While I Was Talking With Sue

Suffering Is Happening. Be Awake and Aware.

While I was talking to Sue Cawthorne yesterday, across the wires here on @Substack, came this missive from Patti Smith:

CATCHING UP1

It is worth the price of admission and relates to the infinite suffering that coexists with infinite bliss. You can catch the whole hour and a half of my conversation with Sue here:

The automagically created title is “Baba’s Gag Made Reality” which could be taken several ways. Did Baba’s gag create everything that appears to be? I think so. Yesterday was, after all, Silence Day - the 101st anniversary of Meher Baba beginning his unbroken verbal silence. I was struck that it was also the 24th anniversary of the funeral of John Entwistle:

He may have been known as “The Quiet One” but he was the loudest one on stage.

I wrote a bit about my own “loudness” this morning:

A good bit of what I am doing here on Harrowings is explaining myself to myself as I am moving into the final stages of life. I don’t anticipate living a third as long as I already have at 63 and I want to lay down something that can be picked up by future generations - a signal through the noise, so to speak. That’s what this post is really about - amplification.

I’ve been doing numerous different slants on this. I’ve been advocating that others pick up on this also:

That said, I just got an accolade for “The Sound of Marching Feet” from Barlow "Skip" Healy. High praise from a chap who was called “The World’s Greatest Fifer” by Yankee Magazine. Skip and I have gotten up with each other a few times:

Seems I’m a bit muffled on this one, but Skip comes through pretty well.

Again, I see my role here as an amplifier of signal through cyberspace - just a node on the non-hierarchical network that is humanity here and now on this third rock from the sun. Being able to connect at a distance is something that our communication technology has enabled. Our ability to store our knowledge too connects at distances across time. Here, I am able to help my AA grand-sponsor be heard 14 years after his departure from this plane of existence:

Parvardigar as explained in the link is a word coming from “nurture” and “again and again” - the Sustainer, the Preserver, the One who is beyond all names. It is a word spoken by Sai Baba of Shirdi when he first saw Meher Baba approaching. He knew.

Followers of Sai Baba of Shirdi believed that he was an incarnation of Dattatreya for those interested in such things. There is a lot to be uncovered there; a lot of food for thought. I don’t know. I just enjoy learning about all of the different concepts that have helped people deal with being incarnate.

As Martin Heidegger observed, we are thrown into this life unbidden without much concept of what we are doing here. I know that’s my case. I am perplexed by how it is that I am here now. I assume that it has some possible purpose and, as Viktor Frankl observed in his Logotherapy, finding meaning is the work we are about here on the journey from “I to Otherwise” - a phrase I’m lifting from Theodore Roethke, one of my favorite poets.

The pleroma has seen fit to serve up this tune at this moment:

I have been very much affected by so many different signals that I’ve picked up on my journey from cradle to the inevitable grave. We stand on the shoulders of all those who have come before and so many who will be coming after. Each of us has a story.

If you’d like to tell YOUR STORY on Harrowings Podcast, please just send me a direct message or comment on this post:

As always, please don’t waste energy on clicking the “Like” button. Click one of those above instead! Help amplify my signal through the noise of cyberspace. I’ll attempt to do the same for you.

Onward!