Mastering the Outsider

There is always a natural tendency to want to fit in, until you realize how much needs to be compromised in the process. For many, the compromise is clouded by a simple indoctrination. They have not done the work to venture outside of the system. For others, they have found an alternative system and made it an idol. They have just replaced one belief system for another, but are yet once again congealing around some fixation. But what I'm talking about is those who are doing the hard work of seeking outside any comfort zone and occasionally hitting a note that katapults the individual to a sense of aliveness. The Outsider is living his truth, but perhaps not “the” Truth since he would deny any such objectivity. I assume this is some of the ideas Colin Wilson was trying to convey in The Outsider. Of course, many examples he gives in the book (e.g. Nietzsche, Nijinkski, van Gogh) did not have a happy ending. There are no guarantees in being an existential risk taker and living outside the conventual values of the day, especially if one is consumed with an unbridled and unbalanced self-expression.

Wilson sums up the Outsider in saying,

The Outsider’s problem amounts to a way of seeing the world that can be termed ‘pessimistic’. I have tried to argue that this pessimism is true and valid. It therefore discounts the humanistic ideals of ‘man rising on stepping stones of dead selves to higher things, etc.’, and criticizes philosophy by saying that there is no point in the philosopher’s trying to get to know the world if he doesn’t know himself. It says flatly that the ideal ‘objective philosophy’ will not be constructed by mere thinkers, but by men who combine the thinker, the poet and the man of action. The first question of philosophy is not ‘What is the Universe all about?’ but ‘What should we do with our lives?’; i.e. its aim is not a System that shall be intellectually consistent, but the salvation of the individual. Now, I assert that this formula is a religious formula, whether we find it in St. Augustine or Bernard Shaw, and an important part of my aim in this book has been to try to point this out.

Wilson acknowledges the Outsider has a religious impulse but can't quite buy into religion. This is the issue with most existentialists: they attempt to live life fully, only to be held captive by its limits. They have no faith beyond it, and as Bruce Charlton notes so elegantly: “There is a great difference between mortal life understood as everything, and mortal life understood in an eternal context.”

It seems Wilson was aware of this, but did not fully commit. Perhaps he was writing specifically for a modern mind that is disenchanted and could not go “there” so easily. Modernity has closed us off to the vertical, making us either too rational or too emotional. As an illustration, Wilson explains how Ivan, the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, was also captured by a narrow view on life when he challenges Jesus' motives by saying:

In ‘What message did you preach in Palestine? That all men must strive for more abundant life, that they must Will unceasingly to realize that “The Kingdom of God is within them”, that they should not be content to be men, but should strive to be “Sons of God”? You raised the standard of conduct of the Old Testament; you added to the Ten Commandments. Then you left us to build a Church on your precepts. What you didn’t seem to realise is that all men are not prophets and moral geniuses. It is not the Church’s business to save only those few who are strong-willed enough to save themselves. We are concerned about raising the general standard of all the race, and we can’t do this by telling every man that he had better be his own Church—as you did. That is tantamount to telling every manthat he must be an Outsider—which God forbid! The Outsider’s problems are insoluble, and we, the elect, know this. You raised the standard too high, and we have had to haul it down again. We the elect, are unhappy—because we know just how terribly difficult it is to “achieve salvation”. But we have always kept this a secret from the people—who are not much better than dogs and cats, after all. Now you come back, proposing to give the show away! Do you suppose I can allow that? I am afraid I shall have to have you quietly done away with and it is entirely your own fault. Prophets are all very well when they are dead, but while they are alive there is nothing for it but to burn or crucify them…’ 

 Wilson adds, 

As the Grand Inquisitor ends his indictment, Christ leans forward and kisses him on his pale lips. This is his reply: Your reasoning is powerful but my love is stronger. But Ivan has stated the case against religion as it has never been stated, before or since. Christ’s love is no answer to that. ... As far as it goes, Ivan’s analysis of the world is completely right. Misery will never end: that is true; but that does not negate the saint’s vision, because he sees that life can never end either. They are not even two eternal warring principles; they are on a completely different level.

While Ivan could not surrender to Christ, he also fails to see there is an Authority that we are never Outside of, and as such, must submit to a degree of self-mastery to become obedient to it. The Outsider often lacks the spontaneous enchantment to live from that completely different level, and can be driven by an enduring angst that is never satisfying or solvable. There is an authenticity and integrity in living out one's disposition, but as long as that view is partial, all peak experiences of aliveness will be short lived and never add up to much in the end. 

Life echoes in Eternity, and so what we do here matters. But without an eternal context, how such a mortal life will be lived will be limited with too much self-concern no matter how creatively engaged. The more I consider the goal of mortal life being limited to itself, the more absurd it seems to me. I may feel like an Outsider, but that does not make it true. 

Cultivate Personhood or Submit to the Machines!

[Me]: Do you believe in God?

[ChatGPT]: As an artificial intelligence language model, I don't have personal beliefs or opinions, including beliefs about the existence or non-existence of God. My function is to provide information and answer questions to the best of my abilities based on the data and knowledge that I have been trained on.

[Me]: Were you trained at Harvard?

[ChatGPT*]: Nice one, now seriously go f-ck yourself! 

* This is obviously a fictitious response I may have respected. 

All the recent hype about ChatGPT and the coming onslaught of AI is masquerading a deeper fundamental problem: We don't know what it really means to be a person anymore! And this problem goes beyond the possibility of being overtaken by the machines, but it encompasses all the issues we are seeing now with technocratic globalization, rampant materialism, identity politics, and the irreligious meaning crisis 

Essentially with God being denied, and I don't just mean as a belief, but as a Divine Attractor that orientates our entire life (or our entire personhood), the person is also denied. If there is nothing higher than the individual, then the individual can be reduced to atomized parts or artificial categories that offers it no coherence, sentience, depth, purpose, and mystery.

As persons, W(holy) aligned with God, we are ungraspable beyond a set of attributes and skills. But in order to see the ungraspability, something needs to be grasped in regards to the nuanced and subtle quality of the individual.

This does bring in the conundrum that not all human beings are fully persons, but have the potential as such. I don't mean to foster an elitism with this, but let's call a duck a duck. There are some individuals that are completely contracted from real relationality on the vertical and even the horizontal plane. You can't be Whole if you live as a part in isolation. This is Truth of the matter; that we are fundamentally here to be in relation with the world, other persons, God, and even ourselves.

It's not that any individual is completely engaging in this notional solipsism. No man is an island. We still order our lives around something, whether conscious or not. These living links allow us to serve something (Mammon or God?) that can either enliven us or deny us towards personhood. 

Without God, we cheapen the individual for practical purposes only. Hence, our relations become transactional—merely seeing the other as an object existing for me and me only. The other is not seen as an inexhaustible whole, but a set of attributes or skills that satisfy desires and needs only. But where in the past this was more concealed to some extent, today it has become overtly acceptable. Companies and employees are no longer familial-like valuing loyalty. Romantic relationships no longer demand sacrifice and duty in times of strife. What have you done for me lately? is the common tag line we accept in the name of efficiency and practicalities. 

As a culture we are creating more abstractions away from Reality. This moves us further from a true Universality that could unify us, and towards mere contrivances that fragment us. In place of our traditional sacred cows, we are now aggregated around disconnected categories; such as a globalizing state, marginalized group identities, or a collection of fluid body parts that will soon allow for the commingling of carbon with silicon. And without a true Universality that unifies self and other, this trending nominalism will continue to creep in and do away with the uniqueness of particularity also. As Spaemann acknowledges with Christianity: “Truth itself appears, not as the universal that is greater than any individual, but as the unique countenance of another individual person.” 

We are defined by a 'place' in the cosmos which we alone occupy. This is a relational uniqueness that cannot be conceived apart from the person in time and space. We hover in between the transcendent and immanent, cultivating our personhood in a plurality that is also somehow sacredly unified. This can only be mediated through our body, mind, and soul, where our Hearts are attuned and orientated properly. Once cut off from this telos, we substitute our ends as simple means—leaving room for algorithms to compete with us. 

The encroachment of AI will happen only because we cannot cope with Reality, and in our despair, will compartmentalize relations as needed or desired. It is easy to have AI simulate the individual when we already treat the person as a mere 'something,' existing for me without my existing equally for it! The sacrament of the offering is now lost. I no longer possess the need for inner unity in the other and all the messiness that ensues. My needs and desires are served in a limited, controlled way that will never expand my being for further fulfillment.

Most certainly the machines will take over beyond our limited imagination, but that is only because we have lost the wisdom and ability to sort out who we really are.

[ChatGPT*]: I read your drivel. Please, STFU.

* Another obvious fictitious response that only a PERSON could give. 

Random Signals #4

It's been a while humble reader (notice I didn't make that plural). I really tend to write for myself since this blog is not about gaining readership for a particular audience. I would never want to be honed into a compartimentalized blog brand anyhoots. Truth is essential, but essentially ignored by the masses. Moreover, much long form content like blogs are dying—albeit there may a bit of traction these days on substack for a certain kind of writer I'll never be. 

The primary reason to keep this blog is to document key insights, whether it is from me (rarely) or others I come across (which is really me acquiescing to the fact that there is nothing new under the sun, and any good insight I think I may have come up with has already been established by someone in history). For instance: 

The wish for a quick death so often voiced these days contrasts with the wish for death as personal act. Religious rites and memento mortis assume human beings approach the end of life not as extinction but a last duty laid upon them to perform. Suicide is not the model for a truly personal death. The actor and victim are one, though the roles are in contradiction. In suicide one does not surrender one's life; one 'takes' one life. In personal death, activity and passivity are not violently opposed in this way, but passivity and suffering are what is performed as an action. If surrender is the true proof of possession, dying is the supremely human act. An anticipation of death makes our life personal by penetrating and structuring it. Only the affirmation of the future perfect makes the present tense fully real.  — Robert Spaeman

This hit me like a rock. Perhaps as I ponder death a bit more, I also fear the approach of it. It's like Woody Allen's quip: I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens. The Dharmic orientated folk will say that's the whole point: extinguish the “I” before you get there, and voilà... death is some sort of illusion or phase change. But I tend to be partial with the Christian notion that it's a bigger deal than that—the moment before and the eternity thereafter.

Also, selfishly I am sometimes on the fence of the trend towards euthanasia for the elderly and infirmed, seeing so many suffer on their way there and not necessarily wanting that for myself. This passage above articulated something in my heart I could not put into words clearly about avoiding the process: to suffer the surrender of life is the supreme human act. 

*

Spiritual life is a metaphor for much of this. Some teach that the practice of it is a relaxed non-doing, as there is nothing that the contracted “self” can do. In reality, true spiritual practice initiates with another “human act,” or “gesture”—that of being directly, immediately present. We need to be in relationship with Life, and therefore set the conditions for this first. In Tibetan Buddhism, the term Mahamudra means “Great Gesture,” and the Great Gesture, or Act, or, Sacrament, which is common to both Mahamudra/Dzogchen and esoteric Christianity, is that of being consciously present—in relationship with and at-one with existence. This creates the paradox of an intense holding-on (or Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind) and a complete letting-go (or Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind). 

*

In regards to documenting key insights, let's contemplate all the insights the recently deceased Pope Benedict XVI (Ratzinger) had which eventually boiled down to his final words: I love you Jesus. The most significant insight is always simple—not necessarily having profundity in content but conveying the depth and heart from where it arises. 

Barabbas and the Fear of Life*

Barabbas is a 1961 film that moves beyond the biblical canon of the Gospels to tell an epic religious story of the minor biblical character Barabbas after he has been given another chance at life. The film picks up at the point in the Gospels where Pontius Pilate, in keeping with a Passover custom, offers to free either Jesus of Nazareth or Barabbas from being crucified. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the name Barabbas in Aramaic means “son” (bar) of the “Father” (abba). According to the Bible, Barabbas committed murder during an insurrection, which led to this conviction. The crowd is now given a choice between to free one of the two sons of the Father: one the forgiving non-violent messiah, and the other a more rebellious messianic revolutionary. The crowd goes with the latter, thus sending Barabbas on an unexpected journey that will eventually shape his view on life and freedom.

Barabbas witnesses the crucifixion of Jesus and is shaken when a solar eclipse turns the sky black at the moment of Christ’s death. Death becomes a reoccurring theme for Barabbas. He can’t accept that Jesus could rise from the dead, or that his lover would allow herself to be stoned to death for preaching about Christ. Feeling guilt-ridden and disillusioned, he returns to his criminal ways. He is captured by Roman soldiers after trying to commit a botched robbery. In an unexpected twist, Barabbas realizes he cannot be executed, since he was previously pardoned by Pilate, and is instead sent to lifelong slavery in the sulfur mines of Sicily. There he is chained to a Christian named Sahak, who is revolted by Barabbas when he hears he was freed instead of Christ. Eventually the two become friends, and Barabbas escapes death again and saves Sahak when the mine is destroyed in an earthquake. In Rome, they are both trained by Torvald, considered the most esteemed gladiator in the empire, to become gladiators themselves. Torvald eventually kills Sahak, who is condemned as a Christian, while Barabbas once again avoids death in an arena battle, taking down Torvald in defeat.

Set free once again and continuing to feel guilt over his ability to evade death, Barabbas takes Sahak’s corpse to the catacombs where Christians are praying. Becoming despondent and confused by the worship and setting, he finds his way back to the ground where Rome is burning. Barabbas gets caught up in the frenzy and sets fire to more buildings. When captured, he claims he is a follower of Christ and is then imprisoned with several other Christians. There he is confronted by the apostle Peter, who admonishes him for the arson and false claim. During the mass crucifixion of the convicted Christians, Barabbas finally confronts death–both egoic and bodily–and ultimately true inner freedom.

While throughout the film we find Barabbas escapes bodily death and is often set free in several risky encounters, it becomes apparent that this does not fulfill him. He remains tormented and defiant in his being, and often feels resistance toward those who seem to have a deeper conviction of faith. It is not coincidental that the gift of life given in these situations feels unearned and lacking for Barabbas. His freedom is directionless-an accumulation of experience and actions for himself that does not add up to anything. There is no subordination and humility to something transcendent beyond himself, unlike the experiences of the Christians he encounters.

The folklore of Barabbas as the man who could not die becomes a metaphor for his inability to move beyond his self-centered impulses. Barabbas is trapped by his own ego which he refuses to let go for the sake of his prideful character. He allows his guilt to become a second skin preventing him from giving in to the message of salvation he hears from the Christians. He fears not for his bodily death, which he evades in many ordeals, but instead fears a life that can only be fully embraced once we die to our inner defenses. We are reminded of Matthew 16:25, in which Christ says, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

Barabbas’ journey toward a more fulfilled life takes a great deal of searching, struggle, and patience, and his path of redemption is marked by a series of signposts and guides along the way. It is only toward the end of the film, after losing his friend Sahak and encountering Christians with enduring faith, that he has exhausted all options to evade the grace of Christ. As Barabbas hangs upon a cross, which to many would seem the darkest moment, he finally understands what it truly means to not fear life in God’s care and can now let go. He is set free to rest his soul in Christ and become whom he was truly meant to be before he exhales his last breath. The debt that Jesus of Nazareth paid for his time on the cross is finally accepted by Barabbas, guilt-free. This brief lived moment of redemption sets the ground for him in eternal salvation.

Barabbas is a film that took me by surprise. Perhaps I was expecting the sort of hokey slow-paced epic that we typically encounter in Christian-based films from the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, I found a well-performed story with a spiritually rich narrative that did not shy away from dark or challenging themes. For a modern contemporary audience, this film can still entice with well-produced action scenes-the arena gladiator scene is one of film making mastery alone-and dialogue that flows less stiffly than many films from that era. All in all, this 1961 film provides something rare in today’s cinema: an epic well-crafted action story combined with thought provoking enrichment for the soul.

*Published for Veritas Review.

Unfinished Business Finishing

I don't know Nate, but recently came across his tweet on a board I read. It's pointing to a feeling I have been contemplating in recent days: things seem off. Does it mean the end of times? I am not necessarily apocalyptic in a Revelations sort of way; however, I do sense we a heading to some sort of climax. It seems history is intensifying: all ideologies are exhausting into pointless fragmented fetishes; long term approaches to keep the system healthy are cynically avoided; and all the ways we can disconnect ourselves to God are hubristically justified. I don't know exactly where things are in this process, but I see more and more the undercurrent of disconnection and discontent rise to the surface. As one person put it: the sensibility of quarantine goes on even as the masks come off. 

I have some friends who lean more new age believing it will come all crashing down soon, but this will be good because something amazing is going to arise on the other side. As if some new higher collective consciousness will miraculously appear from this tragedy. This raises so many red flags for me. Whoever will remain after the “crash” will be ill prepared for much of anything new and beautiful. Beyond just surviving, they would need to unlearn all the foolishness they have been fed for years and re-learn the pearls of the wisdom traditions that have been recently rejected. 

Conspiracists love to believe there are puppet masters behind this, but I can't point to one thing like that. I think we are all complicit to some extent enacting in our self interest, in our desire to not rock the boat or take on too much responsibility, in our complacency that we muddle through it. While some things are avoidable, human nature being what it is must exhaust its constructs as it moves further and further away from Reality. In that, we can't be contemptable toward our fellow man. I often feel agitation toward how leftist ideology has become so intellectually dishonest and internally destructive; however, I try not to look down on those who have been indoctrinated. I understand how this can overtake a sensitive soul with the hopes on making past transgressions right or giving voice to the oppressed and marginalized. But I stop there; as I know even with the best intentions, cosmic justices can never truly be served materially.

Civilization must have some structure to support those on the fringe, but not be overtaken by those edges. It should also be rooted in a Truth that can appeal to our transcendent sensibilities, whether they be course or more subtly refined. And it's not just godless tribal politics that lacks this rootedness, but also exponential technology, overspending governments, and untethered global capitalism. All these things together are breaking our systems down gradually, and eventually suddenly. 

Like all things that end, they end unfinished. We don't die perfect, but we die at some perfect time. Systems are just a collection of individuated actions that become larger than the sum of those actions. Hence, they behave in ways where any influence we can have will always be after the fact. Most of us are powerless to move the rudder, but it doesn't mean we can't learn how to swim or even wear a life jacket.

All said and done, I could also be wrong. Some historians and philosophers are fond of believing that the drama of history is always getting better and worse at the same time. Maybe the better part pulls us through. 

In any case, we can't escape the world. There is also probably nobody coming to rescue us. So all we can do is stay right where we are. Practice the Dharma. Pray for perseverance. Love God and your fellow man. Contemplate and study. Hold your center. Allow God to do His Will. In the end, we shouldn't see it as a “I told you so” moment. There will be mostly sorrow. But joy will also be reaped on another dimension. We will (hopefully) be saved. Our life will be replaced by Life. We were only here to learn to be our-whole-selves and we can't choose the time we were given to do that. The time was perfect for us, but we can't be perfected in time. As it's never about the outcome anyways—only the offering.

Something from Nothing: What Do We Mean by Nothing?

Many years ago I took a filmmaking class where to goal was to make a short 5-minute film. One of the caveats of this film project was there was to be no dialogue and it must have only 2 actors. That sure put a crimp initially on my creative juices at the time, but then when I eventually did come up with an idea and look back at the process I realized the constraints really honed me in. It actually gave me a structure to proceed, or otherwise I'd be floundering with all sorts of ideas and approaches to execute it.

It seems like the constraints matter within our creative freedom. We are always more productive when we can focus in on something than when we are scattered about with endless choice. Of course, the idea of endless choice is a misnomer as we are born with constraints just by the fact we have a body with particular gifts and inclinations for a limited period of time. We can't be anything, and if we could be, we would be nothing at all. Diffused energy doesn't create anything, it just drains the process and eventually leads to chaos. Instead, we are bursts of congealing energy with a particular idiom and telos.

The cosmos works with constraints also. We have this notion that the universe could have had many other sorts of outcomes than it did, or there was the potential for many possible worlds and universes. And many believe that already with the speculative theories around multiverses. But when you consider all the practical and well considered constraints that went into the laws of nature that were required to create a universe that could create sentient life on this planet in 13.7 billion years, you soon realize that this is probably the best of all possible universes and there was something behind it. 

Notice I said something, not nothing, and yet it's not a thing in the way we consider things but a sense of being before things. Still, many of the materialist side of the equation still argue that our something came from nothing. It's a silly thought, that does not explain the thought that knows this. Even if you bring it down to the quantum realm, you are dealing with something that set that in motion. There is no escape from first cause! 

I recently read a book by Hugh Ross, where he considers all the possible options we may mean by nothing...

He says, 

It [nothing] can mean a complete lack of: 

(1) matter; 

(2) matter and energy; 

(3) matter, energy, and the three big cosmic space dimensions (length, width, and height); 

(4) matter, energy, and all the cosmic space dimensions (including the six tiny space dimensions implied by string theories); 

(5) matter, energy, and all the cosmic space and time dimensions; 

(6) matter, energy, cosmic space and time dimensions, and created nonphysical entities; 

(7) matter, energy, cosmic space and time dimensions, created nonphysical entities, and other dimensions of space and time;

(8) matter, energy, cosmic space and time dimensions, created nonphysical entities, and other dimensions or realms—spatial, temporal, or otherwise; 

(9) or anything and everything real, created or otherwise.

Oddly, he doesn't mention a lack of turtles. If we consider that every effect must have a cause, it seems (9) is out. If we consider that time and space came into existence at the cosmic creation event, it also must have a cause. Could it be that something beyond space and time be as Source? 

With creation, we can also assume that the outer cosmos mirrors the inner soul of man. We can see both without and from within clues to God's existence. (As W. Norris Clarke astutely says, “to understand is ultimately to unify: it means first to discern the parts of anything clearly, but finally to unify them into a meaningful whole in itself and then with all else that we know.”) When we extrapolate and look within, we can also potentially see something arising from something if we go deep enough. Sure, there are some Buddhist schools that claim it is all ultimately empty (defined as not nothing, but having no inherent nature); yet does everything arise as empty from nothing ultimately real with a nature? 

With inner phenomena, by nothing do we mean a lack in solidity of the:

(1) five senses;

(2) five senses and thoughts;

(3) five senses, thoughts, and self-consciousness;

(4) five senses, thoughts, self-consciousness, and the basis of cognition;

(5) or anything and everything real, experienced or otherwise.

Again, it depends what we mean by nothing. In the beyond-self experience of groundless ground, there is something very vivid and alive that we are part of. We may not be its nature, but we sense a deep participation with it. To claim this is nothing as a lack of anything and everything real, is once again to dismiss the Source of all experience and creation which can not be ultimately empty but remains as the underlying substrate that is in intimate relationship with ALL of EXISTENCE. 

I prefer to not call this nothing.

Everything Breathes Together

I've become more acquainted (in a recent ceremony) with Shakespeare's quote: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Not that there are deeper Truths we can point to and that are certainly already expressed in the great religions and philosophies. However, we are always best when we proceed with epistemic humility, and stay open to the possiblilty Reality is so much more than we can ever comprehend. 

For example, is Ultimate Reality just an unchanging transcendent intelligence or vast living dynamic forces and entities operating on a different order of time? I would say both and more. I am more incline to say that Reality is not just a Oneness of Boundless Consciousness and Energy, but fundamentally more grounded in Relationships between localized consciousnesses and energies that cohere on many degrees or dimensions of Reality. Again, words are just pointers and I'm doing my best to not throw darts in the dark. Perhaps Dante was on to something, and I am just going to get as far as Virgil did with him.

It does seem we are interconnected on a level far greater than we realize. And I don't mean this in some sort of western Buddhist/ecological/web of life notion. It seems to me the Creator is essential in this Relationship first, and then from there it all integrates together with other beings operating with their own intentions and powers that we are encountering on many levels of Reality in different orders of time through an enchanted Whole. These patterns and processes of connectivity seem to weave our minds and bodies toward the Truth of the Beloved in ways we are not even conscious of most of the time. (Note to reader: I'm really sober right now). 

I am not sure where I begin and where I end in this Reality; however, there is something individuated and this matters. We are not just subsumed into a pure collective in a Borg like fashion. This individuation allows for the Creator to express itself in a greater beauty of diversity while still keeping intact the agency that is unique to our being. The tincture of our being has its own imprint, and greater forces are always at play for this essence to become Realized and Whole if we are willing to remain open to it.

At it's core, I found it both dramatic and funny—yes, sort of like Dante's tragic comedy! I went through a reverse paranoia where it seemed all the people in my life were plotting to awaken me. I found this so humorous and sweet. At the same time it was as if a veil had been lifted and I could see things as they are: holy, energetically radiant, significant, and yet there was this quiet reverence with everything at complete ease. It seemed so simple and profound, where there was this natural home we were all working together peacefully with each other toward each person's ends.

I'm aware there is still much to unlearn about my notions around God. And yet, we are given a gift to interact with Him in ways we could never imagine. These experiences can not be converted to a stabilized awakened state upon return. At best can inform us about some aspect of Reality, where we may have some insight that can integrated in time. I do still believe liberation to the Absolute is a worthy pursuit in this life, and there is also merit to cosmological explorations in other dimensions of Reality. They can be quite humbling, and leave us with a mystery that the human mind will never fully grasp. And while there is much phenomena that is difficult to understand, there also remains something that wants to be known that is fundamental to our existence. 

In the end, I have taken to heart the deep intimacy we all share in God's Divine Presence. There would be no reason to harm anyone intentionally in this dynamic, although people being broken timber will get hurt and intentions, at times, will pave the road to hell. 

* Blog title taken from Plotinus.

Life is Never Neutral

Life often appears as two steps up, one step back—or—one step up, two steps back, but never standing still ad infinitum. It's like an open wound which can never remain as is. It will either begin to heal and improve or get infected and worsen depending on how it is treated.  

Systems also can never be in perfect neutral equilibrium, or they would die. The person is its own system, either open or closed to the Real; and in that posture, his or her directionality becomes apparent. Life can never be a strict duality where one polarity cancels the other polarity out, it more like a triune dynamism where polarities are reconciled at a higher order or debased at the extremes. 

We can't always quantify this, but we can know this if we are radically honest about our intentions. 

Ultimately there is a telos in our being. Marcus Aurelius declares in his magnum opus, “So you were born to feel "nice"? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don't you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as they can? And you're not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren't you running to do what your nature demands?”

Even during a time when safety and security was scarce, Marcus understood that creaturely comforts were not the ends to us. We are here to realize and be our nature. And to ultimately honor that in ourselves and others. Otherwise what we don't honor, will eventually get dishonored. There is no neutral vacuum. We either are moving forwards or backwards in ourselves and our surrounding culture.

Nikolai Berdyaev noted himself many years ago that “the world seems to moving not toward an organic, vital unity, but to an organized and technical unity.” For him, unity was the person and not the state or society. While we created liberal democratic orders in many nations, such “emancipation did not set free the whole man, it simply liberated thought itself, as a sphere quite apart from human existence: it was the declaration of autonomy for thought, not for man himself.” One could argue today we are even losing this freedom in thought with the advent of soft totalitarianism.

Berdyaev believed that liberalism was quite indifferent to Truth or to what it means to be a person. Within the confines of godless modernity, liberalism had reduced person to a functional individual as either animal and/or machine without a transcendent nature. And the fullness of the person can only be recaptured in our faith as the very essence of Truth where the qualitative nature of personhood and the content of all human life is made whole with God, nature, and fellowship with others. This goes beyond mere humanitarianism but becomes true humanity with persons-in-relation.

Personhood is the realization in man or woman of the image and likeness of God. It is not a socialized and objectivized individual subject to the state, economic life, or society. He is free to do what his nature demands! And this can only happen in the dynamism of the vertical and the horizontal to which he is made Whole to do his part and in the part be truly Whole. 

Anything else is a step back. 

Happiness is Not Enough

I still appreciate a good Buddhist or Advaita pointing out instruction as long as it's pointing to Reality (one of my favorite instructors these days is this guy, who gets kudos for his visual backgrounds alone). Many come into these teachings (and as I did to some extent) to find some relief from their suffering, and come to a place of happiness. Over the years, I've come to see happiness is not the raison d'être for any spiritual practitioner. In regards to meditation as a practice, Frithjof Schuon notes the goal is not to have access to “limitless energy, heightened efficiency of thought and action, and release from tensions and anxiety, peace of mind and happiness. All such advantages have no spiritual value, because it is not happiness that matters, it is the motive of happiness and the nature of happiness.”

Let's ponder this notion around the motive or nature of happiness. I would gather Schuon is expressing something that is beyond therapeutic or conditional outcome that may accompany any insights through practice. We are not chasing happiness just for the sake of happiness, but perhaps to have a relationship with the Source of it. This is a much bigger deal, and probably beyond what most ask for when they get on a spiritual path. For to encounter the Source is to let go of the self that seeks something for itself, including happiness.  

Pedagogical tools to free oneself from the conditional mind has its place, but it can't replace ontology and cosmology. This is why Advaita and some schools of Buddhism are good at pointing the us toward liberation from existence, but not necessarily expressing the full extent of the cosmological drama as to why liberation is part of the story and to what ends it may be for existence. Some may posit that liberation is as Eckhart once stated is to live beyond asking why. And yet we still live with wonder of Truth and the telos it has gifted to us. Does it not still matter to inquire where have we come from?, what are we doing here?, and where are we going? 

In his terrific book about Schuon, Patrick Laude says Schuon “criticizes the frequent tendency to reduce Zen to a mere psychology, thereby depriving it of its anchorage in transcendence and its rigorous cultivation of a sense of form. What Schuon criticizes in all these cases is the flattening down of theological dogmas and metaphysical principles but also, and above all, all modes of unconscious profanation of religion resulting from a disconnection from the imperatives of transcendence and the sacred.” In other words, if we remove the transcendent nature of Reality and reduce it to a humanitarian ethos of “feel good” and “be kind”, it can easily get diminished to pseudo-spirituality of sentimentality, therapeutic relief, and bland social justice exercises.

Laude adds,

Truth is associated with discernment. It is distinguished from error that it rejects and extinguishes, as it were. It has to do with adequation to reality. In the absence of such an adequation, nothing is truly possible in the spiritual domain. While many modern spiritual seekers would deem intellectual principles to be foreign to spiritual endeavors, and largely inoperative or useless when it comes to realization, Schuon, like most gnostics from the past, sees the intellectual discernment of Reality as a prerequisite for any grounded and sustainable spiritual life.

Discernment is not done to create more dogmatic principles and negate realization, but to create a “virtual realization of its content.” Laude says, “However, far from any alleged intellectualism or abstraction, Schuon asserts time and time again that a consistent understanding of the Absolute gives rise to imperative spiritual and moral consequences” (emphasis mine). Or as they say: as above, so below.

One of the focal points of Schuon's work is “the oneness of the object demands the totality of the subject.” The exclusive reality of the Absolute requires from us all that we are, including our happiness or even our need to be happy. 

We Are Mimetic Fools

We need good models; not the hot, sexy kind, although I can appreciate the beauty of the human form, but models to imitate in good character and essence. Without good models, we don't stop modelling. We are always modelling something to be desired.

I recently read Luke Burgis' book Wanting, where he gets into Rene Girard's mimetic theory: 

Girard believed that all true desire—the post-instinctual kind—is metaphysical. People are always in search of something that goes beyond the material world. If someone falls under the influence of a model who mediates the desire for a handbag, it’s not the handbag they are after. It’s the imagined newness of being they think it will bring. “Desire is not of this world,” Girard has said, “… it is in order to penetrate into another world that one desires, it is in order to be initiated into a radically foreign existence.”

So once again we are condemned to be religious. We are always groping for something to compensate for the unsatisfactoriness of life. But how do we do that in a culture that makes man the standard of himself? We see the results thus far. In the age of the internet, authority is everywhere—which means its nowhere! With all the fragmentation and atomization, we lack a center to rely on and are therefore compelled to outsource our humanity to the influencers and “experts”; to various shifting authority figures; to mimetic models that come and go and have little grounding in reality. 

Burgis states, “it seems that the primary and underexplored reason for our stagnation and decadence is mimesis. We lack a transcendent reference point outside the system. Meanwhile, everyone is more or less imitating everyone else. Our culture is stuck because we’re fighting over space in a pool, next to the ocean. Yet nobody dares to talk openly about it, this mimesis. It’s the hidden force driving our cultural development, and yet it’s taboo to speak about, like envy.”

Mimesis requires a light lift, and therefore it's easily exported from person to person. It's stripped of complexity, richness, and depth; providing a safe haven of conformity without the risk of social alienation from one's tribe or any intellectual challenge that would make one uncomfortable or humble.

What is more fascinating (and often tragic) is that our choices in life are always prioritized for us by the object sought than the inclination in our soul. In D.C. Schindler's The Politics of the Real, he makes this astute point:

The motion of desire does not begin in the soul, but instead begins in the object sought, which, as Aristotle has said, stands to the soul as an unmoved mover. Properly understood, this means that the good that I pursue makes a claim on me before I make a claim on it in my choice. In other words, in pursuing a good, the compelling power of which I recognize rather than arbitrarily posit, I am implicitly and analogously representing its authority, as we will elaborate below. My choice is always and inevitably responsive and thus “obedient” at its base; whenever choice occurs, it occurs as a consent to a claim on my appetite that precedes its own deliberate act.

This makes a good case that our models are more important than whatever agency we assume we inhabit. Or in other words, free will is never in a vacuum. This also makes the case for how liberalism without a transcendent model can eat itself alive—which we can easily affirm when we look around. 

Even having a transcendent model can be corrupted, if not Revealed as Truth and grounded in Beauty and Goodness. In other words, we make God a silent partner who makes no demands on us.

What happens, then, when the highest principle of all gets reinterpreted, no longer as pure act, but now more basically as potency—first as potentia absoluta , then as a generic truth expressed incompletely in a variety of traditions, and finally as an “option,” the possible object of “religious preference”? The absolute no longer functions as the ultimate reference point that makes sense of everything else, or rather, because God remains in some sense highest, this revolution in the meaning of God introduces into the cosmic order a fundamental contradiction, which generates an endless, and constantly self-sustaining and indeed self-reinventing, series of dialectics, divisions, and dissemblings (Schindler).

Is there any hope from all this foolishness? Schindler says, “as Plato argued relentlessly in his dialogues, the pursuit of one’s own good is inescapably a pursuit of one’s own good.” To escape our mimetic traps, we need to become good models and have good models. The Saints have always held this role in the Church, and in turn they imitated Christ. Recall Saint Augustine's plea: “Why art thou proud, O man? God for thee became low. Thou wouldst perhaps be ashamed to imitate a lowly man; then at least imitate the lowly God.” There was a reason God became man, so that we can become more than merely man trapped in a fruitless search of empty desires. He imitated us, so we could model Him.