The Life and Times of James W. Clark

Always In Motion: Of Crows and Crowns - Dustin Kensrue

The Spiritual Self

Today I ate at Jack’s Cafe on George Street. It was 9 o’clock, the hour in between the principals of management and managerial accounting. My body weighed me down, my fingers felt like rods of steel and my chest like a pile of lead. Part of it was due to tiredness, and learning how to best fight the battle of getting up. I sat there at the bar, my nostrils filling with the usual smell of bacon, until I ordered my usual; 2 eggs over-medium, rye toast (they were out this morning so I got raisin instead), sausage and of course the free grits that go along with it all. In the interim, I drank down a cup of coffee and opened my iPhone’s iBook selection to see what I could read while I waited for my food. I had recently downloaded a free copy of “the yoga sutras,” so I opened it up and read a few pages.

It stressed meditation. Picking an external object and becoming it through a sense of empathy. The way a painter peers into the emotion of the one he’s painting a portrait of, or the therapist sympathizes with a schizophrenic patient. Over time, you will attain an innate knowledge of how the world works. How different atoms vibrate to create the complex and beautiful fabric that composes our day to day lives. The most important lesson I got out of it was understanding how I fit into the grand picture. Furthermore, I could not only see my place, but also how I can improve my standing as a citizen of the cosmos.

In my day to day life, I’ve found myself rushing to class unprepared. I would look at the clock, creating mental deadlines of when I would need to be out of the house, and I would continuously push that threshold back till the point I arrived to my first classes a few minutes late each day. That’s no way to live. If I am to improve my psyche, if I am to become more attuned with my true spiritual self, I must not allow myself to become the victim of time.

Time is roaring wave, and too often I find myself swept off my feet tumbling to shore. Instead, it’s time to anticipate the swell, and let the life I lead be one consistently led in the present; never looking back, with or without regrets.

The Fundamental Problem With 21st Century Thinking

With the advent of the internet and the surging development of modern technology, people have increasingly become more egotistical. Even now, I write this under the presumption that you will read it and give yourself a moment to reflect on what I mean. This type of mindset is a direct consequence of the growing symbiotic relationship between man and machine. Think about how we currently use technology;

• We input language into it and force it to transport that data
• We catalog our daily schedules
• We edit photographs to make them look better as opposed to learning about photography and utilizing natural light
• We alphabetize all the people we know into a comprehensive list, detailing their personal information

I’m not saying that these aren’t useful tools. I enjoy all the benefits technology offers, but also suffer the unintentional consequences.

With the ease of access to information, everyone has access to the same amount of information that previously would have taken a scholar years and numerous degrees to get. But we take this info for granted. We know that should a question come up, we can always refer to google, and promptly return to watching Netflix. The 21st century man is someone who knows everything, yet memorizes nothing. He is someone who has outsourced his mental capacity to applications and databases. As a result the world has demanded more from him then he can supply, so he pop an adderrol or pour that next cup of coffee and come up with another program to help fill the gap.

Bullshit

Bullshit comes about as a result of people being prompted to talk on subjects in which they are more or less ignorant. A byproduct of living in a culture where curiosity is overshadowed by the individual’s need to have an opinion on every issue. It is through the impulsive decisions to speak without knowledge that we have created a society of enigma; in which fact is neither attained or disproven.