San Juan: Glimpses In Time
(Travels through Shadow and Light)
by
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Thirty-two
Friday night…cold, dark, alone…
The candle is lit. The little fire commences another session of writing. I am at my contemplation desk and home, alone tonight.
There was a time that to be alone, awake, sober and alert would have been a very difficult ordeal for me, but not any more. When fear comes near me, or when emptiness or coldness or a heightened sense of isolation visit, I see it for what it is: a simple sensation, or feeling, which has captured my thoughts at that moment in time.
The fear itself is not real; it is only the fearful thoughts I bring into my reality that are allowed to become real.
Out in the city tonight many huddle together under the flashing lights of nightspots, where some form of solace can be felt from the pressing anguish of isolation. To push through some of these crowded quarters – where heavily medicated drinks flow freely, killing pain with each refill – is to realize that humans need togetherness.
We don’t like to huddle alone, under separate cover. What heat is produced in that? We need each other, yet, in our frenzy to feel the protection and security of human companionship, we often neglect the one who can bring more of it to us than anyone: we, ourselves.
In the meanwhile, suffering comes into the way of our path.
Living human organisms desire one another. Sometimes, in some of us, our conditioning settles on a need for diversified intimacy. Other situations, in others of us, provide us no satisfaction unless it is that of a special, particular loved one; no one else, for us, will do.
Whether our needs are great, or small, most of us need someone next to us, near us. We need our lives to dovetail into other lives. We need to know them, feel them, take from them, let them take from us in return.
In the final analysis, it is to sense our oneness with a loving Universe, to know that God is inside of us, patiently, lovingly waiting, simply to be recognized, to touch the essence of that thing, and merge with it, that is the ultimate antidote to all of our estrangement, all of our abandonment, all of our sense of separation.
When this comes to move past us, so, too, does all of our fear.
Thirty-three
Friday night…later…Day 11…
We know that, in the morning, our light will shine again. People will enter the city; life will flow freely, as it always seems to do.
Until that time, some nights we wait longer than other nights, wishing that the night might overcome us more mercifully, and that this particular night will not somehow be chosen to hold us in it as its hostage.
Truly, it is, of course, not the night itself that does the choosing of such things; in our minds we introduce whatever elements to our existence that we want to become a part of us.
If it is fear, we somehow have a need to entertain the fear; maybe we have not come to learn the lessons that fear brings. We should know that when we learn what is behind the fear, it is no longer the same creature it was before. We take something from it. We step towards overruling it, for once and for all…
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About the Book
From my home in
Warning! What you are about to read are personal memoirs! They are much to do about “self.’ They amount to a large group of random thoughts, sporadic observations.
I always feel I am somehow supposed to write my thoughts down – what a big ego I must have – because (I like to think that) if you put them all together, they form a loose-knit way of seeing the world. They are a part of my worldview. Everyone has one of these – what’s your view of the world look like?
I am going to be a world philosopher when I grow up, you see. That is what my intention is, since I have always been preoccupied with how to see things, how to process things.
How odd is life anyway. That’s why my interest in philosophy – to figure out the oddness of life. Normally, I think philosophy can be pretty dry and boring. But, for me, it’s terribly exciting.
…In this book, what you are about to delve into will resemble the form of an ongoing story. It will consist of a sequence of six weeks of shadows and lights (i.e. days and nights). After that time, wherever I am at with it, I will stop, and simply and abruptly start to write another book about something else I know not what.
Here though, I will (I suspect) be sharing with you a series of ideas, dreams, fears, logical thoughts, illogical thoughts, wonderings, wanderings and general psychobabble. I say that because I intend to impart thoughts and ideas about whatever might be in my ongoing existence in being.
This could be anything, I assure you…as of course it could be for anyone.
Exactly what will appear in the pages that represent the next six weeks of my life, I do not have any idea – that, for me, is going to be much of the fun of writing it!
About the Author
Michael Jean Nystrom-Schut has been writing/publishing for many years, but trying to figure out the meaning to life’s deepest questions for much longer than that. With several decades of experience in education, business and real-life circumstances behind him, the questions, in his mind, still far outweigh the answers.
Michael has spent many years piecing together a worldview that is effective and reasonable. Failing to find this from the religious and cultural communities, he set out on an eclectic path of personal enlightenment.
Philosophy of everyday life is important for everyone. Michael understands that, and has actively written books in an effort to create a pattern of anthological thought that will provide his readers with all of what they need to encounter life in a successful way.
Michael divides his time between homes in the United States and the rain forests of Central America. His quest to leave a comprehensive written legacy of life, is by his own admission, and endless one.