Today's bit of wisdom from Steven Pressfield's Turning Pro:
"The Gnostics believed that exile was the essential condition of man. Do you agree? I do.
The artist and the addict both wrestle with this experience of exile. They share an acute, even excruciating sensitivity to the state of separation and isolation, and both actively seek a way to overcome it, to transcend it, or at least to make the pain go away.
What is the pain of being human? It's the condition of being suspended between two worlds and being unable to fully enter into either.
As mortal flesh, you and I cannot ascend to the upper realm. That sphere belongs to the gods. But we can't put it out of our minds either. We can't escape intimations and half-memories of... what? Some prior sojourn, before birth perhaps, among the immortals or the stars.
Our lot, instead, is to dwell here in the lower realm, the sphere of the temporal and the material — the time-bound dimension of instincts and animal passions, of hate and desire, aspiration and fear.
You and I are called to the upper realm (and it is calling to us), but we're having a pretty good time (sometimes ) down here in the sphere of the senses. Bottom line: we're marooned in the middle, stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again."
Pressfield, Steven (2012-05-30). Turning Pro (p. 45). Black Irish Books. Kindle Edition.
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