Arterial Self, Problem d

Problem d: The Weight of Others' Opinions

When Orpheus was but a baby god he ran from his mother's breast, for having suckled too fiercely he had clamped down upon her teat, only to be slapped across the face, reprimanding his insult.

As he fled from his home, the old Moon stared down disapprovingly, to whom he replied, "I do not care for you" and then the silver disc paled amongst the sky...

Presently, with the arrival of the morning, came the Wind who crept around and licked his naked body and Orpheus believed that its tongue was sneering him and he cried out loud, "I do not care for you either!" and he stamped his tiny foot to seal the thought.

The Wind then flew far from him. He lay down into the soft grass to rest, and as it covered him tenderly, it tickled the irritated baby who believed that each spike was prodding him with a pointed blade.

Tersely he could not contain his annoyance any longer and did not even care to address the grassy bed to explain to it what was so wrong, but instead he ran further and onto a mud-bank and settled there amongst the custard of many decomposed winters and solutions of damp earth.

Just then Mother Sun laughed, and with her warmth his clay-skin hardened. Orpheus felt himself crying and asked of her:

"Why do you not love me Mother? Why do you rebuke me so?" With this he wailed.

She smiled a broader smile as he stood up waving his little fist at her saying further "I have fought battle with the old Moon and the treacherous Wind and the spiteful, spikeful grass, and I will not stand for any such meanness!"

At this the dried mud cracked and fell from his skin, and Mother Sun seeing his poor spirit reached down and raised him up, bringing him once more into her arms and onto her breast. Instantly the day's trials left his little furrowed forehead and he forgot his first and only fight with those companions, who cared more than not ... and all was well.

(Footnote: Orpheus was given a lyre from his father Apollo, which it was said that Hermes invented. By its aid Orpheus had the power to move men and beasts, birds in the air, the fishes in the deep, the trees and the rocks - all with the music from his lyre. He was signatory to a perfect harmony with all men, creatures and beings - in contrast to the infant tale of the complete opposite, Orpheus made good!)

Commentary:
The tryst of opinions goes a little like that explained in our story of baby Orpheus, in that our own sensitivities have much to do with the weight and meaning that others carry so upon us. It can go badly indeed if an individual has been so chastised at an early age and from this has never recovered. His relationships ever after, may well correspond to the bitterness of feeling himself to be outcast and unwanted, as he then tries to be independent of others' thoughts and opinions of him.

Of course no one individual can be fully inconsiderate to the social mean or to familial opinion, and so this being coupled with the many imaginary conflicts, there becomes a further isolation and distance from the truth.

Baby Orpheus tells us of our finding our place in the World, that it can change from it bringing its comforts and pleasures to that which is almost intolerably difficult to manage - and that it is largely moreover regarded by our inner bearings rather than decided by our involvements with the outer elements alone.

What the story does refrain from answering is how our babe ever left the breast! Our earliest detachment was and is from Father God. No longer is our sole conscious being affixed and adhered to His immediate Heaven.

We have been made both distinct and separate from Him, even though His Joving reality remains. Should a baby tug too roughly at the breast, his mother will not love him any less for it, but nor shall she suffer the discomfort. So at some time it must be that the infant Man must be brought to understand likewise, the objectionable things he does do and do them no more.

We may well believe ourselves sorely disputed, as ever on there becomes a contest and conflict for selfhood - namely our wants and needs weighed against those of our fellow brothers and sisters. It was with amenable commerce that the first breakthrough did come, for herein the psyche of Man was brought an adaptation to consideration, in that the arterial soul consciousness began to develop planning and applied mathematics, as it became required. Commercial transactions led the men into ways of fair dealing and actuated measure.

Even if the system itself was given to an unfairness - that one could gain an advantage over another - we nonetheless realize that with the birth of commerce into the world there became a means for Man to abstract his wants and longings from the primary responsiveness into planned and negotiated reasonings. One may bargain that the Sun will lift the horizon by the use of a dial or a clock, but the interacting which is required between one man and another is laboriously less predictable than the forecasting of cyclical events.

The bargaining between men gave them also a continuum to work from. As it is the way karmicly, men could trust in a future proceeding rather than have to act within the immediate constantly. There are, added to this, some things which cannot be bartered with; namely the man's own license over himself and that of his own arterial deciding.

Man as a corporate entity, engages in transactions which occur on many planes of being simultaneously. When a man is predisposed unto another he will begin to qualify that of his own thinking with those thoughts that are immediately attracted to him. To this end there follows a sorting process with great distinction and effort entailed, so that the original host of thoughts remains uncorrupted.

It is in point of fact, a very delicate and deliberate act to be openly considerate of another man's thoughts or opinions as they fly out to greet you. All the while and added to this, we are constantly affected by the conceptual pictures that our close associates hold of us. We cannot help but be like the man whose suit does not sit well, when the impressionings dear friends hold of us take hold of us and beg their reality.
Such impressionings may have no manufactured falsehood in the original, but be quite true to a particular outstanding incident in the past, whereupon some obscurity became more memorable than the quieter talents you would be better known for. Or it may be that the former self now greatly contrasts the man that you have become. Whatever the cause for the differentiation, it does happen that the picture images another may hold of you, directly impinge upon your person and at times your consciousness.