A search for life
Copyright- Robert Fullarton 2012
So many notes
are playing together in unison. Many instruments are playing through many
different rooms. It plays a single pitch
But if I were to
partially explain what I meant earlier in the previous chapter to
“the beautiful
truths of life” I would have the reader imagine any one given fact of nature.
To picture one single fact- one single momentous truth- to give credence to
nature, imagine a supernova, the infamous hunts of the lioness, the very poison
from the boxer Jelly fish, the sight of a rainbow, the taste of honey and the
flashing turquoise gleam of the Kingfisher as it flashes past the lone witness.
Let me zoom in closer, to a more appealing, more fixed examination of these
subjects. Let me describe the proximity of notes, their timing, their
performance, their sound, their carrying resilience and then the receptivity of
the beauty received in the emotions, while the brain filters, distils and
understands what takes place, the emotional beauty lasts longer, it defines so
to speak the theme of the concerto or the mood of the symphony to perfection.
The very instruments combined, the combined crescendo, the very written notes,
the notation timed and spaced perfectly, all combined is the preliminary
function that gives expression and perfection to something that is represented
in the mood and the emotional beauty that comes secondary to the very sounds
and the music itself – but nonetheless neither are less important, both are
intertwined in each other, one functions for the other, the music is for man
and the man is for the music, neither part of the process can be viewed with a
lesser importance. Likewise I use this example as one of many, that can come to
mind, for a higher truth, a functional adhesive for life, as a synchronised
truth and beauty that speaks, of logic, intelligence, meaning, importance and
sequence. Man must elevate man and become something wholly new, but no
revolution is born within, without the floods and strains of pain, that is
guaranteed. I myself have had to become more than man, to live through the
floods of life, the humiliations and the pains – call them growing pains if you
like- but I have sought something beautiful in this life and I still search,
despite what events tomorrow may bring, I must search even if the sky were to
fall upon me!
These examples
themselves are the blueprints to a universal and a super sensory truth, that
exceeds and expands itself above and beyond society, they are the exemplifying
images that combine to create the truth or the overall collective picture
itself.
Likewise
individual men and women must utilise their own nature, and self discover what
purpose they have and potential they have for the over all truth. If men and
women remain as mere units of the state cell or organism then indeed the
meaning of life has been lost and the disorder of the age has only made us into
another typecast stereotype of the times. Our age leaves the thinking to a
minority, the happy life is rarely pursued or attained, the pain of life
understood, the actors of the earth have indeed attained the devotion of the
many because too many indeed have become the units of the state and the
individual pictures of an older, more beautiful truth itself is left to the
individuals of the world.
Parents
seek with the highest expectation that their sons and daughters will emerge in
the affairs of the world, will rise to meet the challenges, the stresses, the
quotas, the strains and the responsibilities that come in the cycle of
preceding generations and lifetimes. They seek the maturation of their
children, to become healthy and successful children, to seek a profession, to
eventually flee the nest and seek an elopement or happy partnership with a
spouse or lover. The curriculum of modern and even primitive aspects of human
life- in full circle- are imbedded in the minds of each generation to the
needs, rights and abstaining factors of each society and generation- and parents too often seek to fulfil
something of their own ideology and their own professional desires in at least
one of the offspring. This of course is to satisfaction where a previous
generation had regressed from such professional pursuits and aspirations.
I myself
left school when I was eighteen, I graduated with a meagre figure, my points
were indeed low. I struggled with the notion of studying –loathed it more even
then- and of course I hadn’t the brain for it. I couldn’t study for long
periods, just couldn’t compete with the other students, who would boast for
hours at a time how many A1’s they had scored and I think I should have
realised that that was my signal for a nap or an early death from sheer
boredom. I had few opportunities, just as I had entered Secondary School; I
once again faced the unknown, to face new people and new subjects to fail.
During the summer of that year I had spent time in Croatia with my parents, had
smoked a lot of Cannabis over the period of summer with so-called friends and
went drinking with them at the weekends. I started to suffer from depression
and to make matters worse I began to binge drink on the odd occasion, on cans
of lager and even whiskey, the odd time.
I laughed and put on a pretence, listened
to heavy, loud music and went to parties. But deep down I felt lost, amid a
swelling
crowd of unloving faces. Social anxiety would wash over me, self-hatred,
self-doubt, a deep disorientated state of loss, or a hunger for meaning was
beginning to unravel within me, but I still did not have the courage, the sheer
tact or the confidence to realise that these people –along with my own
weaknesses- were dragging me down into an abyss of self-hatred and loneliness.
I couldn’t sit around girls, they were very attractive, with the full treatment
itself- mascara, lipstick, eyeliner, wearing sultry clothing etc- I was still
living in my childhood fantasises and my mind of naiveties and of course I felt
unbearable at ease around thee women. I have to state that I have never felt at
ease around young attractive women- but I do find a sense of ease around older
women, who are more accepting and less fussy- but generally I have always felt
like a second rate citizen when I am around girls or women my own age. I guess
that it has never been easy for me to release a sporadic moment of confidence
on the spot and I have always felt that such Friday night pretence seems petty,
artificial and contrived. I became addicted to hash over a period of several
months, and even began to think on the lines of desperation to get myself some
hash. Luckily enough, I became temporarily estranged from a certain friend of
mine and of course, with the source removed I found that it was easy for me to
simply quit and move on.
As I said I
did not score high on the Leaving Certificate, so I had few options open to me.
I decided to study Archaeology and Cultural Studies at a Post Leaving
Certificate (PLC) course in Dundrum. I had meticulously drawn up my own
genealogy with the help of my aunt Rosemary and the help of my uncle Peter. I
even went to work for a weeks’ work experience off on an archaeological dig in
Ashbourne Co. Meath and I found the toil, the sheer distances I had to travel
and cover along with all the digging to be very tiring –but luckily enough I
had the help and support of my mother who offered to give me a lift in the
morning to the bus eireann terminal- indeed I was spoilt and sheltered back
then, and I have always pitied and felt an empathy for the hardship my mother
has had to endure in silence, with no other alternative available.
I also
worked for a week in Kells, cleaning and filtering out old bits of pottery,
silt and even bone in a washbasin. I had to clean down bits of old bone with a
tooth brush, beside a group of uninspiring, dour and beautiful Latvian and
Lithuanian women. I naturally enough loathed the work, and was relieved once
the term of experience was up. I studied hard for the first time in my life,
drew up diagrams and profiles on cist burials and megalithic tombs in Ireland.
I found the study of the Megalithic and Mesolithic periods of Ireland's history,
and the early cultures of Europe to be partially interesting. I completed my
family tree, with great excitement and began to study for my exams. My results
were not exceptional, nor were they amazing, but they were a improvement and a
satisfactory result in consideration of my past attempts at academia.
Over the
course of that Year, I had a sort of spiritual awakening; an identity was
beginning to form itself within my my being. I would describe it in
the sense of the mystical and the religious experiences, which we have, and it
held me to see a greater reverence for life and the abundances of majesty and
mystery that surround us. It was and is one and the many, every thing is
connected, a religious experience in my eye has no definite answer or
conclusion, but it must be of objective and universal analysis and its goal or
purpose is self revelatory for a transformation of some kind, that increases, one’s
self knowledge and capacity, for something entirely greater than the subject of
the experience themselves.
Such is the joint union of equilibrium, the
cessation of psychological torments and desires, so that the mind senses a
state of immense peace and tranquillity, the overwhelming worries and anxieties
of daily life are removed and the subject views life in the moment, is aware of
the world around, the macroscopic environment of nature and a state of grace
envelops towards this environment. The subject and the object are one,
everything is accepted, there is for clarity of life, life becomes a mission to
act upon and delve into.
Some could
call it the activation of a sixth sense- namely the intuitive sense of the
animal over the five immanent senses- some could call it apex of evolution,
where the conscious brain and the human mind can experience something which
clinical psychology and modern science has not touched upon. Others will
identify the mystical as something wholly different altogether within a
transcendental category. For me it is indescribable and for what I have
described it touches all the categories mentioned and yet it is intuition of my
character, my world and my religion. I myself disagree and call a spade a spade, and call it something out of the ordinary for that is what an experience or blessing of the spiritual kind is indeed.
Since I have became a Christian I no longer use the word mystical.. nor do I use any modern...new age jargon or junk....but focus on the words...Grace...Holy spirit...Salvation..and of course the Christ Life as Christ's people are joined with the spiritual body of Christ himself.
It is
ultimately the resolution of mind and body for a short period, where anxiety
retreats and equilibrium is achieved, but it is wholly different to say
experiences done with deep relaxation. I for example went walking one day in a
local park, in the heart of summer, I was child again, I walked deep into the
woods, where no people even stirred.
The sights of fresh meadows surrounded me,
the scents of wild flowers, the blue sky and the mountains caught my gaze, and
I was watching the birds collecting seeds grounded in the earth. I was deep in
contemplation that evening, was walking to my own pace, my own space and time
and while my mind was indulging in a richness for thought, I compared my
thoughts with these natural settings and found my emotions were overwhelmed
with the beauty of what I saw, I felt a lightness, a great joy and a sense of
great purpose within myself.
With an
appreciation for aesthetic beauty in nature, I could see something which words
could not fully describe, but of course this is a mere description of an event
which few of my readers will ever understand and this event is a mildly
desensitised event – and I use this word to describe the root of experience and
knowledge, because we sense something often before we fully rationalise on what
it is exactly- it is an event that seems to be a footnote to other, more
profound events in my life. Each man and woman seeks their raison d’etre and is
that not enough.
I have not
always been a thinker, I have had to learn, to reassess and revaluate from
scratch and have to work on nothing. In some ways I am a self educated man, for
I learned nothing from my school education, I have learned more from my
experiences and my passions in life, for these are my reasons to live, but even
I must admit that every day will be difficult way in its own right, each day is
a day of work, even in a minute sense.
I became
interested in the bible, the Jewish scriptures, some of the early Jewish works
of mysticism. I felt on occasion that I was in direct contact with God, through
prayer, through contemplation, through my individual life that was a source of
the totality of nature and God. I was interested in the charismatic movement of
the Holy Spirit, read the gospels of Christ and even began to try and view my
life from a wholly new perspective. I did in some way view things in a more
black and white way than I do now, but I still view this all as something
sacrosanct in my education for life.
I would
rise at dawn, feeling at ease, sensing something alive within me and I would go
nature walking, would channel all my energy into my prayers and meditations.
I sought a
meaning to life, to pain, to death and to the questions that most people simply
avoided for their whole life. I refused to believe in nothing, and sought to
rebuild my very world, up from its dregs to the top. (See Note at Bottom)
With music,
with words, senses, memories and pictures we humans come full circle into a
tapestry of expressionistic power, we go on an odyssey into the unknown and
when our emotions unfold to perfection we sense something wholly new, something
indescribable, for in art, nature and religion man is trying to seek a sense of
equilibrium, a sense of his pure nature must be summed up and spelled up and
this comes in a surrender and acceptance in the source of such power. I myself
have felt my spiritual inquests to be very much the same and view my love for
art, music and the written word to be the tools and instruments in my
orchestra, they will utilise my emotions and the chemical processes of the
brain and the higher functions of the mind into unison and perfect, high
pitched perfection. In dreams and in moments of revelatory worth in life we
shall see this come into fruition. But I emphasise, that these experiences are
self explanatory, one will choose to see these as meaningful, as important and
purposeful, for if the subject does not then these experiences surely were not
really that bizarre and sublime as we first thought. Our picture and outlook on
meaning is the central understanding to our livelihood and our existence and
this goes with pain and pleasure, our perspective will induce the suffering or
the acceptance we give with the central view we have asserted through our will
for our mind to adapt to. Often the mind can indeed influence the brain and
this is the person dictating to the body, not the body dictating to the person.
The person seeks to fulfil themselves against the restrictions of time and
space. The truth runs deeper than the water of a spring or a well; it can only
be known when we have made a decent into the dark.
Life is a
peculiar process, that is what I believe it to be, wake up from childhood to
face the inundation of responsibilities and labours that are ready to meet us.
If we don’t work hard to create a gap between the labours and the
responsibilities then we shall have little happiness and solace, everything
needs to be worked for and strived for, happiness is not compulsory, and
confidence is essential, it is the power of one to bluff himself or herself
over others.
Over the
course of the following summer my father had encouraged me to study legal
studies –Irish Law- in college and to contemplate the notion of studying to
become a barrister or solicitor at law. I enrolled in Griffith College Dublin
to begin my first semester and of course decided to myself that I would have to
work hard –in fact I was waiting and counting down the days, telling myself how
long I would last with this course- but over the course of my first year, my
results were mediocre once again.
I found
myself swamped with paperwork, assignments and research and found such subjects
as Civil Litigation to be seriously boring, stuffy and drab- to sit through a class on civil litigation is one of the chief torments you can experience!
I found
acquaintances in the college who kept the distance with me and I kept the
distance with them. I could not stomach the pretence of young College goers,
the distance and the sheer projections of rich masculine boys living off mommy
and daddy’s money and the rich girls trying to look sensational, with both
sexes trying to fulfil the stereotype. Of course I too was one of those boys,
having my mother mostly pay the expensive fees for the college. I was genuinely
grateful to here for her financial support, but at the time, I was greatly
unhappy in the college- the college life was better than I had previously
known- and had made a few enemies with certain students, with a certain
animosity having been born out of several stupid misunderstandings between
myself and them.
Often life
in the college brought a certain indefinite loneliness, the hoards of students
and the rigidity of deadliness and exams, with the intense amounts of
preparation work that had to come before I even sat down to take my exams. I
did enjoy learning law in certain ways. I found the advocacy and oratorical
improvisation skills were interesting in their own right. I loved to study employment
law- loved to study up and learn the various legislations, acts and quite
humorous cases that accompanied- I also enjoyed studying Tort Law, Family Law,
Contract Law and Criminal practice and procedure.
I found it
difficult to confront and tell the others on my course that I couldn’t cope
with close contact and yet I couldn’t cope with their reticence and their
distance they kept with me at times. So I was a self-fulfilling contradiction,
that couldn’t bare to face the long days with a class full of confident young
adults who seemed to be cleverer and more competent than I could ever be. I was
deeper than night, spent most of my time alone, brooded and delved into my
issues, could be rancorous and moody as I was bottled up with anger and sorrow.
I simply could not sit in a room with girls whom I found attractive, I found it
all to be an engrossing sense of fear or nausea that caused me to have
palpitations and pains in my chest and the atmosphere felt like a court martial
or trial rather than a mere class room lesson! During this time I became
friends with an older woman who was initially on the same course as me. She was
kind, very friendly, artistic, well read, and intellectual and a good listener
and some times I think that I sought a surrogate mother figure in her. I began
to meet her at my breaks, went for lunch with her and I found that we had some
of the most interesting conversations that I can ever record. I guess that in
the end, when I departed from the college, I missed her the most, but people
are always parting and disappearing from each others lives, there is no
singularity to life, it is constant, it flows and moves with a heartbeat, a
vibe and a pulsating energy. People seem to be like passengers that board and depart from the trains and many are temporarily waiting at the train station for something else to happen!
On my
summer holidays that year while abroad in Croatia with my parents I found
myself consumed with depression. I had my first major bout of depression, it
lasted several days, and I felt so sick with depression that I simply lay on my
bed for hours in silence and in a state of paralysis. I cried a lot that day,
my mother simply came and tried to calm me, she stroked my hair and talked to
me. I had been so overcome with my inconsistencies in life. I could not bare
the loneliness, the lack of confidence, the sexual inadequacy, the lack of
friends, the lacking feeling of love, the problems I had with girls and of
course my directionless existence itself.
This
existential crisis was just one of many, the tip of the iceberg and the
beginning of something bad, the beginning of the dark tunnel and the start of
my depression. Often people with mental illnesses cannot address the source or
sources for which they are depressed. I refused to address or to confront the
pathology and the reasons for why I was so unhappy and was drowning in
depression and getting angry with everyone. Often it was everyone’s fault, and
I would even think that I am too unbearable to be seen on the beach, I have to
cover up and get away, I cannot be seen, I am so ugly to behold! These were my
thoughts and my torments. I couldn’t relate to the image or notion of what
other young people were doing, they were partying, they were getting drunk,
having sex, having relationships, getting jobs, meeting friends and of course
they had much more confidence than I ever could. I never wanted to be like
everyone else, I wanted to be me –just me- I did not want to lower myself to
any belittling standards whatsoever.
I sought self-knowledge, freedom over hoarding
generations and I sought my meaning in relation to the world. The world to many
others has seemed to be a mere dalliance, and nothing more.
My brother
John had struggled for many years with an inward sense of estrangement with his
own identity. He now stands as a confident, gregarious, somewhat flamboyant
individual. He is an extrovert, a passionate man for sport, who loves to go
socialising with friends and a man with a great sense of humour- he could light
up a room with his warm sunny nature and his sheer ability to speak his mind.
His confidence stands head and shoulders above mine. But as I was trying to
state, he had troubles with his won sense of meaning. He suffered depression
for a period of time, about ten years ago to be precise. He was struggling with
the curriculum and workloads of college life. He found the studying difficult
to adapt to. He couldn’t relate as well to girls as he had hoped and of course
he worried incessantly about the future.
All these
mounting pressures eventually took their toll on him and he had to be helped,
comforted, related to, reached out to and understood –and I wont for private
reasons state too much on this matter- and my brother’s loss of meaning I
believe had come with his belief that he had failed his family in some form or
other. Of course this was not the case whatsoever- he simply compared himself
with his friends too often- he could not mount to the familial pressures of
having to find work, his sense of estrangement with society, with his peers and
his own identity was muddied up with fear and all his previous acts of
rebellion, parties and past confidence were an act of a troubled being behind
the public persona that was seeking love and understanding, Too many people
want to live up to some expectation, some image or pressure that exerts a
mighty toll on their mental well being. I have known these cases all my life
and I too have been one of them myself. With my Aspergers, I found the
repetitive thinking that has driven me too the point of despair, has had to be
confronted on a number of different levels, with different approaches and
techniques used. My ingrained sense of rooted fear and social anxiety has
always been the worst to deal with and it still cripples me from time to time,
but bore within me a terrible inferiority complex that has been a source of
much of my depression over the past few years in particular.
My brother
moved out when he was 27 years old. He had met the love of his life and I was
–and still am- generally happy for his long sought after wealth of happiness. I
would come and visit him after college on a Thursday evening and each time, we
would fraternise and joke together like free men, as adults together. I
generally enjoyed being in the opulence of his new apartment, happy that my
brother had started to work in the passport section of the Department for
Foreign Affairs. Our friendship blossomed –and though we occasionally fight-
our relationship has taken a new meaning and reached a new level of brotherly
understanding. In the past we would never see each other even eye to eye and
would never spend time together. But now we drank together, we watched films
together and we even discussed intimate matters together. I did indeed find a
friend in my older brother.
When I
turned twenty, I sensed that it was the beginning of a new face in life; little
did I know that my brief transitory states of freedom, peace and happiness
would later be disturbed. It was indeed the brief calm before the storm In all
honesty though I have never had no truly happy period in my life, all periods
have bore me turbulences that shape me in some form or another. Sometimes I
credit my life and how I am even still alive to some unforeseen kindness, I
could call it a miracle, but not a fluke I have had to work tirelessly, have
bent myself from ride downwards to pick up the pieces that have fallen apart
over time. In my delicate disposition I have to learn, through painful lessons
and expositions of experience that I have been reluctant to accept and the changes
are almost invisible to me, but I still have to remind myself that they are
there. When I turned twenty, I thought instantaneously that all the changes of
adulthood would come to me, but I grew to be more depressed and moody, I swung
like a pendulum between one phase and mood and another. I developed a
sociaphobia that was relentless and it left me feeling useless and hated by
general society. I even developed paranoia; sometimes I would even shout aloud
to myself, I blind rage, at the frustrations that I experienced. I could not be
free of my past and its immense baggage. I went to see a psychiatrist, who I
personally found to be a waste of my precious time. He sent me to a psychiatric
ward, during the summer of 2007 and I found some amount of courage just
listening to the stories of others, their desperation, their lives, which left
me feeling incredulous with the health care system and the psychiatrists in
general. A field of doctors would visit me in my bed, to analyse me and they
even thought that I was psychotic at one stage. I had simply overwhelmed them
with my interests for religion, theology and my growing obsession for finding
God.
Overtime,
through the course of that very year, I developed my tastes for literature, and
this was the start of my love for writing. I began to read and write poetry.
Read the theology of C.S Lewis, the poetry of Blake, Eliot, Milton and
Dickinson. I began to take an interest in lively debates and matters of the
intellect for the first time ever. I even began to concentrate, to learn, to
focus on the very words, to improvise and improve. I became an innovator and
sought to teach myself as both benefactor and beneficiary combined. I became my
own protégé and began to teach myself, to read up on improving my diction and I
began to go hiking and developed an even greater ardour for nature, for
wildlife and the outdoors. All of these activities even inspired me to write
more poetry. My results in college had improved drastically at the end of the
year, as I bucked myself up, began to study for hours on end and worked even
harder than ever. I was still as abrasive and as conscientious ever with my
college acquaintances and that is why I was still very much a loner in college,
I couldn’t handle the intensity of having to pretend and to lower myself to the
standards of others and I just couldn’t even sit beside girls for very long
periods –for this had always felt alien to me and often I felt as though I were
going to have a heart attack!
I add to this…that my old take on life was very
naïve…it was at one point a gargantuan consumption of books and knowledge…a
consumption of the incomplete and contradictory philosophies of men and the
weight was enough to sink a ton of lead to the bottom of the sea. I have since
come to reject psycho-analysis and mainstream philosophy…It is good to embrace
the charity of others and indeed as Christ said…”If any man wants to follow me
he must deny himself and take up his cross” Through all I have been through
this has been the truest and greatest for our man to forget the self worship of
many modern schools of thought…and in time and maturation I returned in
strength to the Christian faith, but this time I had no childlike pretensions
in me…but instead a hunger as vast as the firmament above me…to forget what I
arrogantly thought I knew and learn instead what comes from the lessons we
often do not seek but what a habit of finding us instead!
Labels: Spiritual Biography/Memoir
