Swimming Easy in the Deep

THE SECRET TO SUCCESS: POSE AND SUBSTANCE

Life comprises two elements:

• Pose; and
• Substance

To succeed at anything you need both and progress requires you to adopt the pose until – or even in the hope or expectation – that the substance develops.

The logic is really quite simple:

• Unless you look the part you are never going to play the part; and
• There’s no use in looking under “L” for Landing in the Idiots Guide to Flying when you’re about to touch down.

 If all you have is pose your deception will be exposed sooner rather than later. If all you have is substance nobody is going to believe you and you are likely to end up on the sidelines somewhere.

 We all pose. More often than most of us would like to believe. Most often with no idea where the substance will come from. All we can do is trust the universe to deliver … and it usually does.

Ironically pose is not something that is adopted just for the benefit of others, so that we will look right to them, but as importantly so we will look right to ourselves. Our subconscious is a fickle and peculiar thing. It will kick into action to flesh out a new pose at the drop of a hat but will slumber in the background in the absence of one.

This notion of “pose and substance” has an interesting footnote. 

We have been taught to believe that there are only three kinds of knowledge:

• What we know we know;
• What we know we don’t know; and
• What we don’t know we don’t know.

While this may be scientifically accurate in the sense that it can be proven, life isn’t always scientific. At some point in our lives, with some more often than others, everybody finds themselves knowing how to act in a completely new situation, something they had never dreamt of having to do. How does that work?

While scientists may not like it, there is a fourth kind of knowledge: What we don’t know we know.

Those among us who are more easily more willing to adopt a challenging pose are usually also those who most readily accept that we can tap into a universal source of knowledge in ways we may not be able to explain or understand but which is there if we expect it to be. Some people accept this consciously and are able to use it at will. Most, however, only discover or use this parachute of knowledge when they are in unexpected crisis … and then end up believing it was dumb luck. More’s the pity!  

CRAZY WISDOM: ROBBINS SAYS IT BEST

The aim of Swimming Easy in the Deep is to be a serious bit of fun that nudges readers into smiling at life so that they can experience the joy of receiving a celestial grin in return. 

Which is easier said than done and I must confess to finding it really hard to be light-hearted all the time and have ended up writing posts that are longer than intended, more cerebral than they should be and about as funny as a utility account.  It seems I am struggling to escape the ubiquitous subconscious suburban conviction that light-hearted must be light-weight.

So it was with some relief that I came across a new interview with Tom Robbins on the meaning of Crazy Wisdom and how it works.  Robbins starts all his novels with a single "perfect" sentence and then completes them one sentence at a time trusting the universe to lead him from the one full-stop (period if you are in the States) to the next until he gets to the last one.  Apart from being really funny and having an organic - some would say orgasmic - resonance with the vagaries of a universe that defies the vanity of our collective delusions of order, he writes extremely well and has a turn of phrase that few can equal.  A quote from Still Life With Woodpecker will suffice:  "Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature".


One day maybe I will be able to write blog posts as prescient as this excerpt from an interview with Tom Robbins called "Wisdom of the Rebels" in the July issue of Shambhala Sun:

   

Shambhala Sun: How would you define crazy wisdom?

Tom Robbins: The quick and easy answer is that crazy wisdom is the deliberate opposite of conventional wisdom. Like most quick and easy answers, however, that one isn't really satisfying.

For want of a precise definition, we might consider that crazy wisdom is a philosophical worldview that recommends swimming against the tide, cheerfully seizing the short end of the stick, embracing insecurity, honoring paradox, courting the unexpected, celebrating the unfamiliar, shunning each and every orthodoxy, volunteering for those tasks nobody else wants or dares to do, and perhaps above all else, breaking taboos in order to destroy their power. It's the wisdom of those who turn the tables on despair by lampooning it, and who neither seek authority nor submit to it.

What's the point of all this? To enlarge the soul, light up the brain, and liberate the spirit. Crazy wisdom is both transformative and transcendent.