The obvious answer is no. Another answer (as I may or may not have understood it) might be that certain folks have acquired the ability to experience things which are novel as novel - every moment being different from every other. Perhaps for these few there is no such thing as a repeat performance. Every time is their first.
My question now is this: could a person experience something as new not out of some achievement of willful presence and remembrance of self, but because they have forgotten themselves so fully that their repeat performance is experienced as a first? And how to tell the difference?
I'm plagued with a sense of my own inability to decipher whether or not I am improving or simply cycling through the latter of these two scenarios over and over again. And I feel strongly that if I don't work my ass off this will be the only story I ever have to tell. Not the story of my life, but the one of my slow death.
I must remember to remember.
4 comments:
As a person whose story is of a slow, self-inflicted and invisible death, I hope that you can avoid the place (and it is singular) that I've been in. I have confidence that you can.
You can't do it if you try. Being in the moment requires no expectation of outcome. To those seemingly lucky few, it's not that they try to be this way, they simply are. They haven't forgotten the past, they're just not concerned with it. The sheer fact you're aware and observing yourself at this very moment means you're moving forward. It's hard to change something you don't know exists. Now you see it and soon it will be behind you, of no concern.
Erin, my thought is that the Bible has much to say on this subject. Specifically, I would look to the book of Hosea.
The question you are asking is one of mind and nature. You want to know if you can forget yourself so completely that your next experience is brand new, not coated with the ghosts of the past, nor interpreted in the context of what has been-- the goal is to once more have the first experience. Dangerous, shocking, thrilling, and requiring complete surrender to embrace. That's really the goal, would you say?
To regain such a prize, well, you can't mess around waiting. I don't think it will happen naturally. It's more surgical. Hosea talks about it, in that case the prostitute who cheated on her husband when she went back to her old ways, but she repented and wanted to purify herself and restore her innocence. She goes into the wilderness. She undertakes severe ascetic rigors- it reminds me very much of the Native American vision quest. She prays to her God and forgets her own life, throwing herself down and trusting only God to preserve her.
In such times, one might undergo strange visions and startling epiphanies. No doubt lack of food and restlessness add to the effect, but the substance of it seems to be the throwing off of appetites, worldly matters, and attachments; such things as blind the inner nature from itself. So, you might be exhausted and starved and freaking out, but you freak out constructively-- you dig back into the core of what's been there all along. From there, you can deal with it, and trust God to provide.
You pass a point in yourself. You exhaust the barrier between the conscious and the unconscious. The unconscious and the deep inner nature. The inner nature and the soul. One's own soul and the living essence of all creation. Creation and Creator simply being as they are at their core. From this place, all things are possible, yes?
Hosea's wife Gomer not only became pure again, she was transformed into something Edenic. She touched a root of ancestral memory that made her newer than she was even at birth. Wild animals could sense her wholeness and befriended her.
For those of us who have screwed up, there is much inner trash. A journey of ascetic surgery, a worshipful experience of utmost trust, and surrender of all we cling to-- it's going to be harsh for those of us who have fed a lot of demons and now have them to slay. Ascetic journeys are also useful and good to those who've made wiser choices. Did not all the prophets take these paths? It's much more beautiful and not horrible for them; what they face and sacrifice in themselves is far more palatable. Yet, by the grace of God, none of us are beyond restoration.
Those are my thoughts. Hopefully I'm not rambling or sounding like a crazy person.
Actually, there is a yes and a no to this virginity twice question. No by the definition of what losing one's virginity means but through physical and medical means, It is possible to make it appear one in still a virgin, which is explained a bit below.
One of the most common cosmetic procedures in asian and islamic countries where if a women is not a virgin, then she will never marry or will be treated like dirt. What these women do is they actually put in a new hymen made of some type of animal skin or synthetic crap. I forget, but in a way, these women are losing their virginity more than once in a manner of speaking.
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