The Harried Mystic

Of course, we live looking ahead.  We rehearse what it is we expect. We love to muse about the possibilities of tomorrow. We predict and prophesy. Some even bet on those futures and invest their hard-earned money on a hunch.

Be that as it may, we are, in truth, so much more alive by virtue of a storied past. Reading our blog entries an/or our handwritten notes in a journal gives us the chance to see our own story anew, with different eyes, and those things that happened “once upon a time” may reveal more of the secrets hiding inside.

This is also the counsel that Alice receives from the Red Queen in Wonderland:

“That’s the effect of living backwards,” the Queen said kindly: “it always makes one a little giddy at first—”

“Living backwards!” Alice repeated in great astonishment. “I never heard of such a thing!”

“—but there’s one great advantage in it, that one’s memory works both ways.”

“I’m sure mine only works one way,” Alice remarked. “I can’t remember things before they happen.”

“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,” the Queen remarked.”  – from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll

Self-analysis is a vital part of living the good life. Thumbing through the pages of what we’ve written long after we’ve forgotten that we did so, and maybe what we said, is a gift to oneself like few others. Like walking into a room at a favorite art museum, we draw close to a piece of art and read about it, and look at the finer details (as we are close to our own thoughts and emotions in first writing a blog). Then, after we’ve done that, most people step back and look at what hangs on the wall from a distance. [ That’s why the museums put those nice couches and benches at the center of each room.] From a distance, we are better able to experience the gestalt, the larger sweep of the artist’s imagination, mood, and message.

So it is with “living backward.”

We catch a glimpse of the wider sweep of our own lives, and we clarify the message from the watcher within as we revisit the work of our own hands. Henri Matisse summarized this so beautifully. I quote from him:

” Then I found myself or my artistic personality, by looking over my earliest works. They rarely deceive. There I found something that was always the same and which at first glance I thought to be monstrous repetition. It was the work of my personality which appeared the same no matter what different states of mind I happened to have passed through. I made an effort to develop this personality counting above all on my intuition and by returning again and again to fundamentals.”

May your own re-reading of the story of your life and mind bring you illumination.

© Brother Anton and The Harried Mystic, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.