The Thought That Lingers: Part Eight

The thought that lingers concerns the human mind.
How, as humans, we are all storytellers.
As scribes of our imagination, we actively keep records of our experiences.
Recording them, whether on cave walls, on cuneiform, clay tablets, papyri or, in our modern times, employing the platform of the Internet.

Within our own era of this century, we remain connected with our past.
We are yet influenced by what today we call Greek myths.
Like tales of Pandora’s Box, Prometheus, Persephone and Hades.
And as more examples, the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur of the labyrinth.

Although we accept them now as mythical.
Even now as imaginary tales better suited for children.
For whetting the fertile human imagination.
Still we employ them as purveyors of our present culture.

Without these mythical tales we would feel quite bare.
Naked, like  primeval Adam and Eve before being clothed.
It is these very tales that ironically make us human.
Set us apart from other animal species bereft of language.

As Homo Sapiens, we are all possessors of ancient tales.
As archetypal tales they influence our collective memories.
They are ingrained in our philosophies and our sciences.
The heavens declare the wonders of our fertile literary minds.

Consider now the architectural nature of our heavenly realm.
As example, how five of our planets retain these Pantheistic Babylonian mythologies:
Jupiter equated with Marduk, Venus with Ishtar.
Saturn equated with Ninurta, Mercury with Nabu; and Mars with Nergal.

Consider even more the perpetual influence of the Ancient Greek deities on our planetary nomenclature:
The Sun as Helios, the center of our solar system.
The Earth as Ge or Gaia; Mercury as Ermis; Venus as Aphrodite.
Our planet Mars as Aris; Jupiter as Dias or Zeus; and Saturn as Kronos.

We are indeed forever bound to our mythical past,
These mythical tales remain ingrained in our present history.
Without these tales we would be forever lost.
They are our foundation, our background, our cornerstones.

The myths of the past rule the consciousness of our present.
We are beholden to our myths.
They are our sacred objects of worship.
They govern our heavenly realm and invade our religions.

As it is above, so it is below.
The gods on high overseeing our lesser earthly gods.
Like those of our Ancient Greek and Roman gods.
Like those of our Ancient Greek and Roman royalty.

Consider for this poem one such ancient royal house.
Its influence upon our philosophy, our psychology, our mental framework.
Consider alongside this man’s inherited eternal legacy.
Living forever in the Betwixt and the Between.

Consider man to be a liminal being.
Paradoxical Reptilian man with a hindbrain, employing his forebrain to forge scientifically ahead.
Anchored yet by his more familiar hindbrain.
That harbors his dreams, his ancient memories, and his mythology.

We are a paradoxical species.
Living in the present and forever anchoring ourselves to the past.
Our presence can only be explained by our past.
And our past remains ironically our present.

We are paradoxical human beings, forging ahead  towards Paradiso, like adventurous Dante.
One foot pedaling him gradually forwards towards his salvation.
The other back foot anchored backwards towards Purgatorio and Inferno.
This is the indelible portrait of liminal mankind in the Betwixt and the Between.

This is the resident nature of ‘modern’ man.
Seeking the heavenly realm while yet anchored  umbilically to Mother Earth.
A visionary man; yet in many ways oh so blind.
Pursuing knowledge, yet remaining in stalwart ignorance of himself.

Hear now in part the mythical tale of Oedipus.
A Prince who would become King.
An ancient tale by Sophocles.
Presumably deformed by birth with ‘swollen feet,’ a man more persecuted by a mother complex.

By Fate he would possess that which was to him forbidden.
Forbidden Fruit would indeed lead to his demise.
Despite his consultation with a Delphic Oracle and its Sphinx.
His karmic destiny would not deter his moral blindness.

And so this Prince named Oedipus.
Abandoned by his father King Laius as a newborn child for cause of prophetic curse upon the throne.
Now rescued from certain death by a shepherd-servant; raised by King Polybus and Queen Merope as their own.
Set out on a journey for his destined self-discovery.

Now raised as Prince, yet ignorant of his rightful paternal ancestry.
Oedipus set out on a journey as a quest to know his fate.
It led him to a Theban Sphinx who dared all passers by to solve her riddle at the risk of their own deaths.
This riddle Oedipus having solved, ironically led to the death of the lion-hearted Sphinx herself.

For fate of Oedipus is wrought with irony.
Though he the puzzle of the riddle solved.
It too, in turn, would for him become a catastrophe.
How ignorant is man unto himself, to often solve the riddles that life possesses, and not to solve the riddle of his own life and nature.

By destiny then, Oedipus would become a Theban King.
Ironically by means of patricide unknown to him.
Slaughtering his own father, and in even greater ignorance, marrying his widowed mother, Queen Jocasta.
In incest then, she would bear him four children; before the two would search for recompense.

In this sad tale of Sophocles, a Theban Prince becomes a King.
A Theban Prince ascends the throne.
Yet irony abounds.
He sees without seeing.
His blindness is unknown to him.

And so man blinds himself at times without knowing.
He looks but does not see.
He listens but does not hear.
He receives even when he forfeits.

This is the thought still lingering.
Of conscious mythical Homo Sapiens man.
By his unconscious forever grasped.
Still seeking higher states of consciousness.
Awake, yet still asleep in the  Betwixt and the Between.

Between full wakefulness and sleep.
In hypnogogic posture.
Is modern man.
Man of the Betwixt and the Between.
Liminal man in limbo; dancing in his liminality.

His literature exalts him.
His arts and crafts elevate him.
These are vestments of his liminal culture.
These reveal him to be quite civilized.
These portray him to be a man of moral ethical depth.

Yet man remains perplexed in thought.
For man remains a dreaming man.
A dreaming hindbrain Reptilian man.
Still waiting for the moment to become a god.
Waiting, oh ever waiting so ironically absurdly for Beckett’s mythical ‘Godot.’

Man’s life is but a living theater.
Composed of graven images of his own making.
Composed of comedic images that end up mocking him.
Those of gross, even banal absurdity.
For man, nothing of Spirit matters more than that which of matter matters.

In pursuit of a  greater consciousness, is man of a bicameral mind.
Man of the Betwixt and the Between in his perpetual dilemma.
Man graced with both a  forebrain and a hindbrain, advancing forwards, yet looking always backwards.
Man struggling ever to find wholeness.
The paradox of man is man remaining in his dualities.  

A mind divided cannot claim its wholeness.
The very unity that man is forever seeking.
If the higher consciousness that man desires remains elusive.
Is made without man probing deep within the nature of his psyche.
And balancing those parts that beg for wholeness.

Duality is man’s enduring nemesis.
For most of us it appears as if it were an indelible innate trait.
Leading to the curses and addictions that haunt our lives.
Those we often bring upon ourselves, yet by projecting, blame upon others.
That is our hubris of desiring  to be god-like.

Bounded to earth, we seek the stars.
Consuming local spirits, we seek to elevate ourselves to somewhere else much higher.
Outside ourselves, beyond ourselves
Alienating us instead from being that which we were meant to be.
A total being of wholeness with all our parts working together.

The thought that lingers now is this.
The dual nature of postmodern man.
Man of this century marching forwards, still looking backwards.
Modern man retaining his dualities.
Modern man ever seeking peace, yet ironically in warfare with his own nature.

Religion is man’s artifact.
And science is another.
With these two man is a potential force that is heavily armored.
Yet he turns the one upon the other.
Consuming drugs and spirits of earthly matter to replace that of the Heavenly Spirit that to him should matter.

And so man by his own choice becomes a god of war.
He wages war upon himself.
And, blaming others, wonders why there is no peace.
Man is indeed of the Betwixt and the Between.
Liminal man’s urgent task therefore is to restore himself to unity.

This is the thought that lingers yet.
The greatest need of modern man is to embrace his divided self.
To reconcile those quarrelsome parts within himself.
To love himself in all its entities, and in this doing, equally extend that love outwards to other broken entities.
Life’s Motto: To thine own self be honestly true, and in this act of truly knowing Self, thou will not in act of consciousness be false to any other Self.