Being and non-being, life in the city, the Sahara desert, and the inner journey

***

It is hard to describe the inward tangle I was continually getting myself into that was whipping me about and making my migratory life a very difficult event. I was never suicidal, the thought has never entered my head. I was simply incapable of sustaining my ...being with the non-being that I truly was and didn’t know it because I had fallen into identity again.

            And so the days would somehow come and go, one after another, and the Armageddon would continue inside, and my outward life in the city would become either a sugar-coated catastrophe, or I would abandon everything completely in an all out descent into my own psyche and spiritual condition.

           You cannot simply sit down one day and decide to surrender, you can only put up a fight to the death, until both sides are diminished through attrition, and hope that in the end no one is left to rage onward. For if anyone remains the war will go on.

             I have, for example, never been to the Sahara desert. Yet if a person approached me who had just returned from there, and described its endless dunes, unique oasis, and exotic inhabitants, all of which lay outside of my personal experience, I should still not hesitate to accept their experience as real and true- for that person. Why then do we require proof or common experience to validate our limitless inner landscapes? Is it not possible, in fact highly probable, that we will find within ourselves and our experience of life a wholly different happening then any other? Can we not accept this unique opportunity bravely, joyously, and get on with our own, idiosyncratic journey?

            Let the analysts say what they will, but when you live out your process internally, the evolution of your spirit need not take place within the torpor of the manifest.

            Some people accused me of listening to, and following, my dreams too much. They claimed that I gave away my power to my dreams. However, I maintain that I held a dialogue with my subconscious, and did not simply receive a one-way, dictatorial monologue.

***

These fragments and quotes are taken from the unpublished writings of Jack Haas, selected from the notebooks 1990-2005.