Don Miguel Ruiz Doesn't Know Me from Adam

Don Miguel Ruiz tells of his grandfather speaking of the falsity of knowledge. “The truth needs to be experienced. Humans have the need to describe, to explain, to express what we perceive, but when we experience the truth there are no words to explain it.” Yet we all do. And in doing so create a world of lies we dearly believe. Sometimes to the point of killing those who don’t believe our own particular story.

It happens all the time. Gay-bashers, racists, and religious fundamentalists are just the word writ large. In smaller print, we have our own beliefs, and many of them pointed mortally at ourselves. I’m facing a vicious one now. Currently unemployed, I believe there’s nothing out there for me. I won’t bore you with the details, but trust me when I say I have a whale of a story.

Like Ahab, I’m chasing it to the ends of the world. But what I’m really chasing is my own tail. Of course I assuage my dizziness by thinking I'm a poet.

The Dreaming Cantos 26
Monkeyshine

If we’re doomed to always
misrepresent the essence
inherent in the living

ineffability
with words too fucking stupid
for words, then why we try

is unbelievable
cold-bloodedness or warm-hearted
tolerance for tales.

~Son Rivers 2006

Ruiz offers his grandfather’s wisdom to “see everybody as an artist, a storyteller. You know whatever they believe is just their point of view. It has nothing to do with you.” The toughest part is to realize that most of your own story has nothing to do with you too.