“Mind Fields”: Am I Real?

Am I Real?

October 15, 2020

Existence. It can be ordinary. It can be magical. It can be hell. Whatever it is for you, in this moment, there’s no getting away from it. YOU EXIST.

I find that there is an aura of strangeness to existence. Like, how did I get here? Why am I here? What are these gases that I breathe? Do I REALLY exist or is this some kind of dream, cast upon the waters of the void by some Being whose nature I can’t fathom? Still, it’s inescapable. Unless I kill myself this very moment, I am here and am likely to be here for a while. Even IF I kill myself, I’m messing with the odds. More than half the people on this planet believe in re-birth, i.e living over and over again in different bodies. I believe in reincarnation. I may be wrong, but that’s what I believe. A suicide has consequences. It carries a ton of karma. The concept of reincarnation answers many questions, but it also asks some important ones: like, what is the mechanism of continuity? Is it my “soul” that holds the threads together and maintains some mysterious seed of consciousness?Soul, spirit, whatever we want to call it, there is a suggestion of the reality of a non-material realm and of a path or route of progression TOWARDs something. Towards what? I call it Self Knowledge.

When I was a kid, seven or eight, I thought these same thoughts. I would walk up our street and step on the sidewalk cracks. Each time I did, I said aloud, “I am real, I am real.” Even then, I wasn’t sure. 

Reincarnation does a great job of explaining things. Why am I this way?  Why am I creative, musical, compulsive, sometimes greedy, sometimes cruel? Can all this complexity be explained by genetics and environment?Maybe in my last lives I had some of these attributes and I simply continued. I’ve always wanted to know the answers to these questions. I’ve read some of the craziest books and perused the world’s wisdom traditions. I have a curiosity that walks inside me like a second skin. I REALLY want to know. I don’t see much point in things if I don’t get to know….at least…SOMETHING.

I began a long string of poetry writing some forty years ago with a poem that ended with these lines: “I want to know I want to know echoes in the chambers of my heart until the lone spark in the abyss of infinity has become the desire to know.” As soon as I had written those lines a huge reservoir of poetry opened, and I wrote and haven’t stopped writing. I had identified a desire, an intention, that has dominated my life.

 I think…I…may know….a little bit of something. Just a bit. I’ve seen the tiny stitches on the lowest threads on the darkest panel of God’s robe. Just the tiny stitches. That fills me up sometimes. It helps me to relax, to stop fighting against the process of life.

Lately, existence hasn’t just been ordinary, magical or hellish..  Existence has been REALLY WEIRD. I mean weird weird. Like this isn’t the regular old bullshit hieroglyphics panel that we call Normal. The phrase has spread like lightning: The NEW NORMAL. The Old Normal will never return. The challenges of the 21^st century are so numerous and disturbing that we must adapt or perish.

Adaptation is a question of flexibility. I’m reminded of the Zen concept of Beginner’s Mind. In Zen we are taught that whatever convictions might exist inside one’s self, it is wise to treat them as provisional rather than certain. NOTHING IS CERTAIN. In this realm nothing has been or ever will be certain other than the fact that everything born eventually dies. I would even treat THAT axiom is less than certain. Who knows what people have accomplished? If  by some weird and  persistent work I achieve immortality, do you think I will tell everyone about it? Are you kidding? I would either get taken away in the funny wagon or I’d be overwhelmed by requests to share my formula. And that’s the thing…everyone creates their own formula. If you want to have your eyes opened, to GET IT, you need to do some basic homework. This heavenly sizzle isn’t just there for the picking. It takes patience and character. I have so many defects, but let me stress that the THING, the Sizzle of wider consciousness, does not exclude the defects.

It encourages them. What, in your life, has taught you more than your dark aspects have taught you?

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A Midwesterner by birth, Arthur Rosch migrated to the West Coast just in time to be a hippie but discovered that he was more connected to the Beatnik generation. He harkened back to an Old School world of jazz, poetry, painting and photography. In the Eighties he received Playboy Magazine’s Best Short Story Award for a comic view of a planet where there are six genders. The timing was not good.  His life was falling apart as he struggled with addiction and depression. He experienced the reality of the streets for more than a decade. Putting himself back together was the defining experience of his life. It wasn’t easy. It did, however, nurture his literary soul. He has a passion for astronomy, photography, history, psychology and the weird puzzle of human experience. He is currently a certified Seniors Peer Counselor in Sonoma County, California. Come visit his blogs and photo sites. www.artrosch.com and http://bit.ly/2uyxZbv. 

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