Tag: consciousness

A Ramble On Death

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I was watching a video this morning on Facebook, on what I can’t remember; a telling indictment of the zombie social media turns us into. I do remember at one point some footage came on of men in the First World War. It was coloured footage which I always find really fascinating because it makes old film real and relatable in a way black and white can’t be. The Great War was from a time past and those involved have all died now. I haven’t checked it but I seriously doubt there is anyone left. You know you’re looking at dead people, they’re younger than I am now, but there time has been and now they’re dead.

I’m not obsessed with death, it doesn’t fascinate me in some morbid way and I once used to dismiss it in that way people do when they’re young and like to pretend they don’t give a shit about anything. That doesn’t mean either that I’m about to tell you all I’m scared of death but I am trying to understand it. I am trying to understand it because it plays a huge part in our behaviours as a species. We’re aware consciously of our own existence and as a result our own deaths too. Are we alone in this awareness? One day all this is just not going to be there.

This idea of nothingness is hard to comprehend. Imagine you go to sleep and that feeling of deep sleep is what you will be experiencing for eternity, except you don’t experience deep sleep consciously, arguably we don’t even exist in those moments. How then can we imagine not existing. We try to imagine something we have little empirical understanding of and it’s impossible. This is almost scarier than death itself, which kind of isn’t scary at all.

These soldiers were living in their time. This is the thought that inspired me to start this ramble on death. Why do we fear getting old and dying. These people, that was there time and they lived it, they got old and were replaced by other people living their experience of time. This is my time now and I need to live it because one day I will have to let it go and I want to do it with a smile on my face, content. Not content that I lived life to the max or whatever slogan you can come up with, but just content in the knowledge that now my time is up and it’s time for others to take over. There are plenty out there who are like that and plenty who can’t let go. It’s fear ultimately. Fear of stepping into an unknown time in life, closer to the ultimate unknown. I’m just curious, if I’m lucky to live that long of course. And also, in a way, if we’re to understand death do we first need to understand life? Certainly there’s an order to these thing and maybe with some kind of understanding comes a form of acceptance. It’s especially interesting because, in a way, there are no answers and what’s more powerful than that.

Mental Strife

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

“And woe behold, is todays mind but one bereft of even those most basic of ideas” said me now, not someone from an age past, only partly quotable in what the modern age has done to language. Basically I can’t really think of anything to write about…bereft of ideas as a wise man once said. Perhaps I should wait until later in the day when maybe the mind is more keen to do battle with the creative limits it’s own development has boxed it into. Exactly the reason for choosing this moment of struggle to put out a piece, the challenge of finding light in the darkness, the very creative representation of the Guru in translation. For do we not learn what is true in times of strife, when adversity forces us through the self-imposed limits of our ability to find solutions within ourself? The answers are forever within. Alone in life we embrace this struggle of discovery until we are left with nothing but the hollowed out carcass of illusionary past moments and past lives. The frame of conditions we believed were once the existence that held together the fragility of consciousness, of all that we could see and understand before our eyes now nothing but dust as it exposes itself in the light of truth. But what of truth in this great journey of understanding, for what if mine is yours and yours is mine, are not all universal the understandings we seek? Delving deeper into this morass of darkness and confusion that comes before the light, thrashing and screaming as we see only the untruth before our eyes in all it’s ugly vain glory. Until the moment of acceptance comes before our minds eye, will we forever miss the beauty in the darkness of our delusion. The acceptance that comes when we understand we can no longer blame this darkness for stopping us breathing, but our own inabilities to inhale the truth that now fills our lungs. In and out we breath, the oxygen of light that simply began with us pushing out from the shackles we accepted, that grew while we floundered but which now lay smashed upon the ground. The hammer of liberty breaking the bonds of ignorance held in place through such safe existence. Grown fat through illiterate teachings, shepherds of prosperity forcing us to regurgitate their own vomit. To discover the chains had no lock when all is too late and all is lost. For we learn it is easier to dig our own graves, stepping into the reassuring darkness. Better this murky existence than merely pushing ourselves in times of mental stupor.

Death

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Last night I awoke at about four and was unable to sleep again. Today I’m a bit of a grumpy bastard. I just watched a video of a koala that was badly burnt in the bushfires that are still raging in Australia. It had burns all over it’s body and was screaming in pain, blood on the towel, no fur left. I feel like crying. I’m not normally someone who cries and I don’t say that in a proud way as it would probably be good for me if I did. They had to put the little fella down today because his burns were too bad. This is heartbreaking. Think with all the fires this year that raged through the Amazon, Africa, Siberia and currently Australia how many millions of animals have died. In a way this one little koala is more upsetting because we can relate to it. We can see his pain, we can hear his cries. The rest are nothing more than a number, and numbers don’t really mean anything.

Is it an issue of compassion or empathy. As a species do we lack this ability to connect with animals, and that includes humans by the way. There are numerous arguments that we have become desensitised to suffering and death but I’m not sure how true that is. Computer games and films do display graphic scenes but they’re not real and there is no great clamour to watch actual execution or snuff videos. There is no way to know how people dealt with death in the past but it was more common then, for humans at least. That made it a very real part of peoples lives, and this is something we don’t have anymore, not in the west anyway. I still continue to eat meat but less and it’s starting to feel more and more like a weird thing to do. I love my dog, I raised her from a two month old puppy and feel a connection to her in a way that I don’t have with any other creature, not more or less but it’s unique. When I see the koala suffering, I think of her and it’s that relating which is what connects us. Have you ever tried looking properly into someones eyes, they’re the gateway to their consciousness, nobody can tell me other animals don’t have that. We can put ourselves compassionately in the shoes of another human but with an animal whose consciousness we can’t comprehend we need to find other ways to relate.

When I carve a roast chicken sometimes I think it looks like my dog. I ignore the thoughts but it freaks me out none the less. I don’t want to eat chicken anymore. Many people the world over have pets and as I’ve never expressed this reaction to chicken before I’m unsure if others have it too. How do they disconnect and detach themselves from the fact they’re carving an animal when they have another one sitting curled up sleeping in the corner that they love so much. Is it hypocritical, more behaving unconsciously I imagine. Perhaps people just don’t think like that, they just carve the chicken and see it for the chicken, not what it represents. It does represent something though, it represents existence. Until we start to understand this all it does is put in jeopardy all existence, ourselves included.