Being yourself, the musician and the dance, genius, an escape, meaning, and beauty

***

The most important thing in life is to be your true self completely, at every given moment, without a hint of guilt, or shame, or cowardice. To have self-possession without possessing yourself; arrogation without arrogance. To be, and to not be, concurrently. That is what it is to live in the love of just living.

You see, there need be only one true musician, and an infinite number of souls can dance to the song. But still there must be the One to create the music. Indeed, somebody has to play the tune.

For, in the end, both joy and misery lack genius. You need not be ensconced in the hapless glee and tepid sorrow of the day. Outside all truth, without fear or sadness, therein lies the realm of Beauty.

You're not hardened, you're as supple as the wind.

To be trapped? Oh, we are all trapped. And the way to escape is not to try to escape, but to stay where you are- and to stop fighting. To stop fighting, with the impervious weapon of ...of contempt.

Yea, and again yea- resounding mightily without meaning, I touched myself only inside the conscious ignorance of all that is.

I had only been apparently living, apparently striving, apparently caring, apparently suffering, apparently afraid. It was all a makeshift assimilation of what was not manifold. The harder I worked the less life mattered. The less I tried, the more I found.

***

These selected fragments are excerpted from unpublished writings by Jack Haas; selections from the notebooks 1990-2005.