Reforming Patterns

Reforming Patterns

The subliminal means of transmitting society’s conditioning is through tradition. Tradition is the past, acting in the present. Our history books are reports on the conflicts, the abrasions, caused by tradition and the rigidity it encourages. In the same way that we are attached, by the investment we have made, in our own personal progress (dating back to the day when we were able to speak our first word), so are we attached to the “progress” represented by our collective history—even intangible progression of such things as customs, morals, ideals, culture. Pride and tradition are as milk is to cream.

The grid of society’s rules meet and connect with each other, and each time a rule becomes outmoded and is abandoned, a new one takes its place in the arrangement. With no dramatic break in tradition, society is modified from generation to generation, but does not radically change; as long as tradition maintains, there is no traumatic threat to the security of the established, of the “old guard.” (The avant-garde is simply the “new guard.”) Even saints follow their own tradition, else they wouldn’t be recognized by society as saints. Morality divides. Morals are society’s dictation of what will be accepted as normal behavior. Normal derives from “a rule,” a yardstick, and refers to a measurement of an average, of conformity to the pattern. In determining, for example, whether our sexual activity is normal, we make a series of divisive choices: whether, first, to engage in sexual activity at all, or not; then, whether to limit that sexual activity to one sex gender or the other; whether to engage in it with one partner or more than one; and so on.

(In a subway station, I once was accosted by an attractive, but androgynous, hustler. Curious about the person under the makeup and ambiguous clothing, I asked, “Are you heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual?” The reply was, “Honey, I’m just sexual!”) An arbitrary line is an arbitrary line: we call the artificial division between California and Arizona a state “line,” the division between California and Mexico a “border.” Boundaries are intended to demark opposites, the opposition: I am here on the North side of the border, you are there on the South side. How is it that the line between California and Arizona unites—when within the confines of the United States—but the line between either of these states and Mexico divides? This is possible only when the people of California and Arizona believe themselves to be united, and when the people of California and Mexico believe themselves to not be united. Boundaries are created, and they can be dissolved. There is nothing which is eternal, immutable, about them. That which the individual cultivates as the self, the collective cultivates as the nation. To observe the illusory force in abstraction, consider all that is proposed when one chants, “I pledge allegiance to the flag…” The concepts of family, church, state, each promote identity and isolation; there are people who are “special” (the ones who are in association with, who “relate” to, us) and people who aren’t special. If it is possible to be free of anger or greed, is it also possible to be free of obedience or loyalty? We associate war with anger; we associate peace with obedience. Is war independent of obedience (to ideals, if nothing else)? When anger has been suppressed, will peace be the result? One man’s anger is another man’s indignation. One man’s

obedience to law is another man’s obedience to state. Are there imperfect ideals and perfect ideals? Or are there only ideals?

Where there is an ideal to kill for, and an ideal to die for, it is clearly only a matter of which side you are viewing that ideal from. When we have all psychologically died to ideals, who will march for war? And who will march for peace? If violence is a result of an idea, what is non-violence a result of? Can the reality of violence be invalidated by an effort in the opposite direction? Can’t we face the fact that there is violence—inwardly and outwardly—and not turn away, to lose our attention in some ideal…treating it as subject/object, something that we have no involvement in perpetuating? Aversion, avoidance, is a moving away—the creation of a space between, by choice. Resistance, opposition, rebellion, revolution, all establish their own traditions, authority and conditioning; the “new” which they bring is a reform, a modification or refinement, of the old. There are “new” ideals, new priorities, new titles, new costumes— new resolve to focus on becoming something different or “better” in the future. The most secure place to be is inside the matrix, the pattern; but a pattern is a form, and a form can change; and a reform can also change. To “reform” is to remake the old into a new shape, and that which has been reformed is subject to be formed again. Reform is the pendulum of the clock, causing the hour hand of history to “progress”—but never to cover ground that it hasn’t covered before. The clock has had only one opportunity to sweep through entirely new territory. We notice mechanical movement such as physical growth, and we speculate that there is the reality of psychological

movement, such as spiritual growth or “raising our consciousness.” Spiritual progress is viewed similarly to a joust with a pinball machine: when, with practiced control, the last light has been lit, the successful player is rewarded with the free game. Can enlightenment be “obtained” in stages, like studying for one’s doctorate, or climbing the Matterhorn…just a matter of desire and time, method? Can it simply be a matter of following a fixed, traditional pattern or practice?