January 18th, 2022
Nobodaddy
At this particular moment in the current debate about the Jesus prayer, strained as it is, I come down firmly on the side of “dangerous.” For the meditator it’s a step down from that lyric on the car radio that stays in your head and you can’t turn off. Instead of prison and mother, it weaves a lovely spell of angels and divine nectar. Perhaps this is not the danger that the fathers of the Eastern Church warn about, but nonetheless a danger.
The repetition starts out as a simple concentration exercise, riding the breath like 123. The terrain is familiar but the vehicle is clumsy and unpredictable like an imaginary Model A Ford. Boredom sets in as stories & associated phantasms begin to loop, and on that radio a lyric purporting to be from the son of David pops up, or, my favorite, the thespian voice of the god of Abraham faking Aristotle. Rattling around the head’s Netherspace, it’s a wily enemy, play acting to hold onto power. It wants to be accepted as "the Truth."
If we don’t play close scrutiny, it maintains secret sway over our choices and our futures. But we might get lucky enough to understand deeply that we alone, no one else, sustain the imagined conversations and images that flow through the mind. This moment of enlightenment can strike instantaneously!
Avoid the loud applause.
To Nobodaddy
Why art thou silent & invisible
Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye
Why darkness & obscurity
In all thy words & laws
That none dare eat the fruit but from
The wily serpents jaws
Or is it because Secresy
gains females loud applause
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| UriZen, William Blake |
