Jeremiah Johnson
"I been to a town."-Sydney Pollack, Jeremiah Johnson
“But if you have come by now to dislike the world, you are not compelled to remain a citizen of it.”
—Plotinus, The Enneads
The tripartite of the Greek philosopher Plotinus included matter, soul, and The One. A child plays with toys. Toys are matter, the furthest link away from God. It includes plants and planets, people, and places. Since it is the furthest away, it contains less of that good ole’ God essence. It is more vulnerable to miseries and corruptions.
The soul is the directing intelligence in this analogy or the child. It is kids who play with limited things. The child is free to come up with all sorts of risqué scenarios because it is not personally affected by the games it plays.
This leaves the last role of the parent to The One. This groundless ground of all being—who watches us with a slight smile, amused at how its creation continues to create and individuate. When the child is ready, it can put down its toys and join the parent in enjoying what it actually possesses.
Once the soul has recognized that its current home is a motel planet—a verifiable house of mirrors—it begins the flight of the alone to the alone. In the cowboy film, Jeremiah Johnson, this flight is seen as the retreat to the mountain. One bear tracker quips that he has never seen marks proving the heart of a woman but Jeremiah hasn’t seen the marks that prove that the mass of humanity possesses a heart.
He just got back from some war that was some other fellow’s idea. This fellow got his boys together and they formed a great big gang with their own special and unique colors. They then found another great big gang with their own special and unique colors. So they fought and killed each other over some land that existed in their heads. Jeremiah’s been to a town. And he’s been to a war. And he knows that some things never change.
Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won
—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
What is there left to do but the only thing left to do for people who don’t know what to do? Stop doing anything until something makes sense. The Desert Fathers spent their whole lives in inhospitable lands. Believing that the vast emptiness and arid air would manipulate the last lever left that would allow them to see their God. CEOs often do a one or two-week nature and sans-technology vacation to clear their heads. Big questions; big spaces.