This is the final part of a trilogy that was initiated by a question about my religious “views”.
After teaching classes at Leeds for almost two years, I was discontent with life.
For the most part it was because there was no mystery to me that my life had been one of theory with no realistic application. I was no stranger to meaninglessness. The situation was that I actually had time to consider it more often. There was nothing sacred for me.
There was only one thing to do. Quite literally overnight I dropped all responsibility to everyone, including most importantly my duties at the university. I had to go somewhere, anywhere. It did not matter to me that I may end up drifting the rest of my days with no clear direction. I was certain it would be better than staying in one spot whilst never having lived.
So I was off to tour Europe in no particular order. Without knowing what I wanted and whether I truly did want anything or not, it did not seem to matter. I had never felt at home anywhere, so it seemed natural that I should just remain homeless and wander. I made sure that I would be light on funds as well. It seemed necessary; I was done trying to find a reason for everything.
It did not take long before I began to meet some of the most extraordinary people I have ever interacted with. The whole spectrum, from lifelong vagabonds to bored trust fund babies out and about “roughing it”.
Through several highly intelligent people, I was given a proper introduction to the realm of esoterica. This particular underground culture and the people of whom it is comprised, gradually became more and more of an attraction for me. I preferred communicating through this symbolism that to me was on a different level than the system of mathematics as it is practiced currently. Over time it became much simpler for me to integrate the more advanced systems into what I already knew of traditional science and of my own research.
It did not take long for this new symbol system to reach a critical mass and connect with everything else known to me. Once that happened I was at the level of deciphering and synthesizing rapidly anything “new”; that is until I realized there was nothing new anymore, just different ways of attempting to communicate it or in certain cases, hide it.
Enter LOVE:
So I am invited to a ballet, which was not quite my fancy until I saw her. But it was not her as I would come to know her. No, she had become one with harmony, giving a gorgeous form to the flow, a brilliant moving structure to this ethereal substance in the air. The lines blurred. I was not captivated. Contrarily, my heart was set free. Such feelings, such an energy as I had never felt. Could it have been that I had known so much, accomplished so many things, without ever having had this experience? It was so. I can assure you as a chemist that at least in my undertakings this is not replicable with current pharmacology. No, this was death; an orgasmic death. There is nothing that could have prepared me. Yes, I had previously had some “far out” experiences that were certainly exhilarating, but this was real magic.
Unbeknownst to me, and perhaps even hidden from fate herself, my companions and I were to end up at a reception later that evening where the dancers would be.
I was chatting it up and I am sure that I was visibly full of a kind of vibrancy that must have been gaining the attention of those that knew me better. So I was on the verge of gibberish when the person I was looking at averts his eyes past my shoulder and says something to the effect of, “Uh-Oh!”.
I turn around, and there she was standing there looking right at me. She was beautiful. Strong. Overflowing with radiant passion. Russian.
Everything was in slow-motion. I hesitated, and then I fell. I have been falling ever since.
I will say that her and I spent the two happiest years of my life together. I will omit the details. I will omit the tragedy, except to confirm that her body gave out on her and died.
And so I was done wandering. My companion was, at least physically, gone.
She was capable of teaching me more with one look then I could ever teach anyone with books full of words and other symbols. She did it without even trying.
She taught me grace. She had given me laughter; and inspired a luminous, resplendently fierce, and profoundly vivacious love of life. Soul-mate?
I found myself broke, in Paris. Broken in every way possible. Alone in a way so much more real with having lived, loved, and lost. It would take time to realize what had been gained. I understood then what it was to feel.
I came to New York, and worked my way down to Miami. From there I was eventually given an offer for a respectable job. And for now, I reside in Sarasota, FL.
My views on religion?
My religion is love. I cannot commit to one person. That is not possible for me.
That is ownership. That is jealousy. No, I am a cuddle-buddy with several cuddle-partners and growing.
I’ve tried, and sex when it is purely for kicks just seems to be too much of a complicating factor, a limiting one. People inevitably become envious, from my experience. Sometimes I think it is a game with the intention to avoid actually loving someone, and so we trade the physical vulnerability that is had in sex, instead of yielding the real ambrosia that is within the naked confessions of our hearts.
I am perhaps greedy then, and I would rather have a thousand great friends then instead, one love/hate, angry sex relationship after the other: A serial monogamy.
I believe in one truth.
Love is what I rely on, so it is my religion. It is therapeutic. It is free; it can only be free. It is compatible with most other religions.
I look at the religion as it manifests from the mainstream. I look at this pre-packaged, spoon-fed neurosis that is called religion and I shake my head.
I will accept that there is the unmistakable cultural aspect.
Religion from a cultural perspective I would then define as such:
A creative expression of the cultural interpretation of the monistic truth based on the underpinning collective psyche of the tribe ultimately establishing for itself the accepted norms made law and justified by an assumed divine intelligence that oftentimes may, and less of the time may not, thoroughly result in oppression and repression in one form or another of the very impulses which the so-called divine intelligence had built-in to the living mechanism in the premier.
An efficient recipe for neurosis and violence when haphazardly yet frantically accepted as such based on the fear that is fed along with it.
I would rather keep it simple. I did my time with all of the mind games in the first half of my life. Now I simply live and let live.
Institutionalized religion then, is like superficial sex. With it we offer up a partial vulnerability as a trade in counterfeit of a truly holistic and existential vulnerability that would allow existance through experience to penetrate, or crucify us, in order that we may be born into a valid, more corporeal knowledge and consequential trust of SELF.
