The Inner Narrative

[jimshort19]

Mikey DB

"..is lying to protect someones' feelings... reason enough to forego communicating honestly....."

Sometimes in this wild province we must do the lesser evil, we cannot live here and stay clean. The one who thinks he stays clean shows himself a coward and a self-righteous fool. When the Gestappo comes, you will lie for Anne Frank. The greater truth than self-righteous guilt is to do the loving thing, and may that be the truth of you, and consider it told to your own profit. Do the truth. Walk the walk and don't sweat the talk. You may safely keep your mouth shut, and you are no fool, no coward, but show valourous discretion.

"...or should I think for myself?"

As surely as you were made to think, Homo sapiens sapiens, do it and do not stop. Do it until you die.

"... or is it more important to me to be the person that someone else expects me to be."

1. What is it you are being?
2. What is it that other(s) want you to be?

Let me compare these two so that the question may easily be answered.
Your inner narrative is something of a rant, but it is a rant of values and demonstrates your predisposition on matters of one man's inner dialogue. It is a highly moral dialogue, indicating a morally functional intellect. In fact, if this is representative of any recurring dialogue, the dialoguer is a moral intellectual. That does not mean that he is smart or knowledgable, but he is wiser than before and cannot help but grow wiser yet.

P.S. I see that you have posted again with a wonderful detail that tells me that I am not speaking to a young man, but one more accomplished than myself. I suspect that I have yet to learn the manners of this place. I may have already offended many, but I plead ignorance, and while ignorance of the law merits no mercy in the courts of man, at least you will forgive me.

 

[jimshort19]

Back to the Mikey

MDB, "... took a little extra time to read your contribution carefully so please forgive me if you thought I was ignoring you…FPRIVATE "

I do not know what "OFPRIVATE" means, but I had no notion that you owed me a response, but if I did, then I do again.

MDB, "I don’t think my "inner narrative" is as much a product of access to the Internet as it is a never-ending-question that began when I was a child seventy years ago."

You did not speak of 'The Question' per se, but exposited the matter well.

MDB, "It’s a long story and I’ve only sketched the briefest of outlines for you up to this point. I can assure you that you now know more about me now than any other person who’s shared their time and thinking with me here at Canadian Content."

And I am glad of it.

MDB, "I’m sorry you feel my contributions stem from conceit, if that’s the impression I’ve given then I ask for your forgiveness and forgiveness from all the wonderful folk here at CC."

That was not so much my impression but I got a glimpse that we were getting close to the slope from a searching morality play obviously written by a guy who knows the answers and is holding out on me. A lesson is coming. I knew it, but I thought it was going to be weak tea. I was wrong. Here it comes!

MDB" "Love" isn’t a commodity or a characteristic or an attribute….it is what life is all about.

MDB, "...but the very first thing we learn is love. A human being is about love and everything else is secondary to that reality.
MDB "We are selfish to a fault before we learn that every human being around us feels the same way that we do. We begin to "other" and in that "othering" we find a fundamental commonality... and until we learn prejudice and... hatred contempt and disdain we know at the basic most fundamental stage of our being that we are all the same.

Wow! Ca-Ching! That's the real bloody inner dialogue right there! This is the nut. And a fine nut it is.

MDB, "I hope we can communicate further, maybe we can and maybe we can’t but my inner narrative tells me that if I fail it won’t be because I didn’t try.

I'm sorry but that would be impossible. It's an inner guy dialogue thing. Like you want me to spill my the beans in return? Reciprocity is a common moral thread, and my beans aren't that good, but I'll do a mind-reading trick for you... Your real name is probably Mike. Am I right? Did I get it right? Ha!

 

[jimmoyer]

Darkbeaver wrote:

I'm grateful my kids didn't get hurt like that. I always encouraged them to get out and see the world before they committed themselves to the grind, two of the three graduated from highschool and took of for a few years to various parts of the world, I always believed that at eighteen or nineteen most young prople didn't really know enough about the world to make an informed decision about carreers, and that a little experience would serve them well.
What pressure kids must be under these days from the machine! It isn't fair and it isn't right. Christ look what's considered normal for a univercity student, they're saddled with debt up to and exceeding a hundred thousand dollars before they even get a degree or a trade, they've been made to sell thier futures and the futures of thier children. Attached to the foul breast of the stinking bankers before they have a chance to say no.Fornicate everyone of the slimey basturds.
----------------------------------------above by Darkbeaver-------------------------------------

That post is worth repeating, among the many fine posts by others here.


The unchallenged inner story line we have for ourselves can be a negative or a positive thing, but it's scary how few of us are aware of it. In my own experience, I was very unaware of it for many many years.

 

[jimshort19]

Dark DarkBeaver

"Fornicate everyone of the slimey basturds."

Well said Sir! After being victims of the religion industry, we are now victims of the education industry, though not the education per se. But if you fail to borrow and prostrate yourself to the existing paradym the existing paradym will step on your face. Fornicate everyone of the slimey basturds - and double dog fornicate them!

 

[Unforgiven]

I wonder if that is tied in some way to the moment? ------Asks Unforgiven

The Inner Narrative is a separate entity. It of course influences the moment, and vice versa the moment impinges on the Inner Narrative, my grasshopper.

Glib answer of me. But let's sidestep your question for a moment and look at our unspoken and unchallenged assumptions about ourselves, our inner story line.

Last Sunday night was a B-grade Made For TV movie on ABC.
In it was a 40something year old at his wit's end and raises a 38 to his temple, after being not invited to his daughter's wedding, after a couple years separation from the wife, after many incidents spawned by his alchoholism and after just walking away from a car accident.

Notice the Inner Narrative gets tripped up by the moment, by an incident.

In this case the inner narrative was triggered by both the non-invite to the daughters wedding compounded by just being in a car accident.

The inner narrative is just one accident away, so to speak.

This man's inner narrative : YOU'RE A LOSER IF YOU HAVE AN ORDINARY JOB.
Also, all losers are to receive no mercy, no love, no friendship AND no respect.

The inner narrative is similar to the idea : If only this and that happens can you ever be allowed to be happy. The corrolary to the Inner Narrative is: You will misunderstand and misinterpret and deny all that confronts you if life does not correspond to your inner story line script.

This man had an ordinary job.

A lot of teenagers coming of age and facing a graduation fear this. A lot of them have this innner narrative.

I agree with that I think. Though I suspect I know the answer, how is it that we go about changing this, if we infact rule out the input from anyone we feel doesn't toe the inner narative line, so to speak?

 

[jimshort19]

Unforgiven

Firstly, I forgive you. Secondly, so I agree, like the Inner Narrative might be total, 38 to the temple, bull****. Thirdly, and I've never counted past two before, so be glad for what we had, when I could not count to three.

 

[MikeyDB]

Long long ago in a galaxy far far away....

There was a popular phraseology used during the sixties...."Get it together". With variations of course.."Well I finally got it together and now I can't remember where I put it.."

"Getting it together" was melding the inner narrative (I really don't like that pharaseology much...) with the temporal and situational.

Intellect alone won't serve the caprices and challenges encountered on the human sojourn and neither will emotion. A mind that finds that equisite balance between the two then moves into that space surrenders nothing but opens a window onto timelessness.

The minds-eye if you would, freed from the mechanics of reason and analysis riding the subtle whisper of dreams and wonder finds beauty and harmony in all things. Life demands we accept the unacceptable and somehow find our way around it. The symphony of life reduced to frequency and period is but a pale simulacrum of the radiance of existence.

There is a beauty of sorts in the cogs and levers of necessity and obligation, but the melody and lyric of the symphony is found in emotion. Michelangelo had to eat but does anyone really believe that the Pieta or David was created through the hawking insults poised on grocery shelves bleating to be taken home to appease the petty hunger of the mechanism of mankind?

No, the connection made with inner strength and all that makes mankind's brief glimmer among the stars worthwhile is found at the soul of beauty. Awareness in and of itself is a poor navigator. It is the sirens song, the oranges and purples of a summer's sky, the fragrance of the lilly the rose and the violet, that heady allure of a summer captured on a gentle zephyr. It is imagination that works between the pauses of gentle sleep interspersed between necessities that opens the doors to vistas beyond the mundane and calculated.

When our existence becomes overwhelmed by the nuts and bolts, the dust of life as the Chinese say, we risk breaking our connection with the song that only peace and balance permits us to hear. We've committed a grave injustice to our children in demanding they grow up faster than they should. That they become sophisticated and worldly before they've had time to swing like pirates from gnarled apple tree limb or wait in agonizing anticipation for the handsome prince astride a white steed.

We steal from our children the opportunity to recover from failure and rise again after falling down when we demand they be something other than what they are. It is great disservice to our children and our community of man we manipulate when we force the bean to grow more and faster than is normal and the same is true of children. When we describe the world by "things" and cultivate the notion that honor comes through ownership and not deeds we have placed them in a prison.

In failing to seek justice and balance for their future we abandon them.

You can only know these things when you stumble upon them.....

 

[darkbeaver]

"Fornicate everyone of the slimey basturds."

Well said Sir! After being victims of the religion industry, we are now victims of the education industry, though not the education per se. But if you fail to borrow and prostrate yourself to the existing paradym the existing paradym will step on your face. Fornicate everyone of the slimey basturds - and double dog fornicate them!

I was lucky early in my life to have experianced the cruelty of others on a dayly basis. This compelled me to become a loner, this isolation allowed me the luxury of a measure of independent thought, something I still feel a bit of guilt about. I'v watched my persecutors accumulate the poverty of silver and gold. I learned emphathy for others from the gift of pain and cruelty. An education and experiance I could not have paid for. That great rotten paradym we speak of can't afford me, it will never grind the smile off my face it will never know my company except at it's peril.

 

[jimshort19]

DarkBeaver Light - Heavy

Wow DB. The stuff being ripped off on this thread now is quite a narrative in itself. By way of by the way, I too am just an apeman who failed to pay the dues but did the duty anyway, and count it a continuing profit to possess myself enough not to put a 38 to my head and blow my brains out. I've been up and I've been down. That's life.

That's what all the people sayay!
Shot down in April,
Back up in Mayay!

Sorry 'bout that. You've got great dirt man. I bought a Rolls Royce once. Had it for about an hour. I had a nice office looking down on Toronto at King and Bay. Had a family. Had stuff. Now I still have some stuff, like what is in my pocket and my suitcase and a box upon a dresser bursting with T-shirts and socks and sweaters and underwear. I've got stuff! I've done 20 different things, been a miner and a short order cook, and another 18 things besides. Furthermore, I'm not dead yet.

But you know I'm gonna change that tu-oon,
When I'm back on my feet in Ju-ooune

 

[MikeyDB]

Shih the carpenter was on his way to the state of Chi. When he got to Chu Yuan he saw an oak tree by the village shrine. The tree was large tnough to shade several thousand oxen and was a hundred spans around. It towered above the hilltops with its lowest branches eighty feet from the ground. More than ten of its branches were big enough to be made into boats. There were crowds of people as in a marketplace. The master carpenter did not even turn his head but walked on without stopping.

His appreentice took a long look, then ran after Shih the carpenter and said, “Since I took up my axe and followed you master I have never seen timber as beautiful as this. But you do not even bother to look at it and walk on without stopping. Why is this?”

Shih the carpenter replied, “Stop! Say no more! That tree is useless. A boat made from it would sink, a cofin would soon rot a tool would split a door would ooze sap and a beam would have termites. That is why it has reached such a ripe age.”
Chuang Tsu

 

[darkbeaver]

Wow DB. The stuff being ripped off on this thread now is quite a narrative in itself. By way of by the way, I too am just an apeman who failed to pay the dues but did the duty anyway, and count it a continuing profit to possess myself enough not to put a 38 to my head and blow my brains out. I've been up and I've been down. That's life.

That's what all the people sayay!
Shot down in April,
Back up in Mayay!

Sorry 'bout that. You've got great dirt man. I bought a Rolls Royce once. Had it for about an hour. I had a nice office looking down on Toronto at King and Bay. Had a family. Had stuff. Now I still have some stuff, like what is in my pocket and my suitcase and a box upon a dresser bursting with T-shirts and socks and sweaters and underwear. I've got stuff! I've done 20 different things, been a miner and a short order cook, and another 18 things besides. Furthermore, I'm not dead yet.

But you know I'm gonna change that tu-oon,
When I'm back on my feet in Ju-ooune

I think you have the stuff that matters sir. You're very much alive. Don't let them phuck with your song. I have considered an early departure, but I'm held here by duty to my offsprungins
and thiers, if anything feeds off my mortal remains it'll be them. I'v had a mix of occupations, presently I'm involved in keeping my carbon footprint small, I'm hard at work doing nothing but conserving energy.:lol:

 

[jimshort19]

Doobey Dark Brothers Beaver

And when the line seemed near the bitter end,
the old bulls did play upon the thread.

 

[darkbeaver]

Shih the carpenter was on his way to the state of Chi. When he got to Chu Yuan he saw an oak tree by the village shrine. The tree was large tnough to shade several thousand oxen and was a hundred spans around. It towered above the hilltops with its lowest branches eighty feet from the ground. More than ten of its branches were big enough to be made into boats. There were crowds of people as in a marketplace. The master carpenter did not even turn his head but walked on without stopping.

His appreentice took a long look, then ran after Shih the carpenter and said, “Since I took up my axe and followed you master I have never seen timber as beautiful as this. But you do not even bother to look at it and walk on without stopping. Why is this?”

Shih the carpenter replied, “Stop! Say no more! That tree is useless. A boat made from it would sink, a cofin would soon rot a tool would split a door would ooze sap and a beam would have termites. That is why it has reached such a ripe age.”
Chuang Tsu

That little book and it's gems should be given to children early and often.

 

[jimmoyer]

So "old saps" aren't good for anything else, excepting that of survival into old age ?

Trees, silent sentinels, listening to us, observing us, standing over us, giving voice to the wind.

I love when the wind moves through the trees.

 

[MikeyDB]

One of the pieces of writing I've had pubished was about exactly that feeling. Trees whispering the ancient dreams of time long gone.

 

[darkbeaver]

So "old saps" aren't good for anything else, excepting that of survival into old age ?

Trees, silent sentinels, listening to us, observing us, standing over us, giving voice to the wind.

I love when the wind moves through the trees.

Me too Jim, a tree wood be a good thing to be.

 

[jimshort19]

Old Saps and Useless Trees

Mikey, "In failing to seek justice and balance for their future we abandon them."

Your concern for the others to follow is clear. Liked your prose too. My brother Tom, a ponderable man, told me that the reason babies are made cute is so we won't throw them off the balcony.

Children must and do grow up, and we'd be better off having them educated and voting at the age of 16 than to leave them out. But civics is saved for a few, in university, where the call of the buck is near. As for the unseemly rush to mold them, there is clearly something desperate and malignant about the overachieving parent, a vicarious bloodsucker, when the child is found dead by their own hand between high school and the next level of expectations.

Justice and balance are served better than we do if only we do not spend their future on our present.

 

[darkbeaver]

The problem as I see it is choice, the same benefit offered as proof of benevolence of the machine is in fact a mindphucking labrinth where the new mind gets lost and trapped for ever more. When the new mind is faced with so many avenues of exploration it is susceptable to illusion and deception. Modern main stream media was used right from the beginning to construct a false paradiam, it has usurped the traditional direct instruction and is responsible for the better part of generational divide. At my age I can still vividly remember what it felt like to grope about in the dark for a handhold. If we believe the machine( it ) is the leading exponent of criticle thought, a lie so patently false as to be the greatest joke of the last century. The modern addage "thinking outside of the box" is an example of the junkspeak, we've all heard someone speak outside of the box while describing the inner wall of the next slightly bigger box. The wedge is driven in between the generations and forms the gap that paralyzes discrimination. When we use a disney film to occupy the minds of babys we work for the machine, the young have been imprinted by the machine in this manner for decades, the machine is my mummy. Throw out the idiot box, save a baby today.
The bankers wern't kidding when they coined the phrase "children, our most precious resource" haha.

 

[MikeyDB]

Beve....

Great contribution but (and I understand that we're talking...not blogging.. there's so much more to this idea....

I'd agree in a general sense with your postulates but there is in my mind no denying the price that we are all paying as neo-postmodernity dawns for the abandonment of moral and social frameworks that both enhanced and improved life for a very long time...and were the seeds of a retained bigotry and pseudo-dependency on the msysticism of "beliefs" as the magic silver bullet that would ultimately re-direct humankind back onto the pathway of his humanity.

I'd write more on these two points and thanks Beve for your astute input, but it would be a blog and not a conversation....

 

[jimshort19]

DeepBeaver

What to Hell are you smoking DB? This stuff is dynamite!

Tell me DB, how many minutes did it take you to write that? (Indicate years, months, days, hours, minutes and seconds please.)

But when you say it, it doesn't sound like Mummy. It doesn't even sound nice. And you are talking about the people who know what is good for my brain, so they know what is good for my soul as well.

Machine, "DB, thou dost protest too much. Wherefrom springs thy bitterness? Everything is not as it should be, never was, never will be, but you have the vote."

DB, "The problem as I see it is choice, the same benefit offered as proof of benevolence of the machine is in fact a mindphucking labrinth where the new mind gets lost and trapped for ever more."

Machine, "Vote Rhino."

Jim, "This requires, demands, screams for a new thread DB. This is way out there. Can you keep this up and make it consistant? or do we have to use Inner Dialogue Analysis on this stuff?"

DB.... DB? Earth to DB, come in please.