support their goals. The thinking mind is a miraculous realm of sophisticated delusions. It takes a protagonist very far indeed. In real life, it takes many people as far as they’ll ever go. But fiction is different.

Fiction is the realm of the extraordinary. It’s a place where characters persevere. Subconsciously, we the reader are willing to suffer any amount of painful complications as long as it delivers us to that moment of presence that opens us to our higher selves.

We want to experience the ‘greater intelligence’ that sweeps any good story to its resolution.

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Flight of the Patriot

June 4th, 2010

Flight of Patriot

An Iranian writer-filmmaker, Mohammad Nourizad, was recently sentenced to three years in prison and 80 lashes. He dared to criticize the country’s leadership. Ouch. Lest I become blasé about the freedoms we enjoy in our relative paradise here in Canada, I take a minute out to feel his pain.

I know a bit about his future in Evin prison, since I spent eight years writing a memoir for an Iranian refugee living in Vancouver. Flight of the Patriot has just been released by Thomas Allen Publishers.

Yadi Sharifirad was a fighter pilot in the Shah’s airforce, and his wartime exploits against Saddam Hussein became legend in Iran. Feted as a hero, then arrested and tortured as a spy, Yadi’s subsequent escape through the mid-winter mountains into Turkey is high adventure. He might well have failed – shot by border patrols or killed by wolves or simply frozen to death – in which case we wouldn’t be reading about him.

Which is why Yadi wrote the story. For all the other freedom-loving Iranians who have died at whim of the ayatollahs, who never succeeded (or who never had the chance) to escape the Islamic Republic.

For Yadi, and for all those who have died attempting to attain basic human freedoms, the meaning of life is simply ‘to live’. To breathe. Life itself.

While we talk about suffering in the name of spiritual growth and ‘no pain, no gain’, it’s easy to forget that there are real Mohammad Nourizad’s out there taking a real beating, even as we sit here blogging.

I think a reading of Flight of the Patriot may help us all to understand what he’s going through.

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Bringing Your Inside Out

May 26th, 2010

I spent the weekend monitoring the border between the known and the unknown. To the fly on the wall it no doubt appeared as if I were merely interviewing people. Tattooed people. And a group of professional photographers. These two tribes were brought together in a unique photo project sponsored by Vanishingtattoo.com.

photo by Vincent Errol Hemingson

photo by Vincent Errol Hemingson

You could call it ‘fine art meets tattoo art’, but that glib pitch sells the project short. While the strobes were illuminating some amazing body art, they were also shedding light on a once-taboo cultural practice that remains widely misunderstood today.

The event’s organizer, Vince Hemingson, suggests that tattoos are symbolic of a person’s inner self. It’s that simple. They bring a person’s inside out. If your inner life seems sometimes vague and chaotic (and whose doesn’t?), a visual reminder of who we are, or aspire to be, can’t be a bad thing.

“My tattoos help me steer a less self-destructive course through life,” says Jody, one of the models who volunteered to be photographed.

The soft-spoken tattoo artist from Abbottsford, BC, explains that many of his tattoos were acquired as markers of painful events in his life. This pain, he confesses, was largely his own fault. The extent of his tattoos, encroaching even onto his face and skull, suggest that his life has been a rough ride.

photo by Vincent Errol Hemingson

photo by Vincent Errol Hemingson

I can’t imagine adopting this strategy to deal with my own failures as a human being, although I am seriously impressed with the clarity that Jody has gained by these indelible marks.

“I’m reminded every day to choose good over evil,” says Jody, whose skin ink is largely self-applied.

The mystics – from Buddha to Jesus to Gurdjieff – have been teaching us how to be in constant remembrance of ourselves. They implore us to bring an objective awareness to our lives of abject narcissism and subjectivity. Most students in spiritual practice lack the commitment that would result in any real change. Which makes Jody’s commitment remarkable.

He scares us, all right. But why? Could it be because we’re fearful of doing what it takes to bring our dark side into the light of day?

photo by Vincent Errol Hemingson

photo by Vincent Errol Hemingson

NOTE: if you’re considering getting a tattoo, you might first want to check out these two resources:

Think before you ink:  http://www.youtube.com/user/1tattootribe
What’s a good tattoo:   http://www.vanishingtattoo.com/good_tattoos.htm

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Stop!

May 18th, 2010
Stop!

Peace of mind…isn’t that an oxymoron? The mind is all busyness. Peace of mind is really a disengagement from the mind. This very disconnection, or stoppage of thought, is what I’ve been pointing to in recent posts. It would seem that writers instinctively force their protagonists to this mental ‘stop’, where flashes of insight descend upon them. Enough to see them through Act 3.

Let’s not make a rule out it, but it would appear to be a principle of story structure – that protagonists who win almost invariably experience a moment of ‘stop’ just prior to their victory battle. You can check it out for yourself by watching for it while reading novels and watching movies. The vigilance does nothing but heighten our enjoyment of fiction.

The ‘Stop!’ experience actually has a long history. In esoteric circles it’s a technique to free the mind from the habitual patterns that bind most people to utter predictability.

George Gurdjieff (1872-1949) required his pupils to Stop! in the midst of their daily activities. At the signal, you would freeze on the spot. While working in the kitchen or opening a door or lighting a cigarette, you held whatever position you found yourself in. Likewise feelings and emotions were to be fixed, which was virtually impossible, since the illusions that comprise our mind-made reality depend on a constantly moving stream of knee-jerk reactions to incoming stimuli. Gurdjieff’s practice was all in aid of freeing the mind to attain a more objective reality. 

In other words, the truth about things.

I don’t think everyone is guaranteed objective truth in this lifetime.  I think it takes some kind of heroic effort.  Does this explain our insatiable appetite for stories?

 

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Do You Fear the Wind?

May 10th, 2010

eagl

My post on ‘fearlessness’ prompted considerable e-mail response. One story – from a member of our Mazatlan writers’ group – was particularly powerful. Sue Carnes, who has published an award-winning picture book called My Champion, describes a childhood in which she had to continually stare fear in the face. I’m happy to turn this week’s blog over to Sue and her thoughts on ‘fear’:

“Fear can paralyze, send you to your knees, fill your ears with the crescendo of your racing heartbeat, until you take control, stop running and turn a brave face. That is my story in a sentence. It took me years to execute. First, I suffered and hid, a quivering small person imprisoned by fear. Disgusted with myself, I tried to be proactive. I read all the books and practiced conquering fear doing scary things. One day, I heard a 2000 year old fable that some say originated with Buddha himself. The story stole into my subconscious mind liberating my spirit. This ancient fable convinced me there is power in the myth. So, I pass it on in hopes it will open some doors for you also.

“In the deep forests of Benares lived a young elephant as white as crane’s down, with size, strength and beauty befitting a king. Trainers were selected to teach her to stand firm and follow commands, but they used harsh means that maddened her with pain. The young elephant broke free escaping captivity.

“Far, far into the Himalayan Mountains she ran outdistancing all the king’s men. In time they went home and she was free. But she raced on, not reducing her pace, not forgetting her cruel imprisonment, and with the snap of any twig or the rustle of the trees moved by a breeze, she became wild with fear. Finally, a compassionate tree sprite observed her thrashing, exhausted and spent. Leaning out of a tree he whispered into her ear:

“‘Do you fear the wind? It only moves the clouds and dries the dew. Look instead into your mind. It’s fear that has captured you.’

“And the minute the beautiful elephant heard these words, she realized she had nothing to fear but the habit of being afraid, and she began again to enjoy life.”

To get a taste of Sue’s powerful comtemporary prose, check out: 

http://skcarnes.wordpress.com/the-untold-story/

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Fear.less

May 7th, 2010

Stories with fearless heroes are guaranteed to be forgettable. Fear serves the literary purpose of bringing the protagonist to that place of “emptiness, exhaustion and dread” about which I spoke in my previous post. Fear brings the hero to that very necessary full-stop, where she has no choice but to surrender her tired old strategies. But don’t take my word for it – here’s what a Buddhist nun living in Nova Scotia says about fear:

“Anyone who stands on the edge of the unknown, fully in the present without reference point…that’s when our understanding goes deeper.”

Pema Chodron

Her name is Pema Chodron, and this next quote is music to my ears, trying as I have, lately, to prove the advantages of adversity:

“If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.”

Who’d have thought that my literary lessons were imbedded in Buddhist thought?

Not for the first time, I have Seth Godin’s blog to thank for a timely link, this time  to Chodron in a new e-mag called Fear.less. Truly religious people like Chodron are always iconoclastic, turning our conventional logic on its head.

“No one ever tells us to stop running from fear,” she says. “We are very rarely told to move closer, to just be there, to become familiar with fear.”

We’re more likely to be given soothing words or even drugs – but Chodron reminds us that dissociating from fear comes quite naturally to us. What we really ought to do – and what the best story protagonists do – is to hold our ground. Heroes don’t run away. They risk burning in the present moment. It’s a risk that’s guaranteed to pay off in fiction, and even more so in real life.

“The most heartbreaking thing of all,” says Chodron, “is how we cheat ourselves of the present moment.”

I should end there, but there’s no harm in leaving you with a few more words from Pema Chodron:

“So the next time you encounter fear, consider yourself lucky. This is where the courage comes in. Usually we think that brave people have no fear. The truth is that they are intimate with fear. When I was first married, my husband said I was one of the bravest people he knew. When I asked him why, he said because I was a complete coward but went ahead and did things anyhow.” 

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Gurdjieff and the Centre of Gravity

May 2nd, 2010

If George Gurdjieff (see previous post) had been a screenwriter, he might have organized his plots around the story’s “centre of gravity”. Gurdjieff used that term with reference to his lectures. There’s no point in wasting time with details, he said, if the essence of his subject isn’t understood. Let’s – as writers and readers – consider this approach.

So, what is a story’s centre of gravity?

In Star Wars, it was the Dark Force, a centre of gravity that most certainly guided George Lucas through the development of his intergalactic tale. It’s almost always a ‘dark force’, that is to say, an aspect of the protagonist that he or she will avoid like the plague. It’s what heroes fear most. It defines their limits. So, naturally, that’s where the story is headed.

A story should take the protagonist to that very place where she has no experience in defending herself. It’s a place of emptiness, exhaustion, and dread. It’s only at this dead-end where the hero opens up to influences beyond her narrow, mind-made reality…and finds a way out.

As writers, we need to discover this crucial story element as soon as possible in the writing process. As readers, we get seduced into the story by our expectation that the protagonist will crash and burn into this personal void.

This week’s blog from Eckhart Tolle says it perfectly: “Creativity arises out of the state of thoughtless presence in which you are much more awake than when you are engrossed in thinking.”

Consider Loretta (Cher) in Moonstruck. I keep coming back to the Act Two crisis in this most perfect of films. Loretta has struggled throughout Acts One and Two to suppress her romantic nature because she’s soon to marry a dullard. But after the most romantic evening of her life (with her fiance’s brother), she has run out of defenses. She has come to a full stop. As the camera zooms slowly into her face, we see exactly what Gurdjieff and Tolle are talking about. We see the ‘thoughtless presence’ that exists at the ‘centre of gravity’.

Act Three finds the hero functioning in tune with her deeper nature for the first time. As in fiction, so in life – we have to come to a complete stop before resuming a life that’s in tune with the wider world.  

Until we know what it takes to bring our hero to that complete stop, all other story details are meaningless.

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Gurdjieff and the meaning of life

April 26th, 2010

This week, while house-sitting on BC’s so-called sunshine coast (it’s raining as I write), I devoured a biography of George Gurdjieff. You don’t know G.G.? The Greek-Armenian mystic? Established a ‘mystery school’ in Paris in the 1920s? No? Don’t worry. You’re not alone.

Gurdjieff: Making a New WorldGurdjieff (by J.G. Bennett), describes Gurdjieff as someone whose life’s mission was to point to life’s purpose. Even back then, Gurdjieff’s ideas didn’t find many takers. They seemed to emanate from ancient teachings from the misty past. People just didn’t get it. Gurdjieff would seem to have been born to late, or perhaps too early.

And now, a hundred years later, are we ready? And if so, then what is this ‘purpose’ he spoke of?

Since you’re not going to read the book (just a hunch I have), it behooves me to give you the briefest of briefings.

First of all, it’s necessary to view the planet as a whole, a unity. (Whoever can’t grasp that concept should come back in another hundred years.) Various levels of energy, from basic (heat) to subtle (thought) to extremely subtle (compassion, for example) all feed on and off each other. It’s one system. As we feed and love and die, we transform energy. A plant, for instance, transforms sunlight and carbon into chlorophyll. An animal’s stomach transforms chemical energy into heat and then mechanical energy.

Rocks, plants, animals, humans…everything is involved in an ongoing energy transformation that not only sustains the earth, but plays a part in its evolution.

Now, here’s the tricky part: Gurdjieff suggests that humans alone have the power to transform energy into the kind of high-level vibration that supports the evolution principle. If this is so, then it would seem immoral in the extreme for anyone to withhold his or her participation. Wouldn’t it?

According to Gurdjieff, we humans play a part whether we want to or not. As we die, uniquely subtle energies are released. I’ve always thought so, myself. I’ve long imagined that at death, when there’s no need to wear a mask or assume postures, our psychic energies might be available for transformation into pure consciousness.  Even if only for an instant. It makes sense, doesn’t it? On our deathbeds, we tell the truth because we see the truth. And we die with a smile on our faces.

Well, how about a smile before then?

Exactly. We can participate in this energy transformation while we’re alive and kicking. We can participate in this evolutionary project by being conscious as we live. The more conscious we are, the more accurately we perceive reality as it actually is. We are wise, far-seeing and useful contributors to the unified system of energy on planet earth.

This is the unique contribution that humans can make to the system.

To grow our awareness, our consciousness, so that we can participate in the evolution of the entire system… that’s what I call meaning in a human life.

Anybody still with me?

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An Education

April 10th, 2010

The unbearable consequences of being human – flawed, imperfect, shortsighted – this is what the Brit film, An Education is all about. What better vehicle to highlight human folly than a 17-year-old schoolgirl. The bright and talented Jenny is so hungry for worldly experience that she can hardly be expected to defend herself against the seductions of a cultured and charming older man. She’s so bored with her institutional education that the audience accepts the risks she faces in escaping into David’s grown-up world of art and music.

Even still, because this is a movie, we know that Jenny’s bubble has to burst. We know instinctively that it’s going to happen. We know that stories are designed to hang the heroine on the petard of her own desires. The three-act story formula always reduces the protagonist to a moment of stupefying self-awareness, something along the lines of, “I’m a complete idiot.”

Jenny had thought herself so wise – wiser by far than her teachers – and now at her humiliating epiphany she distrusts the conventions of her own mind. Who is she, now? What happens to a person when they are forced to accept their own limitations? (Who am I when I reject my own thoughts?)

It’s the premise of this blog that the crosscurrents of a life lived passionately lead inevitably to a glorious disillusionment. It’s a blissfully painful space generated by our rejection of the strategies that produced the crisis that is killing us. Mystics might call it a moment of pure being.

In An Education, Jenny comes to glimpse her appropriate place in the cosmos. What else can she say except, “Help me.” She has become a wiser person.

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Oops…My Blog Has Offended Somebody

April 1st, 2010

Of course, I was aware from the start that naming my blog The Meaning of Life would appear presumptuous. Meaning? It’s an outrageous proposition in this postmodern age. These days, no one is right, and everyone is right. Life has no meaning; or else God is love is meaning. We’re none the wiser. No wonder that comedians have the subject pretty much to themselves.

You say, “The Meaning of Life”, and we immediately think of the Monty Python movie. Most people are content to have the ‘meaning’ enquiry begin and end with that band of enlightened idiots. And it might not be such a bad thing, since laughing simultaneously opens the mouth and shuts the critical mind. Enter the truth, maybe.

I’m using humour as a vehicle in a new novel called I Swallowed a Saint. The plot is no clue at all to the story’s ‘meaning’, and even now I’m worried about how I’ll respond to interviewers such as… oh, say… David Letterman.

“The meaning of life… ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” says Dave. “I love it – I have no idea what you’re talking about but… ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!… but I love it.”

“I know, Dave. We all suffer a grave misunderstanding about meaning in life. Because it would appear not to be a ‘thing’ at all.”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha…no?”

“Not an accomplishment, either, Dave. Certainly nothing so winning that it would earn a gold medal or incite the raising of a flag. Not even a high falutin purpose…”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha… then what the hell is it, Reece?”

“Meaning in a human lifetime, Dave, begins with, a) the surrender of all such earnestness and, b) replacing it with absolutely nothing.”

“That’s not very funny,” says Dave.

“That’s right, Dave. In fact my protagonist is rightfully terrified. He’d thought that meaning would help him cope with bankruptcy, sickness, failure, ridicule, shame, humiliation, failure…

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Okay, I’m laughing again…”

“I know… this is what happens to protagonists in stories. They get clobbered. If not for existence helping them in this way, they wouldn’t change. The hero would never reach that critical point where the only way out is to help himself. We’re very close to meaning, now, Dave.”

“Put me out of my misery…I’m begging you.”

“Okay, Dave…the hero quits relying on his puny little self. After all, it’s landed him repeatedly in all this trouble. He lets go of his attachment to this ‘failed’ self. He falls upward, you might say, and sees his role in a larger reality. From up there, he can see his way out of the maze. He’s more, Dave… he’s bigger… he’s wiser… he’s realizing some human potential that’s been lying dormant his whole life. It’s like he’s woken up. He sees that this is the direction in which evolution is trying to take the human species. And he starts laughing.”

“So…meaning is…ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha…!”

“That’s right, Dave…ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha…!

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

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