1/ People, carrying a constant mirror to themselves in their mind's eye, wish to disperse with hopelessness, anxiety, confusion, as if it were an article of clothing that does not fit their imaginary reflection.
-
-
11/ We have also forgotten how to see. In our marvelous superiority over the ancients, we have complicated matters that pertain to our humanity to such a degree that we cannot untangle ourselves from our faulty conceptions. This is an immense obstacle we face.
Show this thread -
12/ A word, or perhaps a few words, used to be enough to occupy one's thoughts for weeks. People meditated on what was said, thought, and heard. By this very act of attention they paid and the importance they gave, any word had the potential to lead them back to themselves.
Show this thread -
13/ We rarely pay such gravitas any more, to anything. We change the question as often as we hope for a different answer that works. We jump from one method to the other, one silver bullet to the next, never understanding that we doom ourselves to a perpetual desperate seeking.
Show this thread -
14/ Coming back to Narcissus, it was not his narcissism that killed him finally, but his naiveté. It is this very same naiveté, born out of a refusal to drop the mirror for a while, to see, to listen, that is the very danger our deep-seated anxiety warns us about.
Show this thread -
15/ If we refuse hopelessness, if we refuse anxiety, confusion, frustration, and every other message our wise bodies transmit to our consciousness, we are walking, mirror in hand, towards the edge of Narcissus's lake, and one day we are sure to drown.
Show this thread -
16/ The mirror offers no growth, no evolution, no transcendence; this, too, the ancients knew in some wordless, instinctive manner, and they would not tolerate a minute of the so-called elevated word-games of psychobabble we throw around today to make us feel smarter.
Show this thread -
17/ My beloved Henry Miller wrote “Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.” It is through chaos that one arrives at this certainty, and through giving up the ghost of that elusive mirror.
Show this thread -
PS
@IntegralStory is of course, correct, in pointing out that I have omitted many aspects of the story of Narcissus in my using it in this impromptu thread. The actual myth itself is a subtler and more meaningful affair than what I portrayed, and is recommended to all.Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.