The Importance of Reading

Voracious reader that I am, I was dismayed to read in the July/August edition of The Atlantic magazine that reading is so heavily on the decline -- not just of books but of periodicals and newspapers, too. The article, entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", follows the downward trend of reading in America, something that is receiving more and more attention these days.

The author, Nicholas Carr, argues that Google's speed of return and instant access to material makes most folk less inclined to power through a book or even finish reading a newspaper article. Bruce Friedman, a pathologist on faculty at the University of Michigan Medical School, was quoted as saying, "I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print...I can't read War and Peace anymore...I've lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it" (p. 58).

And, while the internet allows us to read more, it has also changed how we read and process the information. Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, stated: "We are not only what we read, we are how we read." Wolf worries that the type of reading the WWW promotes ("efficiency" & "immediacy") may damage our ability to read things closely...to really dig into a book and form our own thinking about it. Essentially, the question is whether or not the internet is damaging our ability to really mull over ideas and think deeply about what authors are really trying to share with us.

Apparently, technology can shape the way we think about ideas, altering how we may have thought about the idea without the invention of certain technologies. When Nietzsche bought a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball typewriter back in 1882, friends of his noticed that his writing had become "tighter, more telegraphic" than his writing during the pre-typewriter era.

This development of technology was something that disturbed Socrates back in his time. Plato's Phaedrus has Socrates moaning about the development of writing. "He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue's characters, 'cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.' And because they would be able to 'receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,' they would 'be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.' They would be 'filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom' " (p. 63).

After Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century, humanists declared that it would make men "less studious" and weaken their minds! And, as Wolf would argue, there is no distinction between deep reading and deep thinking.

I agree with Carr when he says, "If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with "content", we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture" (p. 63). I agree, too, with playwright Richard Foreman's sentiment:

"I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and "cathedral-like" structure of the highly educated and articulate personality -- a man or woman who carried within themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self -- evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the "instantly available"...[as we are drained of our] "inner repertory of dense cultural inheritance, [we risk turning into] "'pancake people' - spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button (p. 63)."

***

Trained in the humanities and as a former educator of the subject, I cannot plug often enough the importance...no...value of reading, especially the classics. While a 688 page book like Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo is a commitment and its major themes could easily be picked up in the film version, there is something to be said for reading the unabridged version and mulling around Dumas's humor and his insight into the complexities of the human psyche -- not to mention all the material the film leaves out -- like the fact that the Count had a Turkish slave (gasp!) and dabbled in medicine OR the strains of Orientalism that dot the landscape of its pages like little candles.

I've read the 1455 page War and Peace and delighted in its layers. I dug the dramatic landscape Stegner describes in his 592 page Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Angle of Repose. The point is that reading challenging works helps one to better understand humanity because the themes are so pervasive and largely unchanging.

What the internet deprives us of, then, is the journey and there's something to be said for arduous toil, even in the small act of processing words slowly. As a former yoga teacher once said, "If everything was easy, what would they be worth?"

In our fast paced culture, why not slow down a bit and commit to reading something longer than a few paragraphs on the internet? Why not actually go out and buy the paper and relish in getting ink-stained fingers? Why not spend time browsing through a bookstore or library and allowing your mind to see what's out there...to see what's beyond the internet? I, for one, would rather see humanity dotted with "cathedral-like" minds than flat "pancake" ones.

The Power of Myth

Lately, I've been watching old Bill Moyers interviews of Joseph Campbell , pulled towards them likely due to interest in understanding myth and the role it can play in our lives. Campbell has long fascinated me, especially his work done to interpret humanity's collection of myths -- his categorizations, explanations, and musings on the subject.

All cultures put forth an idea of a hero -- someone who has given himself over to something larger than himself and has returned to teach others. The hero throughout religion and literature has followed a formula, regardless of era, religion, or culture, and it is this: there is a departure of sorts, there is some sort of quest (whether physical or spiritual in nature), there is the fulfillment of this quest and then a return.

Campbell argues that the metaphors found within these stories are merely labels for things like the "unconscious" or "ego". For example, in the biblical story of Jonah and the Whale....Jonah enters into the whale and remains there for three days and three nights. Only after Jonah offers supplications to God and acknowledges that he has placed idols before his relationship with God was he released from the belly of the whale.

Campbell offers that this story is more about Jonah's journey into his unconscious than it is about the dangers of marine outings. Jonah finds himself adrift in water (symbol of the unconscious) after troubling times in his conscious world. He is swallowed whole by his unconscious and during his time within the whale (can also be interpreted as within himself), he gains consciousness and can then return to the world he knew with fresh eyes and a more clear understanding of what it is all about.

A similar metaphor is put forth with the dragon stories which originated in Europe during the medieval era. In these, a dragon is guarding either gold or a beautiful woman -- it cannot partake of either one and can only guard them from others. At some point, a young male comes to challenge the dragon and slay it, thus freeing the bound treasure.

Campbell says that the dragon has long been a symbol for the ego. It is the voice within us that says, "Oh, I couldn't do that...I couldn't be that." Its goal is to prevent us from finding the freedom we seek; our charge, then, is to slay it.

Along these lines, Campbell offered the following:

"If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're gonna have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it is not one the body is interested in at all...the world is full of people who are not listening to themselves at all...follow your bliss."

***

Kelly, as many of you know, means "warrior" in Gaelic and it has come to have incredible meaning for me in my life. However, a warrior's role is not to inflict pain on others with his or her sword. Instead, my role is to use the sword upon the ego and its thoughts of fear and delusion, slicing them to non-existence, and freeing myself in the process. The beauty of this practice is that I am free and it is entirely delicious.

My buddy, CJ, cross-country skiing out in Harriman Park with the Tetons in the background.

Ice and snow must be on my mind today -- likely due to 4 days of a heat index hovering between 100-110 degrees -- because when CJ sent me this picture, I knew I had to post it. Breathe in ice and snow, exhale humidity and heat!

In keeping with this theme, I am in the process of completing the book The Ice Museum: In Search of the Lost Land of Thule by Joanna Kavenna. This book is fantastic and I've been mesmerized by Kavenna's writing and travels through Shetland, Iceland, Norway, Estonia, Greenland and Svalbard. Loaded with readable history and beautiful passages, it has been a delicious way to pass time in the heat.

Here is an excerpt taken from her musings on Iceland:

"The road turns to rubble at times; it passes through lush green valleys; it rises into grey mountains, past lunar slabs of rock in pastel shades. The mountains become multi-tone--the whiteness of the snow stark against the orange sand-cones and the dark ash slopes. At the coastal towns everything is coated in mist and the dull shapes of farms loom from the whiteness. The road runs past the silver waters of lakes, over the table mountains. When the mist falls away, there are rivers and a few slender firs, clinging to the rocks. There are hotels, surrounded by baroque basalt pillars. The mists swirl across the plains. When the light dwindles, patterns begin to emerge from the lava, the piles of rocks like stacked-up coals, the deep blue river carving a channel through the valley, the conical peaks jutting out of the uneven ground. The lowland plains are coated in grasses, scattered with boulders; the mountain slopes are delicate layers of ash rock, with snow dusting the higher peaks. All these cracked slopes stand with the clouds casting shadows across them, the empty road winding under them" (p. 94).

Snow Cone, anyone?

Yellowstone Lake before the thaw...courtesy of CJ.

What is "mine"? What is not?

I've been spending much time lately thinking about this idea of self-empowerment. Following this, I have come to believe that each of us is wholly responsible for our own lives -- our happiness, our immediate realities -- and because of this, we cannot blame others for unhappiness or hold them responsible when our lives do not go the way we anticipated. Do so would be to give some of our own power, our creative power away and to fall into sloth and false thinking. I say this because I believe we create our our worlds through our thoughts. We think, therefore, we create. So, everything we have in our lives is a product of thought -- whether mine or another's.

What adds a layer of complexity to this idea is our own humanity. I feel that we inherently possess duality because we are human. It seems to come with the terrain. What do I mean? I mean that we simultaneously exist in this Earth plane with both our divinity and our humanity, neatly packaged in one human body. The challenge and perhaps lesson of Earth is to integrate this duality and co-exist harmoniously.

How do I know about this duality? I know that when I am quiet, I recognize a part of myself which is timeless, which transcends this world, and which is wholly and perfect, and I have come to know this entity as "me". For much of my life, I have called this awareness the "soul" but I've also heard it called "the observer" or the "subtle awareness being".

However, there is also our humanity with which to contend, more specifically, our human minds. This thinking, reasoning part of us allows us to make sense of our physical world and its societal and cultural norms, which can be both helpful and productive. However, many freedoms aside, it can also bring us much pain and destruction. Herein lies the rub...it is only when our human mind begins to think thoughts which are not our own -- which are not in line with our divinity -- that we find ourselves in pain.

Let us take this one step further.

When I am still, I find myself tuning myself into the thoughts my mind is producing. Some of them are in-line with my divine self and I know this because they bring me peace and blissful joy. Others, I can only describe as being more "cold prickles", leave me feeling depressed, self-conscious and anxious.

Because I have slowed down my thought processes and have turned my attention inwards, I know that these "cold prickles", these thoughts which cause me pain, are really not my own.

Don't get me wrong. I know that I am thinking them; therefore, I accept responsibility for having allowed them into my mind. Still, in the same breath, I can acknowledge that my divine self is incapable of thinking these thoughts. It is observing them, to be sure, but it is not thinking them since it is beyond the realm of thought.

Slowing down my thought processes even further, I have been able to name the owners of these thoughts which cause me pain. I can say to myself, "Oh, the root of that thought goes back to the 6th grade when so and so said that to me about ______________ (fill in the blank)."

Upon identification, I find freedom and release. I find forgiveness. I can let go of it and reclaim the power I gave away to entertain that thought in the first place.

Still, this process raises interesting questions for me, such as "Why did I allow myself to adopt that thinking as my own?" "What compelled me to do so?"

Even more interesting, "Why did I allow my mind to adopt thoughts coming from another person's mind?" "Why would I choose to align myself with diseased thinking?"

I say this because if my theory here is correct, then it would be impossible for another's divine self to address my divine self in such a way. However, it is very possible for a human mind to do so and for my human mind to receive it.

It seems, then, that this brings us to to the realm of diseased thought patterns of the human mind. And, the amazing thing about this is that it allows me to welcome compassion into those thoughts which are not my own, console them, and then send them back to their owners.

We often speak of balms for the soul, but I think we would do better to think of balms for the mind. This is beyond pharmaceuticals. This is about allowing our divine selves into the forefront of our minds and allowing the necessary healing to take place. It is about surrendering to our divinity and letting go of our humanity. The first step, methinks, is the realization that this is all part of the journey of humanity. It is our human lesson.

And, once we accept this, we can move into integration. Integrating our divinity with our humanity and avoiding idolatry -- the act of making our humanity higher than our divinity.

Turning back to the practice of slowing down our thoughts, we would do well to ask ourselves in the presence of thought -- is this thought my own? My mind's? Another's? We could ask ourselves "How would my divine self approach this thought?" "What would my divinity say to my humanity in this moment?"

In this way, then, can we move towards balance and healing...to bring ease to dis-ease...love and compassion to suffering. We would be on our way to creating an existence more in-line with that which is timeless and less with that which is limited.

Stepping Into The Flow

In the most recent edition of "Poets & Writers" magazine, I was struck by the article "Way, Way Too Much Information." The title alone pulled me into the writer's musings on the subject because I think there is such a thing as too much information.

I think there is also something to be said for getting inundated with more information than you bargained for...unsolicited information.

I mention this because I'm writing again, and it's my deep desire to get one of the two books I've already written published within the next year. It is also my deep seated desire to bring to life the 5 other story ideas I have brewing in my mind -- some, of course, more advanced than others. I'm aligning with that desire and know it's just a matter of time until the books are in print and enjoyed by others. It's already in the process of happening!

However, what is needed for creativity? Some quiet time -- made possible by choosing to unplug on a regular basis. Less outside distractions...more internal quiet.

In the article, author Frank Bures has this to say:

"There is another, perhaps more important consideration for writers: the loss of creative space. In his book Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, Guy Glaxton cites several studies that point to an "unconscious intelligence," which works while our mind is disengaged or working on something else entirely. Ideas emerge from a kind of creative womb, one that works while we are focused on some mundane physical task, like walking, or riding a train, or staring at the ocean. Just letting the mind run.

"But if simply staring at the ocean and allowing your unconscious intelligence to do its work is difficult in this age of too much information, there is another state beyond that, which has become--speaking for myself, at least -- even harder to attain: flow. As described by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, it's a state of mind in which you are so engaged in an activity that you lose track of time -- even lose track of yourself. You forget about everything around you and wake up kind of surprised to find yourself back in your room. The state of flow is when you get your best work done, and when writing really becomes fun."

***

I understand this idea of flow because it's happened to me on several occasions. In fact, when I wrote my longer book, it flowed out of me in about 3-4 days of nothing but continual writing. Looking back, I don't really remember sleeping or eating...I just rode the waves of the creativity and gave birth to something I wasn't expecting. The story was IN me and all I had to do was sit in front of a computer or a piece of paper in order for it to just come tumbling out.

Because it is my desire that this happen again and again, I know that all I need to do now is to put aside some "writing" time each day and wait for the stories to surface. And, I know they will, too, as they've just been waiting for the invitation to appear.

I welcome the "flow" and wait for it.

Wisdom from a tea bag

Even my tea bags have wisdom for me these days! I had to laugh to myself when my Celestial Seasonings tea bag had this to say:

"And what he greatly thought, he nobly dared."

~ Homer

Hear! Hear! Homer. Hear! Hear!

My daily wish

Wouldn't it be nice if every interaction we had with another human being left him or her feeling better or about the same than before he or she met us?

Wouldn't it be nice if no one was left feeling worse?

'Tis my daily wish!