Authenticity & Appetite
May 20th, 2009 by Dunya
Conversation between Dunya & Kate Temple-West:
Kate: I came across this from philosopher Charles Taylor:
“If authenticity is being true to ourselves, is recovering our own ‘sentiment de l’existence’, then perhaps we can only achieve it integrally if we recognize that this sentiment connects us to a wider whole. It was perhaps not an accident that in the Romantic period the self feeling and the feeling of belonging to nature were linked. Perhaps the loss of a sense of belonging through a a publicly defined order needs to be compensated by a stronger, more inner sense of linkage. Perhaps this is what a great deal of modern poetry has been trying to articulate; and perhaps we need few things more today than such articulation.”
It is authenticity that connects us, and so therefore it makes sense that we can be our most authentic when we feel most connected… to the Divine/ nature/ each other, etc., as well as the other way around.
Dunya: Yes! Most of modern life is a distraction to feeling self-connected. Such distraction drives appetites and is therefor good for capitalism, but it starves us on spiritual and emotional levels. I believe that all of our innermost hearts want love — both human/natural and Divine. Meditation is THE most revolutionary work to practice in a capitalist society; it calms appetites by filling us with what we really need, really want. Then we buy less, eat less. We consume appropriately.
Mike and I recently canceled our cable service for some of the reasons you discuss. We miss it not a bit.
I have lived for years at a time w/o TV. These were the most growth producing and profound times in my life…not necessarily because of the absence of TV; its just notable that the TV was absent at such times.
I began to dance during one such time.
Yes yes yes yes!! great conversation and comments…Kate I also have felt that my connection to myself is served by my connection to nature, a simple thing like heating with a wood burning stove seems to help. And I don’t have a TV, haven’t for years and wonder how people have time for them! I admit that sometimes I wish I had the distraction, but then I appreciate the struggle I have with myself at those times as real. Thank you for your comment too Dunya about ‘much of modern life is a distraction to feeling self connected’…I have felt this as part of the struggle. So yes, dance and connect!