So I'm thinking about the reading process and the fact that, at all times, I'm in the middle of some books of greater or lesser impact or insight, and constantly led to something new, and that this is potentially a pointless, never ending process, since eventually, I'll get too busy and my mind will atrophy once again and forget most of what I've read. Each book I'm currently reading, for example, will refer to or quote another book. Through this process I've come to some of the most formative books in my own intellectual/spiritual journey (vs. say, required class reading) and yet...and yet... I'm considering how trivial, how transient the awareness is for me personally acquired by reading. It's refreshing, there are gold mines, new horizons opened up. And yet! A quick glance at my book bag reveals eight or nine titles I'm currently reading. (I can't focus long enough to read one thing at a time...and yet this is its own problem. When I hear of a book that connects with what I'm reading, by the time I come around to ordering it, and actually receiving it, my mind may have moved on to the next idea, the next author, the next genre...and where to find the time to read closely and meaningfully...another conundrum.) Each of these titles, may shoot off like a dendrite into some other territory. On some level, the urge is to mine deeper ore, I suppose, as if, through continued reading one were getting closer to the core truth, ultimate reality, what have you. But the more apt metaphor may be the agricultural one. Sowing, harvesting, keeping the soil fertile, receptive, experiencing new growth, and inevitably, experiencing fallow periods. I'll keep reading, no doubt, even re-reading, each book like footsteps along a labyrinthine pilgrimage to...something. And yet! The soul wants some kind of practice, at least it does at this age. the coffee shop and the full book bag has become a kind of comfort zone. I'm sensing the need for embodied experience, for a challenge to the ego. For in reading through, say, Wordsworth's Preludes, one experiences a host of things, among them pride of exclusivity (along with awe, beauty, humility, at times annoyance at its highfalutin opacity, self-recognition, etc.) But there is also the sense of being a member of an exclusive tribe, i.e. the kind of people that sit in coffee shops reading Romantics, with access to some arcane esoteric knowledge, the ability to muster the prolonged attention such reading requires. Suffice to say, one can build up as much ego as tear down in such reading. In discussions with a friend of mine, Paul Engler, (see his page
here), I'm led more and more to the precipice of some kind of contemplative practice, recognizing not only the need for liminal space, but for community, and for being called on some of my ego defenses, for them to be torn down for true new growth to occur. Time to step, methinks.
