Monetizing the Soul
Monetizing the soul
Forget mindfulness… unless you can show me a profit. Emerson rages back.
How deeply frustrating that insightful articles and meaningful verses are usually submerged and buried in our pop-culture writing environment. We live in a culture that’s far too dominated by how-to lists and never-ending, sugar-high formulas of success.
Even when we protest that we’re not about any of that, what remains exposed for all to see and lust over is pretty much all about monetizing and optimizing, influencing and growing target audiences, to say nothing about all the anger, shouting, hating and dividing.
We’ve been utterly dumbed down. And we’ve signed up willingly, if sometimes unconsciously, every step of the way. Even our dreams have been abducted.
The alarms all got disconnected
It once seemed a mystery to me how this could have happened. How could we be so stupid, so easily convinced and persuaded?
But mysteries have a way of uncoiling themselves. And in this case, the knots and restraints have undeniably been entirely of our own making. Someone asked if we wanted to buy some swampland in Florida, and we shouted “Yes!” in patriotic devotion. Someone asked if we wanted to own a home, TV and a fat bank account, and we shouted “Yes!” in unison.
From over on my side of the meadow, it seems that we have a problem with what I term ‘deeper human discernment.’ Alarm bells should be going off. But they aren’t. Our inner truth barometer should be shrieking. But it isn’t. Hell, I’ll just have another drink, bro.
These critical alarms were disabled, long ago, if they even worked all that well in the first place.
I work in buildings, often during the construction phase. There comes a point when fire alarm testing is implemented. This always occurs before the building is allowed to be occupied. Every smoke detector, every pull station, every heat sensor and sprinkler flow switch is activated. The shrill alarms ring out… every. single. time. While all of us keep working on all the stuff it takes to build a building, during test days we are also having to do our best to block out the din, the assault on our senses, the shrillness of the annunciators and the incessantly blinding strobe lights that hurt our eyes.
If humans were buildings, they wouldn’t be allowed to be occupied. There’s too many critical safeties being bypassed or ignored.
When it comes to life itself, it’s clear we’ve disconnected or jumped out the wiring. If humans were buildings, they wouldn’t be allowed to be occupied.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Arguably America’s premiere essayist and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was direct and to the point on the one hand, yet popular and deeply influential on the other. He was widely criticized for his premises of Individualism or Pantheism, yet revered by crowds and readers throughout the nation and Europe.
It’s hard to imagine a philosopher and writer of Emerson’s skill and insight being popular today. We have no time for matters we trivialize or dismiss such as contemplation and consideration. I suspect Emerson would have been uncompromising in his view of the busy, hard-working American of today. On the one hand he would no doubt tear into and fume over the concentration of wealth at the expense of the majority, but on the other hand he would scold all of us — rich and poor, alike — for disconnecting from our inner, innate wisdom.
Emerson repudiated crowds, even though he drew them. His repudiation was against the pursuit of fame and fortune, particularly if at the expense of genuine inner wisdom. In his essay Self Reliance, he stated:
“My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.”
He frustratingly acknowledged that the contemplative man will generally be scorned and ignored.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
He tended to keep it simple, in the sense of providing guidance that was do-able, not vague and esoteric.
“Whenever a mind is simple, it receives a divine wisdom.”
In Emerson’s case, he’s comparing what I’ve termed ‘connected wiring’ to a so-called simple mind. Emerson views a simple mind as someone connected to Nature.
Nature, he reminds us, is the way the Divine makes itself visible to us. Consequently, as we observe and become more and more congruent with Nature and with more natural ways of living, Nature in turn purifies the way we observe ourselves as we navigate our way through life.
With Emerson, harmony with Nature meant being unconcerned with notions of busyness, or with fanatically filled schedules, or ceaseless goals and objectives.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The simple or connected man or woman discovers a far deeper lagoon in which to rest, a place of far greater resources and humanity.
“There is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.”
“We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul.”
REFERENCE: Emerson and a Fourth State of Consciousness
Emerson is not all doom and gloom. He sees ways to cut through the fog. And it boils down to what a man or woman decides to elevate their life upon. Yes, Emerson promotes Nature as a guide. But he also promotes principles.
I have a fortune cookie message taped to my computer monitor. It says, “Your principles mean more to you than any money or success.” Emerson puts it thus:
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”