Sunday, September 07, 2014

The Beautiful Mind

For the fourteenth time I watched The Beautiful Mind, a movie directed by Ron Howard and an Impeccable role played by Russel Crowe as the Mathematics professor at Princeton University. My son Karim when asked to pick me a  movie to watch for the evening had decided that The Beautiful Mind was what I needed to pick me up from the impending mood swing I was headed for and by the end of the movie I sat by myself in the dark sobbing shamelessly as Prof. John Nash made his speech at the Stockholm Nobel Prize award ceremony, this to me was the triumph of the spirit that man is capable of facing against all odds if and when he puts his mind to the task.

John Forbes Nash, Jr. (born June 13, 1928) is an American mathematician whose works in game theorydifferential geometry, and partial differential equations have provided insight into the factors that govern chance and events inside complex systems in daily life. His theories are used in market economics, computing, evolutionary biologyartificial intelligence, accounting, politics and military theory. Serving as a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University during the latter part of his life, he shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi.
Nash is the subject of the 2001 Hollywood movie A Beautiful Mind. The film, loosely based on the biography of the same name, focuses on Nash's mathematical genius and also his schizophrenia.[1][2][3]...From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I am a little sentimental and emotional when it comes to the success and triumphs of others no matter how small or great and every so often I cannot hold back my tears especially when i am watching a story or movie alone. I always imagine that this is what i aim for in life, this is what life is all about, to be triumphant over all odds at the end regardless if it is great or small; you have live life well. The life story of John Nash may be spiced up for a movie but in essence it was still the life of a man who went through what not many men would have survived and become a victim in the mental asylum. Nash took on all his demons and kept them at bay while he stayed on track on his day to day existence,to me this would have been scary to say the least. But Nash not only overcome his mental problems he transcended it and claim his right as a superman of the scientific circles to be applauded by the world for his achievements; what could be more inspiring?

"  We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate,  It oppresses I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow sufferer. I do not in the least to say that we must never pass judgement when it is our desire to help and improve but if the doctor wishes to help a human being he must accept him as he is and he can do this in reality only if he has already seen and accepted him as he is. Perhaps this sounds very simple but simple things are always the most difficult, In actual life it requires the greatest art to be simple and so acceptance of one self is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one's whole outlook on life.
"That i feed the beggar, That i have forgiven insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ all these are undoubtedly great virtues, what i do unto the least of my brethren that i do unto Christ. But what if i should discover that the least amongst them all the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself, that these are within me, That i myself stands in need the arms of my own kindness, that i myself am the enemy who must  be loved. what then?  Then as a rule the whole truth of Christianity is reversed. There is then no more talk of love and long suffering, we say to the brother within us 'Raka!",and condemn and rage against ourselves, we hide him from the world, we deny having ever met this least among the lowliest among ourselves,and had it been God Himself who threw me this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed."  a passage from C.G Jung's work in trying to heal this insanity from which our culture in particular.has suffered of thinking that a human being can become  hail and healthy and holy by being divided against himself in inner conflict paralleling  the conception of a cosmic conflict between an absolute good and an absolute evil which cannot be reduced to any prior and underlying unity. In other words our rage and our very proper rage against evil things which occur in the world must not overstep itself. For if we require as a justification for our rage a fundamental and metaphysical division between good and evil, we have an insane and in certain sense schizophrenic universe.of which no sense whatsoever can be made.
"Healing may be called a religious problem in the sphere of social or national relations. The state of suffering may be civil war and this state is to be cured by the Christian virtue of forgiveness and Love of one's enemies.That which we recommend with the conviction of good Christian is applicable with external situation. We must also apply ..in the treatment of neurosis. This is why modern man has had enough about guilt and sin. He is sorely beset by his own bad conscience and wants rather to know how he is to reconcile himself with his own nature. How he is to love his enemy in his own heart and call the wolf his brother. The Modern man does not want to know in what way he can imitate Christ but in what way he can live his own individual life however meager and uninteresting it may be. it is because every form of imitation seem to him dead and sterile that he would rebel against tradition that would hold him against all such roads for him leads in the wrong directions, he may not know it, but he behaves as though his individual life with God's special Will which must be fulfill at all cost.this is the cause of all his beggarism which is the one tangible evil of the neurotic state."
From Alan Watts You Tube lecture.
Yes I feel often times trapped in this predicament when i pass judgement over the state of international affairs today, Israel, Palestine and the rest of it and making comments on Face Book about these events as though it matters much other than the fact that i am not so perfect myself come to think of it.,Yes i do get very upset over what is happening around the world and at home but there is a part of me that questions this deeply, like what right have I to judge. Would i not be capable of the same heinous acts if the assault rifle is in my hands and given the circumstances am i not the same as those i accuse. In making judgement i find myself deviating from what i have come to understand over the years about not being able to change the world but to at least change myself. All that talk of Love conquering and so forth, where does it all fits in? Am i not running around like a schizoid myself.  How can i reconcile my ways when I am no better than mine own enemies and that the devil that i fear so much is in fact residing inside of me? Where is my simple practice of bare attention when i am sucked into these worldly events and getting involved without having thorough understanding of how or what my role is in all these?
Have i looked deep enough? have i found what i am looking for? I don't really know and my ignorance is getting the better of me and if I am not careful I will regress into a deeper depression than i can ever imagine simply because i have stuck myself in a quagmire of international scale. So it is time to retreat and reevaluate take stock of where i stand on issues and how or what they have to do with my own personal development. take a step back and look at the world from the distance again or step into the center of the eye of the hurricane  and find that inner space of silence  Time to distinguish between angels and demons within and without. Time to do some exorcising and healing.


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