Spontaneity . . .

“Spontaneity is, after all, total sincerity–the whole being involved in the act without the slightest reservation–and as a rule the civilized adult is goaded into it only by abject despair, intolerable suffering, or imminent death. Hence the proverb, ‘Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.’ Thus a modern Hindu sage has remarked that the first thing he has to teach Westerners who come to him is how to cry, which also goes to show that our spontaneity is inhibited not only by the ego-complex as such but also by the Anglo-Saxon conception of masculinity. So far from being a form of strength, the masculine rigidity and toughness which we affect is nothing more than an emotional paralysis. It is assumed not because we are in control of our feelings but because we fear them, along with everything in our nature that is symbolically feminine and yielding. But a man who is emotionally paralyzed cannot be male, that is, he cannot be male in relation to female, for if he is to relate to a woman there must be something of the woman in his nature…

Childlikeness, or artless simplicity, is the ideal of the artist no less than of the sage, for it is to perform the work of art or of life without the least trace of affectation, of being in two minds. But the way to the child is through the woman, through the yielding to spontaneity, through giving in to just what one is, moment by moment, in the ceaselessly changing course of nature.”

Alan Watts – Nature, Man and Woman

I could repeat this bit over and over:  “But the way to the child is through the woman, through the yielding to spontaneity, through giving in to just what one is, moment by moment, in the ceaselessly changing course of nature.”

Again…

“But the way to the child is through the woman,

through the yielding to spontaneity,

through giving in to

just what

one is,

moment by moment,

in the ceaselessly changing

course of nature.”

And without being split, in two minds – we come to a wholeness of expression in life.  We unite the maculine and the feminine within, without destroying one or the other. This dynamic of spontaneity in personhood is so vital. And it haunts at every stop, every start, every juncture in life, every intersection and possibility. Spontaneity. And the way to the child through yielding.

My kids remind me of this daily and sometimes especially along the Tallulah River…

jrk