Today

[Rhiannon]

Just something that happened earlier.

Essex isn't really known for river valleys, but it has them, and I'm blessed enough to live in one. I walk this land where I live day in, day out; it's my home in such a way that the house that I live in is not.

It wasn't windy when I left; or if it was I didn't notice it. It's barely noticeable where the valley ends and the flat fields puncuated with woodland begin. I'd walked to the edge of the estate belonging to the old Tudor manor and back; the dog and I pattered across the footbridge, over Parsonage Farm Lane and followed the trodden path through the wheat to the slope with the plank across the ditch, making our way down to the willows and back up through the copse.

There I stood at the top of the hill, looking across to the village and the river valley beyond. The wind moaned, grabbing at my hair, my coat, my face smarted. A reluctant sun silvered the shivering bean fields as clouds cast a moving curtain across the green; behind me the hedge of thorn and field maple crackled.

And that was all there was. I closed my eyes and let the elements, earth, sky and sun cloak me. There was nothing there to ask, nothing the wind could tell me, nothing to find consolation in outside of nature itself.

And there was nothing else that I needed.

[Shaker]

Beautiful post 

[Rhiannon]

Thank you. 

[Enki]

I like that, Rhi. I think, and hope, that I know what you mean.  A very special moment!

[Rhiannon]

Thanks, enki. 

Incidentally, predictive text on my phone turns your username into 'enlightened'. 

[Enki]

Actually, Enki is a Sumerian God. One of his attributes was, of course, 'intellgence'.

[Rhiannon]

Good choice then. 

[torridon]

M1 I think you took us with you, for a moment or two; thanks.

It reminds me that we don't always need good weather for these moments.  Some years back when I was working in Aberdeen I felt like going into the hills one weekend; the weather was dreadful that day, wall to wall pencilling rain such as you get in the Highlands, and absolutely a day to stay in by the fire. But nonetheless I pressed on, drove out to Balmoral and climbed Lochnagar alone in the pouring rain.  I had the entire mountain to myself, it took me an exhausting 8 hours to the top and back, but somehow the experience lifted my spirits in a way I cannot explain.  It should have been miserable, staggering about in the wind and rain, stumbling over rocks and scree. Somehow despite all that I came away with a calm inner glow that I can only reap from a day lost and alone amongst high hills and wild places.

[Rhiannon]

I've never climbed a mountain but I can relate to what you say, Torridon. Great post, thank you,

[Gonnagle]

Dear Torridon,

http://www.rampantscotland.com/songs/blsongs_lochnagar.htm

Oh! for the crags that are wild and majestic,
The steep frowning glories of dark Lochnagar.

Dear Rhiannon,

Lovely post, was the dog a big part of your experience.

Gonnagle.

[torridon]

Dear Torridon,

http://www.rampantscotland.com/songs/blsongs_lochnagar.htm

 

Maybe it was the knowledge that I was following in Byron's footsteps that kept me going through the wind and the rain 

[Rhiannon]

Thanks, Gonners.

Yes, there is always a level of companionship between the dog and I on our walks, so it was in some way a shared experience. I tell you what the main thing about having him with me is though: I feel safe, so I can go to the more remote and isolated places, and I can stand on a hill and close my eyes and allow the experiences to flow rather than have even the slightest edge of fear at being alone.

[Shaker]

Experiences of this kind (which I've had, all too rarely unfortunately) bring to mind the term 'oceanic feeling' which was coined by the French writer Romain Rolland as the underlying basis of all religious experience. In the 1920s Rolland had a famous correspondance with Sigmund Freud and talked about this sensation; Freud just didn't get it, saying that he'd never experienced anything of the kind himself, and regarded it as a form of infantile regression, a left-over of the baby's (very small) relation to its mother's breast (very large) while being breastfed. Well, that's Freud for you.

[Gonnagle]

Dear Shaker,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_feeling

This feeling is an entirely subjective fact and is not an article of faith. Rolland's view is that one may justifiably call oneself religious on the basis of this oceanic feeling alone, regardless if the adherent renounces every belief and every illusion.

We are all religious!! it's in our genes, part of our evolution, every atheist on this forum is a religious nutter, that's official!!

Gonnagle.

[Gordon]

Moderator:

I have removed all the posts that followed on from the removal of an earlier post. Not only was my earlier warning not heeded, it was clear that the thread had become unacceptably derailed.

So, and just to be clear: the matter of the deleted post will not be discussed further in this thread.

[Samuel]

what a lovely thread

I've had similar experiences all my life. They come easy to me, and it doesn't have to be anywhere spectacular, as long its 'countryside' if you know what I mean. I remember talking to a colleague about a trip to the Scottish mountains he had taken. He said something like "round here is lovely but up there the landscape is on a whole other level". While I can see why he said it, its something I really can't empathise with. For me there are no 'levels', there is simply 'out there'.

Also, this reminds me of those little murmurings a couple of weeks back about a creative writing thread... it would be great to give a dedicated home to all the lovely posts like these that members turn out every so often. Not conversation starters necessarily, just lovely observations and expressions of feeling.

[Jack Knave]

Rhi

Don't take this the wrong way but you sounded gloriously 'dead', that is, detached from this world.

[Shaker]

Rhi

Don't take this the wrong way but you sounded gloriously 'dead', that is, detached from this world.

Rhi can speak for herself (and no doubt will if she wants to) but I see it as the most amazing aliveness to the world in the here and the now of this moment right here and right now rather than deadness.

On the other hand I am entirely sympathetic to and (I think) in tune with that spiritual viewpoint - you can find it in Islam, in Zen and in native American spirituality and umpteen other traditions - of "Die before you die, and then you can never die," which is death to the self so that you can clear away the dead wood to be alive to reality. Die now, and then live as an already dead person until you do not. Only a day or two ago I referred to Wittgenstein's famous comment about death not being an event in our lives: life goes on until it stops, but by definition we don't know when it stops so from the entirely subjective point of view eternal life is right here and now.

Bloody hell. I never thought I'd get into this on a Saturday night. Wiggy I think gets this or something of what I'm trying and failing to get across. Where is he when you need him?

[Nearly Sane]

I'm no wigginhall but I feel the insistence from some of the specific individuality of a soul or a pespective is a line to a belief in specialness. I accept that I cannot cross the hard salt barrier of solipsism but neither can the solus be assumed without the leap across. The self is our cross and our bonus ball.

[Rhiannon]

Only posting on my phone - need to get on my iPad to do this properly - but can something die if it never existed in the first place? If I'm not my physical self and I'm not my thoughts or my soul, then I'm nothing. What is there to die?

[Jack Knave]

Rhi can speak for herself (and no doubt will if she wants to) but I see it as the most amazing aliveness to the world in the here and the now of this moment right here and right now rather than deadness.

On the other hand I am entirely sympathetic to and (I think) in tune with that spiritual viewpoint - you can find it in Islam, in Zen and in native American spirituality and umpteen other traditions - of "Die before you die, and then you can never die," which is death to the self so that you can clear away the dead wood to be alive to reality. Die now, and then live as an already dead person until you do not. Only a day or two ago I referred to Wittgenstein's famous comment about death not being an event in our lives: life goes on until it stops, but by definition we don't know when it stops so from the entirely subjective point of view eternal life is right here and now.

Bloody hell. I never thought I'd get into this on a Saturday night. Wiggy I think gets this or something of what I'm trying and failing to get across. Where is he when you need him?

She closed her eyes and not even the wind could speak to her, or something. Part of death is the separation from our senses etc. and our mind from its connection with the body - this is what I meant by this being 'dead'. A kind of freedom.

[Jack Knave]

Only posting on my phone - need to get on my iPad to do this properly - but can something die if it never existed in the first place? If I'm not my physical self and I'm not my thoughts or my soul, then I'm nothing. What is there to die?

Only you can answer that. That is, 'seeing' and understanding this has to be an experience, not something told as an intellectual dialogue.

[Rhiannon]

Rhi can speak for herself (and no doubt will if she wants to) but I see it as the most amazing aliveness to the world in the here and the now of this moment right here and right now rather than deadness.

On the other hand I am entirely sympathetic to and (I think) in tune with that spiritual viewpoint - you can find it in Islam, in Zen and in native American spirituality and umpteen other traditions - of "Die before you die, and then you can never die," which is death to the self so that you can clear away the dead wood to be alive to reality. Die now, and then live as an already dead person until you do not. Only a day or two ago I referred to Wittgenstein's famous comment about death not being an event in our lives: life goes on until it stops, but by definition we don't know when it stops so from the entirely subjective point of view eternal life is right here and now.

Bloody hell. I never thought I'd get into this on a Saturday night. Wiggy I think gets this or something of what I'm trying and failing to get across. Where is he when you need him?

Yes, in that moment it was aliveness. It's why I head out in the way that I do - it's one of the most important things in my life.

But this is interesting though... what am I but an empty vessel in which these experiences pass? Co-incidentally I got the Zen Commandments by Dean Sluyter off my shelf earlier, - bit of a hit and miss book but he has this gift for putting complex ideas simply and clearly, in my view - and he describes this as unjoining the dots.

'We're not the constellations. We're not the stars. If we're anything, we're the endless sky within which the stars appear to appear.'

So if I am this empty thing - this dead thing, if you like - then my feeling alive is a star passing through. And so my thoughts, emotions, preferences. Stars passing through the empty space of my own nothingness. So that means that I don't need to identify with any of it - I'm not happy or sad, for example - these are mere stars in the sky of this thing I think of as me.

[Rhiannon]

She closed her eyes and not even the wind could speak to her, or something. Part of death is the separation from our senses etc. and our mind from its connection with the body - this is what I meant by this being 'dead'. A kind of freedom.

I was very alive to my senses. What I did die to in that moment though was that there was anything more than the sensory experience. That there was any hope of a god, basically. But that was a good thing.

[Rhiannon]

Only you can answer that. That is, 'seeing' and understanding this has to be an experience, not something told as an intellectual dialogue.

Yes, what I 'know' and how I live don't always match.