Alchemy and Dragon tattoos

Seeking is like traveling. You have to look around while you're moving, or you will miss the whole point.


I took a few hours this past week to pick my head up from my seeking to look around and read some books. Of note were "Influence", "Siddartha", "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", and today, start to finish in 230 pages, "The Alchemist."


There is much to commend about any one of these books. Together though, they were like a spicy paella for the soul and the brain.


Reading new material excites neurons and opens the senses. Possibilities not previously conceived explode into being. Motivation and desire that may have sat collecting the stiffness of apathy springs up and says "Let's do it!"


Not a day goes by that I do not see the psychological clicks and whirrs described in Influence. My time next to a river nearly every day reminds me of Siddartha's view of the never ending nature of life, the universe and everything. In my practice the savagery and the inscrutable nature of people reflects right back to the sadistic and self serving characters in Dragon Tattoo. Finally, the crystal merchant in The Alchemist looked up at me today from the pages of the book and said "I am you. Is that enough?"


My personal legend has yet to be written, but I am on the path. Maktub.

Big and small at the same time.

Look down at an ant. It is tiny. Even close up to your face it will be small. Its legs and antennae thinner than hairs. As small as it is, it is to an aphid as you are to it. Gargantuan. Monolithic. To a bacteria an aphid is a skyscraper. And so on.

You may be a 450 pound giant strongman. 6 foot 9 and dwarfing most humans on the planet. But from the top of a 15 story building, your bulk is invisible. Your relative size rendered meaningless. You would be like an ant.

To a toddler child, adults are giant gods. Even so, to any observer, from say 5 miles away, we are all but invisible; unseen even as we walk, drive, love, fight, vote, and otherwise go about living our lives.

All things are this way in this universe; both giant and tiny, all the time, overlapping each state, depending on the observer's perspective.

In this respect we are no different than stars, galaxies and planets. Why would we be? We're all made of the same stuff and in the same place. Gotta love the universe.  Thanks Alan Watts.