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Excerpt:
DONDON:
Sometimes when I move my head a certain way, like very slowly to the side and slightly up but with the suggestion that I’m not moving at all. Not moving my head at all, or if I let my hands fall casually by my side or really, like a pretend casual, a studied casualness--hyper-aware internally but externally seemingly casual dropping of the hands--a signaling of comfort and ease or if I shift my weight from one leg to another changing the balance and the polarity of my energy waves and their relation to the earth and the sky, or if I move my eyes in a numerical rotating pattern—left up, left up, left up, left up, right left, right left right left right left, up, right, up right, up right, up right—if I do this pattern or some other similar patterns then sometimes then I think I can catch a glimpse.
ESMERELDA:
I think that I understand. how about arms above the head? Gentle shaking?
DONDON:
Yes. Well, sometimes. sometimes if I stretch up so that I can imagine clinging to one of the clouds going by so that I can feel that weight--the weight that my body would make and the way it’s weighted by the cloud---this balance.
ESMERELDA:
well my friend that is just amazing. I do not think I have ever experienced this feeling.
DONDON:
it’s different from a feeling Esmeralda.
Esmeralda:
what is it closer to?
DONDON:
it is closer to sport. it is closer to the intellectual meditative sport of focus and internalized sport. And it is religious.
ESMERELDA:
what religion?
DONDON:
no, no particular religion
ESMERELDA:
so you mean spiritual?
DONDON:
No, not spiritual. it is religious. but formally. formally aligned with the concept of religion. Not with the concept of religion but the ways that religions work. the structure and form of religions.
ESMERELDA:
the hierarchies?
DONDON:
well yes the hierarchies are part of it but right next to the hierarchy is a self-organizing principle and I think that is rare. No one tells somebody that they have to go to mosque or church but they go. It’s not like a job... but it is. There is hierarchy and rules to be followed but there is a great deal of latitude in how much an individual person might want to partake. one can go incredibly far into the mania of any religion if they would like to.
ESMERELDA:
yes I’ve all often thought that it would be very nice to be a full on religious fanatic. Such purpose and frenzy.
DONDON:
yes I imagine it is a very completing feeling. a complete feeling. or completed feeling? I imagine that that feeling is marked by a measure of completeness.
ESMERELDA:
and mania.
DONDON:
probably in many cases yes. But who knows in some cases perhaps no, perhaps just actual direct and continued communication with God.
ESMERELDA:
Yes, probably that sometimes.
DONDON:
yes sometimes that.
ESMERELDA:
I think that would be just incredible---I mean the experience of an eon but I think it would also be exhausting and I think, well, it seems an obvious thing to say, or worry about, but I bet that it would subsume every other interest you had going on in your life and that could be an unfortunate narrowing….though, I guess if you’re in that space then you would want or know the rightness of that sort of narrow focus.
DONDON:
oh I wouldn’t want it at all. I would not want to be one of the chosen. I would not appreciate the pressure.
ESMERELDA:
even if the pressure was accompanied by glory? Beatific—ational glory? You, shining forever in the light of the lord? Absolution?
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