Someone new and kindred in New York wrote to me, about the whole “becoming the disease in order to cure it” theme I worked over last week—both with the third series grit and with the drug withdrawal. He’d been reading a forgotten one of UG’s books on the subway, and ran across this:
Because will implies conflict, struggle, the contradiction: I am this and I must be that. And to become that, I must exercise will. We are asking if there is not a different way of acting altogether, without will?
Nice to know Krishnamurti asked the same question, given his ultimate teaching is to remove brute force from practice—and to transcend discipline (which it is said that I have in spades). Thanks for writing, J.
As for me, I’m not satisfied with my thoughts about the will. Not satisfied with my thoughts! (Laughing.)
And it dawns on me that I’m not going to find intellectual satisfaction about this topic, because this particular road is not one you travel by way of analysis.
I’m trying to telegraph a kind of understanding that I don’t have. Getting ahead of myself.
I’ve always used writing as a way to get to the nub of things, to become clean and conclusive. I really had to write in that mode for the first year of this writing practice just in order to get myself talking, but the past two months I’m finally letting go—a bit—of the narrative, analytical modality. Eased up on the drive for intellectual satisfaction, just to see if it makes things interesting… and if lightens up the habits in me.
What it’s revealing lately—and I think you will agree—is that the stream of my consciousness is fucking dense. I’m letting that happen—letting the blog be less well written and far less accessible—because it feels like good process. Interesting to see so many of you staying around for this. Who knows, even as the signs seem to indicate travail is coming—poetry may not be far away.
Which is not to say I get to rewrite the dissertation in free verse.
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