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Written by Maalac Adidas Steele
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Wednesday, 06 January 2010 |
It's another super-cold pre dawn.
I'm hopefully getting traction on getting past the side effects of what is hopefully my last chemical treatment. Today is treatment + 7 days, and I've usually been past this point in my previous treatments. I can't decide if the wort of the worst side effects are hanging on because of Disease, or because I have so much of the chemicals used for the treatment built up inside my body after 3 treatments in rapid succession.
I got about 3 hours sleep overnight, which is the most I've gotten in one sitting (laying?) since the 31st, before I had to jump up with the sickness, and start the day. But after some pipe tobacco, some soda water (To clear the "baffolds" as it were) and some more reading in the uplifting book "Secret Messages in the Water" which I suggest to any seeker of knowledge,
I feel downright Almost human.
I had a thought overnight while I tussled with sleep about being an initiate in the Order. There is a story in Bushido about a skilled swordsman, famous in his region, dueling another, travelling Samurai looking to test his skills. After a rousing defeat, the swordsman, rather than get angry, or despair, or make excuses to the victor instead offered, in writing, to become the master swordsman's pupil, and in his letter vowed to forsake every bit of 'knowledge" he ever learned about the art from anywhere else, and be a pure, unbiased, student of the master.
The Master agreed, and took him on.
It is a valuable idea. Although the Bushido came long before, it is one that is wisely repeated in the famous lines "You must unlearn what you have learned."
A concept that all of us on this journey must internalize at one point or another I suppose.
It is not something that will be of immediate nature to me, despite having been familiar with the story for years. I've always believed that in Philosophy, one took what they learned from one source and "rolled it over" i.e. invested that knowledge into the next bit of learning you got the opportunity to have. That way, your able to pick up on the lessons, patterns and ideas familiar to us all, and see how each different philosophical group or people approached it.
I was so pleased that the TOTJO uses the work as Joseph Campbell, that I went into my personal library and dug out my copies of his book to keep by as I listen to the rest of the MP3's. The poor things are "dog-eared" and hilited, and written in almost to pieces. One of the most profound things I got from Campbell was a story about his life. I don't know if this is covered in the MP3's or not, but Campbell found himself in New York when the great stock market crash happened, and he did not have a job for Five years!
During that time he made do with odd jobs, living day to day in a shack.
But to hear him tell it, he was not making do, it was one of the richest times of his life! Campbell says: "I didn't feel poor, I just didn't have any money." It was during that time he was able to "Follow his Bliss" and read all day everyday.
This has been a great comfort to me during the times during my protracted illness (When my ego would allow it to be) In that Chess and Philosophy have always been my bliss and although affected by my ills, I have had more time than ever before to pursuit them. I've oft hoped I was following in Campbell's, and others, footsteps and if the time should come that I be made well, I would be all the better off for it.
It is my hope my experience with TOTJO is either a part of, or a culmination of that experience.
I won't really know which for some time. It will take weeks before I know the result of the chemical treatments, and it will be the Summer before I know if I will need the surgery they are already talking about.
In the meantime, it's one day at a time. and for today TOTJO has gotten me through a couple of rough nights now. Yesterday, I had one of my Chess students over for annotation and analysis practice, and I showed him the website here. So who knows, I may have repaid TOTJO for its help already with another, I'm sure would be, worthy student.
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