Daily Meditations

[Daniel]

How to do it:

First of all, you will need a small spiral bound notebook (nothing too large or you will be tempted to write more than you need to) and something to write with; the short story to screenplay book (and/or) the official soundtrack cd (and/or) the DVD. Somehow generate a random passage/track/scene and write down the most important part in your notebook.

If you have one of those DVD players that will skip to a random scene, it might be helpful when the DVD comes out.

Now use some book which has some philosophical or spiritual meaning for you and turn to a random page, writing down the first thing you come to. You may do this several times. Look at what you have written. Does it seem to be saying something, does it offer insight into your life or into the film or into life in general?

Turn the page and write down your thoughts and feelings....

My meditations follow. Feel free to post yours here if you like.

[Daniel]

Ennis: "What're we supposed to do now?"

The Five Stages of the Soul:

"We stood there by the lifeboat stations not knowing exactly what to do when suddenly there was an earsplitting crash."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"The ocean remains faithful to the land, it always returns."

"After being hurt, it is natural and indeed necessary that we draw back inside the shell."

"Once we recognize how control and self-protection rob life of all vitality and rhythm, we will find ourselves slowly advancing towards the threshold of risk and trust once more."

Ennis' s words mirror a great and respectable acceptance of both risk and trust. For a stoic, it is astonishing. The level of trust grows deeper; the bond between he and Jack expands. Ennis is willing to risk his own control and nervous self-protection and as a result creates another lasting aspect of relationship.

Risk and trust together create a bond of will, soul, and heart. The individual must extend himself far from his comfort zone and then acknowledge that extention toward another: becoming open and caring with another is not harmful. In fact, when trust becomes mutual there is a creation of a new identity, a new realm of understanding with infinite possibilities. Anything could happen in a truly trusting relationship.

Although there are no guarantees in the kingdom of risk, nature shows us, time and again, that it is precisely at that moment of greatest risk, the moment when everything could be lost, that the greatest change happens.

A new life opens out into a new world that could not have been dreamed before this.

[Phillip Dampier]

My meditations follow. Feel free to post yours here if you like.

This is great!  I hope others will use them as well as the affirmations and other positive motivational phrases because they really do work (even if you think they are corny at first).  Repetition and keeping the more powerful ones in front of you or in your mind regularly can shove out negative thinking and drag-you-down stress and replace it with more useful positive and calming thoughts which give energy, hope, motivation, and are calming at the same time.

[Daniel]

Jack: Howdy, Mr. Aguirre. Wonderin' if you was needin' any help this summer?"

The Five Stages of the Soul:

" 'Now' Zenkai says, presenting himself to the son of the man he murdered so many years ago. 'You may kill me. My work is done.' "

Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

"Compassion and attention keep the [heart] clear so that beauty may illuminate our life."

"The human eye always sees twice in one look the thing and the emptiness."

"The unknown dwells in the recesses of the human heart and becomes especially explicit in our flaws... consequently the true language of the soul is hesitant, shadowed, and poetic."

Jack's sentence again reveals a type of suffering: hesitancy which reveals his fear of nonacceptance, a shadow which reveals an uncertainty in his emotional state, a poetic rhythm which is uttered with a surety of being. The rhythm calls upon Jack's most inner being for faithful expression in a world in which nothing is certain - "a world that may say that we're wrong."

"Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse." -Heraclitus.

We also see that Jack's compassion once again spills out into his expression: words and action - through a kind and questioning voice. When combined with the attention of his questing mind, still wrapped in uncertainty, it is revealed that Jack has opened himself almost completely once again and perhaps not in the right scenario. He is hoping, unsteadily, for a positive response, but is instead cut down by a scathing attack on his personhood. It strikes to the core and bursts with aching pain. If it had been joy, it would have been a beautiful experience far greater than any painful bursting in upon the heart.

For those who experience this pain secondhand, as in the audience, the pain is a recognition of the absence of a potentially greater and powerful joy. It is the absence of joy which is perceived and which culminates in some emotional phenomenon by which we can relate entirely to the rawest of human experiences. At the same time we realize that the experiences of pain and joy cannot be possible without the extention and presentation of the self to some other principle.

Joy and pain are jewels of attention. They are experienced because some part of ourselves is devoted to experiencing them. But this attention does not arise out of nothingness. It is accompanied by a type of compassion, an interest in provoking ourselves into becoming and being more human.

[Daniel]

Ennis: Come on now, you're sleeping on your feet like a horse...

The Five Stages of the Soul:

"There is a Reality more meaningful than everything we see around us, and that the purpose of life is to find that Reality."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"Somewhere in every heart there is a discerning voice."

"People identify themselves with their stories."

"Outside, the day is seared with summer light."

"Once evicted, we can never return."

"Divine grace works without a program; it does not labor under the leaden intention of a pre-existent, fixed plan."

Sleeping on one's feet is a resistance to the call of exhaustion, and in this particular instance, in order to experience something real and meaningful: some genuine happiness brought about by a contemplation of the life filled with a loving relationship. It is ultimately heartful.

Ennis's discerning voice lovingly points out the truth, and urges Jack to take care of himself, but at the same time it allows him to position himself in direct contact. The simile provides Ennis's story which is ultimately himself, concluded shortly after.

The outside world feels distant and extreme - its pains and conflicts are not present in the small world that Jack and Ennis share intimately. Once evicted from this world in a type of symbolic death, they can never return completely.

[Daniel]

Monroe: It's okay, Alma, it's okay. Really, Alma, it's okay.

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"Imagination returns us to our native wildness, to the natural and seamless fluency of our own nature."

"[Imagination] never blasts us with information or numbs us with description. It coaxes us into a new situation."

"We find ourselves engaged in [Imagination]'s questions and possibilities, and new revelation dawns."

"We enter into the life of a character. Our empathy and our minds are engaged by the depth and complexity of the characters heart and by the quest of his mind for vision and meaning."

"Suggestion respects the mystery and richness of a thing. All it offers are clues to its nature."

The characters Ennis and Jack rail against their own harsh lives which keep them from one another, resisting and twisting away from their social restrictions. They yearn, instead, to be themselves in a world of natural beauty - a return to an idyllic state of innocence where their love has meaning and silent companionship is as revealing as any conversation. Here, joy is expressed freely. Here, sorrow, grief, and dissatisfaction are shared vocally while such discontent would be frowned upon by society's standards. Here, lovers can be unified without fear of reprisal, vengeance or punishment from a world of darker shadows. The inner light shines forth, unhidden and unburdened by the weight of society.

When the inner light is exposed, the complexity of heart and meaning of mind are made real. Every emotional vibration, no matter its perceived significance, strikes the chord of empathic hope. Every vision, the kaleidoscope of truth and life.

Monroe's thrice-spoken supplication of calmness, the invocation of peace, and the assurance of continual support unite in a manner most becoming of love. They suggest the beginnings of a romantic entendre, and mirror Jack's words to Ennis which do the same: ((It is here that I am referring to the controversially and continually debated second tent scene)) "'s allright. 's allright. 's allright." Both sets of thrice spoken supplications provide some spiritual support.

Monroe: The supplication of calmness, the invocation of peace, the assurance of continual support (As mentioned earlier).

Jack: Assurance of acceptance, invocation of peace, presentation of agreement.

[Daniel]

Ennis: "I doubt there's nothing we can do. I'm stuck with what I got here."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"A glimpse of an expression in someone's eyes can awaken a train of forgotten memories."

"Beauty loves freedom... The imagination always goes beyond the frames and cages of the expected and predictable."

"When everything has become locked inside a dead perspective and the consensus is that a cul-de-sac has been reached, the love and affinity between two people becomes sidelined into a repetitive and wearying pattern."

"The soul awakens in the presence of beauty and recovers and grows her external wings" - Plato.

"Beauty calls us beyond ourselves and it encourages us to engage the dream that dwells in the soul."

I do not feel as though I need to interpret, add to, or respond to tonight's passage other than to say that Ennis opens to Jack twice. Once in words, which is ultimately to be called "hope" and second in deeds, through a moment of "faith". He steps beyond the boundaries he's established for himself in order to be with Jack.

Ennis's third opening to Jack occurs after Jack's death - when finally he comprehends and can continually live for the love of Jack - recognized in the acceptance and demonstration of the nested shirts.

Hope by the opening of thought.
Faith by the opening of will.
Love by the opening of heart.

[Daniel]

Jack: "And why is it we're always in the friggin' cold? We oughta go south, where its warm. We oughta go to Mexico!"

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"In the presence of beauty, we are called to be gracious and worthy."

"The ruthless winter clearance of spirit quietly leads to new possibility of springtime."

"The beauty of compassion continues to shelter and save our world."

Does Ennis blame Jack for needing a warm relationship or does he feel guilty because he was unable to provide that relationship, or does he feel jealous for not having that same outlet to ease his need for a warm relationship?

(I'm not certain why I didn't complete this meditation, but it closely parallels another similar meditation that I did complete, so I will just combine the two here.)

Lureen: "Last time I seen it you was in it... the day we had that big ice storm."

"Beauty, the Invisible Embrace"

"To recognize and celebrate beauty is to recognize the ultimate sacredness of experience, to glimpse the subtle embrace of belonging where we are and to the divine, the beauty of every moment, of every thing."

"Beauty holds faith with the deepest signature of individuality: it graces the passion of individuality when it risks itself beyond its own frontiers, out to where the depth of the abyss calls."

"In that stillness the multiple futures of the scene are caught in the glimmer of the as yet unchosen possibility."

"In dance the gravity of the body is released."

"Beneath the skin is the brilliance of matter."

Coldness of nature imparts stillness: endless possibility from one beginning point. And in this icy embrace, Jack languishes for his personal freedom - always perceiving the endless possibilities but never able to pursue any as long as he remains in that icy grip. Lureen here ultimately represents the unchanging power of frozen water.

He manages to escape her icy, laconic wit through dance when he dances with the warm, fiery, and talkative LaShawne. Though perhaps he imagines himself with her husband.

The ice storm is a visual image which recurs many times, and its relation to snow cannot be overlooked. We can compare Lureen's "big ice storm" to Ennis's Christmas blizzard and both to the hail storm that drives the yoiung lovers to a more comfortable place. We can see in many ways that is is these same storms which drive action and response: a type of frozen coldness or numbness that we wish to avoid, and we avoid it by reaching for warmth. We avoid hatred, and its compatriate, cold indifference, by seeking the warmth of a loving relationship.

Lureen ofers little sympathy, does not move herself to help him, and in a slightly cold manner reminds him of the last time it was used. Her speech seeks to dismiss both him and the entire idea out of hand, as though it is not important to her and not worth the trouble.

[Daniel]

Ennis: "Tent don't look right."

The Five Stages of the Soul

"Repentance is not self-chastisement or abuse, not regret over things done and past that cannot be changed. Repentance is a kind of turning, a starting again: self-cleansing; self-forgiveness; self-renewal."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace

"We need to learn the art of inner reverence and never force the soul out into the false light of social gratification and expectation."

"Neither in environment nor in heredity can I find the exact instrument that fashioned me."

"To be human is to be ambivalent: every experience open to countless interpretations never seeing a thing completely."

"The soul always strains beyond the body."

In this scene, perhaps we finally perceive something of a nesting instinct. Ennis yearns to make the habitation a good one though this is after he and Jack have switched their jobs and it is Jack, not Ennis, that will stay in the camp. The tent is perhaps symbolic, then, of his love for Jack, which has only started to blossom and is not recognized on the whole.

To Ennis, the tent lacks something and he attemtps to fix it, to turn it into something better (even though it is not his to turn) - and perhaps some type of internal resignation that their relationship "don't look right."

That being said, it is this very same tent in which the relationship is consummated, and we can perhaps see a type of repentance on Ennis's part. Self-cleansing by fire, Self-forgiveness by choosing to enter the tent, Self-renewal by the acts of consummation.

[Daniel]

Now that there are a week's worth of meditations, perhaps I might try to summarize just exactly what this week's meditations have done for me. Its always good to look back and be grateful for the small experiences during the week that have aided in transforming a simple life into a much more meaningful one.

It seems that this week's meditations all seem to deal with extension of the self in one way or another. Here is wisdom for those with eyes and ears. It is important to extend the self, despite our fears and anxieties that those extensions may meet with failures. Self extension is a part of the full life, and when we hold ourselves back, when we refuse to meet the challenges that life presents to us, we withdraw into ourselves and live a much lesser life. It is natural to experience fear and anxiety, but it is perhaps less natural to allow that fear and anxiety to dominate our lives.

When you put your best self forward, when you extend consciousness and the most loving and risking aspects of your self into a world "which may say that you're wrong", I think you will find that life will offer much more joy, wisdom, happiness, peace, and prosperity. I wish you all the best of luck in learning to transcend the fears and limitations of your weaker lives, so that you may continue to expand your consciousness and your lives along the spiritual and philosophical precepts that this film and a meditation upon this film will offer.

[Daniel]

Sorry people, I'll continue the daily meditations tomorrow. Going through a tough time tonight, emotionally, anyway.

*hugs*

[Daniel]

Ennis: Bet you could fix this place up real nice if you wanted to.

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"Habitatuation sets in when we not longer hear what people are saying to us. It happens when we become blunted to the subtle beauties surrounding us."

"The voice is the sound of human consciousness breathed out into the spaces."

"The longing to love and to be loved are the stirring of God within."

"The inner voice makes any complicity uneasy."

"The gracious eye can find the corners where growth and healing are at work even when we feel weak and limited."

Personal limitation and habituation: Ennis's inside world is described as a cage, a prison, and even a coffin. Nevertheless, he is still loathe to change his situation as he does not imagine it can be much better.

As the years go by, we recognize the few things that do inspire Ennis to reach above and beyond his limitations: Jack and his two daughters. Even his marriage to Alma seems more a result of what he feels he has to do rather than what he wants to do. His responses become automatic.

Here he seems to grasp hold of his mediocre life and say, "I can change this. I can improve this, without losing too much of what I got now."

[Daniel]

Ennis: "Me, I don't know."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"The seeds of goodness lie in all people, and anyone with a willing heart can be saved."

"Wisdom is knowing which embraces are the truest feeling of the heart and the most profound seeing of the mind."

"Nowhere is the sense of the beauty of wisdom and the shelter of providence more tested than in suffering. True beauty must be able to engage the dark desolations of pain; perhaps it is on this frontier that its finest light appears?"

"To observe an appropriate silence regarding our interiority means our talk will never be weak."

To hide the self or quietly pronounce his pain? Which is this statement? By Jack's response we might assume it is a declaration of pain.

"That Brokeback got us good."

Translated: The experience on the Mountain affected us in ways which we never thought possible and triggered some highly volatile emotionality.

This is a questing of the pain and suffering that Ennis foresees as an inevitable result of their communion; as well as of his current painful and meaningless life: a daily struggle for existence which deserves no romantic composure until some base is held and maintained.

[Daniel]

Ennis: "You girls need a push?"

The Five Stages of the Soul:

"The doorway to the mysteries is there - everyone's room is filled with doors."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"While we can participate in beauty, we can never possess it."

"To learn to recognize, accept, and integrate the shadow is to transfigure much of the bruised areas of the heart which dwell in fear and unease and rob us of joy and creativity."

"The difficulty in being human is that one can never be merely human."

"The work of art inevitably has some vulnerability in its form."

"The imagination has an eye for the invisible."

This scene, and perhaps in truth, this very statement is the exact center of the film and may contain the secrets to many mysteries presented throughout it. Ennis attempts to involve himself in a world in which he feels quite alien. He wants to aid his children, these extensions of himself, even as another extension has already walked away angrily. Ennis wants to help move them forward even as he himself hangs back. They refuse. They can do it on their own. Ennis is forced to reconcile with his independence, his loneliness, and perhaps worst of all, his own shadow.

He encounters this shadow again, at the end of the film, when he opens several doors - doors to mysteries he hopes to understand. He encounters the same feelings here. But instead of a future in which there is no need for his presence, Ennis looks upon a past where his presence was needed but not freely given. It is revealed that mere human effort was not enough and that he should have participated more in the temporal flow: foreseen and remembered - created and repented; enacted in all possible ways the divine presence of superhuman effort.

What is time to one who is actively present?

What is space to the eye of imagination and memory?

Past, present, future flow and swing in the universe - requiring no push or creative elements, merely flowing as their nature dictates.

"What my God's form may be, yourself
you should perceive,
who views himself in God gazes at
God indeed."
- Angelus Silesius.

[Daniel]

I missed yesterday, gonna post 2 today, lol.

Cassie: "Tryin' to get a footrub, dummy."

The Five Stages of the Soul:

"The educated people, the people of repute and discernment who leave their marriages and their jobs, sacrifice their families and fortunes to follow a master they believe will lead them to enlightenment. We have also seen how years later many of these same people come slinking back humiliated and in despair."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"One can hear the contours of the landscape shape the tonality and spirit of the music."

"Integrity is achieved when there is a complete realization of whatever a thing is supposed to be."

"Despite its best brightness, your mind can never illminate what your life is doing."

"Each heart holds a different world and often its net of desires is entangled and confused."

"Where is fancy bread, in the heart or in the head?"

Cassie's reluctance to be direct is a realization on her part that such discourses will not be persuasive. Some part of her recognizes this - even responding to Ennis's shock or surprise by adding a teasing tone - manipulative in its subtlety.

An emotional landscape can shape music as much as a real one can, and Cassie's continual desire to dance and move about - particularly with emphasis on her (and Ennis's) feetindicates that her specific landscape is unstable. Listen to the songs she plays: "Mama Says a Pistol is the Devil's Right Hand", "It's So Easy To Fall In Love", some song where there is falling off a mountain, as well as "D-I-V-O-R-C-E":

Instability, violence, shaky ground, incompletion, falling apart.

Does her mind realize what her life is doing? Probably not. She lacks both integrity and self knowledge as she flails about in streams of emotional consciousness. She grasps, clingingly to what she believes she wants, not yet wondering if it is truly what she wants. Perhaps that is why she calls Ennis a "dummy", because she does not know what she is doing (on some subtle level), or more importantly why.

[Daniel]

Ennis: "You'll run the sheep off again, if you don't quiet down."

The Five Stages of the Soul:

"Suddenly we understand that our bargain with life has been based more on wish fulfillment and the need for security than on any heavenly guarantees. We realize that the agreement we made with life was really just an attempt to manipulate reality, and attempt at striking a [...] deal with Providence. Unfortunately, the contract was signed by only one party - ourselves."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"[The discerning voice] advises distance and opens up a new perspective through which the concealed meaning of a situation might emerge."

"When serenity is restored [...] the tired machinations of the ego are abandoned."

"Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and can never be lost. This is the art of the soul: to harvest your deeper life from all the seasons of your experience."

"While beauty usually quickens our senses, awakens our delight, and invites wonder, there are occassions when the force of beauty is disturbing and even frightening."

The world is full of maledictions - "If you do this, then this will happen." They are often curses of damnation, statements of moral supremacy, or perhaps the well-meant advice of a superstitious nanny.

But in this particular sentence humor is invoked because both parties realize there is no correlation between the playing of a damaged harmonica and the running off of sheep. At the same time, Ennis does seem to be offering some advice to Jack - perhaps to look back on their recent, harrowing experience. To explore the full meaning of everything that has just happened and what they accomplished together.

The worry has faded from his expression, and the anxiety. Jack and Ennis emerge from their struggle triumphant and serene. Both are capable of putting aside their controlling egos and relax in the companionship they simply enjoy.

A trying event - spiritually, mentally, emotionally - as though God or Providence had sought to scatter the sheep to test their resolve and their spirits, and perhaps more importantly, their relationship. These trials have all been comprehended by the heart and soul and bared all in its beautiful splendor. The trial opened them up completely and melted the last barriers between them.

The one most resistant to this raw experience is Ennis who is in very unfamiliar ground with the development of a heartful and soulful relationship with his own guilt and self-attacks through the knowledge of his upcoming nuptial obligations and the social "wrongness" of their particular relationship. Ennis does learn to respond with full emotionality: to laugh, to open himself, and extend towards Jack to perceive a limited beauty in their relationship; to open further through their harrowing experience, but here - after extending trust and hope (see Meditation 10) after relating deeply to Jack by involving himself in their mutual project - Ennis fears some forceful experience in their evolved relationship, some new awareness based upon the trial through which they bonded even closer.

In fear, and maybe trepidation, he uneasily expresses the humorous (and yet meaningful) statement. "You'll run the sheep off again if you don't quiet down."
We might see this in one of two ways: "Wouldn't it be funny if the sheep ran off again?" and on a more subtle level, "That was some experience back there as we rounded up the sheep, and now I feel awkward and have to say something to feel normal again."

[Daniel]

Cassie: I left word for you with Steve up at the ranch. But you must of got those notes I left at your place.

The Five Stages of the Soul

"I tried to tell her what fun it was, how nice it is to have a living thing around the house. But she didn't want to know from it [....] She just couldn't do it - couldn't put herself out for anybody or anything, man or beast."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"There is a wonderful complexity in nature and indeed in the world of artificial objects, yet no complexity can rival the complexity of the human mind and heart."

"Even the most caring [...] will leave inevitable trails of damage. This is a natural part of the 'dark industry' of imperfection and brokenness that lies within everyone of us."

"Part of the beauty of the act of discovery is the integrity of desire for wholeness."

"Sometimes absence is merely arrested appearance."

"We are no longer trapped in mental frames of self-reduction or self-denunciation."

Cassie's words here seem to elicit an understanding of her inner nature. On the surface, she seems a little eager to understand Ennis's absence, but her sorrow is overwhelming, and somewhat manipulative. She does not truly seek to understand Ennis and feels too comfortable with his personal and emotional arrested appearance. It seems as though there is some part of Ennis which she fears: a denial which will inevitably bring about heartache.

Even if Ennis and Cassie truly cared for one another in some way, it is likely that their imperfect and broken spirits would have clashed together in opposition, leaving throbbing tendrils of pain. Ennis is not capable of meeting her emotional wounds with his own, for they are far too similar. One cannot heal the other.

At the same time, though, there is a part of Cassie that needs to know - that years for the act of discovery so that she can integrate the knowledge with the rest of her life.Although her words seem cheerful and beneath them are the tones and pauses of manipulation, ultimately at their core is a quest for knowledge, completion, and wholeness, to be recognized by herself as a human being.

With that knowledge, even if it was not the knowledge she sought, she is freed from doubt and worry: self-reduction and self-denunciation.

[Daniel]

I know, a bit late (again).

This is a line from the screenplay, and I know for a fact that it was modified in its actual presentation in the film, but I am not altering it now, though I may come back and edit it. How these small changes arise in the film I think is up to the actor's style, and in particular to their own sense of the rhythm of the film and the words they speak.

Ennis: "Jack and me is goin' out for a drink. Might not get back tonight, we get to talkin' and all."

The Five Stages of the Soul:

"[T]he King learns that recapturing the glories of youth is a foolish dream. Conquest eludes him, and his attempts to recapture these fragments of time gone by bring humiliation and imprisonment. The King is then rescued by the force of the feminine, which up till now he has denied. Intelligence and subtle wisdom are personified in the form of the Queen, who comes to help him in his darkest hour, offering a second Call, this time to true freedom."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"A glimpse of an expression in someone's eyes can awaken a train of forgotten memories."

"Words create the bridges between us without them we would be lost islands. Affection, recognition and understanding travel across these fragile bridges and enable us to discover each other and awaken friendship and intimacy."

"To practice the discipline of reverence [...] means that we remain always secretly ready to receive the words that could illuminate our destiny."

"In the presence of Beauty, the passion and inner fullness of the gift flows forth in confidence and sureness."

Ennis's words, while deceitful and at least in part fictitious reveal a great inner truth - his need for open communication - for true freedom which has been revealed by the sudden and heart-expanding appearance of Jack, whom representes so much to Ennis (passion and inner fullness) and whose qualities struggle to flow forth meaningfully.

After so many weeks of open soulful communication on Brokeback Mountain, Ennis learned to close up again in his relationship with Alma. He does not seem to desire affection, recognition, and understanding to the same depth that he experienced with Jack. So when Jack appears again - his words are empowered by passion and joy and by a true happiness which startles Alma, and while his body does once again yearn for union - his heart, mind, and soul are rapidly preparing for provocative and emotionally deep conversation. So after the "all" Ennis and Jack do indeed "get to talkin'".

[Daniel]

I know I should do a week summary again, but I wanted to jump right into the next meditation. And after everything is said and done in this world, there is no right or wrong, only the personal choices that we make and the results of those choices.

Jack: "S'allright... S'allright" (The Second Tent Scene (STS))

The Five Stages of the Soul:

" 'You see, magicians know that you, Mr. and Mrs. Audience have certain fixed habits of perception. Assumptions about reality. You expect things to look and behave a certain way because they've always looked and behaved that way.' "

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"I arise today
With God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me
God's wisdom to guide me
God's eye to look ahead for me.
God's ear to hear me.
God's word to speak for me.
God's hand to defend me
God's way to lie before me.
God's shield to protect me.
God's host to safeguard me."

"Music does not touch merely the mind and the senses; it engages that ancient and primal presence we call soul."

"It is fascinating to consider the ancient kinship of light and dark, white and black."

"It is delightful when you find out more of your hidden light, when the radiance inside you glimmers through in new, unexpected colors."

"There is nothing in the world as intense as a human person: each one of us is inevitably and helplessly intense."

I have written much about the second tent scene already (in the book I am writing) and there is some controversy still over the words that are spoken during it. The subtitltes seem incorrect, so are not helpful.

First and foremost, Ennis is drawn into the tent with some resistance. His expectations are grim; his perception clouded. Perhaps we might see his venture into the tent as a divinely guided process.

There is no music but in Jack's voice: rhythm and repetition - tone and consistency, but these can heal like no other music can - the human voice is a powerful instrument of divine elation and forgiveness. This music is ultimately engaging of Ennis's mind, senses, and soul.

The second tent scene is played out in light and dark. Fire releases its golden fusion to bathe everything in light. Behind Jack are the white walls of the tent, glowing with light. Behind Ennis is the black opening - a darkness from which he has turned - this is perhaps a reversal of their normal roles and colors. Ennis is so often associated with white and lighter earth tones while Jack is associated with blue and black.

The scene reveals intensity and radiance of inner light in Jack and Ennis. When the social restraints are lifted they cannot seem to help but be that which their inner nature has called them to be.

[Daniel]

Hmm, as I look over these meditations they seem to be pointing towards the self. Whereas in the first week everything seemed to be pointing from the self outwards, in this week the self is pointing at the self. This brings up to mind one principle of human responsibility which is often lacking in our modern society: integrity.

"This above all, to thine own self be true." Polonius's words to Laertes in Hamlet ring true throughout this film and in our own lives. To be true to the self, to listen carefully to the inner voices and to do what we know our soul is calling ourselves to do. That would be quite a wondrous experience. In Brokeback Mountain, many characters are incapable of dedicating themselves to themselves. They do not seem to be able to grasp that responsibility. This is not something that we should be upset about. Every individual matures at a different rate, and we cannot blame those whom have not yet reached their highest understanding of themselves. For many, this type of understanding can require a lifetime (or more than one). The ability to be still and listen to the self and allow the truest aspects of self to spring forward. This is integrity, and it is one of the most beautiful aspects of the human soul.

Learn to listen to your own inner voice. Prepare a special time and place to hear it. Learn to communicate with wisdom and do not share or impress upon others yourself when you are not certain where you stand. Stand upon firm ground and then reach out to others, and help them to find their own firm ground as well. This is perhaps one of the greatest loving things that you can do: help another human being to find himself or herself, his or her own inner voice, and to herald that voice as you would your own.

Let love reign supreme.

[Daniel]

Jack: Quit your hammerin' and get in here!

Five Stages of the Soul:

"Spiritual journeys are best undertaken with the aid of a teacher, a teaching, and a community [....] Does this mean that one cannot follow a spiritual path alone with a simple faith in a personal God? Of course not. Many people feel no need for formal guidance or for the help of a community. Their own inner belief is enough.

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"And you who with your soft but searching voice
Drew me out of the sleep where I was lost
Who held me near your heart that I might rest.
Confiding in the darkness of your choice;
Possessed by you I chose no other choice:
Fullfilled in you I sought no further quest."
 - Geoffrey Hill, "Tenebrae"

"The soul is the real container of an individual's life [...] The soul surrounds and pervades the body. The body is in the soul."

"If we could but realize the sureness around us, we would be much more courageous in our lives. The frames of anxiety that keep us caged would dissolve. We sould live the life we love and in that way, day by day, free our future from the weight of regret."

"The beauty of God is that sure embrace where eternal love is eternal memory."

"Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eye'd Love observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd any thing."
- George Herbert, "Love"

Does Jack take on the voice of a spiritual teacher, a mystic master, making a call to some deeper and more experiential journey of the soul?

Perhaps it is merely some physical desire on the part of Jack that evokes the call into the night - though it is apparently a necessity as well to prevent damage from the cold. But if the body is contained within the soul as some mystic thinkers seem to perceive, then our physical desires are ultimately desires of the soul.

The most enthralling aspect which is newly presented here is Ennis's fear and lack of courage in the face of Jack's invitation. What harm would have happened in the evening when sleep was young and minds wearied - mayhap none - but it is likely something that both parties learned to regret for the rest of their lives. If they had shown courage in embracing the physical aspects of their relationship could they have freed their future from regret - could they have established some even deeper relationship?

Hypotheses of the past are impossible to test, so we are left to wonder.

The correllation of love and memory in some divine presence recalls the perfection of the final scenes where love is laid bare and memory entwined with it in every way. Death has stripped us of the bright soul, but his memory is perfected, grown, harvested in the now unbreakable love between Ennis and Jack.

Ennis held back his soul from the spiritual journey, though Jack invited him lovingly to pursue it. Finally Jack extends himself so much that the call cannot be refused and Ennis replies to Jack's call with his own desire to seek spiritual meaning in life (and in relationship.)

[Daniel]

Sorry people, I do have more meditations coming... I've been very busy at work lately. My supervisor went on vacation so I'm picking up the slack. I am working about 6 AM to 6 PM every day this week. And I am usually going straight to bed whenever I get home. I originally had Friday off, so thought I could get a bunch done then, but I've just been given projects to do then too. So who knows when I'll be able to post more meditations..??

[pgcatz]

 I just wanted to thank Daniel.

[Daniel]

Yes, I know. I keep appearing and disappearing... I hurt my leg a few weeks ago, badly enough to make moving very difficult sometimes. So that's the main reason I haven't been posting lately. I am about halfway through my meditation notebook though, and I definitely intend to share them with everyone here when I have more time (and less physical pain) to do so.

[YaadPyar]

Sorry about the injury - glad to see you here though, friend...I was starting to wonder.

[Daniel]

Jack: "Honey, you seen my blue parka?"

The Five Stages of the Soul: "A time of abundance is usually brief. Therefore a sage might well feel sad in view of the decline that must follow."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace: "Though farm work is hard, there are certain times in each season when the work becomes beautiful and the farmer becomes an artist who transforms the landscape."

"Most talk about the self disappoints because it presents not the deep, autonomous and unknown inner world, but cipher figures that are easily recognizable as members of some psychological syndrome."

"An individual is a creature in whom difference has come alive."

"[T]he focus ws more on the experience as participation in something more ultimate than one's needs, projection, or ego."

Jack's inclusion of his wife Lureen indicates an active role on his part to include her in an important experience inhisl ife - the desire to share every experience is in particular a quality of the questing soul. If he is nothing else, he is that.

Perhaps that is also the reason he seems to complain so much throughout the film: he is sharing his experiences as best he knows and reaching out with hopeful consciousness, as he does time and time again. Complaint shares experience and pain.

[Daniel]

This is a meditation upon the track known as "Brokeback Mountain #1" from the soundtrack. I have heard it enough times that I do not need to hear it as I perform this meditation.

It begins (joyfully) with an intricate and happy musical piece performed on one guitar - deep and resonating - much like a baritone voice. But it is quicly joined by a pump organ which also plays its own song - harmonizing with the first voice in its own tinny instrumentation. It is a plaintive voice an octave or two higher than the first one.

Into this beautiful and playful harmonization is introduced orchestral strings, which bridge the silences that grow wider and wider as the music continues, until finally the tenor voice dies off completely, leaving the guitar to harmonizeas best it can with the orchestral strings.

As for the musicality of this piece, it quickly and lively moves upward through the note scale, but not without some tune of pure essentiality: a voice which harmonizes joy and serenity, union and seperation, life and death. As the music continues and the two voices learn to mesh and play off of each other, where one falls back and its music is muted, the other pulls forward and fills the void.

When the violins are introduced, the musical piece quickly cresendoes then dies down in tone and emphasis slowly. The songs of the two voices slow down as well. When the baritone voice is left entirely alone with the strings, they both suddenly crescendo again before fading out completely.

The Five Stages of the Soul: "Something about returning to music after all those years aroused feelings of an old companionship and made life seem newer and richer. Existence is not over til the last breath, and we all have an obligation, a mandate even, to plumb its depths."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"Music does not touch merely the mind and the senses, it engages that ancient and primal presence we call soul. The soul is never fully at home in the social world that we inhabit. It is too large for our contained, managed lives."

"Sound and gesture are contemporary, identical, and indistinguishable... Linked to its own past, the gesture fills up with music and becomes rounded, like the universe... The beauty of gesture renders time invisible." -Catherine David

"For their short while on earth, most people long to have the fullest life they can. No one wants to remain a prisoner in an unlived life."

"Where woundedness can be refined into beauty, a wonderful transfiguration takes place."

The music is not over until is is over  and every instrument is silent. During the music are we not drawn into some experience transcendent to ourselves?

Do we not experience emotional pains: joy, loneliness, sorrow, mourning. In society, we are requested not to experience these - we are told to live a normal life and not to worry about being more than human.

Ultimately, the soul insists upon movement. It cannot remain stifled in lesser forms but must expand to fill the gap between God and Man. Inspiring works of art, including music, can expand consciousness and advise the soul to seek what it does not have.

If music is a gesture, when combined with vision it resourcefully dislodges the soul from its quiet slumber. It awakens the soul to the experience it most lacks, makes bold our weaknesses, and instills within one a desire to relinquish them.

In other words, certain pieces of music wound us to the core. They wound us so that we may see the necessity of transformation and experience fulfilment by that transformation.

[gattaca]

This is rather like the I Ching of Brokeback Mountain. I really like it! I'll read it more thoroughly today. 

[gattaca]

Daniel -
Forgive me for my rather broad interpretation of this. I find the concept intriguing. I mentioned the I Ching of Brokeback Mountain just now and since I have an electronic copy of the I Ching I decided to get a reading. I don't have the DVD yet (it's been ordered) but I do have the soundtrack - Wings has been playing like a hymn (mentioned elsewhere) and the music plays in my head unbidden, but adds color to the day. And so, I threw the I Ching with the word 'Wings' (my intent here was 'ascent'). The result is quite interesting:



The present is embodied in Hexagram 26 - Ta Ch'u (The Taming Power of the Great): It will be advantageous to be firm and correct. If he does not seek to enjoy his revenues in his own family, without taking service at court, there will be good fortune. It will be advantageous for him to cross the great stream.



The things most apparent, those above and in front, are embodied by the upper trigram Ken (Mountain), which represents stillness and obstruction.



The things least apparent, those below and behind, are embodied by the lower trigram Chi'en (Heaven), which represents strength and creativity.

[Daniel]

Thank you for sharing that... I have more meditations, I really do.

My leg has finally healed to the point where I can get to the computer more regularly now, and of course as soon as that happens my current workplace requires extreme temporal devotion, which is always taxing.

Good news. I have nearly completed the first draft of a book I am writing which pursues intensely the philosophical, spiritual, and psychological repercussions of this film. I have about two more chapters to write, then the conclusion, and then rewrite the introduction. Maybe three more chapters, conclusion, and introduction, depending on whether my concept of a dreamfilm (as discussed on the IMDB board) is one worthy of immense detail. The more I research the concept, the more I think that it is, and that Mr. Lee has introduced a new type of artform which other directors have attempted to do in the past but have not (as far as I am aware) been as successful as Mr. Lee's interpretation of Brokeback Mountain.

For instance, I can recall hearing something about Ridley Scott's attempts to create a film which had a dream-like quality and a disturbing effect on the human psyche through that film. As far as I know, while the film which resulted from that attempt obtained a cult following, its effect on the majority of those who saw it was mind numbing rather than expansive. But the point is, that the attempt was made. There are other films where this type of quality seems to be strived for, but which is sorely missed due to some internal flaw(s) of the films themselves, which of course can be attributed to human error. This is not to say that Brokeback Mountain is unflawed. It certainly is, but its flaws do not retract from the dream-intense state that so many people have described during and immediately following the film. In other films, these flaws are barely noticable yet somehow prevent the dreamfilm experience. Consider the following films as potentials for dreamfilms, though this list is by no means comprehensive.

Brazil
Legend
The Dark Crystal
Labyrinth
What Dreams May Come
Logan's Run

I am certain there are many more films in which the director saw some obscure vision which deeply impacted the subconscious which he or she attempted to draw out in the films he or she created. Whether or not this was successful depends I think on the depth of the experience of the individual audience members who saw it. That is all I have to say about the dreamfilm.

As far as the philosophical and psychological repercussions of the film, the chapter I am currently writing about revolves around the issues of death, and perhaps more importantly, Thanatos. The death urge, the death instinct, thanatos seems to be one of the least understood draws of psychology. The death instinct was originally hinted at in Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle which I think is his best work as it ascribes some meaning to the existence of human life beyond its most basic drives. But it has only recently (within the last 20 years or so) been understood in an artistic sense. In my depths of research specifically into the topic of thanatos, I have uncovered very few nonfiction texts which discuss it in detail. Actually, I have uncovered none, which is both surprising and disappointing. There is a book of poetry/photography which is the closest I have found to understanding the duality/relationship between Eros and Thanatos, and it has provided some insight. If anyone has suggestions for a book or articles which describes thanatos (or the death instinct) in some way which points out a depth of almost indescribable meaning in the film, please let me know. If not, I may be on a voyage of discovery in an unexplored frontier.

[Daniel]

Eros and Thanatos, my concepts:

"Eros, that dazzling sun, attracts to its light, and burns us in the consumation of our desires. Thanatos, that enigmatic moon, pulls us inevitably to its shores like the tide." -from Eros and Thanatos

Now this interesting image, which ascribes Eros to the sun, and Thanatos to the moon, recalls any number of poetic and visual images. Consider Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, (written as much from memory as possible):

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks.
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon.

With a few lines, Shakespeare introduces a conflict between sun and moon, between Eros and Thanatos, and perhaps this image is perfectly suited for a romantic relationship doomed to end before its construction is complete. Visually, such a conflict brings to mind a complete solar eclipse, where the moon becomes a black shadow hiding the sun. Importantly, Eros and Thanatos are not equals. Their relationship is not akin to the one between yin and yang. Nor are they two sides of the same coin. Like many mental concepts, there are times when eros appears to be stronger, and there are times when thanatos appears to be stronger. In the human reality, this perception is in fact true. To attempt to equalize or limit the experience of either seems a grave crime against the fullness of human existence, in whose field the natural conflict results in both beauty and understanding.

[Daniel]

Ah, yes, back to the meditations... I am certain I have them around here somewhere. Ah yes, here they are.

Now where was I? Ah, here.

Ennis: "If I had three hands I could."

The Five Stages of the Soul: In the case of Tolstoy, the desire to face his suffering squarely became a driving force. Like many of us, his impulse was to grow by simplifying and confronting the obvious. He began by eliminating the distractions and ambitions that were eating his life.

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

The beauty of colour is an intricate play of presence and absence.

None of us comes to a new relationship with empty hands.

Each shape of vulnerability has a different origin.

When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation of new growth.


If nothing else, in this particular scene Ennis reveals his vulnerability and for a moment drops his stoic composure and looks elsewhere for aid. I wonder if we were to examine Ennis's statements throughout the film how many other times does he begin his statements with "If...". It is a plaintive tone of dependency heard elsewhere in the film, and reveals his inner nature much like every other statement he utters.

Vulnerable to the difficulties of life, struggling against his own suffering, Ennis seems to plead with the powers that be, even offering recompense for the third hand that would enable him to once again retain a stoic independence.

"If I was lucky, that harmonica woulda broke in two."

"If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it."

"If you don't want no more of my kids, I'll be happy to leave you alone."

"If you don't got nothin' then you don't need nothin'."

It is interesting to note that these statements relate cause and effect and also reveal Ennis's inner beliefs about the world, but at the same time they have a vibrant rhythm of their own. The word "If" denotes an either/or situation and when only one choice is presented it is a statement of presence as opposed to absence.

If your life is difficult, then we should do this.... If this, then that.

Logical? Perhaps. But also deeply emotional.

In his relationship with Jack he offers two "If" statements and it is enthralling to see that where Ennis adopts the plaintive tone, Jack creates a supportive tone, creating a balanced system of need and fulfillment.

[Daniel]

Joe Aguirre: "Well look what the wind blew in."

The Five Stages of the Soul
"Turn to a higher power. Become sober. Admit your guilt. Review your errors. Make amends to the people you've hurt. Stay on the straight and narrow. Help others avoid similar mistakes."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace
"Music is often the only language which can find those banished to the nameless interior of illness."

"Ultimately, reverence is respect before mystery. But it is more than an attitude of mind; reverence is also physical - a dignified attention of body showing that sacred is already here."

"To be who we are, we need the consolation and companionship of the outside."

"The imagination is like a lantern. It illuminates the inner landscapes of our life and helps us discover their secret archaeologies."

Joe Aguirre's words ring with a heavy lack of reverence and no small amount of disgust. I have learned a long time ago that disgust is an inner emotion rather than an external one - it expresses our discomfort with ourselves and our lack of identity - it is an illness.

But more sorrowful than the inner emotion of disgust is the need to externalize it. To use that emotion to harm others rather than to examine the self. Throughout this scene, Joe Aguirre uses harmful words to attack Jack's desire and selflessness and unique self - his personhood. Joe Aquirre's self is invasive and deadly. He stands forth in blazing righteousness and helps spread guilt, shame, and disappointment to Jack's fragile character, which though slightly damaged remains unbroken.

We can see within these words a sarcastic use of imagination - a limited perception of Jack's ungrounded nature, but this imagination reveals Mr. Agurre's lack of interest or support for Jack's independent nature.

[Daniel]

This is the first meditation upon a nonspoken part of the screenplay. It was the first thing I pointed to and instead of redoing the randomization I decided to go along with it.

'Ennis is thrown, lands hard, rolls on the rocky ground."

The Five Stages of the Soul
"Enterprise, challenge, daring, activity - all these qualities, psychologists tell us, are integral parts of existence and a tonic to our self esteem. They make us vital and interested. They keep us alive. Without them, and without our dreams, we wither and turn old before our time."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace
"Within one single colour there is a fluent geography of tone: at one end the colour belongs more to the darkness, at the other end more to the light. Each colour is its own spectrum. Within itself and together with other colors, each color remains fluent in that perennial yet elusive dance of hue."

"In the face of such beauty our bodies feel paper thin; this beauty could undo us. Eventually time comes to the rescue and its pedestrian sequence calms us again."

"She was gone and would never come back."

"The 'web of betweenness' is still there but in order to become a presence again, it needs to be invoked."

If we are kept alive by challenge then even our most painful moments resonate with the grandness of life. As Ennis falls from his comfortable place of being to an agony of ground, we can see at first glance some great and painful difficulty that invokes both anger and regret. Ennis, like other people, is a cascade of possibilities, a vibrant spectrum of light and shadow.

Ennis's collapse reveals, with stunning insight: vulnerability. The opening up of the body and soul - such beauty has the potential to suffocate our emotions, but man cannot reside in a continual state of emotional compassion. That compassion calls us to act, and through action the vulnerability, the wound, is healed.

The departure of that moment, when the wound was laid bare for us to heal, is permanent. The same moment can never return. When a wound is exposed, it must be treated quickly before it festers and becomes a perpetual soreness and destruction of the spirit.

The opportunity to heal the vulnerability of another invokes the 'web of betweenness' and disturbs the responsibility of the human spirit. We can appreciate the exposure of the wound and the ultimate trust required to expose it, but failure to act is a betrayal of that trust and a destruction of the strands of human connection.

[Daniel]

After weeks of searching for my medititation journal, I have finally recovered it.

Lureen: "Oh yeah, Jack was pumping up a flat on the truck out on a back road when the tire blew up. The rim of the tire slammed into his face, broke his nose and jaw, knocked him unconscious on his back. By the time somebody came along, he had drowned in his own blood. He was only thirty-nine years old."

The Five Stages of the Soul
" 'Hazardous diversions can stop the customary flow of associative thought for a few remarkable minutes and transport risk-takers into a state of terrifying bliss. This perilous strategy achieves its greatest intesnity during moments of life-threatening danger.' "

Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

"As the soul can render the face luminous, so too can love turn up the hidden light within a person's life. Love changes the way we see ourselves and others. We feel beautiful when we are loved, and to evoke an awareness of beauty in another is to give them a precious gift they will never lose."

"When you become vulnerable, any ideal or perfect image you may have had of yourself falls away."

"The beauty of God is the warmth of the divine affection."

"You cannot divest yourself of your immortal clothing."

-----

Moments of life threatening intensity, huh? Yep, I guess that fits the bill. The point that seems to be captured here is that no matter how Jack specifically died - wheter it was as Lureen described or Ennis believed - he did experience the final separation and move beyond this world... and this broke Ennis.

Ennis did not break down, did not burst into hysterical laughter, gut-wrenching sobs, or fits of depression. But he did break. His customary flow of associative thought was disturbed. All the things he had grown used to over a period of 20 years and a few exhilirating months on a special mountain had suddenly, irrevocably, unequivocably stopped.

He becomes completely vulnerable, and it is here that the image he had been fronting - his rough, independent exterior - begins to fade away. Here he faces his own inner shadow: a facing which grows more complete, particularly when he ventures to the Twist Ranch.

There he discovers Jack's love for him to be complete and the words of "Beauty: The Invisible Embrace" hold true: Ennis begins to feel beautiful, his own awareness of beauty evoked by Jack's tender demonstration which his words could not seem to capture. Ennis finally receives the precious gift that Jack had been trying to give him for many, many years. His vulnerability is ultimately complete - he is the most exposed to the Universe as he is going to be in all his life.

An added note: Some members have mentioned that Ennis whispers the words "I love you." in this particular scene. While I have not experienced that myself, such a revelation at such a vulnerable moment can only be a sacred beatification of love as one of the most powerful forces of the Universe, in that it is always an inner presence but not always identified or recognized.

Jack's mother provides something that Ennis needs very badly - the divine affection.

[gattaca]

Ennis did indeed break. But as you say, quietly, but profoundly. I understand this type of break very well.

[Daniel]

I've noticed I'm rubbing some people the wrong way. This is entirely not intentional on my part. I in no way mean anyone any harm or to change their ways of life or their beliefs. I do not think I have said anything causing harm or prompting people to attempt to make changes. Often I make suggestions, but these are more often than not suggestions for myself personally, or they are made to affirm my personal beliefs. If they come across as too strong, please do not personalize them for yourself.

That being said, please keep in mind that these meditations are a part of a key to my inner being. If I did not believe 100% in the words that I post here I would not have posted them. Not only do I believe they are true, I also believe they define the relationship between man and the universe and that individual beings can continue to transform their consciousness and relationships in an ever-expansive identification of themselves and their acknowledgements of what is so.

I am not certain if I should go into more detail here, as I am unaware if this is the correct forum for a Statement of Belief or Testament. But I just want everyone here to know that I love them very much and that I am very sorry if anything I have said has been painful, insulting or judgmental toward anyone else. I do not feel like a Defense of Consciousness is necessary here, and I am certain that no one will ask for it. 

[gattaca]

Daniel -
I can't imagine anyone interpreting your words here as anything but contemplative and positive.
I certainly enjoy it.

[vkm91941]

Daniel I love reading your thoughts and your poetry there is nothing bad here, only a refreshing self awareness, openess and honesty.

[Daniel]

"There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it, you've gotta stand it." (from the short story)

The Five Stages of the Soul

"[Habituation] can be looked at as the polar opposite of the mindfulness and attentiveness which are the pillars of spiritual life."

Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

"So many people feel deep dissatisfaction and an acute longing for a more real life, a life where they could discover a different resonance, one which echoes their heartfelt dreams and longing."

"The sheep needed neither introduction nor persuasion, they simply gave in and became instant addicts."

"The magnificence of this Music of Eros consists above all in the fact that it is a profound engagement with the other side, [...] death."

"More often than not it is the inner beauty of heart and mind that illuminates a face."

Dissatisfaction and distinction, beauty and truth are not brought about by happiness but by discovery. Whether we go through life pursuing this discovery or as sheep addicted to life's pleasures relies very much upon the human capacity to live as one's heart dictates.

The beauty of love and romance, in part, is due to the natural opposition of death and life. Where there is hope, death cannot enter. There is open space between what we know and what we try to believe. But there is definitely something we can do. To take one step into that space: to wonder, to hope, to think, to believe, can immensely change a person's life from its drab, nonessential existence to a lively performance of play between soul and body, heart and mind. Whether or not this play resolves the situation is not important. What is important is that we not simply stand the situation and do nothing to resolve our pain and anguish.

[Daniel]

Lureen: "I thought you were gonna call"

The Five Stages of the Soul

"The Wise have said that we repair the past and prepare for the future by living in the present. A committed contemplative regimen is what matters now:
cultivate attention and mindfulness; give up what has to be given up; prune what has to be pruned; strive without embarassment or apology to be virtuous; be discerning - choose wisely; struggle; and eventually you will surely find the means you need to live each day in the way you were meant to live it, and to become the person you were meant to be. Herein lies the ultimate struggle of mind and heart."

Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

"Sound can create a world as real as that of the clock, the field, or the street."

"Though beauty is autonomous, there seem to be occasions when human presence can become congruent with her will."

"Time becomes restless in us. The human heart is full of quickening.

"For Aquinas, beauty also included the notion of integrity (integritas)."

The plaintive tone (or human whine) can deal damage with merciless strokes of voice. To speak in such a tone is to create disharmony.

Whatever this disharmony, whether productive or not, it does require a temporal dissatisfaction. To be out of harmony is to be dislodged from the beauty and power of the present moment. Our consciousness is brought painfully to the past or the future, whether that tone laments the past or bemoans the future.

To escape that sound and its false or painful reality, we must instead seek beautiful sounds and human experiences, and perhaps most importantly of all seek out our own integrity and personal power.

[Daniel]

Terry Pratchett Good Omens

"God does not play dice with the universe. He plays an ineffable game of His own devising which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players (i.e. everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch dark room with blank cards for infinite stakes with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules and who smiles all the time."

[gattaca]

"There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it, you've gotta stand it." (from the short story)

I ponder this one line constantly, and find myself mourning what it implies.

[Daniel]

Sometimes, despite great differences, friends can find a way to love one another.

[Daniel]

"Ennis, his chest heaving, does not turn away from Alma, but can still smell Jack -- the intensely familiar odor of cigarettes, musky sweat, and a faint sweetness like grass, and with it the rushing cold of the mountain." (from the short story)

Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power of Intimate Relationships

"An enchanted love is holy ground where the meanness and the assaults of the world are not escaped so much as transformed by the power of love and forgiveness."

Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

"Frequently, the imagination can bring completely new eyes to a situation."

"Nothing is said directly in a creative work; it is obliquely suggested."

"Faith is attraction to the divine."

"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

"Those who believe in God but who do so without anguish, uncertainty, or doubt, actually believe only in the idea of God, not in God Himself."


"Meanness and the assaults of the world..." Can there be any better description for the death scene that Ennis imagines? Ennis has grown up with cruelty and learned to hide his emotions deep within himself. Now that a loved one has died, his memories of cruelty resurface and his imagination paints a scene of cruelty onto a situation already too painful to bear.

But what should he do now? His world has been shaken but no specific thought has risen to the top. As is often the case when a person is left confused and despairing after a tragic event, Ennis seeks aid from the divine - simply to know it, and share with it his grief, and perhaps for a short while understand the higher reasons for the tragic event.

The divine, however, may be experienced in many ways. Ennis seeks out both a source and target for divine compassion. Children often learn the most about God from their parents and associate the nature of the divine with their parents' nature. Ennis has lost his parents, but instead seeks out Jack's. This is an act of Faith, and one of the few that Ennis actively engages himself in.

While at the Twist ranch, he discovers the nestled shirts and in a dance of memory and revery loses himself. He struggles to smell the familiar scents and remember forever a presence passed on. In the end, however, he attempts to make amends with Jack's eternal spirit. If Faith in God is difficult, faith in one person as a spiritual, eternal being may be downright impossible. The struggle itself reveals faith and devotion, love and sincerity, hope and repentance.

[Daniel]

I have forgotten who said this, but I believe it was an adult film director. In any case, it's a beautiful concept and one I fully adhere to.

"Gay, Bi, Straight - these are just titles.
If you're going to love someone, love them."

[Daniel]

Ennis: "Where's the powdered milk 'n' the spuds?"

Enchanted Love: The Mystic Power of Intimate Relationships

"In the end, the struggle of mind and heart comes down to a small margin of choice. If the truth be told, we don't really govern many of the forces which shape our existence [....] We don't pick our parents. We don't choose our bodies, our talents, our temperament, or most of the other seminal elements that determine our fates."

The Five Stages of the Soul

"In both men and women, the separation of essential aspects of our humanity is the cornerstone of the fallen self."


The shortest distance in the world is the one between you and yourself. The space in question is tiny. Yet what goes on in this little space determines nearly everything about the kind of person you are and the kind of life you are living. Normally the priority in our culture is to function and do what is expected of us. So many people feel deep dissatisfaction and an acute longing for a more real life, a life that allows their souls to come to expression and to awaken; a life where they could discover a different resonance, one which echoses their heartfelt dreams and longing.

So much of the pain that is experienced seems to be self-inflicted. Ennis yearns for a dream-life, a wonderful relationship, opportunities to truly pursue happiness. The happiness which has already been denied to him so many times. Death relieves us of happiness, perhaps because it is misunderstood or improperly defined. With Ennis, his romance begins because of the death of his parents. He encounters death high on the mountain. And the romance ends with death - the death of a loved one whose momentary presence miraculously lifted spirits and drove away most of his fears and worries. In the end, though, Ennis realizes that the fluency of life - its continual flow, balance, and flight required a spiritual honoring and a mental and emotional release. Death is a transitory state and it opens doors wherever it occurs for human love to ascend and divine love to descend.

[Rayn]

I am not certain if I should go into more detail here, as I am unaware if this is the correct forum for a Statement of Belief or Testament.  

There is a thread that you also may be interested in, Daniel. It's "What Religion are you..."  It's interesting to me to see where each person's background has formed and where they may be going.  I thought that might interest you if you haven't seen it yet. 

I want to read all the writing here, but I must sleep now, but say before I do, I find nothing harmful or offensive here at all.  I send you en-courage-ment.... courage... from the French "corage", meaning heart.

Peace,
Rayn

PS: I haven't reached the sea in this life yet, but I've a good, strong boat and the wind is in my sails.  Enjoying the journey...  R

[Daniel]

Sorry I have not had time to do or post any more meditations lately... I am eventually going to get 365 of them for you... lol.  I've been working on my book, recently, and it is actually more than 90% done now (at least the first draft, pre content-editing).

[Rayn]

I thought this appropriate for this thread here....  I wrote it for another topic, but it's general enough to go anywhere, especially here.


Quote from: Tristann on July 23, 2006, 10:57:10 am
"Someone once said, "who said that the great love of your life has to last?". How true. Hollywood tends to make us believe in the 'happily forever after', but no one made that rule."


Yes, right on Tristann, love comes in many forms to many couples and while it's different for each, it 's also the same in many ways too.  Anyone who has loved, can understand others who have too.  Anyone who has known love is lucky to have experienced the abiding joy, unforgetable bliss and the sorrow when, like all things in life, it comes to a physical end.  But while it ends, it is not destroyed.  It lives on within us, in memory, in personal history, in stories and poems, in paintings and sculpture, in music and much more, in our cells, in our genes: though all this, we give it to the next generation to continue the great adventure.  Love is a mystery and a great adventure into the heart of humanity where we find both the destructive and creative forces within the Mind and what we do with those forces defines who we are. 

Peace,
Rayn

[Rayn]

"Gay, Bi, Straight - these are just titles.  If you're going to love someone, love them." 

and this too...

"In the end, the struggle of mind and heart comes down to a small margin of choice. If the truth be told, we don't really govern many of the forces which shape our existence [....] We don't pick our parents. We don't choose our bodies, our talents, our temperament, or most of the other seminal elements that determine our fates."

I love these, Daniel, thanks.

Rayn

[Rayn]

"Meanness and the assaults of the world..." Can there be any better description for the death scene that Ennis imagines? Ennis has grown up with cruelty and learned to hide his emotions deep within himself. Now that a loved one has died, his memories of cruelty resurface and his imagination paints a scene of cruelty onto a situation already too painful to bear.

But what should he do now? His world has been shaken but no specific thought has risen to the top. As is often the case when a person is left confused and despairing after a tragic event, Ennis seeks aid from the divine - simply to know it, and share with it his grief, and perhaps for a short while understand the higher reasons for the tragic event.

The divine, however, may be experienced in many ways. Ennis seeks out both a source and target for divine compassion. Children often learn the most about God from their parents and associate the nature of the divine with their parents' nature. Ennis has lost his parents, but instead seeks out Jack's. This is an act of Faith, and one of the few that Ennis actively engages himself in.

While at the Twist ranch, he discovers the nestled shirts and in a dance of memory and revery loses himself. He struggles to smell the familiar scents and remember forever a presence passed on. In the end, however, he attempts to make amends with Jack's eternal spirit. If Faith in God is difficult, faith in one person as a spiritual, eternal being may be downright impossible. The struggle itself reveals faith and devotion, love and sincerity, hope and repentance.

This is remarakable insight, so true, but the most remarkable thing about such writing is that truth spoken,  spoken clearly and fearlessly by anyone reaches into the heart and touches us.  I am in Asia, yet you have touched me.   I'm sure your words will reach other people as well. 

Thank you again, Daniel.

[Daniel]

Jack: "Like to buy Jimbo a beer. Best rodeo clown I ever worked with."

The Five Stages of the Soul:

"We will dream our dreams in an awakened state."

Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power of Intimate Relationships:

"The fact that nothing is happening is the beacon light you've been searching for."

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace:

"The night breaks when the red fire of dawn is kindled and the world glows again in the beauty of color."

"I find by bearings where I become lost."
-Helene Cixous

"Imagine: if the mind of the politican and developer could awaken to the ancient integrity of landscape, it would become more and more difficult to damage the beauty of nature."

A thing is first and foremost itself. Seperated from his lover for over a year, Jack suffers from the pain of loneliness. This can be momentarity eased when he gives of his attention to Jimbo, though even this small gifting is non apropros and denied. I think, here, when Jack runs into the repeating frustration, he finally begins to understand the impoverished depth of his romantic and loving interest in Ennis. This revelation is stunning - it is the night breaking, the bearings of his loss. Jack now knows with certainty that what he had experienced with Ennis was real, if not complete.

This is also a moment of revelation about his true uniqueness. When a person can come to terms with himself as himself, it is at that moment when he is most capable of anything. Life offers no challenges to one armed with wonder and self-revelation.