3/28/2024 0 Comments Printable ring sizer us![]() ![]() The retreat is a few hours north of the city. The man without a head will hold a retreat, to gather any seekers who wish to go deeper into his truths. One day on the radio the host makes a special announcement. The man without a head says it is better to live in truth than in illusion. Only a vast emptiness in which the world presents itself. What is there? Where your head should be, there is nothing. He has you describe to yourself the characteristics of the object, say it is a scotch glass, its contours, the slight lick of white where the light bounces off it. He recounts on air an endless number of experiments meant to demonstrate the essential first-person truth that no one, individually, has a head. The radio show’s best regular guest is the man without a head. This was how he would speak to me, until he got so sick he couldn’t speak anymore. After my crack-up, for the rest of his life, he called me a case, a simp, a loon. But he believed in his own psychic strength. He was not a man who would otherwise strike anyone as deeply invested in moral formation. My father kept bits of paper all over his house, taped to the refrigerator, to cabinet doors. Watch what you think-it becomes what you do. My father kept the opposite advice taped to the mirror in his bathroom. The self is a lie and it lies to itself, makes up reasons for doing the things it has already done. The self is just a vital lie-that is what they say on the radio. I do not know if I should give my ten percent to digging wells or to distributing mosquito nets, or if I should use it to feed and clothe the refugees who line the sidewalks outside empty midtown hotels. This is a biblical number, an Old Testament tithe, but the man on the radio did not admit that. One guest came on to say what portion of your money you should give away to charities-charities that his group, his nonprofit, has vetted as well-run and measurably efficacious. The guests come on and recommend things: water with lemon, say, or open-water swimming, or mixing lithium with seltzer. ![]() While I run, I listen to the radio, always the same show, a show on the subject of right living. I watch myself closely, eat square meals, run a dozen or a few dozen miles most weeks. I try, though, still, not to hope for anything. ![]() I have not had to see a psychiatrist in years. And I can tell, for example, the difference between reality and dreams. At least, I can say this to myself and believe it. ![]()
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