a Warren of the wayward Weyrd : Led to Believe

Once again, it's my birthday, and today is weird since I begin my 60th year on this planet. So let's get one thing straight right away. I do not turn sixty until next year. I am still in my 50s, so thank our universal equilibrium for that. It's weird, while part of me does seem to remain relatively unphased by the decades piling on, there's another part of me sitting here shocked and dismayed about it. (No sir, I don't like it.) Then again, my worrisome mind eases itself back into a state of complacency and acceptance in almost no time at all. One thing I've learned after all these years...is that I'm super resilient like that.

Above is the snapshot I took of my work desk this morning, with my breakfast laid out on top of it. First is the cup of coffee, which we always buy whole bean, organic, and I grind it up fresh every morning and prepare it with a stainless steel French press. Next is the one banana I always have with my coffee, since I've been led to believe that the potassium in bananas helps absorb the acidity in coffee, and that's presumably why folk living down in the tropics (where bananas are plentiful) don't suffer the acidity in their coffee that much. If you think about it, the coffee bean is a berry, so yeah...I prefer consuming nothing but fruit & berries for breakfast. High in antioxidants, the food of the gods. I once read that eating fruit for breakfast is easier on our digestion, so to be honest, that's good enough for me. I love cantaloupe and grapes too, so the more variety of fruit the better.

We are led to believe a lot of things, and sometimes our brains try to process it, only to reject it out of hand; I don't know really, but I can say that I myself lie somewhat balanced in between extremes as a "Skeptical Believer," which is a phrase I learned from John Shirley, who used to write an online column with that title. I suspect that if I were to undergo a comprehensive analysis about just what percentage of the way from "Skeptical" (say, 1 on the scale of 10) to a complete "Believer" (a 10) I happen to be, well I'm of the mind that I most likely rank at least a 6 or 7 (or even higher) which I find very interesting, indeed.

I often suspect I was born an 11 on that scale. A total Believer... (That doesn't mean I'm religious. Just that I Believe...in nothing. Which-in-turn-leads-to-something-that-in-the-end-becomes-nothing-at-all-so-you-go-figure-it-out-for-yourself) ...So let me tell you what. The overwhelming magnitude and intensity with which I Believe (in nothing and something) is such that even the healthiest dose of skepticism injected into my consciousness would likely bring that rating of an "11" down to a decent 6 or 9! That's how powerful our need to believe (in anything) seems to me. I've read that we human beings are more or less "born to believe," which is to say, it's a deep-seated drive to want to find meaning in this life. And that's the very crux of the matter, right there. We shape our own respective realities.

If you ask me, I suspect the power to believe may actually be programmed into us, written in the very code that produces DNA and infuses our planet with this spectacular and miraculous thing we call Life. Whether this drive to rationalize our existence remains a sort of complex algorithm encoded in our genetic scripture, or merely subsists as a fundamental and singular aspect of being a "one" instead of a "zero" in our existence, well anyone's guess could be as poor as mine...

There's no room for doubt that nonetheless, I Believe. I'm sort of like an atheist who believes in God. That's because I've actually taken the intellectual leap (anyone can do it, it's not that hard, easy as falling off a cliff) to determine by a process of inference that the ever-elusive idea of absolute truth must be tantamount to the notion of paradox. I am telling you right here and now that my mind has divined and locked onto this concept and for lack of a better explanation, has by default allowed this seemingly incongruous notion to replace any ideology such as what drives religions or people to believe in the existence of God, etc. God is Nothing, I am Everything. I am Nothing, God is Everything. As Janis Joplin once famously put it, "It's all the same fucking day, man."

As Walt Whitman so eloquently stated, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” I can wrap my mind around most of that, so sure I stand with both of my feet planted directly on terra firma, as the saying goes, but more to the point, what I've come to understand is that by doing so properly, I remain true to the very ground of being, which just so happens to be time itself, and not just the dirty ground we stand upon. It's sort of like learning to walk a highwire tightrope, and getting so accustomed to it that you're no longer aware of doing it. The main difference being that instead of a sheer drop-off on either side of your tightrope walk, you have the past to your right and the future to your left. Ignoring those ephemeral concepts of past & future allows us to focus on the here and now. That's as close as I can come to describing my belief system. So happy birthday to me... I have been led to believe...in the here and now, at the very least.

Cheers to you all!

Fractal Dragon of the Moment