‘I wasted time, and now doth time waste me . . .’
(Richard II Act 5, Scene 5, line 49)
I am in between switching my focus from one Eliot (Thomas Stearns) to another (George). I need more time to ponder on why Middlemarch, her masterpiece, resonates so much more strongly with me than The Waste Land. Given that George Eliot is praised for the skill with which she conveys the consciousness within, it seems appropriate to republish this sequence which is a fictional attempt to project my inscape into words.
After what seemed an interminable silence, I just have to say something else.
‘I’m not trying to minimise the problem with global heating. It’s an international emergency, I know that. I think we all do. But it is not the only issue. Genuine consciousness changing is far wider and goes far deeper than the consciousness-raising involved in the climate situation.’
‘Where’s this going exactly?’ Indie interjects. ‘Are we just going to be finding excuses for doing nothing?’
Fred comes to my rescue.
‘We’re very good as a species at focusing on one thing at a time with a narrow band of attention. That got us through the stone-age fine, when our main concerns were not getting eaten or wiped out by a neighbouring tribe, but it’s not so great when you are dealing with a wide range of complex and toxic problems stretching over a globally connected society. Plastics, potentially genocidal prejudice, a competitive ideology based on a distorted Darwinism preaching a divisive and misguided doctrine of the survival of the fittest . . .’
Emma groans out loud. Chris is nodding. Fred is oblivious, sitting at the back of the classroom on the right hand side, staring out of the window at the rain spattering against the tall glass.
‘. . . rampant consumerism and greed for profit fuelling an unbridled and unsustainable exploitation of the earth’s resources, extreme inequality, treatment resistant bacteria, as well as the climate crisis, to name but a few of the most obvious. And I can’t list the ones we don’t know.’
‘Have you quite finished now?’ Indie and Emma moan in unison, ‘or do you need another hour?’
Though I resonate to Fred’s line of argument, what he has said seems only to exaggerate the divide.
I hesitantly wade in again, from the doorway I first entered 53 years ago. My struggle with the lower sixth, when I eventually found where they were, is nothing compared with this.
‘Maybe we have to dig deeper still, much deeper than any of us have dug so far.’
‘What do you mean exactly?’ Chris queries, probably feeling that none of us could ever possibly have dug deeper than he has.
‘Well, first of all, I don’t think any of us, including me, is wise enough to know what’s best.’
‘But most of us think we need to be more active,’ Indie feels.
‘Half of the six of you, to be fair,’ I correct her.
Emma scowls.
I try again.
‘Look, the whole point is that even when we put our heads together we can’t agree what to do. We’ve got another stand off. Carrying on arguing, with feelings running so high, will never get an agreement on what’s best to do.’
‘We’re stuck then, I guess,’ Bill shouts from the back corner, his expression darker than the cloud outside. ‘But at least I can carry on writing poems, while Chris meditates and Fred learns more about the brain.’
‘That’s all right for you three but it’s not all right for the rest of us,’ Peat says. ‘Mum’s really upset and so is Auntie Emmie.’
‘That’s the problem,’ I respond. ‘We’re each seeing only a part of what’s wrong and so can just suggest a remedy that works for that bit only. We need to work out how to get closer to the whole truth. And, the way I see it, there’s going to be only one way to do that, given consulting together at our current level of understanding is getting us nowhere. We all have to step back from our attachment to the person we think we are.’
‘Sorry,’ Bill, leaping to his feet, jumps in. The desk rattles as he does so. ‘I know who I am. I’m a poet who loves nature. Nothing’s going to change that.’
‘And I know who I am as well,’ agrees Emma. ‘I’m an activist – always have been, always will be.’
‘I agree,’ comes the chorus from Indie and Peat.
Not surprisingly Chris and Fred seem to be taking a different line, with Fred speaking first.
‘I know about sub-personalities and I know that’s what we are. But that doesn’t mean, Pete, that you are not who you think you are. This isn’t going to break the block.’
Chris raises a hand in the air, asking for a moment’s silence. There is quiet for a moment.
He wades in, ‘Most meditative traditions contain some sense that a self of any kind is an illusion. I’m inclined to agree. So, yes, we could all be illusions, including you, Pete. The problem is that this doesn’t mean there is a real self of some kind we can tap into, which is where I suspect you are heading. Whatever self we discover apart from us, is going to be another illusion, believe me. We’ve been down that road twice already since this process started, and, with all due respect neither Peat nor Indie can claim beyond a shadow of doubt that they are the true self you seem to be looking for.’
I can see I’ve got a tough job ahead of me. Just as we couldn’t agree on what to do when the argument started, we’re not going to agree any time soon on this issue either.
I accept we can all get a long way by using all sorts of creative techniques to enhance our understanding. Dreams for one thing. The sand dream I was having when they barged in was a case in point. It flagged up the issue of how we use our time.
Reading and writing, perhaps especially poetry, are important others. My recent encounter with Machado’s blessed illusion poem is a good example of the fruits of those activities. Quoting the last few lines of my attempted translation illustrates how tricky the next stage of our development is going to be:
Will tomorrow’s dreams, to heal my heart,
again be blessed, with radiant sunlight
this time, hotter than the warmest hearth?If that should happen, there’ll be no doubt,
in my mind at least – my heart does hold
within it, at its deepest point, what
feels the closest we can reach to God.
How am I going to explain the next step to them, something I don’t fully understand and I’m not sure I completely believe is possible for us? I could build on our hearticulture plan, but that didn’t carry everyone with it anyway, which is why it hasn’t got very far as yet.
While I was lost in thought just now they were all just staring at me in frustration, or at least that what it looks like now I’ve surfaced again. If anyone did speak I didn’t hear them.
I need to find some common ground, not just between them and me but among them as well. This story may not have a happy ending.
‘Do we all agree,’ I ask, ‘that we would like to achieve two things at the very least – one is to understand ourselves better and the other is to do as much as we can to make this world a better place?’
There are murmurs and half-hearted nods suggesting general agreement, with an undercurrent of suspicion. Bill is inspecting the bike shed through the rain-splattered window again.
‘OK. So, don’t pounce on me straightaway but, to explain where I’m heading right now I’ll have to use two words not all of you like.’
The stirrings of discontent begin to rise.
‘Let me guess,’ says Emma. ‘Reflection is one of those words.’
I nod.
She grimaces, looking across Peat at Indie. ‘We bloody knew this’d come up again, didn’t we?’
Peat looks confused. Indie whispers an explanation to him.
‘Look,’ I pleaded. ‘Can we strike a bargain here? The three of you are passionate about combatting the climate crisis. Did I use the right word there, by the way?’
‘It’ll do,’ Indie smiles, probably aware I’d learned the word from Fred.
‘Well, you claim I’m doing nothing, but that’s not quite true. I have been vegetarian since the late 70s and now I’m cutting down on dairy and trying to become vegan. Most of the science suggests that this is the single most important thing any individual can do, more effective than just flying less for those like me who don’t fly much, or giving up the car when you hardly drive at all. So, I’m asking the three of you in particular for whom this is so important, meet me halfway. At least think about working on our ability to reflect and learning to tune into our heart at the deepest level – that’s the second part.’
William James. (For source of Image see link.)‘Nice move, Pete,’ grins Fred, ever the pragmatist. ‘You know you can drag the rest of us on board more easily. You know what? I’ve been thinking that we can treat it like an experiment. It’ll be hard to test properly for whether it’s working, because how will we know for sure that what we do has helped us get closer to the truth. Remember William James – you can discover the truth, but you can never know for sure that you have done so.’
Chris also looks reasonably pleased though Bill looks a bit glum still.
‘How is this going to help me break through my writer’s block?’
‘If what we finally plan to do works,’ offers Chris, trying to be helpful, ‘surely your poems will start flowing again because they come from the heart, don’t they, and we’re going to try and connect to that more strongly. I may distrust this true self stuff, but I have experienced how tuning in more deeply to what is going on beneath the surface of consciousness produces unexpected insights which our conscious mind cannot usually access. You’d go along with that as well, Fred, wouldn’t you?’
Fred nods in agreement. ‘You bet. It’s happened to me a lot as well. And there’s a lot of evidence to support this in the literature.’
Bill looks a bit happier.
‘So, where does this leave us?’ I ask, moving to stand near Fred at the front of the class. It makes me slightly nervous because of the memories it brings back of disruptive teenage lads muttering with each other, or fidgeting inside their desks instead of listening, and possibly planning their next unsettling move.
‘Are we all on board with at least an experiment to see where this gets us?’
While Chris and Fred have been working on Bill, Indie and Emma have been helping Peat keep up with the arguments put forward.
Indie nudges Peat. ‘Go on, love. Don’t be scared. Say what you want to say.’
‘I am glad you’re going vegan, sir.’ He’s obviously got a bit carried away with the classroom situation. ‘I think we all are. I hope we’ll be able to do more than that in the end though. For now, I’ll agree to try this experiment. But how long are we going to do this before we decide whether it’s going to work or not? We haven’t got forever.’
He looks nervous but speaks clearly.
‘I’m not sure, Peat. The experiment won’t mean we do nothing, remember that. I’ll be blogging and networking. I’m sure Bill’s poems will help people focus on important issues, and Fred’s reading and Chris’ meditation are both going to help as well. And what you three feel about climate change — sorry! crisis — is going to still influence us all in that we do, write and say. The experiment will be a crucial focus for all of us, though. Because we will not be doing it full time, and because we’re not experts in what we are going to try and test out I think we’ll need to give it at least six months before we review. Would that be OK.’
Peat looks at Emma and Indie, checking out their expressions, before nodding his agreement.
‘That’s good,’ enthuses Chris, moving to sit in the front row. ‘So, what’s the exact plan then?’
‘I think we’ll have to work out the details after we’ve all given it some more thought. The key component will be using reflection, in the strong sense of the word, involving withdrawing our identifications not just from our thoughts and feelings, but even from our sense of who we are, so we can tune in more strongly to the depths of our being. I think we will also have to build in a pause button to press when we catch ourselves reacting automatically, particularly when we’re under pressure or in social situations. And in addition to learning how to remain more deeply grounded, we’ll need to find words to catch the insights that we find. This might mean we need to dig up the right images to do that with, rather than relying on ordinary prose. That should suit you, Bill!’
He doesn’t hear me. He has taken his notebook out at the back of the class and is scribbling something down as he mutters to himself – it’s about being as lonely as a clown, if I heard him right.
‘There’s always one,’ I find myself thinking.
I start to draw a diagram on the blackboard to try and explain how all these factors relate to one another. It doesn’t seem to work and I give up after a few boxes and arrows.
‘Shall we leave it a month to ponder on and then come back together again?’ I ask. ‘We’ve all got more thinking to do before we can make a clear plan.’
‘That makes sense,’ Fred agrees. ‘This is going to be really tricky.’
The walls of the classroom and the faces of my parliament of selves begin to fade as the need for a visit to the toilet takes control. Even in my dozy state I realise I’ve got some serious thinking to do about an issue that matters a lot to my waking self.
References:
For the first and last post in the original Parliament of Selves sequence see links.
Everybody Means Something 
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