Hi Greg,
Thank you for sharing all this about your life. What interesting adventures you had there. I must admit I’m a bit envious.
You clearly lived the “golden times,” those good old times when the world was still opening up and becoming a so-called “better place,” when things could still be explored and discovered, when it still seemed that world peace would be possible some day.
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The after-war time, progress, the end of poverty in sight, a humanity that signed up for shared values of democracy, freedom of speech, and never again fascism. Free love, equal rights for everybody, the opening of the East, spiritual enlightenment, Zen Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, gurus, and searching for the meaning of life, experiments with “substances,” being able to travel for reasonable prices, affordable housing … well, you name it.
I got the “tail” of all that in the 1980s until the mid 1990s. Yet, afterwards it became clear that we’d entered a new post-modern, super-capitalistic world order with new rules, other rules.
War, frictions, economic hardships have been of all times, sure, but I have the feeling that from the 1940s up to beginning of the 1990s there was something like: “Things will change, it’s gonna be alright. Things are gradually moving in the right direction.”
But what a world we live in today. It’s really scary sometimes. I have looked for answers from the 1980s up to about 2015. Visited gurus in Europe in India. Looking for “the truth.” Studied, read. And, actually it was Gurdjieff, when I was 17 — which was in the 80s — who launched me on this path: the quest.
As you say: “… the consequences of Ego continually trying to steal the goods from Soul” is where I finally ended. That is, suddenly the “search” stopped. The quest imploded. Without any answers. In fact, the questions disappeared. But not because they were answered. They just didn’t come up any longer. Just like that. And when there are no questions, you don’t need any answers, right?
Maybe I just grew so intensely weary from this quest and not being able to find any real answers. Maybe it was a “quest burnout.” I don’t know. But no lightning flashes, no enlightenment, no blue lights, no nothing. Just me, here, now, with all the daily issues and problems.
I don’t know if this search will still resurface one day. I don’t know. But what the quest taught me is that apparently nobody knows the answers. And if they do, it seems like it’s not possible to transfer wisdom and truth in a sensible way. Not on an intellectual level anyway.
I’m happy for you that you have such an interesting life, and that you are still in good health at 83, it seems. And thinking and writing and enjoying your life. It seems so to me.
Unfortunately, I’m so busy with “making money” and making ends meet that I currently have little time to do what I really want to do. But that’s the story and situation of many people, I think.
This for now then. Wish you a good evening,
Marce
