Everything Lies Ahead

Sometimes I play a game with myself. Wow. Ok, check that. I call a mulligan.

Sometimes I ask myself some damn deep questions. But, given that I can't really tap into the subconscious to pull forth the answer I'm looking for, I instead go to some great minds to get their take on it all. Tolkein, Rand, Nabakov, Hemingway, Bach, Hesse, Miller, Lewis...they've all got good input. You just have to listen sometimes. So here's what you do. With the question firmly planted, staring you straight in the eyes, you pick up a random book off a sufficiently well-stocked bookshelf, and without noting special interest in the title or author, you flip to a random page. Run your finger down the page till it stops (it will stop), and read. Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of a sentence and you just start reading from there. Other times, that doesn't feel right, so you back up to the beginning of the sentence. And if you have really difficult issues, it might be best to take in a whole paragraph, though sometimes the shortest phrase is 10 fold as potent. You have to allow yourself to make the connection...and it will happen. Same idea as reading runes or horoscopes: It's not the content or intended meaning which matters, but only how you perceive it and how you make use of it yourself, to your own life. So I did that tonight, as I sometimes do, and it was so pertinent that I figured I'd share it with you. Of course, it doesn't often work second hand, but this is such a genius piece of writing, go ahead and bring a question before your mind before you proceed. Then simply read. See what happens. If it doesn't quite get to you where it count, pick up your own book off a bookshelf. Try just a sentence or just a phrase. Naturally, it works better starting off with poetry or great prose. But, as the connections become easier, reference books and newspapers can serve the same purpose. Better to start out with your favorite author (it's ok to cheat a little, just make sure the sentence itself has been sufficiently randomized)...

Lie down, then, on the soft couch which the analyst provides, and try to think up something different. The analyst has endless time and patience; every minute you detain him means more money in his pocket. He is like God, in a sense -- the God of your own creation. Whether you whine, howl, beg, weep, implore, cajole, pray or curse -- he listens. He is just a big ear minus a sympathetic nervous system. He is impervious to everything but truth. If you think it pays to fool him then fool him. Who will be the loser? If you think he can help you, and not yourself, then stick to him until you rot. He has nothing to lose. But if you realize that he is not a god but a human being like yourself, with worries, defects, ambitions, frailties, that he is not the repository of an all-encompassing wisdom but a wonderer, like yourself, along the path, perhaps you will cease pouring it out like a sewer, however melodious it may sound to your ears, and rise up on your own two legs and sing with your own God-given voice. To confess, to whine, to complain, to commiserate, always demands a toll. To sing it doesn't cost you a penny. Not only does it cost you nothing -- you actually enrich others. Sing the praises of the Lord, it is enjoined. Aye, sing out! Sing out, O Master-builder! Sing out, glad warrior! But, you quibble, how can I sing when the world is crumbling, when all about me is bathed in blood and tears? Do you realize that the martyrs sang when they were being burned at the stake? They saw nothing crumbling, they heard no shrieks of pain. They sang because they were full of faith. Who can demolish faith? Who can wipe out joy? Men have tried, in every age. But they have not succeeded. Joy and faith are inherent in the universe. In growth there is pain and struggle; in accomplishment there is joy and exuberance; in fulfillment there is peace and serenity. Between the planes and spheres of existence, terrestrial and superterrestrial, there are ladders and lattices. The one who mounts sings. He is made drunk and exalted by unfolding vistas. He ascends sure-footedly, thinking not of what lies below, should he slip and lose his grasp, but of what lies ahead. Everything lies ahead. The way is endless, and the farther one reaches the more the road opens up. The bogs and quagmires, the marshes and sinkholes, the pits and snares, are all in the mind. They lurk in waiting, ready to swallow one up he moment one ceases to advance. The phantasmal world is the world which has not been fully conquered over. It is the world of the past, never of the future. To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. We are all guilty of crime, the greatest crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power. What these powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything. Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything God-like about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

by Henry Miller, Sexus, The Rosy Crucifixion. New York, 1965, pps. 340-41.