eThoughts : Journeying Through Purgatorio

Some time back I wrote about the illusion of correcting the trouble created by the human occupation of Earth. Perhaps the concept bears revisiting. The point of the previous post was that one can’t fix Puratorio, but one can learn how to journey in Puratorio. This notion is usually translated Scarface style—one keeps going for the next step in acquiring power: “Take what you can,” “the world’s your oyster,” “if you don’t take it someone else will,” etc., etc., etc. Probably that was all a natural evolution from the previous level of consciousness. But is it true, or is it only true if one has a Puratorian mind?

Okay, this is not new, but when we change our minds we change the world. Changing the world first is like putting the cart before the horse—doable under some circumstances but pretty idiotic overall.

Still, changing our minds can make pushing a cart with our heads look like a care-free, sunny Sunday.

One thing that helps us from bleeding energy is to quit complaining about Purgatorians—they’re everywhere and they’re doing Purgatorian things and that’s just the way it is. It’s true that sometimes when a Purgatorian comes crashing into us—or we come crashing into ourselves—we might have to speak up, but mostly what’s true is that we live Inferno, we live Purgatorio, or we live Paradiso. Perhaps what we mostly live is mostly where we live. No—that doesn’t mean we’re solely responsible, we live in an energy soup and there are lots of other ingredients affecting the stew. But if we’re an ingredient in the stew, we’re an ingredient in the stew—what’s the point of a slice of carrot bitching about the evolutionary status of a slice of tomato?

Traversing Purgatorio and Purgatorians is an incredible journey, an appropriate journey. It is the great school of learning that teaches us not to be too into either saving the world or gaining from it. Somewhere in this school, the lamp of learning holds a secret—keep you’re senses alert, remember to rest (do lots of this), play (do even more of this), laugh at the absurdities of the impossible task we seem to have, work hard at succeeding in the impossible task—even though it doesn’t matter, and look a bit more for Paradiso and a bit less for suffering. No, that doesn’t mean turning into Barney the Dinosaur, it means think angels. That won’t render devils obsolete, but it does render them to their place. No, that doesn’t mean that devils live separate from angels. Actually what if we considered we all live in the same “place,” but that different minds can create separate dwellings. So the trick would be in changing our minds, especially if something wasn’t working anymore.

Of course our minds are changing whether we like it or not—we might as well take the helm some of the time, just for novelty. In any case, welcome to Purgatorio. We’ve got some major blundering to entertain and appall us, and we’ve got some doors all around for when we lose our minds even further, or gain them even more. In any case, my fellow Purgatorians, let’s quit trying to change the world as a primary pattern and practice changing our beliefs and our behaviors—or at least questioning them. That seems like a real good way to connect up and to learn—comparing notes instead of always looking for the moral high ground. After all, a funny thing about the moral high ground is that it isn’t “above” us, it is in us. And another funny thing about the moral high ground is that being moral doesn’t really elevate us, it simply allows us to walk freely amongst all of God’s creation.