- Health - meat is good; even 20 min of exercise is amazing, and quality supplements are vital for my wellbeing
- Mediation - I learned how to meditate with intention. 30 minutes each day, embracing the 5 tenants is life-changing:
- The First Tenet: Clarity of Intention
- The Second Tenet: The Law of Volitionality
- The Third Tenet: Face Everything and Avoid Nothing
- The Fourth Tenet: The Truth of Impersonality
- The Fifth Tenet: For the Sake of the Whole
- Marriage - I am a separate individual, which opens up a vast potential for my future and my family's future.
- The 5 tenants can be applied to business
- I am a pretty good manager, but I cannot do this business alone. I am best suited to be a facilitator.
- 20 years of examining Financial, Emotional, Social, Professional, Intellectual, Physical, Spiritual (FESPIPS) dimensions of my life without much perspective, I realized a new perspective - that the Spiritual dimension influences the Emotional and Intellectual, which in turn, influences Professional, Physical, Financial and Social dimensions. This realization reinforces my meditation practice.
Showing posts with label enlightenment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label enlightenment. Show all posts
Monday, January 03, 2011
What I Learned in 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
Lessons from the Breakup
A couple of weeks ago I went on a spiritual retreat led by Andrew Cohen. There is too much to record here right now, but basically I learned that by meditating with the intention to transform spiritually (as opposed to simply making incremental improvements), I could connect with a life energy so profound and intelligent.
I also learned that I didnt need to depend on others for love and support and approval by doing this. I learned that I could set the example, because I can get my energy and focus from what Cohen calls the Ground of Being, but any casual person might call God.
I started meditating this way for two weeks and felt an immediate change. Other things happened. I had loving sex with my wife TWICE in the same weekend. I got her to agree to meditate.
Oddly - and not really importantly - I feel a bit lost and even guilty for starting to leave my old ways of thinking behind me. I used to think that my fantasy life had at least SOME merit. I used to think that I had a reason to not take responsibility for my life and my decisions.
It doesnt change the fact that meditating for 30 minutes every day is probably the most important and transformative decision I've ever made.
I also learned that I didnt need to depend on others for love and support and approval by doing this. I learned that I could set the example, because I can get my energy and focus from what Cohen calls the Ground of Being, but any casual person might call God.
I started meditating this way for two weeks and felt an immediate change. Other things happened. I had loving sex with my wife TWICE in the same weekend. I got her to agree to meditate.
Oddly - and not really importantly - I feel a bit lost and even guilty for starting to leave my old ways of thinking behind me. I used to think that my fantasy life had at least SOME merit. I used to think that I had a reason to not take responsibility for my life and my decisions.
It doesnt change the fact that meditating for 30 minutes every day is probably the most important and transformative decision I've ever made.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Transcending the Self Cult
In my pursuit of greatness I realize that I have never fully defined it. I wont go into that here, because I don't know that definition yet.
What I do know, is that the world of the self - the world where we promote all things having to do with being perceived as completely unreliable on anything or anyone else - and that unreliance is naturally THE source of success - THAT world is a myth.
It is the prison of loneliness and not getting your way. It's filled with anger and lack and being lost. Because there is only the self and no other data points to provide context, then there is no perspective on one's problems. Those problems, therefore go unsolved.
It is a cult that requires one to be the master of one's domain. And that requires a LOT of money. Money to hire servants and vendors and consultants. Money to build up reserves of cash in case there's a threat to the career or the investments. Money to drive the nicest cars and visit the nicest places. Money to create the the appearance as well as acts of influence. Money and the cult of the self doom one to never connecting with one's greater purpose.
Money and a global or even spiritual perspective, however, work like a contribution to the greater good. Much more than money and the right perspective are needed to make a solid contribution.
What I do know, is that the world of the self - the world where we promote all things having to do with being perceived as completely unreliable on anything or anyone else - and that unreliance is naturally THE source of success - THAT world is a myth.
It is the prison of loneliness and not getting your way. It's filled with anger and lack and being lost. Because there is only the self and no other data points to provide context, then there is no perspective on one's problems. Those problems, therefore go unsolved.
It is a cult that requires one to be the master of one's domain. And that requires a LOT of money. Money to hire servants and vendors and consultants. Money to build up reserves of cash in case there's a threat to the career or the investments. Money to drive the nicest cars and visit the nicest places. Money to create the the appearance as well as acts of influence. Money and the cult of the self doom one to never connecting with one's greater purpose.
Money and a global or even spiritual perspective, however, work like a contribution to the greater good. Much more than money and the right perspective are needed to make a solid contribution.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
The Hard Truth
Reflecting on my last posts, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that I am much less than I've been giving myself credit for.
My frustrations and depressions and various other mental ills were certainly fed by my inflated sense of self coming into conflict with reality.
Its all over now. The dreaming. The imaginary fights. The deluded self-talk. What remains is the decision to pick up the pieces that matter, look at the world for what it is, and follow through.
My frustrations and depressions and various other mental ills were certainly fed by my inflated sense of self coming into conflict with reality.
Its all over now. The dreaming. The imaginary fights. The deluded self-talk. What remains is the decision to pick up the pieces that matter, look at the world for what it is, and follow through.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Hedonism and gravity
I continue to think deeply about the hedonistic tendencies of the ego.
Dont change - that's work and it's threatening. Always find a reason to exist. be superior. no pain- unless it's a badge of honor. Indulge Indulge indulge - in fantasy behavior, tv, movies, emotions, laziness, delusions and denial.
I can see how my ego and hedonistic leanings have stalled my growth. I can also see how it's pushed my ambitions in ways that dont really make sense.
I need to figure out what I really want from this life and how i can make a better contribution to my wife and family. Essentially, I have three main resources: time, energy, and money. Instead of pushing so hard I am exhausted, lonely, broke (from indulgences and mis-spending) and alienated from anything meaningful, I think I need to look at Maslow's again and rethink my priorities.
Why have I (do we) make "survival" such a moving target?
Dont change - that's work and it's threatening. Always find a reason to exist. be superior. no pain- unless it's a badge of honor. Indulge Indulge indulge - in fantasy behavior, tv, movies, emotions, laziness, delusions and denial.
I can see how my ego and hedonistic leanings have stalled my growth. I can also see how it's pushed my ambitions in ways that dont really make sense.
I need to figure out what I really want from this life and how i can make a better contribution to my wife and family. Essentially, I have three main resources: time, energy, and money. Instead of pushing so hard I am exhausted, lonely, broke (from indulgences and mis-spending) and alienated from anything meaningful, I think I need to look at Maslow's again and rethink my priorities.
Why have I (do we) make "survival" such a moving target?
Monday, August 25, 2008
meditative prayer insights
Last night and this morning I prayed to get more of a clue about time management and balance. I wanted to get a clearer picture of what and how I could create more time for myself, so I could spend it with my family and think deeply about our path.
I was feeling trapped in my schedule and knew intuitively that I needed to 'optimize' my demanding worklife to create a few extra hours each week. I was also feeling burned out and recognized that I kind of have a singular focus about work that leaves me exhausted after 6 weeks or so.
The pattern continues with me reducing my hours and not pushing so hard for a week or so, then returning to devoting all my time to work for another period of about 6 weeks. Since much of this pattern is driven by my own choices and much is driven by external work forces (boss' demands, specific oblications, etc.,) it's a very powerful pattern that i cannot seem to break. Again and again, I seem to find work environments that are very demanding in this way. I walk myself into my prison and lock the door behind me.
And it IS locked, so I can point to it and say 'look, I'm the victim. I can't get past this locked door!'
I do this because I feel compelled to, for some reason. I feel like it's what I'm SUPPOSED to do. It feels very familiar, even comfortable to be the prisoner, and that scares the hell out of me. I dont want to keep recreating new prisons. I certainly dont want to set that example for my wife and child to follow. Thinking about it in that way is very scary.
When I work late or during a weekend, I feel so sad, but also purposeful. It's like I'm being a martyr or something. I kind of expect sympathy (come to think of it) and yet as I reflect on this, the reactions I remember getting from ppl is more like 'that guy is crazy, or has his priorities all mixed up.'
Referencing another post, I've often heard people asking 'what's up with his apparent lack of execution and attention to details?'
Seeing these words on the page here, all I can think of is, " this guy is such a martyr, but nothing is getting done?? why???'
Part of my issue is that I dont often really feel personally invested in the outcome of my actions. (That's another insight from my prayer last night) I need to pray on that some more, b/c I'm not totally sure why that is. I can guess that i'm not invested in the outcome b/c I'm such a victim and so 'institutionalized'.
I definitely need to pray on that more.
Within that frameset, I look to hedonistic indulgences, be that sleeping in on days full of deliverables or fantasizing about having miscellaneous sexual needs met. I am like on a throne, awaiting to be served, and frustrated and sad that I am not being catered to. I am a martyr; a victim; a pussy and a patsy, and it's worked for me.
In my mind, it's all one big lump of time, with all the same low-value on a personal level.
But its not all the same time, I now so clearly realize. I can see that I've used hedonistic fantasy and slothfulness and lack of planning to passive-agressivly grab time from ppl to whom I give too much power.
Speaking of which, I need to be careful to focus on my energies on true enlightenment pursuits. I cannot just find a new parent for my needs, I must plan and execute the steps needed to create a wonderful, balanced, loving life.
Right away, I feel the meditative prayer is a key starting point. Physicality and physical health is next.
I was feeling trapped in my schedule and knew intuitively that I needed to 'optimize' my demanding worklife to create a few extra hours each week. I was also feeling burned out and recognized that I kind of have a singular focus about work that leaves me exhausted after 6 weeks or so.
The pattern continues with me reducing my hours and not pushing so hard for a week or so, then returning to devoting all my time to work for another period of about 6 weeks. Since much of this pattern is driven by my own choices and much is driven by external work forces (boss' demands, specific oblications, etc.,) it's a very powerful pattern that i cannot seem to break. Again and again, I seem to find work environments that are very demanding in this way. I walk myself into my prison and lock the door behind me.
And it IS locked, so I can point to it and say 'look, I'm the victim. I can't get past this locked door!'
I do this because I feel compelled to, for some reason. I feel like it's what I'm SUPPOSED to do. It feels very familiar, even comfortable to be the prisoner, and that scares the hell out of me. I dont want to keep recreating new prisons. I certainly dont want to set that example for my wife and child to follow. Thinking about it in that way is very scary.
When I work late or during a weekend, I feel so sad, but also purposeful. It's like I'm being a martyr or something. I kind of expect sympathy (come to think of it) and yet as I reflect on this, the reactions I remember getting from ppl is more like 'that guy is crazy, or has his priorities all mixed up.'
Referencing another post, I've often heard people asking 'what's up with his apparent lack of execution and attention to details?'
Seeing these words on the page here, all I can think of is, " this guy is such a martyr, but nothing is getting done?? why???'
Part of my issue is that I dont often really feel personally invested in the outcome of my actions. (That's another insight from my prayer last night) I need to pray on that some more, b/c I'm not totally sure why that is. I can guess that i'm not invested in the outcome b/c I'm such a victim and so 'institutionalized'.
I definitely need to pray on that more.
Within that frameset, I look to hedonistic indulgences, be that sleeping in on days full of deliverables or fantasizing about having miscellaneous sexual needs met. I am like on a throne, awaiting to be served, and frustrated and sad that I am not being catered to. I am a martyr; a victim; a pussy and a patsy, and it's worked for me.
In my mind, it's all one big lump of time, with all the same low-value on a personal level.
But its not all the same time, I now so clearly realize. I can see that I've used hedonistic fantasy and slothfulness and lack of planning to passive-agressivly grab time from ppl to whom I give too much power.
Speaking of which, I need to be careful to focus on my energies on true enlightenment pursuits. I cannot just find a new parent for my needs, I must plan and execute the steps needed to create a wonderful, balanced, loving life.
Right away, I feel the meditative prayer is a key starting point. Physicality and physical health is next.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Rejuvenation
On Friday, I had a bit of a setback. Several projects were running behind schedule and one big project deliverable was regarded in a less than awestruck way. I just couldn't take it.
I went home, drank a beer and my sorrows, plodding along at like 50% productivity to catch up.
Here it is, Sunday afternoon, and I still have too much to do. As per my last post,I'm so depressed. Basically, I allowed myself to go to a very dark place.
I look at that now, and ask why. The answer came to me the way it did for my 'sometimes i like to feel weak' post. I realize that I look at defeat as a way to rest and rebound.
There's got to be more productive ways to rest and rejuvenate, but I choose the dark places - the baser impulses - to relax. It's because i have difficulty thinking of myself worthy. That difficulty extends to avoiding planning for my rest.
I put myself behind then I'm always behind and that's proof that I'm not worthy to treat myself better.
Another silly belief discovered.
I went home, drank a beer and my sorrows, plodding along at like 50% productivity to catch up.
Here it is, Sunday afternoon, and I still have too much to do. As per my last post,I'm so depressed. Basically, I allowed myself to go to a very dark place.
I look at that now, and ask why. The answer came to me the way it did for my 'sometimes i like to feel weak' post. I realize that I look at defeat as a way to rest and rebound.
There's got to be more productive ways to rest and rejuvenate, but I choose the dark places - the baser impulses - to relax. It's because i have difficulty thinking of myself worthy. That difficulty extends to avoiding planning for my rest.
I put myself behind then I'm always behind and that's proof that I'm not worthy to treat myself better.
Another silly belief discovered.
Where the F are we going?
This blog was started to chronicle my progression from essentially a victim of circumstance- past and present - to being a captain of my own life. Now, over two years later, I am facing the same sorts of issues, compunded by my parental responsibilities.
My primary effort was to focus on my career. To rise up the ladder and get into a position where I would give myself the freedom to make the right decsions for myself, my friends, and my family.
Secondarily, I made a big push to become enlightened, which I define as being free from worldly bs: caring about what ppl think about me; wanting to keep up with the jones's; not falling into depression and isolation. It's also fountain for love and understanding in dealing with others.
Back then, I thought I could be both. I remember joining What is Enlightenment and talking about how I wanted affluence and englightenment. I remember their patient and gracious reponses - talking about how difficult and perhaps unnecessary that goal was.
I now realize that I dont want both. I just want enlightenment, as I currently understand it. The pursuit of affluence, i now realize, just creates a constant struggle for survival. Possessions become something that have to be defended and focus on them is too great. It pulls one away from love and family, i think.
Survival, however, is no fantastic thing, and I have no idea how to 'survive' in the physical sense (not to mention how to provide that for my family) if I were to openly pursue enlightenment. I want to be a better person. I want to be with my family and connect specifically with humanity and generally with God's creations. I want my little child to be a strong, loving, transcendant person who is a great friend, lover, mother, wife - a whole person not defined by her posessions or career title. My wife wants these same things, but somehow we're not connecting on this topic.
So, onward i work. stuggling to survive, seperated from love, at a shared income of $300k. How absurd.
There's a better life waiting for us. A life that let's us travel; a life that gives us plenty of time to deepen relationships with friends and family; a life that encourages us to ask the big questions and share the answers; a life that is filled with growth and meaning. An enlightened life.
There are obstacles to this life, though.
My primary effort was to focus on my career. To rise up the ladder and get into a position where I would give myself the freedom to make the right decsions for myself, my friends, and my family.
Secondarily, I made a big push to become enlightened, which I define as being free from worldly bs: caring about what ppl think about me; wanting to keep up with the jones's; not falling into depression and isolation. It's also fountain for love and understanding in dealing with others.
Back then, I thought I could be both. I remember joining What is Enlightenment and talking about how I wanted affluence and englightenment. I remember their patient and gracious reponses - talking about how difficult and perhaps unnecessary that goal was.
I now realize that I dont want both. I just want enlightenment, as I currently understand it. The pursuit of affluence, i now realize, just creates a constant struggle for survival. Possessions become something that have to be defended and focus on them is too great. It pulls one away from love and family, i think.
Survival, however, is no fantastic thing, and I have no idea how to 'survive' in the physical sense (not to mention how to provide that for my family) if I were to openly pursue enlightenment. I want to be a better person. I want to be with my family and connect specifically with humanity and generally with God's creations. I want my little child to be a strong, loving, transcendant person who is a great friend, lover, mother, wife - a whole person not defined by her posessions or career title. My wife wants these same things, but somehow we're not connecting on this topic.
So, onward i work. stuggling to survive, seperated from love, at a shared income of $300k. How absurd.
There's a better life waiting for us. A life that let's us travel; a life that gives us plenty of time to deepen relationships with friends and family; a life that encourages us to ask the big questions and share the answers; a life that is filled with growth and meaning. An enlightened life.
There are obstacles to this life, though.
- We dont know how much money need
- We dont have any clarity on what an enlightened life looks like
- We dont have any precedent on the pragmatic aspects of an enlightened life
- We need a grip on our financials
- We're probably too worried what other ppl think
- Obviously, we have no plan fwd
Monday, August 18, 2008
The Secret
I was deconstructing The Secret ( http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Rhonda-Byrne/dp/1582701709/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219064496&sr=8-1 ) and was fast coming to the conclusion that it was very 'external' in nature. That these things ppl were getting, were all from the outside - new car, career, house, etc.
Since my last few posts, I've been very conscious of possessions, and so thinking about The Secret gave me a mixed set of feelings that I can be generating positive vibes, but within a materialistic context.
I keep asking myself - what will i be doing in 10 20 30 years?? I've worked hard to get where I am, but it feels empty.
All last night and this am, I was praying about this and hoping I'd come to some sort of realization about what my goals for the future should be. Then I realized some things:
I am afraid of myself.
I dont treat myself well - mostly b/c of the bs I subscribe to. After conteomplating it, i dont really have anything to be afraid of. I think it's just old habits and old memories that make me think I'm afraid.
Actually as I think of it, I really don't treat myself well at all. Again, here's an opportunity to look at that statement through an enlightenment context. So, if I was going to treat myself well, I'd not create issues for myself by not thinking things through. I'd think them through to the logical conclusion. I'd also find the energy to do nice things for myself that could reap rewards now and in the future.
I'd look at my whole self, my family included, and think about their treatment also. The primary thought fueling all of this would be LOVE and I would create within me and around me a focus on living well, within an enlightenment context.
It's the cool side project I've been looking for, and it's THE gateway to the bigger questions I've been asking about my future.
Since my last few posts, I've been very conscious of possessions, and so thinking about The Secret gave me a mixed set of feelings that I can be generating positive vibes, but within a materialistic context.
I keep asking myself - what will i be doing in 10 20 30 years?? I've worked hard to get where I am, but it feels empty.
All last night and this am, I was praying about this and hoping I'd come to some sort of realization about what my goals for the future should be. Then I realized some things:
I am afraid of myself.
I dont treat myself well - mostly b/c of the bs I subscribe to. After conteomplating it, i dont really have anything to be afraid of. I think it's just old habits and old memories that make me think I'm afraid.
Actually as I think of it, I really don't treat myself well at all. Again, here's an opportunity to look at that statement through an enlightenment context. So, if I was going to treat myself well, I'd not create issues for myself by not thinking things through. I'd think them through to the logical conclusion. I'd also find the energy to do nice things for myself that could reap rewards now and in the future.
I'd look at my whole self, my family included, and think about their treatment also. The primary thought fueling all of this would be LOVE and I would create within me and around me a focus on living well, within an enlightenment context.
It's the cool side project I've been looking for, and it's THE gateway to the bigger questions I've been asking about my future.
Saturday, August 09, 2008
A Life Worth Living
The Solzhenitsyn Obituary, posted below, resonates with me as I sit at my office desk on a Saturday, preparing for a long day's work.
Again I work for something that doesnt give me hope. Again I wrestle with the burdens of colluding with mgmt toward my failure. Again, I calculate the outcome of long hours and sloppy personal finances.
The stuggle for humanity..hmmmm. What I am I struggling for? Survival, I guess. Seems silly for a family that makes in excess of $300k to struggle for that. Since life is about struggle, in a lot of ways, it would seem that I have a choice over what to struggle for. I could struggle for crap. I could struggle for ..... uh,
I could struggle for .....?
Something other than crap?
Lame.
If Enlightenment is seeing and noticing and learning from that.Then I need to get started. Meditation is the first step toward understanding what I should be shooting for.
Cerebrality is not the only way. Going forward relying solely on that self-debate is just theatre.
Again I work for something that doesnt give me hope. Again I wrestle with the burdens of colluding with mgmt toward my failure. Again, I calculate the outcome of long hours and sloppy personal finances.
The stuggle for humanity..hmmmm. What I am I struggling for? Survival, I guess. Seems silly for a family that makes in excess of $300k to struggle for that. Since life is about struggle, in a lot of ways, it would seem that I have a choice over what to struggle for. I could struggle for crap. I could struggle for ..... uh,
I could struggle for .....?
Something other than crap?
Lame.
If Enlightenment is seeing and noticing and learning from that.Then I need to get started. Meditation is the first step toward understanding what I should be shooting for.
Cerebrality is not the only way. Going forward relying solely on that self-debate is just theatre.
Solzhenitsyn Obit
Literature
Solzhenitsyn, Optimist
In his struggle with the Soviets, he had the last laugh
By EDWARD E. ERICSON JR.
August 9, 2008; Page W12
Imagine a weak little calf butting his head against a huge, immovable oak tree, naïvely thinking he could knock it down. In Alexander Solzhenitsyn's memoirs titled "The Oak and the Calf," the Soviet regime was the oak, Solzhenitsyn was the calf, and the book describes their battle to the death. The Soviet Union came crashing down in 1991, with the Red flag lowered from the Kremlin's ramparts for the last time on Dec. 25 of that year. The surviving combatant, subject to the fate of all flesh, finally succumbed, too -- on Aug. 3, 2008. After a day at his desk doing what he did every day for years and years, he felt sick as evening fell, gave final instructions to his wife and a son about the disposition of his writings, and slipped away before midnight. Thus ended one of the most sensational and consequential lives of the era.
Corbis
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One of the exaggerations that many cultural sophisticates hold about Solzhenitsyn is that he was a dour Jeremiah figure hurling thunderous judgments at a wayward world. He did some of that; his courage earned him the right. "No one can bar the road to truth," he declaimed in 1967, as his combat with brute force raged, "and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death." Dedication to a mission in life moved him beyond the potentially hedonistic platitude that "you have only one life" to the counter-principle that "you have only one conscience, too," as Innokenty Volodin puts it in "The First Circle." But see in "Invisible Allies" his boyish fun in the high-stakes game of outfoxing the plodding secret police as he and his helpers keep the manuscripts of "The Gulag Archipelago" away from the Unsleeping Eye. And don't miss the wry irony of Solzhenitsyn as silly calf. The self-deprecation masks a little joke: The calf will win.
Solzhenitsyn has described himself as "an unshakable optimist." On a dark day when one of his helpers had been arrested and interrogated and ended up dead (who knows how?), he could "raise a defiant battle cry: Victory is ours! With God's aid we shall yet prevail!" Virtually every one of Solzhenitsyn's works, of whatever type or length, ends on the note of hope. This is not an accident or affectation; it is a revelation of character and statement of faith. In seeing him as he isn't, we err.
What could his mortal foe do about Solzhenitsyn's great weapon, "The Gulag Archipelago," first published in the 1970s? Solzhenitsyn was "sure" that "Gulag" "was destined to affect the course of history," and early reviews reinforced his optimism. A German newspaper editorialized, "The time may come when we date the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet system from the appearance of Gulag." Diplomat George Kennan said that this "greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime" would stick in "the craw of the Soviet propaganda machine . . . with increasing discomfort, until it has done its work."
A SOLZHENITSYN READER
(With dates of U.S. publication)
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev miscalculated when he approved the appearance of this novella in the literary journal Novy Mir. He saw this story, set in the prison camp at Ekibastuz, where Solzhenitsyn was held for a while, as useful in his de-Stalinization campaign. In fact, the work was not only anti-Stalinist but anti-Soviet.
• The First Circle (1968) is a novel grounded in autobiography and set in December 1949 in a prison research institute on the outskirts of Moscow. It was there that Solzhenitsyn came to reject Marxism-Leninism. His intellectual odyssey is traced through his fictional alter ego, Gleb Nerzhin.
• Cancer Ward (1968) is based on Solzhenitsyn's own bout with cancer, diagnosed as terminal when he was 34. The novel is set in a clinic in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where he went for treatment, but its focus is more moral than medical.
• The Gulag Archipelago (1973, 1975, 1978). This seven-part nonfiction work, published in three volumes, traces the history of the Soviet concentration-camp system from its 1918 beginnings to 1956, when Solzhenitsyn was released from its grip. He makes his case against the system that produced this massive instrument of arbitrary punishment as only an artist could. Arguably, no literary work of this era -- perhaps any era -- has had such a profound impact on the world history of its own time.
• The Oak and the Calf (1979). These memoirs are the author's account of his struggles with the Soviet regime through the 1960s and into the 1970s -- the period when people around the world kept abreast of his courageous defiance of the repressive state. The narrative has all the tension and verve of a good novel, and numerous critics say it rivals his novels in its literary attainment. One part was withheld until after the Soviet Union collapsed, because it included the names of many of the helpers who handled his literary texts; it appeared in English as a separate book, Invisible Allies (1995).
• The Red Wheel. Solzhenitsyn considered this 5,000-page work, intermingling fiction and history, to be his magnum opus, believing that the story of Russia in the 20th century holds paradigmatic lessons for the world. Only two of its four installments have appeared in English: August 1914 (1989) describes the manifold weaknesses of the czarist regime, which left it unprepared for World War I. November 1916 (1999) tells of a time when carefully considered action needed to be taken on behalf of the nation but was not.
--Edward E. Ericson Jr.
Solzhenitsyn, for his part, instructed us early in the book that if all we expected from it was a political exposé, we should "slam its covers shut right now." It is more than a history of Lenin's concentration-camp system; it is a literary investigation, the work of an artist. An "ordinary brave man" could decide "not to participate in lies, not to support false actions." But "it is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! For in the struggle with lies art has always triumphed and shall always triumph!" Solzhenitsyn was not the first witness to speak truthfully about the gulag. But because he was an artist, he was the first one able to make us all hear it and believe it. There is no answering "the many-throated groan, the dying whisper of millions" that he transmitted.
The Soviet establishment proved supremely vulnerable when no one, not even the leaders, any longer believed in the ideological myth. The New Soviet Man never got created. The classless society never materialized. Government was certainly not withering away. Democratic centralism was all centralism. The dictatorship of the proletariat was all dictatorship. What the Soviet system produced, after three generations of trying, was a self-perpetuating, sclerotic regime hanging onto power for power's and comfort's sake. No one will die for that. Solzhenitsyn, more than anyone else, delegitimized the Soviet experiment at home and discredited it abroad. It helped to have people pushing against the tottering tower from the outside, but external pressures are of less consequence than demolition charges ignited from the inside.
What could the guardians of "the lie" do with this truth-telling renegade? They could kick him out of their paradise. It is a real loss for a literary artist not to be surrounded by his native language. Yet, in the end, exile was a paltry, pathetic punishment for the enormity of his offense. The Soviet leaders did guess correctly that this sometimes-prickly fellow would become a burr under someone else's saddle. The West of course welcomed him like a conquering hero. But soon enough he alienated some; he had his cultured despisers. The impatient man's tone too readily turned stentorian, peremptory; he was inattentive to the social niceties that lubricate good relationships. Still, he was much more sinned against than sinning.
The squalls of yore are fading. Time will tell if this week's evenhanded obituaries signal merely momentary respect for the newly dead or augur better days ahead for Solzhenitsyn's reputation.
In his struggle with the Soviets, Solzhenitsyn had the last laugh. He had predicted through all his 20 years in exile that he would return to Russia in the flesh. He set three requirements for his return: that his citizenship be restored, that the charge of treason be dropped, and that all his works be published at home. In other words, the Soviet Union would have to collapse first. All of this happened just as he predicted, and he moved back to Russia in 1994. Such prescience is rare.
When Solzhenitsyn landed in the West back in 1974, Harrison Salisbury mused: "Against a powerful state stands a single man. . . . The odds against Solzhenitsyn seem tremendous. Yet I know of no Russian writer who would not trade his soul for Solzhenitsyn's mantle, who does not know that one hundred years from now all the world . . . will bow to his name when most others have been forgotten." Two-thirds of a century remain before the running time for this prediction is up. Meanwhile, one should not bet against Solzhenitsyn, the man who had been so right so often about so much.
Oh, that winning side he was on? It was not the West over the East but humanity over anti-humanity.
Solzhenitsyn, Optimist
In his struggle with the Soviets, he had the last laugh
By EDWARD E. ERICSON JR.
August 9, 2008; Page W12
Imagine a weak little calf butting his head against a huge, immovable oak tree, naïvely thinking he could knock it down. In Alexander Solzhenitsyn's memoirs titled "The Oak and the Calf," the Soviet regime was the oak, Solzhenitsyn was the calf, and the book describes their battle to the death. The Soviet Union came crashing down in 1991, with the Red flag lowered from the Kremlin's ramparts for the last time on Dec. 25 of that year. The surviving combatant, subject to the fate of all flesh, finally succumbed, too -- on Aug. 3, 2008. After a day at his desk doing what he did every day for years and years, he felt sick as evening fell, gave final instructions to his wife and a son about the disposition of his writings, and slipped away before midnight. Thus ended one of the most sensational and consequential lives of the era.
Corbis
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One of the exaggerations that many cultural sophisticates hold about Solzhenitsyn is that he was a dour Jeremiah figure hurling thunderous judgments at a wayward world. He did some of that; his courage earned him the right. "No one can bar the road to truth," he declaimed in 1967, as his combat with brute force raged, "and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death." Dedication to a mission in life moved him beyond the potentially hedonistic platitude that "you have only one life" to the counter-principle that "you have only one conscience, too," as Innokenty Volodin puts it in "The First Circle." But see in "Invisible Allies" his boyish fun in the high-stakes game of outfoxing the plodding secret police as he and his helpers keep the manuscripts of "The Gulag Archipelago" away from the Unsleeping Eye. And don't miss the wry irony of Solzhenitsyn as silly calf. The self-deprecation masks a little joke: The calf will win.
Solzhenitsyn has described himself as "an unshakable optimist." On a dark day when one of his helpers had been arrested and interrogated and ended up dead (who knows how?), he could "raise a defiant battle cry: Victory is ours! With God's aid we shall yet prevail!" Virtually every one of Solzhenitsyn's works, of whatever type or length, ends on the note of hope. This is not an accident or affectation; it is a revelation of character and statement of faith. In seeing him as he isn't, we err.
What could his mortal foe do about Solzhenitsyn's great weapon, "The Gulag Archipelago," first published in the 1970s? Solzhenitsyn was "sure" that "Gulag" "was destined to affect the course of history," and early reviews reinforced his optimism. A German newspaper editorialized, "The time may come when we date the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet system from the appearance of Gulag." Diplomat George Kennan said that this "greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime" would stick in "the craw of the Soviet propaganda machine . . . with increasing discomfort, until it has done its work."
A SOLZHENITSYN READER
(With dates of U.S. publication)
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev miscalculated when he approved the appearance of this novella in the literary journal Novy Mir. He saw this story, set in the prison camp at Ekibastuz, where Solzhenitsyn was held for a while, as useful in his de-Stalinization campaign. In fact, the work was not only anti-Stalinist but anti-Soviet.
• The First Circle (1968) is a novel grounded in autobiography and set in December 1949 in a prison research institute on the outskirts of Moscow. It was there that Solzhenitsyn came to reject Marxism-Leninism. His intellectual odyssey is traced through his fictional alter ego, Gleb Nerzhin.
• Cancer Ward (1968) is based on Solzhenitsyn's own bout with cancer, diagnosed as terminal when he was 34. The novel is set in a clinic in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where he went for treatment, but its focus is more moral than medical.
• The Gulag Archipelago (1973, 1975, 1978). This seven-part nonfiction work, published in three volumes, traces the history of the Soviet concentration-camp system from its 1918 beginnings to 1956, when Solzhenitsyn was released from its grip. He makes his case against the system that produced this massive instrument of arbitrary punishment as only an artist could. Arguably, no literary work of this era -- perhaps any era -- has had such a profound impact on the world history of its own time.
• The Oak and the Calf (1979). These memoirs are the author's account of his struggles with the Soviet regime through the 1960s and into the 1970s -- the period when people around the world kept abreast of his courageous defiance of the repressive state. The narrative has all the tension and verve of a good novel, and numerous critics say it rivals his novels in its literary attainment. One part was withheld until after the Soviet Union collapsed, because it included the names of many of the helpers who handled his literary texts; it appeared in English as a separate book, Invisible Allies (1995).
• The Red Wheel. Solzhenitsyn considered this 5,000-page work, intermingling fiction and history, to be his magnum opus, believing that the story of Russia in the 20th century holds paradigmatic lessons for the world. Only two of its four installments have appeared in English: August 1914 (1989) describes the manifold weaknesses of the czarist regime, which left it unprepared for World War I. November 1916 (1999) tells of a time when carefully considered action needed to be taken on behalf of the nation but was not.
--Edward E. Ericson Jr.
Solzhenitsyn, for his part, instructed us early in the book that if all we expected from it was a political exposé, we should "slam its covers shut right now." It is more than a history of Lenin's concentration-camp system; it is a literary investigation, the work of an artist. An "ordinary brave man" could decide "not to participate in lies, not to support false actions." But "it is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! For in the struggle with lies art has always triumphed and shall always triumph!" Solzhenitsyn was not the first witness to speak truthfully about the gulag. But because he was an artist, he was the first one able to make us all hear it and believe it. There is no answering "the many-throated groan, the dying whisper of millions" that he transmitted.
The Soviet establishment proved supremely vulnerable when no one, not even the leaders, any longer believed in the ideological myth. The New Soviet Man never got created. The classless society never materialized. Government was certainly not withering away. Democratic centralism was all centralism. The dictatorship of the proletariat was all dictatorship. What the Soviet system produced, after three generations of trying, was a self-perpetuating, sclerotic regime hanging onto power for power's and comfort's sake. No one will die for that. Solzhenitsyn, more than anyone else, delegitimized the Soviet experiment at home and discredited it abroad. It helped to have people pushing against the tottering tower from the outside, but external pressures are of less consequence than demolition charges ignited from the inside.
What could the guardians of "the lie" do with this truth-telling renegade? They could kick him out of their paradise. It is a real loss for a literary artist not to be surrounded by his native language. Yet, in the end, exile was a paltry, pathetic punishment for the enormity of his offense. The Soviet leaders did guess correctly that this sometimes-prickly fellow would become a burr under someone else's saddle. The West of course welcomed him like a conquering hero. But soon enough he alienated some; he had his cultured despisers. The impatient man's tone too readily turned stentorian, peremptory; he was inattentive to the social niceties that lubricate good relationships. Still, he was much more sinned against than sinning.
The squalls of yore are fading. Time will tell if this week's evenhanded obituaries signal merely momentary respect for the newly dead or augur better days ahead for Solzhenitsyn's reputation.
In his struggle with the Soviets, Solzhenitsyn had the last laugh. He had predicted through all his 20 years in exile that he would return to Russia in the flesh. He set three requirements for his return: that his citizenship be restored, that the charge of treason be dropped, and that all his works be published at home. In other words, the Soviet Union would have to collapse first. All of this happened just as he predicted, and he moved back to Russia in 1994. Such prescience is rare.
When Solzhenitsyn landed in the West back in 1974, Harrison Salisbury mused: "Against a powerful state stands a single man. . . . The odds against Solzhenitsyn seem tremendous. Yet I know of no Russian writer who would not trade his soul for Solzhenitsyn's mantle, who does not know that one hundred years from now all the world . . . will bow to his name when most others have been forgotten." Two-thirds of a century remain before the running time for this prediction is up. Meanwhile, one should not bet against Solzhenitsyn, the man who had been so right so often about so much.
Oh, that winning side he was on? It was not the West over the East but humanity over anti-humanity.
Solzhenitsyn Obit
Literature
Solzhenitsyn, Optimist
In his struggle with the Soviets, he had the last laugh
By EDWARD E. ERICSON JR.
August 9, 2008; Page W12
Imagine a weak little calf butting his head against a huge, immovable oak tree, naïvely thinking he could knock it down. In Alexander Solzhenitsyn's memoirs titled "The Oak and the Calf," the Soviet regime was the oak, Solzhenitsyn was the calf, and the book describes their battle to the death. The Soviet Union came crashing down in 1991, with the Red flag lowered from the Kremlin's ramparts for the last time on Dec. 25 of that year. The surviving combatant, subject to the fate of all flesh, finally succumbed, too -- on Aug. 3, 2008. After a day at his desk doing what he did every day for years and years, he felt sick as evening fell, gave final instructions to his wife and a son about the disposition of his writings, and slipped away before midnight. Thus ended one of the most sensational and consequential lives of the era.
Corbis
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One of the exaggerations that many cultural sophisticates hold about Solzhenitsyn is that he was a dour Jeremiah figure hurling thunderous judgments at a wayward world. He did some of that; his courage earned him the right. "No one can bar the road to truth," he declaimed in 1967, as his combat with brute force raged, "and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death." Dedication to a mission in life moved him beyond the potentially hedonistic platitude that "you have only one life" to the counter-principle that "you have only one conscience, too," as Innokenty Volodin puts it in "The First Circle." But see in "Invisible Allies" his boyish fun in the high-stakes game of outfoxing the plodding secret police as he and his helpers keep the manuscripts of "The Gulag Archipelago" away from the Unsleeping Eye. And don't miss the wry irony of Solzhenitsyn as silly calf. The self-deprecation masks a little joke: The calf will win.
Solzhenitsyn has described himself as "an unshakable optimist." On a dark day when one of his helpers had been arrested and interrogated and ended up dead (who knows how?), he could "raise a defiant battle cry: Victory is ours! With God's aid we shall yet prevail!" Virtually every one of Solzhenitsyn's works, of whatever type or length, ends on the note of hope. This is not an accident or affectation; it is a revelation of character and statement of faith. In seeing him as he isn't, we err.
What could his mortal foe do about Solzhenitsyn's great weapon, "The Gulag Archipelago," first published in the 1970s? Solzhenitsyn was "sure" that "Gulag" "was destined to affect the course of history," and early reviews reinforced his optimism. A German newspaper editorialized, "The time may come when we date the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet system from the appearance of Gulag." Diplomat George Kennan said that this "greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime" would stick in "the craw of the Soviet propaganda machine . . . with increasing discomfort, until it has done its work."
A SOLZHENITSYN READER
(With dates of U.S. publication)
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev miscalculated when he approved the appearance of this novella in the literary journal Novy Mir. He saw this story, set in the prison camp at Ekibastuz, where Solzhenitsyn was held for a while, as useful in his de-Stalinization campaign. In fact, the work was not only anti-Stalinist but anti-Soviet.
• The First Circle (1968) is a novel grounded in autobiography and set in December 1949 in a prison research institute on the outskirts of Moscow. It was there that Solzhenitsyn came to reject Marxism-Leninism. His intellectual odyssey is traced through his fictional alter ego, Gleb Nerzhin.
• Cancer Ward (1968) is based on Solzhenitsyn's own bout with cancer, diagnosed as terminal when he was 34. The novel is set in a clinic in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where he went for treatment, but its focus is more moral than medical.
• The Gulag Archipelago (1973, 1975, 1978). This seven-part nonfiction work, published in three volumes, traces the history of the Soviet concentration-camp system from its 1918 beginnings to 1956, when Solzhenitsyn was released from its grip. He makes his case against the system that produced this massive instrument of arbitrary punishment as only an artist could. Arguably, no literary work of this era -- perhaps any era -- has had such a profound impact on the world history of its own time.
• The Oak and the Calf (1979). These memoirs are the author's account of his struggles with the Soviet regime through the 1960s and into the 1970s -- the period when people around the world kept abreast of his courageous defiance of the repressive state. The narrative has all the tension and verve of a good novel, and numerous critics say it rivals his novels in its literary attainment. One part was withheld until after the Soviet Union collapsed, because it included the names of many of the helpers who handled his literary texts; it appeared in English as a separate book, Invisible Allies (1995).
• The Red Wheel. Solzhenitsyn considered this 5,000-page work, intermingling fiction and history, to be his magnum opus, believing that the story of Russia in the 20th century holds paradigmatic lessons for the world. Only two of its four installments have appeared in English: August 1914 (1989) describes the manifold weaknesses of the czarist regime, which left it unprepared for World War I. November 1916 (1999) tells of a time when carefully considered action needed to be taken on behalf of the nation but was not.
--Edward E. Ericson Jr.
Solzhenitsyn, for his part, instructed us early in the book that if all we expected from it was a political exposé, we should "slam its covers shut right now." It is more than a history of Lenin's concentration-camp system; it is a literary investigation, the work of an artist. An "ordinary brave man" could decide "not to participate in lies, not to support false actions." But "it is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! For in the struggle with lies art has always triumphed and shall always triumph!" Solzhenitsyn was not the first witness to speak truthfully about the gulag. But because he was an artist, he was the first one able to make us all hear it and believe it. There is no answering "the many-throated groan, the dying whisper of millions" that he transmitted.
The Soviet establishment proved supremely vulnerable when no one, not even the leaders, any longer believed in the ideological myth. The New Soviet Man never got created. The classless society never materialized. Government was certainly not withering away. Democratic centralism was all centralism. The dictatorship of the proletariat was all dictatorship. What the Soviet system produced, after three generations of trying, was a self-perpetuating, sclerotic regime hanging onto power for power's and comfort's sake. No one will die for that. Solzhenitsyn, more than anyone else, delegitimized the Soviet experiment at home and discredited it abroad. It helped to have people pushing against the tottering tower from the outside, but external pressures are of less consequence than demolition charges ignited from the inside.
What could the guardians of "the lie" do with this truth-telling renegade? They could kick him out of their paradise. It is a real loss for a literary artist not to be surrounded by his native language. Yet, in the end, exile was a paltry, pathetic punishment for the enormity of his offense. The Soviet leaders did guess correctly that this sometimes-prickly fellow would become a burr under someone else's saddle. The West of course welcomed him like a conquering hero. But soon enough he alienated some; he had his cultured despisers. The impatient man's tone too readily turned stentorian, peremptory; he was inattentive to the social niceties that lubricate good relationships. Still, he was much more sinned against than sinning.
The squalls of yore are fading. Time will tell if this week's evenhanded obituaries signal merely momentary respect for the newly dead or augur better days ahead for Solzhenitsyn's reputation.
In his struggle with the Soviets, Solzhenitsyn had the last laugh. He had predicted through all his 20 years in exile that he would return to Russia in the flesh. He set three requirements for his return: that his citizenship be restored, that the charge of treason be dropped, and that all his works be published at home. In other words, the Soviet Union would have to collapse first. All of this happened just as he predicted, and he moved back to Russia in 1994. Such prescience is rare.
When Solzhenitsyn landed in the West back in 1974, Harrison Salisbury mused: "Against a powerful state stands a single man. . . . The odds against Solzhenitsyn seem tremendous. Yet I know of no Russian writer who would not trade his soul for Solzhenitsyn's mantle, who does not know that one hundred years from now all the world . . . will bow to his name when most others have been forgotten." Two-thirds of a century remain before the running time for this prediction is up. Meanwhile, one should not bet against Solzhenitsyn, the man who had been so right so often about so much.
Oh, that winning side he was on? It was not the West over the East but humanity over anti-humanity.
Solzhenitsyn, Optimist
In his struggle with the Soviets, he had the last laugh
By EDWARD E. ERICSON JR.
August 9, 2008; Page W12
Imagine a weak little calf butting his head against a huge, immovable oak tree, naïvely thinking he could knock it down. In Alexander Solzhenitsyn's memoirs titled "The Oak and the Calf," the Soviet regime was the oak, Solzhenitsyn was the calf, and the book describes their battle to the death. The Soviet Union came crashing down in 1991, with the Red flag lowered from the Kremlin's ramparts for the last time on Dec. 25 of that year. The surviving combatant, subject to the fate of all flesh, finally succumbed, too -- on Aug. 3, 2008. After a day at his desk doing what he did every day for years and years, he felt sick as evening fell, gave final instructions to his wife and a son about the disposition of his writings, and slipped away before midnight. Thus ended one of the most sensational and consequential lives of the era.
Corbis
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One of the exaggerations that many cultural sophisticates hold about Solzhenitsyn is that he was a dour Jeremiah figure hurling thunderous judgments at a wayward world. He did some of that; his courage earned him the right. "No one can bar the road to truth," he declaimed in 1967, as his combat with brute force raged, "and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death." Dedication to a mission in life moved him beyond the potentially hedonistic platitude that "you have only one life" to the counter-principle that "you have only one conscience, too," as Innokenty Volodin puts it in "The First Circle." But see in "Invisible Allies" his boyish fun in the high-stakes game of outfoxing the plodding secret police as he and his helpers keep the manuscripts of "The Gulag Archipelago" away from the Unsleeping Eye. And don't miss the wry irony of Solzhenitsyn as silly calf. The self-deprecation masks a little joke: The calf will win.
Solzhenitsyn has described himself as "an unshakable optimist." On a dark day when one of his helpers had been arrested and interrogated and ended up dead (who knows how?), he could "raise a defiant battle cry: Victory is ours! With God's aid we shall yet prevail!" Virtually every one of Solzhenitsyn's works, of whatever type or length, ends on the note of hope. This is not an accident or affectation; it is a revelation of character and statement of faith. In seeing him as he isn't, we err.
What could his mortal foe do about Solzhenitsyn's great weapon, "The Gulag Archipelago," first published in the 1970s? Solzhenitsyn was "sure" that "Gulag" "was destined to affect the course of history," and early reviews reinforced his optimism. A German newspaper editorialized, "The time may come when we date the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet system from the appearance of Gulag." Diplomat George Kennan said that this "greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime" would stick in "the craw of the Soviet propaganda machine . . . with increasing discomfort, until it has done its work."
A SOLZHENITSYN READER
(With dates of U.S. publication)
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev miscalculated when he approved the appearance of this novella in the literary journal Novy Mir. He saw this story, set in the prison camp at Ekibastuz, where Solzhenitsyn was held for a while, as useful in his de-Stalinization campaign. In fact, the work was not only anti-Stalinist but anti-Soviet.
• The First Circle (1968) is a novel grounded in autobiography and set in December 1949 in a prison research institute on the outskirts of Moscow. It was there that Solzhenitsyn came to reject Marxism-Leninism. His intellectual odyssey is traced through his fictional alter ego, Gleb Nerzhin.
• Cancer Ward (1968) is based on Solzhenitsyn's own bout with cancer, diagnosed as terminal when he was 34. The novel is set in a clinic in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where he went for treatment, but its focus is more moral than medical.
• The Gulag Archipelago (1973, 1975, 1978). This seven-part nonfiction work, published in three volumes, traces the history of the Soviet concentration-camp system from its 1918 beginnings to 1956, when Solzhenitsyn was released from its grip. He makes his case against the system that produced this massive instrument of arbitrary punishment as only an artist could. Arguably, no literary work of this era -- perhaps any era -- has had such a profound impact on the world history of its own time.
• The Oak and the Calf (1979). These memoirs are the author's account of his struggles with the Soviet regime through the 1960s and into the 1970s -- the period when people around the world kept abreast of his courageous defiance of the repressive state. The narrative has all the tension and verve of a good novel, and numerous critics say it rivals his novels in its literary attainment. One part was withheld until after the Soviet Union collapsed, because it included the names of many of the helpers who handled his literary texts; it appeared in English as a separate book, Invisible Allies (1995).
• The Red Wheel. Solzhenitsyn considered this 5,000-page work, intermingling fiction and history, to be his magnum opus, believing that the story of Russia in the 20th century holds paradigmatic lessons for the world. Only two of its four installments have appeared in English: August 1914 (1989) describes the manifold weaknesses of the czarist regime, which left it unprepared for World War I. November 1916 (1999) tells of a time when carefully considered action needed to be taken on behalf of the nation but was not.
--Edward E. Ericson Jr.
Solzhenitsyn, for his part, instructed us early in the book that if all we expected from it was a political exposé, we should "slam its covers shut right now." It is more than a history of Lenin's concentration-camp system; it is a literary investigation, the work of an artist. An "ordinary brave man" could decide "not to participate in lies, not to support false actions." But "it is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie! For in the struggle with lies art has always triumphed and shall always triumph!" Solzhenitsyn was not the first witness to speak truthfully about the gulag. But because he was an artist, he was the first one able to make us all hear it and believe it. There is no answering "the many-throated groan, the dying whisper of millions" that he transmitted.
The Soviet establishment proved supremely vulnerable when no one, not even the leaders, any longer believed in the ideological myth. The New Soviet Man never got created. The classless society never materialized. Government was certainly not withering away. Democratic centralism was all centralism. The dictatorship of the proletariat was all dictatorship. What the Soviet system produced, after three generations of trying, was a self-perpetuating, sclerotic regime hanging onto power for power's and comfort's sake. No one will die for that. Solzhenitsyn, more than anyone else, delegitimized the Soviet experiment at home and discredited it abroad. It helped to have people pushing against the tottering tower from the outside, but external pressures are of less consequence than demolition charges ignited from the inside.
What could the guardians of "the lie" do with this truth-telling renegade? They could kick him out of their paradise. It is a real loss for a literary artist not to be surrounded by his native language. Yet, in the end, exile was a paltry, pathetic punishment for the enormity of his offense. The Soviet leaders did guess correctly that this sometimes-prickly fellow would become a burr under someone else's saddle. The West of course welcomed him like a conquering hero. But soon enough he alienated some; he had his cultured despisers. The impatient man's tone too readily turned stentorian, peremptory; he was inattentive to the social niceties that lubricate good relationships. Still, he was much more sinned against than sinning.
The squalls of yore are fading. Time will tell if this week's evenhanded obituaries signal merely momentary respect for the newly dead or augur better days ahead for Solzhenitsyn's reputation.
In his struggle with the Soviets, Solzhenitsyn had the last laugh. He had predicted through all his 20 years in exile that he would return to Russia in the flesh. He set three requirements for his return: that his citizenship be restored, that the charge of treason be dropped, and that all his works be published at home. In other words, the Soviet Union would have to collapse first. All of this happened just as he predicted, and he moved back to Russia in 1994. Such prescience is rare.
When Solzhenitsyn landed in the West back in 1974, Harrison Salisbury mused: "Against a powerful state stands a single man. . . . The odds against Solzhenitsyn seem tremendous. Yet I know of no Russian writer who would not trade his soul for Solzhenitsyn's mantle, who does not know that one hundred years from now all the world . . . will bow to his name when most others have been forgotten." Two-thirds of a century remain before the running time for this prediction is up. Meanwhile, one should not bet against Solzhenitsyn, the man who had been so right so often about so much.
Oh, that winning side he was on? It was not the West over the East but humanity over anti-humanity.
Friday, August 08, 2008
The Weight of Living
There will always be Need.
Needing posessions. Needing external emotional support. Needing physical gratification.
Denying my needs is as naive as indulging in them.
I've been occilating for years between the twin time-wasters of denying and indulging. Doing so has stalled my enlightenment.
Noticing these two, and being patient with what I notice, is going to be really important. I'll chronicle my observations going forward, but right away, I can see that i use my ego to wrestle with life's challenges v. observing them and learning from them.
I find myself being drawn into wanting to meditate. That's a first.
Needing posessions. Needing external emotional support. Needing physical gratification.
Denying my needs is as naive as indulging in them.
I've been occilating for years between the twin time-wasters of denying and indulging. Doing so has stalled my enlightenment.
Noticing these two, and being patient with what I notice, is going to be really important. I'll chronicle my observations going forward, but right away, I can see that i use my ego to wrestle with life's challenges v. observing them and learning from them.
I find myself being drawn into wanting to meditate. That's a first.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
in out
a couple of nights ago, i listened to a meditation tape that called for 'breathing in pain (mine and others') and breathing out compassion.
It was an AWESOME way to explain how to confront the previously unconfrontable. My whole life, I've been avoiding ANYthing that has to do with facing various issues, mostly havinig to do with taking personal responsibility for not thinking things through to their logical outcome. This is where the new behavior of doing the work of worry comes in, and that's very helpful.
Empathizing with others, then releasing it with compassion is a much more profound way of embracing enlightenment while also taking responsibility for follow-through. Breathe in pain. Breathe out compassion.
While I loved, loved, loved the tape, it also seared my brain and I had a very hard time not falling -ok, jumping - off the wagon. I spent a lot of time with porn vids.
It's very disapointing, and shows how far I have to go, still.
The next tape had two questions at the end of it. Something about what am I saying to God with my being. This popped into my head:
I dont know; I dont care; I'm alone.
also very dissapointing.
I'm eager to dig into this, despite the above. It represents an amazing set of growth opportunities on many levels.
I also find myself clinging to the idea that somewhere, somebody wants to fuck my brains out and deliver all of my sexual fantasies. It's bullshit, and a hold over from all that wasted time day dreaming online. It's especially bullshit, since I'm not willing to take any action whatsoever to make it reality.
Mediation is the best way forward. It's helped me a lot so far. I've been praying instead of fantasizing and I can really feel the difference in my self-talk. I want to pursue this and have an enlighted life.
Why do I want to get laid so badly??
It was an AWESOME way to explain how to confront the previously unconfrontable. My whole life, I've been avoiding ANYthing that has to do with facing various issues, mostly havinig to do with taking personal responsibility for not thinking things through to their logical outcome. This is where the new behavior of doing the work of worry comes in, and that's very helpful.
Empathizing with others, then releasing it with compassion is a much more profound way of embracing enlightenment while also taking responsibility for follow-through. Breathe in pain. Breathe out compassion.
While I loved, loved, loved the tape, it also seared my brain and I had a very hard time not falling -ok, jumping - off the wagon. I spent a lot of time with porn vids.
It's very disapointing, and shows how far I have to go, still.
The next tape had two questions at the end of it. Something about what am I saying to God with my being. This popped into my head:
I dont know; I dont care; I'm alone.
also very dissapointing.
I'm eager to dig into this, despite the above. It represents an amazing set of growth opportunities on many levels.
I also find myself clinging to the idea that somewhere, somebody wants to fuck my brains out and deliver all of my sexual fantasies. It's bullshit, and a hold over from all that wasted time day dreaming online. It's especially bullshit, since I'm not willing to take any action whatsoever to make it reality.
Mediation is the best way forward. It's helped me a lot so far. I've been praying instead of fantasizing and I can really feel the difference in my self-talk. I want to pursue this and have an enlighted life.
Why do I want to get laid so badly??
Monday, August 04, 2008
Compassionate Exchange
I just was listening to the podcast Compassionate Exchange and another one about meditation. When I think about my little prison that I've created for myself, it's clear to me that I'm in prison from love and true compassion.
i dont have compassion for myself at all.
i dont have compassion for myself at all.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Enlightenment
It's funny how I'm here. When I started this path, i decided that I really wanted to be in a 'performance' work environment, that I wanted to make a lot of money, and that i wanted to be free from the BS constrains of my current boss.
So I'm here, but i realize - through the process of learning about enlightenment - that my compass was a bit off. I wanted to be rich and enlightened. I didnt realize that those two things are practically opposites of one another, since being enlightened is to trust in the greater flow of consiousness and being rich is to accumulate stuff.
Desipte my income - which has more than doubled since 06 - i still feel like I'm not getting paid enough to deal with the stresses of this job. It's not rewarding at all, and since i'm still in my early 40's, this is just the beginning.
I still have 20 or 25 years ahead of me, and when I think about my profession and my career path during that time frame, i really just dont care. No passionate aspirations come to mind, no visions of grandeur or jacob's ladder of responsibility and perks. When I think of the future, i just see a blank canvas. Or, more ingratitude for a even greater amount of work and saccrifice on my part.
It's just not worth it.
But, what else is?
I've been thinking about some of the patterns I've experienced in my life, and the most obvious is that I can set a course and keep it. I can set out to accomplish a big goal - like being VP of Marketing, making $170k + bonus - and reach it.
That's intersting and gratifying, but as I think about my path toward enlightenment, i wonder how important setting and reaching goals actually is.
Another thought I've had, (and maybe blogged about) is the idea that maybe this job is just a bootcamp to teach me to be more present and disciplined. Naturally I dont want to get fired, so I'm really focused on rising to that challenge, on a personal level.
Lots of questions... no answers yet...
So I'm here, but i realize - through the process of learning about enlightenment - that my compass was a bit off. I wanted to be rich and enlightened. I didnt realize that those two things are practically opposites of one another, since being enlightened is to trust in the greater flow of consiousness and being rich is to accumulate stuff.
Desipte my income - which has more than doubled since 06 - i still feel like I'm not getting paid enough to deal with the stresses of this job. It's not rewarding at all, and since i'm still in my early 40's, this is just the beginning.
I still have 20 or 25 years ahead of me, and when I think about my profession and my career path during that time frame, i really just dont care. No passionate aspirations come to mind, no visions of grandeur or jacob's ladder of responsibility and perks. When I think of the future, i just see a blank canvas. Or, more ingratitude for a even greater amount of work and saccrifice on my part.
It's just not worth it.
But, what else is?
I've been thinking about some of the patterns I've experienced in my life, and the most obvious is that I can set a course and keep it. I can set out to accomplish a big goal - like being VP of Marketing, making $170k + bonus - and reach it.
That's intersting and gratifying, but as I think about my path toward enlightenment, i wonder how important setting and reaching goals actually is.
Another thought I've had, (and maybe blogged about) is the idea that maybe this job is just a bootcamp to teach me to be more present and disciplined. Naturally I dont want to get fired, so I'm really focused on rising to that challenge, on a personal level.
Lots of questions... no answers yet...
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Stop Coping
A few more 'enlightennment' vids and blog posts later and it seems that the reasons why I'd want to be enlightened, are to essentially see the world around me as it actually is - not as I want it to be; not as i'd hate it to be; not as I'm afraid it might be. Another reason is that - as an enlightened person - I wont be emotionally attached to my needs.
I'll have faith that, tapped into the greater consiousness, I'll be totally taken care of.
If this were a job description, I'd want it. I'm just not totally certain how realistic it is. I guess that's the 'faith' part.
I'll have faith that, tapped into the greater consiousness, I'll be totally taken care of.
If this were a job description, I'd want it. I'm just not totally certain how realistic it is. I guess that's the 'faith' part.
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