On Mantras

Day 42

Words which are important to us and which seem to have some deeper meaning often come to us from the outside. They are words which are said to us by someone who means a lot to us, words we overhear which allow us to feel a deep sense of connection or understanding with someone, and words we read which seem to outline a faint pathway to truth or to unleash a torrent of feeling and change within us. However, these are not the only words we encounter; We also encounter words which we say, sentences we have let loose upon the world, and actions that we ourselves have undertaken. Just as we can analyze and try to understand why words, passed along meanings, from outside effect us so, we can also try to understand why we say certain words. Why we have reactions to certain things, events, and people – often that tells me something about myself. Sometimes I feel that I know myself quite well, that I know why I have certain reaction, or why I use certain words. Other times, I feel that I don't know myself very well. Why did I react in such a way, when a moments thought would have led to me reacting a different way? Why do I think of plenty of clever things to say or do after the fact, but seem like such a fool during the fact? Why do some words strongly effect me, and some words do not? Trying to understand this, to understand myself, is of course not a simple or a quick endeavor. Even worse, as I investigate and try to understand myself I find that I have changed, that I change by the bare fact that I investigate myself and drag my thoughts and feelings, my world, out into the open. In this sense, to understand yourself completely seems a hopeless endeavor, like trying to build a castle out of sand - the tides of time, fate, and will constantly knock it down, and the knowledge of self which you have, the sandcastle, holds its shape, but only to a certain degree. Some pillars far from the edge are sharp and clear, while the outer walls constantly buckle and shift. Sometimes a surprise happens and the sea rushes in farther then you ever thought it would, sometimes the tides brings a stronger wave than you expected, and you have to quickly and slapdashedly repair what you can before the next wave assaults your position. Eventually of course the tides comes in and the sea begins to swap the castle, dragging it all down – but even after the castle has been inundated, you can still see the lump of sand where it was. You can still see where the high towers stood, where the bastion lake to hold the overflow dips, where the broken down edges of the walls still slow down the rush of the tide, and where the sameness of the water is different here. This is like a picture of the world.

This world, this sandcastle that you build, is not random, and is not planned, but is a curious mix of the two. You and the sea work together in the creation of the castle, though you do not intend to do so at all. And this castle is made of grains of sand that stick together, little crystals – little gems which connect and make a whole castle, but also many parts like towers and ramparts. If life is like a castle, and words are signs, then perhaps there is something to there being a tower in the castle – why that tower? Why a tower at all? I imagine that the fact that there are towers, the fact there there are certain shapes which appear and reappear in many castles that we make, is for a reason – so to in life, when you see words, when you say words, which reappear again and again, then those words are like towers and signs in a castle of sand. The towers themselves aren't very effective at holding back to the tide, but they make the tower a better castle. When a sandcastle wall falls down you can repair and rebuild. When I make sandcastles, I often make forward-deployed to walls to actually be sacrifices, to slow down and break up the tide. The fall of a single wall is not the ned of the castle, but when the tower falls and is overwhelmed, when the tower lies under the sea, then you know that the castle has fallen. The walls are flesh, but the tower is the bone of the world, the central pillar that, in a way, holds it up and is the reason for the castle.

As I change, I know that I am not exactly the same person that I was ten years ago. The world is constructed differently. Yet, there are somethings which are the same. Sometimes these things are basic, like tables and chairs, family and computers. The shape of things today is different, but understandable then and now in much the same way. Other times the things which are the same are complex things, like poems or books. They look the same, but they have gotten more complex over time – they are the same thing, but they mean more to me now. Other times there are things which are not quite simple but not complex – not simple because they have changed much, but not complex because I still don't understand them. For me, some of these things are certain words and phrases which I have said for a long time, certain things which I don't remember picking up and reading somewhere, or hearing from anyone but me. Words I speak to myself, things I mutter when I'm feeling confused, or bored, or which I blurt out in moments of inattention. Words which I feel ground me in some way, though I know not how. I think of these things like mantras, like sayings which focus the world. Little truths which it helps to remember. Little things which remind me of who I am. For many these sorts of things are memories – places or things like a grandfather's watch or a mom's house. A teddy bear or a song which awakens in you a feeling, not quite of deja-vue or melancholy, but of, perhaps, peace. Touchstones in a turbulent world. I of course have those things as well, but it is not perhaps quite so easy to analyze or to carry those around. I find that words, certain words, can do much the same for me. Many times those words are words I learned which others spoke first; The words which I came up with on my own seem to have a special significance. They don't necessarily have to, but they can. I once talked about the idea that ethics are necessary to be a person, to make decision, because they allow us to recognize who we are in this world. As long as we act within our ethics, we are still who we are; No matter how much we have changed, we are still somehow, in some way, the same. I sometimes think that descriptions can do as well. Things like mother or father, friend or student, are labels we can give to help us define, order, and complete. However, these things are almost always strongly linked to the outside world, to the society and family we live in. They are a part of the world where I and the other meet and mix.

Certain things in the world are clearer than others, are more readily accessible or analyzable, can be pulled apart more easily or dived into more deeply than others. Many times these things are gems which are definitively mixes of the self and the other. When we try to understand something which is a mix in this way, we can use other things in the world – like language – to make sense of them. When we try to understand something which is not, or not very much of, a mix then we find that it is harder to understand them, harder to make them clear. These are things like feelings, phobias, and some habits. Trying to work out 'I am a mother – what should I do?' is very different from tryign to work out 'I am jealous – what should I do?'.

It seems to me that our own words and actions which we don't understand are a happy medium between the two. They are things about ourselves which we don't understand, and yet we feel we do in a way because we keep saying them. They are things which come from us, but are also made up of words in a language we use all the time. They are sentences and so it is possible to understand them at least somewhat by means of other sentences, and not wordless actions. The saying of a word is still an action, but somewhat of a partial action, depending on the point of the saying. After all, you can think a sentence and also say it, and when that sentence is from yourself to yourself, there isn't that much difference between the two, though there is some.

Some of my mantras are words like: “A fool I've been, a fool I am, all my days and more” - meaning something like 'I've always been a fool, and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon'; “I do not forget, I do not forgive” - meaning something like 'I remember what people have done and what they are, when I can trust them and when I can't.'; and “This we are, we live to dream, and from time to time we feel an urgent need to scream” - meaning something like 'We are a type of person who often lives in our head, but who sometimes feels the urge to not be silent'.

These mantras, for me, are about myself most of all. They reveal something about who I am, to me. They are the same words over many years, but the meaning and significance of them changes. I gave a meaning, an interpretation to each one, but that interpretation is only a meaning that is 'somewhat' like the meaning of the sentence. The meaning changes over time, and I understand the meanings differently in different situations. I can analyze the sentences by definition, but looking at the dictionary and figuring out all the words and what they mean, and I can also analyze the sentences by use, by figuring out where I said them and why. Each of these methods is the correct method, and yet none of them is absolutely correct. Yet somehow, the sentences come out. I say them, and don't always stop to analyze. They are mantras, words said over and over again. They are me trying to talk to myself, trying to unwind stress, to calm down storms, to dive deeper into the well. They are dear treasures brought back home through much toil and trembling.

Mantras can take many forms. They are like touchstones to ourselves from ourselves, but cloudy touchstones. Amethyst touchstones to clear away nightmares. They are important, but we don't always know why, because we ourselves are deep pools. The light only goes so far into the depths, and sometimes the light is not enough, to see is not enough – we need to sink, beyond breath and help, lost until we touch something, feel something which tells that we have touched the bottom, or at least a bottom, and that we can stand up or push off of it in order that we may know we are getting somewhere. I can't really tell you what your touchstones are; I can only tell you what mine are, or what I think they are. I only look at myself, find myself even when I don't know that I'm lost and many times when I am, in order to figure out something – anything. We and the world seem to be bound together in a sort of dance along the edge of the void, always speaking and whispering to each other.