The First and Second Steps

The First and Second Steps

The First..

is the step of disentanglement..

we notice our failure to notice

the Identity is obscured midst

the stories which clutter

and demand our attention..

but then..at long last..we notice

that which within lie

all of those tangled tales..

we are renewed knowing now

the identity we had lost..

The Second..

comes from a growing unease

that the identity we found

may be something more..

we recall all those stories which

obscured..calling us once more

now shining in our projected light..

Two steps to home...

the mind lens

the mind lens

this is the fundamental new path
which science and philosophy must tread 
in our days marked with confusion and strain:
our minds view what might be known
through a lens which limits the known..
until this lens fact is known we will remain
in a fundamental morass:  not knowing 
ourselves..and by extension..not knowing
countless appearances dancing and
tantalizing our search for truth...

the walker

the walker

how 

to experience our true nature

 going for a walk..?

we know that the mind shapes

and names the body as the walker..

but what if we were to imagine

that the shape of the body

occurs within a substance

seeming to merge the walker

with path and the passing sights..

we might then discard the

the habitual picture of 

a body limited..out for a walk

with passing appearances

changing as we step..

our true nature experiences

a stationary whole

within..and as which..the walker

 and appearances seem to move 

to and fro...

lives lived in contraction

lives lived in contraction

our lives are lived in a contraction
which we often do not recognize..
the recognition that would be helpful
is the knowing of suffering as the
contraction which has resulted from
consciousness moving within itself
to produce our manifest perceptions..
the manifest appears as a multiplicity
of separation..with a convincing air
of a universe as the wholeness of all..
based only on the perceptions which hide 
the truth of consciousness in contraction..
the truth awaits our discovery with
suffering as teacher and friend..

ULYSSES

ULYSSES 
It little profits that an idle king, 
By this still hearth, among these barren crags, 
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole 
Unequal laws unto a savage race, 
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. 

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink 
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d 
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those 
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when 
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades 
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; 
For always roaming with a hungry heart 
Much have I seen and known; cities of men 
And manners, climates, councils, governments, 
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all; 
And drunk delight of battle with my peers, 
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. 
I am a part of all that I have met; 
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’ 
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades 
For ever and forever when I move. 
How dull it is to pause, to make an end, 
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use! 
As tho’ to breathe were life! Life piled on life 
Were all too little, and of one to me 
Little remains: but every hour is saved 
From that eternal silence, something more, 
A bringer of new things; and vile it were 
For some three suns to store and hoard myself, 
And this gray spirit yearning in desire 
To follow knowledge like a sinking star, 
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 

   This is my son, mine own Telemachus, 
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,— 
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil 
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild 
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees 
Subdue them to the useful and the good. 
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere 
Of common duties, decent not to fail 
In offices of tenderness, and pay 
Meet adoration to my household gods, 
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. 

   There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: 
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners, 
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me— 
That ever with a frolic welcome took 
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed 
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; 
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; 
Death closes all: but something ere the end, 
Some work of noble note, may yet be done, 
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. 
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: 
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep 
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world. 
Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds 
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
Of all the western stars, until I die. 
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: 
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, 
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. 
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ 
We are not now that strength which in old days 
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; 
One equal temper of heroic hearts, 
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

~~Alfred Lord Tennyson

Summary

Ulysses (Odysseus) declares that there is little point in his staying home “by this still hearth” with his old wife, doling out rewards and punishments for the unnamed masses who live in his kingdom.


Still speaking to himself he proclaims that he “cannot rest from travel” but feels compelled to live to the fullest and swallow every last drop of life. He has enjoyed all his experiences as a sailor who travels the seas, and he considers himself a symbol for everyone who wanders and roams the earth. His travels have exposed him to many different types of people and ways of living. They have also exposed him to the “delight of battle” while fighting the Trojan War with his men. Ulysses declares that his travels and encounters have shaped who he is: “I am a part of all that I have met,” he asserts. And it is only when he is traveling that the “margin” of the globe that he has not yet traversed shrink and fade, and cease to goad him.

Ulysses declares that it is boring to stay in one place, and that to remain stationary is to rust rather than to shine; to stay in one place is to pretend that all there is to life is the simple act of breathing, whereas he knows that in fact life contains much novelty, and he longs to encounter this. His spirit yearns constantly for new experiences that will broaden his horizons; he wishes “to follow knowledge like a sinking star” and forever grow in wisdom and in learning.

Ulysses now speaks to an unidentified audience concerning his son Telemachus, who will act as his successor while the great hero resumes his travels: he says, “This is my son, mine own Telemachus, to whom I leave the scepter and the isle.” He speaks highly but also patronizingly of his son’s capabilities as a ruler, praising his prudence, dedication, and devotion to the gods. Telemachus will do his work of governing the island while Ulysses will do his work of traveling the seas: “He works his work, I mine.”

In the final stanza, Ulysses addresses the mariners with whom he has worked, traveled, and weathered life’s storms over many years. He declares that although he and they are old, they still have the potential to do something noble and honorable before “the long day wanes.” He encourages them to make use of their old age because “ ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.” He declares that his goal is to sail onward “beyond the sunset” until his death. Perhaps, he suggests, they may even reach the “Happy Isles,” or the paradise of perpetual summer described in Greek mythology where great heroes like the warrior Achilles were believed to have been taken after their deaths. Although Ulysses and his mariners are not as strong as they were in youth, they are “strong in will” and are sustained by their resolve to push onward relentlessly: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Form

This poem is written as a dramatic monologue: the entire poem is spoken by a single character, whose identity is revealed by his own words. The lines are in blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter, which serves to impart a fluid and natural quality to Ulysses’s speech. Many of the lines are enjambed, which means that a thought does not end with the line-break; the sentences often end in the middle, rather than the end, of the lines. The use of enjambment is appropriate in a poem about pushing forward “beyond the utmost bound of human thought.” Finally, the poem is divided into four paragraph-like sections, each of which comprises a distinct thematic unit of the poem.



Ulysses (Odysseus), fed up with retirement, summons you to the deck of a massive vessel on the ocean’s edge and announces: to hell with old age, to hell with senility, we’re going on an epic journey.

Though not published until 1842, the poem was composed in 1833, only a few weeks after Tennyson learned of the death of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. The loss was to haunt him for the rest of his life, and Hallam became the subject of his longest poem: In Memoriam A.H.H. Years later Tennyson commented:

There is more about myself in Ulysses, which was written under the sense of loss and that all had gone by, but that still life must be fought out to the end. It was more written with the feeling of his loss upon me than many poems in In Memoriam.

Tennyson picks up the story of Ulysses/Odysseus about where Dante does in the Inferno (Canto 26), though the venture Dante’s Ulysses undertakes ends poorly… which says what about this poem?

‘O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand
Perils,’ I said, ‘have come unto the West,
To this so inconsiderable vigil

Which is remaining of your senses still
Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge,
Following the sun, of the unpeopled world.

Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;
Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,
But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.'

So eager did I render my companions,
With this brief exhortation, for the voyage,
That then I hardly could have held them back.

And having turned our stern unto the morning,
We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,
Evermore gaining on the larboard side.

Already all the stars of the other pole
The night beheld, and ours so very low
It did not rise above the ocean floor.

Five times rekindled and as many quenched
Had been the splendour underneath the moon,
Since we had entered into the deep pass,

When there appeared to us a mountain, dim
From distance, and it seemed to me so high
As I had never any one beheld.

Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping;
For out of the new land a whirlwind rose,
And smote upon the fore part of the ship.

Three times it made her whirl with all the waters,
At the fourth time it made the stern uplift,
And the prow downward go, as pleased Another,

Until the sea above us closed again."

Roots

the roots of our feeling of separation
come from acknowledgement of all
we think and perceive as sole reality..
we thus conclude that separation is the
fundamental nature of who I am..
the world out there by consensus
lies outside of your and my consciousness
and this common sensical belief
remains the cornerstone of our lives..
according to this bedrock belief
we create creators out beyond
whom we implore to help us with
the lives we believe in separation..
and so it goes.. through desperate years
alleviated at times by the joys we
all know..but in the end..wondering
if separation..believed so long..
perceived so long..those roots assumed..
need now..at long last..to be uprooted...

Alone?

Alone?

Where is everybody?

Enrico Fermi asked

he and the 

Drake equation

attempt to calculate

how many of us there are

out there..

the equation is fraught

with many guesses

and the latest conclusion

leans to say:

yes..we are alone..

this is another example of late

of thought and perception

attempting to grasp

what cannot be grasped..

if we flip our programing

to mind over matter

we might recognize

a new identity

of each of us..

as mind

we need ask:

what is the nature

of our identity..?

our experience would

then tell us:

we have no boundaries

and we are that

which does not

come and go..!
recognizing then the
infinite possibilities
(and aligning it seems
with Drake's simple formula)
we await the endless
possibilities of SETI
appearing or not
 in mind...

https://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2018/06/new-model-predicts-that-were-probably.html#jxH5DQR9U7YjeS0H.97

THANKS, CP!