I was in tears less than halfway through reading this, and fully when I saw that beautiful photo of (your?) hand with dandelion seed (at least that's what it looks like to me!). And then I remembered a short animated video essay I saw a few months back about a Russian botanist who was arrested and sent to the Gulag, where he wrote his daughter in Leningrad regularly, pretending he was on a scientific research trip. He sent her some dandelion seeds and talked metaphorically about the strength and determination we don't always know we seed.
"how can one ever write about a philosophy of destruction unless they name the vessel that carries it?" What a question! Maybe it's THE question. I've been thinking again of Abdullah Öcalan's work, and this line reminded me of his contentions about power and wealth hoarding always traveling hand in hand going back around 5,000 years.
You are a light, my friend, and one of the most powerful ones I know. Your voice in this essay, in all your essays, shakes the ground under my feet halfway across the world.❤️🔥🕯️🧚
Oh Nia, my dear! Yes I feel what you feel. That’s my hand indeed, when I was at my mother’s place one day desperate grappling with a crisis, a dandelion seed effortlessly floated in through a window and landed right on my palms. These subtle signs makes me believe in a path that exits independent of our individual sufferings and stories, a sort of eternal state of love. I believe in it Nia, I really do, despite all the tears that I shed, despite all the heartbreaks I suffer, I believe in it.
Thank you for sharing the story of the botanist sent to Gulag. I remember reading sorts of such stories in Svetlana Alexievich’s work. Stories of war and revolution from the USSR always makes me cry. I bow to the resilience and courage of the people who have and still survive such horrible fate, and if they haven’t survived, they perished while fighting for beauty and hope. I can’t imagine the pain you must feel when you look and hear about all of it, the land of your ancestors. I am with you my dear.
The light that I am, you are too Nia! We are it, we are us, together, that is exactly the ecology of consciousness I have been speaking and writing about. The illusion of separateness has to disappear before we can herald peace again.
So much love to you my friend, you have led me deeper into my heart ❤️
Maybe the pain of ancestors that runs through us is another kind of river that connects 💚
And I can't remember whether we've talked about Svetlana Alexievich, but I love her work! I still think The Unwomanly Face of War might be the most important book I've ever read, because it made so many "ordinary" people's lives just as relevant as generals and politicians who take their countries to war.
I hadn't known of the artist you mentioned, and am eager to see if my father knows him, which I'm sure he does.
We carry the lands of our ancestors within our blood and bones, my dear friend 💚
Oh yes, you are the one who suggested me her work. She is incredible in documenting oral history. Unparalleled actually. Her work broke me down, it was so powerful and visceral.
I am hoping your father knows of Roerich, although he was from generations before that.
Nia, I keep thinking and dreaming of rivers. Ancestral memories like rivers flowing through us, maybe we are tapping into something older than history. The spirit of life and creation itself.
I keep thinking of you too, of lost lands, rivers, forests, language, ancestors. Of stories that we now carry with knowing that is very limited. That’s why there’s so much pain. But there’s also kinship that surpass language. And love - that soft flowing energy of constant compassion and healing. ❤️❤️
This was a gorgeous essay Swarnali. I could feel the angst and yearning in it, and also the exhaustion. It is also my wish to use this space as a way to bring light to our connections with all life on this planet in hopes that we may cherish and protect it and each other. 🌺
Thank you sweet friend. I wish you success in your noble endeavour. You have a gentle and compassionate heart, if only the world was more like you. ❤️🙏
Thank you for your beautiful and powerful words, Swarnali. I am glad to be connected to you through them and through the hope that we share despite the darkness that seems everywhere.
I love the development of your writing, Swarna. Leading with the combination of both reason and feeling, it reaches into power of totalised expression: the macro and the micro, the outer and the inner, the mind and the soul. I’m looking forward to the next one.
As the others here say, a wonderful essay as always. I love your mentioning those wonderful writers. I know you agree with Camus when he said, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
The horrors of which you so eloquently write are, I think, unleashed whenever inequality lets the sour darkness in one mans soul extinguish the lives of others. These perpetual genocides occur when our fellow beings are turned into the “Other.”
I think we have learned form past wars. What we have forgotten, since the creation of our hierarchies of power, is how to rein in the capacity of any broken individual and their supporting systems to enact their vile prejudices and darkest impulses.
Sometimes I like to remember that the vast majority of Human culture has been far less vicious and far more cooperative and communal than the time after the Agricultural revolution.
Strangely only yesterday I was replying to a note with a ridiculously condensed version of what you are saying about path toward atomisation taken by the western philosophical traditions. For me, I think Platonic idealism imagines there’s an underlying essence to all things and that the real physical world around us is merely an imitation of these non-physical, timeless and absolute forms. Platonic Idealism managed to kick off what eventually became a deep feeling in the Western mind; that there’s a splinter between humans and nature, which in turn seeds the idea of humans being faulty and broken etc.
This Platonic idea helped to fuel Christian beliefs of Man being created in the image of God, of man being separate from nature, of heaven being the perfect form and Earth merely a place filled with flawed humans trying to return to perfect forms etc. etc.
And these ideas helped fuel Enlightenment concepts of Man’s mastery over nature which in turn led to ideas of separation and dominance, etc. etc. which then set the stage for exploitative economic value system that helps to form and perpetuate the current multi-crises we’re suffering.
Modern capitalism is fuelled by ancient (and modern) ideas of power, guilt, shame, imperfection, dominance, a belief in and support for powerful hierarchies and unchangeable power structures based on our so-called innate flaws which also lead to the justification for so much of the horror you describe
Eventually we arrive at the current moment (that Albert Camus perfectly describes as Absurdism) and I think of as Pivotal, where there is no longer any point in seeking meaning in life because there is no meaning in a meaningless universe.
Another beautiful intellectual and soulful essay Swarnali. I’ve missed reading your thoughts. Thank you for this one. I’ve been taking a bit of a break myself but there’s been a few things recently that have pulled me back and your writing is one of them.
Thank you my friend. I have been so burnt out lately and was in sordid need of respite. But nothing seems to make feel better anymore. I am sure it is the macros that are affecting my psyche, like a lot of other people, whom I know to be empathetic and kind, have been feeling these days. It is just one crisis after the other - both in the inner world and the outer.
I read your essay yesterday about the moomin series and its creator, it brought me so much joy. I see myself as snufkin as well. I love that character so much - an eternal vagabond witness of life! That series has saved me from some of the darkest days of my life.
There is so much in the world to love and cherish my friend, but the heaviness these days are too much to bear. The modern capitalism has flushed us enough in these parts of the world to make a shell out of a culture that seems to be on the edge of a massive collapse - both ideological and ecological.
I agree so deeply when you say, “Modern capitalism is fuelled by ancient (and modern) ideas of power, guilt, shame, imperfection, dominance, a belief in and support for powerful hierarchies and unchangeable power structures based on our so-called innate flaws”. Plato and his mind and nature split has been the root, but it is mostly the interpretation and the stubbornness to see things only in one way that has brought us to this. Indigenous people and culture, Eastern principal thinking, and many different evolved bodies of wisdom - have always known the better path, even have elaborate guides to walk on that path, only to be obscured by western idealism. For example, one of the them is the Rigveda which questions the creation of the universe through the senses of an observer.
And yes, Camus, he knew there is no point in the world but even in his endless paradigms of absurdist explorations, the last chapter was ‘Love’, which he never lived to finish which is both the proof of his own theory of absurdity and meaninglessness. Though his daughter finished his work, and I see beauty in that continuation, as it also proves his own theory - that in a meaningless universe it is only love that leads us on the path that brings us closer to whatever meaning we create.
Keep telling truth through your stories, my friend, in that I am always your reader and supporter. 🙏❤️
Beautiful essay. Reading the last section calmed me into that very feeling of peace. May all beings know happiness and the root of happiness. 🙌
Thank you Julie 🙏 I echo your prayers for all beings of the world. May they know peace, may they know love and compassion ❤️
I was in tears less than halfway through reading this, and fully when I saw that beautiful photo of (your?) hand with dandelion seed (at least that's what it looks like to me!). And then I remembered a short animated video essay I saw a few months back about a Russian botanist who was arrested and sent to the Gulag, where he wrote his daughter in Leningrad regularly, pretending he was on a scientific research trip. He sent her some dandelion seeds and talked metaphorically about the strength and determination we don't always know we seed.
"how can one ever write about a philosophy of destruction unless they name the vessel that carries it?" What a question! Maybe it's THE question. I've been thinking again of Abdullah Öcalan's work, and this line reminded me of his contentions about power and wealth hoarding always traveling hand in hand going back around 5,000 years.
You are a light, my friend, and one of the most powerful ones I know. Your voice in this essay, in all your essays, shakes the ground under my feet halfway across the world.❤️🔥🕯️🧚
Oh Nia, my dear! Yes I feel what you feel. That’s my hand indeed, when I was at my mother’s place one day desperate grappling with a crisis, a dandelion seed effortlessly floated in through a window and landed right on my palms. These subtle signs makes me believe in a path that exits independent of our individual sufferings and stories, a sort of eternal state of love. I believe in it Nia, I really do, despite all the tears that I shed, despite all the heartbreaks I suffer, I believe in it.
Thank you for sharing the story of the botanist sent to Gulag. I remember reading sorts of such stories in Svetlana Alexievich’s work. Stories of war and revolution from the USSR always makes me cry. I bow to the resilience and courage of the people who have and still survive such horrible fate, and if they haven’t survived, they perished while fighting for beauty and hope. I can’t imagine the pain you must feel when you look and hear about all of it, the land of your ancestors. I am with you my dear.
The light that I am, you are too Nia! We are it, we are us, together, that is exactly the ecology of consciousness I have been speaking and writing about. The illusion of separateness has to disappear before we can herald peace again.
So much love to you my friend, you have led me deeper into my heart ❤️
Maybe the pain of ancestors that runs through us is another kind of river that connects 💚
And I can't remember whether we've talked about Svetlana Alexievich, but I love her work! I still think The Unwomanly Face of War might be the most important book I've ever read, because it made so many "ordinary" people's lives just as relevant as generals and politicians who take their countries to war.
I hadn't known of the artist you mentioned, and am eager to see if my father knows him, which I'm sure he does.
We carry the lands of our ancestors within our blood and bones, my dear friend 💚
Oh yes, you are the one who suggested me her work. She is incredible in documenting oral history. Unparalleled actually. Her work broke me down, it was so powerful and visceral.
I am hoping your father knows of Roerich, although he was from generations before that.
Nia, I keep thinking and dreaming of rivers. Ancestral memories like rivers flowing through us, maybe we are tapping into something older than history. The spirit of life and creation itself.
I keep thinking of you too, of lost lands, rivers, forests, language, ancestors. Of stories that we now carry with knowing that is very limited. That’s why there’s so much pain. But there’s also kinship that surpass language. And love - that soft flowing energy of constant compassion and healing. ❤️❤️
My heart eased up so much reading this just now!
❤️❤️❤️❤️
This was a gorgeous essay Swarnali. I could feel the angst and yearning in it, and also the exhaustion. It is also my wish to use this space as a way to bring light to our connections with all life on this planet in hopes that we may cherish and protect it and each other. 🌺
Thank you sweet friend. I wish you success in your noble endeavour. You have a gentle and compassionate heart, if only the world was more like you. ❤️🙏
Thank you for your beautiful and powerful words, Swarnali. I am glad to be connected to you through them and through the hope that we share despite the darkness that seems everywhere.
Thank you dear one for looking at darkness from the eyes of transformation. I am glad we are on the same boat. ❤️🙏
I love the development of your writing, Swarna. Leading with the combination of both reason and feeling, it reaches into power of totalised expression: the macro and the micro, the outer and the inner, the mind and the soul. I’m looking forward to the next one.
Thank you Thomas. It sure has changed and evolved over years 🙂
As the others here say, a wonderful essay as always. I love your mentioning those wonderful writers. I know you agree with Camus when he said, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
The horrors of which you so eloquently write are, I think, unleashed whenever inequality lets the sour darkness in one mans soul extinguish the lives of others. These perpetual genocides occur when our fellow beings are turned into the “Other.”
I think we have learned form past wars. What we have forgotten, since the creation of our hierarchies of power, is how to rein in the capacity of any broken individual and their supporting systems to enact their vile prejudices and darkest impulses.
Sometimes I like to remember that the vast majority of Human culture has been far less vicious and far more cooperative and communal than the time after the Agricultural revolution.
Strangely only yesterday I was replying to a note with a ridiculously condensed version of what you are saying about path toward atomisation taken by the western philosophical traditions. For me, I think Platonic idealism imagines there’s an underlying essence to all things and that the real physical world around us is merely an imitation of these non-physical, timeless and absolute forms. Platonic Idealism managed to kick off what eventually became a deep feeling in the Western mind; that there’s a splinter between humans and nature, which in turn seeds the idea of humans being faulty and broken etc.
This Platonic idea helped to fuel Christian beliefs of Man being created in the image of God, of man being separate from nature, of heaven being the perfect form and Earth merely a place filled with flawed humans trying to return to perfect forms etc. etc.
And these ideas helped fuel Enlightenment concepts of Man’s mastery over nature which in turn led to ideas of separation and dominance, etc. etc. which then set the stage for exploitative economic value system that helps to form and perpetuate the current multi-crises we’re suffering.
Modern capitalism is fuelled by ancient (and modern) ideas of power, guilt, shame, imperfection, dominance, a belief in and support for powerful hierarchies and unchangeable power structures based on our so-called innate flaws which also lead to the justification for so much of the horror you describe
Eventually we arrive at the current moment (that Albert Camus perfectly describes as Absurdism) and I think of as Pivotal, where there is no longer any point in seeking meaning in life because there is no meaning in a meaningless universe.
Another beautiful intellectual and soulful essay Swarnali. I’ve missed reading your thoughts. Thank you for this one. I’ve been taking a bit of a break myself but there’s been a few things recently that have pulled me back and your writing is one of them.
Much warmth my friend :)
Thank you my friend. I have been so burnt out lately and was in sordid need of respite. But nothing seems to make feel better anymore. I am sure it is the macros that are affecting my psyche, like a lot of other people, whom I know to be empathetic and kind, have been feeling these days. It is just one crisis after the other - both in the inner world and the outer.
I read your essay yesterday about the moomin series and its creator, it brought me so much joy. I see myself as snufkin as well. I love that character so much - an eternal vagabond witness of life! That series has saved me from some of the darkest days of my life.
There is so much in the world to love and cherish my friend, but the heaviness these days are too much to bear. The modern capitalism has flushed us enough in these parts of the world to make a shell out of a culture that seems to be on the edge of a massive collapse - both ideological and ecological.
I agree so deeply when you say, “Modern capitalism is fuelled by ancient (and modern) ideas of power, guilt, shame, imperfection, dominance, a belief in and support for powerful hierarchies and unchangeable power structures based on our so-called innate flaws”. Plato and his mind and nature split has been the root, but it is mostly the interpretation and the stubbornness to see things only in one way that has brought us to this. Indigenous people and culture, Eastern principal thinking, and many different evolved bodies of wisdom - have always known the better path, even have elaborate guides to walk on that path, only to be obscured by western idealism. For example, one of the them is the Rigveda which questions the creation of the universe through the senses of an observer.
And yes, Camus, he knew there is no point in the world but even in his endless paradigms of absurdist explorations, the last chapter was ‘Love’, which he never lived to finish which is both the proof of his own theory of absurdity and meaninglessness. Though his daughter finished his work, and I see beauty in that continuation, as it also proves his own theory - that in a meaningless universe it is only love that leads us on the path that brings us closer to whatever meaning we create.
Keep telling truth through your stories, my friend, in that I am always your reader and supporter. 🙏❤️