Meditation

Adding to the long list of contradictions attributed to the ideologies of William Blake we recently touched upon the differences of sight and vision as an extension of the body functioning as the prison of the soul. Picture your face, your outward signifier of social difference. Corporeal sight functions as a way of internalizing the physical world around us. I see you, that tree, and those telephone poles and I understand that I am seeing such objects. The instant my eyes set upon an object, my brain automatically interprets, reasons what that object is. It becomes real to me, exists in my immediate reality. When I close my eyes, however, that reality does not go away. Just because I can not see your face does not mean that your face no longer exists in my perceived reality. It remains in my memory, in my imagination, which exists beyond the tangible world. Blake argues that man is blinded in a sense by corporeal sight; that the world can be experienced more fully through imaginative vision. Imagination pushes us beyond the bounds of reason and exposes that reason itself is bounded.

I think that the most immediate way in which to explore outside the bounds of reason is through meditation. The Romantics may not have called their walks through nature meditation, but that is definitely what they were doing. Contemporary life does not always lend to the physical exploration of natural settings, so meditation offers a sort of out of body experience that can happen in your own home. I always thought of meditating just as a way for the body to relax, a calming experience rather than an internal exploration. My sister-in-law encouraged me to start meditating for a half hour or so every day to help with anxieties and stress, etc. But then she came over with a guided meditation of past life regressions and asked if I was interested (she was doing a paper for one of her graduate classes). I thought that it would be fun to try, but I didn't think that anything could actually happen because I have never really been able to relax enough to be hypnotized. But it turned out to be an amazing exercise in allowing the imaginative mind to overtake your corporeal body, and all rationality or reason aside, explore parts of the mind that I didn't think accessible.

It began as all guided meditations do, dark room, very quiet and relaxed setting, breathing exercises to bring about the most relaxing state. Her voice soothed and quieted my thoughts, focused only on a bright light. As the regression continued, she eventually led me to a door, and as the door opened the threshold of reason and imagination was crossed. Asking descriptive questions about my surroundings, she encouraged me to describe all that I was seeing (silently of course). Where was I? What environment surrounded me? What was I wearing? Was I male or female? Going into this regression, of course I thought about what kind of individual it would be cool to think that I was in a past life. Of course I thought of great women throughout history, in the style of Elizabeth or Marie Antoinette. I can with absolute honesty say that the vision I had during this meditation was the furthest thing from my mind possible. I was standing on the bank of a river, surrounded by green, an ancient temple in the distance. I could feel the cool wind on my naked body. I looked down at my hands, large, dark working hands. I knew that I was male. I didn't see my body, I just understood that I was male and I was naked. I was jerked awake from the vision and I sat up, my sister-in-law curiously asking if I had seen anything. Had the regression worked? And I was silent. My mind was trying to reason what I had just experienced. But I couldn't.

Throughout reading Blake in this class I have been thinking about this experience. I don't necessarily believe that I was actually a man in some ancient civilization (I latched on to Mayan civilization for some reason), but I think that it makes me feel what Blake is trying to express when he says that reason is bounded and that imagination allows us to bridge that boundary.

SUVs Aren't All That Bad

Of all of the mind boggling interpretations of our Romantic readings and complex discussions, this statement from the first day made a particular impact on my way of thinking about this course: Romantics experienced their world by walking. So simple. I know. Nonetheless, it posed a particularly obvious question: How do I experience my world? Digesting the question, I got into my car to go home when the answer suddenly dawned upon me. I’ll leave walking to the Romantics; I prefer driving.

A few years ago, driving represented the necessary evil to getting anywhere. It was a nuisance, and I avoided it at all costs. Recently, though, I’ve come to appreciate my car as a place where I can collect and organize thoughts, the portal to peace of mind. Since the semester began, I find myself overwhelmed with all of the information thrown at me in class, particularly Romanticism and Apocalypse: Literature and Critical Theory. And while I cannot sit here and recite all of the complicated particulars of class, I can assure you that this constant state of confusion has been more than beneficial to the way that I evaluate the world while driving. Even though I don’t come to any concise conclusions, I nonetheless find solace in my attempts. Reflecting while driving becomes a strange experience in itself though. My best thinking is done in a state of complete thoughtlessness, windows down, music up, hand swimming smoothly through the air.

Through the polarities of thought and thoughtlessness, I’m able to escape to a place unattainable by anyone else. Who knew that a car could provide such an escape? These thoughts particularly came to mind when reading Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” namely this line: Importance makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius. Always driving around New Orleans, I know all too well of these “crooked roads,” though they take more of the form of potholes and protuberances in the roads. Created from the tension between the potentially smooth ride my car can provide and the streets that prevent this from happening, the perfect ride occurs, perfect because of its contradiction-driven energy. The ride may not be stereotypically smooth, and passengers can expect at least one gut-wrenching jolt to avoid a flat tire. However, these jolts remind of us that we are constantly in flux with the roads on which we drive, in flux with the world around us. The world’s roads come in a variety of lengths, types, and conditions and help serve as a reminder that not everything is laid out before us; we sometimes have to take a different route that may not be as smooth and provides a challenge. The rational car brings us along the network of imaginative roads, destination unknown