Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Non-Literally Speaking

“The student who comes to his teacher and subjected primed with what the modern university praises as the virtue of “critical intelligence” ruined by the shallow skepticism of Hume and Kant before he even starts, rejecting a priori anything which will not stand some superficial dialectical and arbitrary test to tickle his curiosity—such a student may acquire the technology of science and the humanities but he will not experience the reason for either. Such a critical intelligence, whatever its use in the marketplace, is prophylactic of the beautiful, the good, and the true.” — John Senior, The Restoration of Christian Culture

When it comes to the three transcendent virtues—the Beautiful, the Good, and the True—the modern approach of overly defining our terms or literal interpretations will rarely ever work getting us there there. Modern approaches will emphasize gross terminology over a place of wonder and subtlety, and attempt to foster motivations and concepts towards an imminent frame only. 

Oddly enough, the case for beauty can almost be stated the same way Justice Stewart said for pornography: I know it when I see it. Of course, not everyone's soul has been cultivated towards beauty to see it (or to see pornography is an evil distorted expression of it). I often come across people stating that beauty is all just subjective preference, and yet objectively noting collectively when something stands out. We are all hypocrites. Perhaps because we deny transcendent guideposts, we assume our views are just personal without realizing there is something intelligible beyond our preferences that comes online when struck by true beauty. We can note attributes of beauty—wholeness, harmony, and radiance—and yet still this doesn't get at the resonance, wonder, and awe that overtakes oneself when we can really be with it. We are not thinking about what it says or means, but just allowing it to wash over our soul. A beautiful song, person, or painting will touch in such ways. We begin to see the part from the whole, as well as the whole is in the part. 

When it comes to the good (or morality), you can claim to be a utilitarian, follow a Kantian deontology, or live out an existentialist ethos. All these things will fall short at times. The good can't be confined to a formal system, instrumental approaches, or life-limited narratives. Virtue ethics has the best approach in a sense because it calls for virtue appropriate to the circumstances cultivated through habit. In time, this can be spontaneous in our acts. In other words, we can only show the good through being good; through inhabiting the other as oneself and by acting in ways that are appropriate to the situation. Doing small things with great love, as Mother Theresa said. Models, like saints or sages, draw us in and inspire us to be better beyond our self-absorbed motivations. We aren't limited by the secular ethos of “being nice” that fails to strengthen our soul, surrender us to the good outside ourselves, and result in the best outcomes. We are made to be good for the sake of it; for its intrinsic value, and its potential to echo in Eternity.

There are relative truths, and some are better than others. But they are merely partial degrees of truth that can only explain the whole from the part. Even mathematics has principles outside of itself that can't be explained through math. Or as Robert Rosen says, “There is always a semantic residue, that cannot be accommodated by that syntactical scheme.” When allowed, what seeps in is ultimate Truth where symbols can at best point. There are two significant ways to present the Truth. One is to indirectly express what it is; such is the purpose of art, mysticism or myth or sacred scripture like the Gospels or the Tao Te Ching. The other approach to Truth is to break down our egoic or worldly distortions of it, and let the Truth speak for itself. Socrates was a master at this. So was the Buddha. The postmoderns went too far relatively and not far enough transcendentally. Again, beliefs through words will ultimately fall short of Truth, but that does not mean there is not an order to such views. There is a hierarchy to relative views, but the View (or Truth) is simply a lack of resistance to what is. It can only be intuited, realized, and embodied as gift.

Literalism cannot explain the cause of beauty, goodness, and truth. There is a mystery to the existence of these virtues that can't be easily compartimentalized in an imminent frame. Yet, we know it when we see it. Or at least a part of us knows—the part that is Whole!

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Sojourn as a Foreigner

The award for shortest and profoundest book may go to Giorgio Agamben’s The Church and the Kingdom. If you take away the photos (which are quite effective at de-centering you as fragmented images), the text may only be 40 pages long. The gist of the book makes you come to grips with time and our relationship to it. The bigger critique is where the Church stands in relationship to it, and how it may have lost its vocation. 

Agamben says, “The Church has lost the messianic experience of time that defines it and is one with it. The time of the messiah cannot designate a chronological period or duration but, instead, must represent nothing less than a qualitative change in how time is experienced.”

He contrasts the messianic notion of time with that of the apocalyptic. The apocalyptic can only point to the end of times–which will certainly happen sooner or later depending on how much patience you have. I’m not so presumptuous to think it will happen in my lifetime, although I see challenges ahead. More likely, it may be when the sun burns out while a bunch of AI’s are running the show. The posture Agamben brings in is not to wait for a historical dialectic of progress, or for the Messiah to come and redeem. As such, the focus of the Church should not be on the imminent ultimate, but the transcendent penultimate: thus transforming the experience of time to live in the Eternal NOW!

He says, “To experience this time [in this way] implies an integral transformation of ourselves and of our ways of living.”

He even points to Paul’s position on this view,

It is with this in mind that Paul reminds the Thessalonians, 'About dates and times, my friends, we need not write to you, for you know perfectly well that the Day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night' (1 Thess5.l-2; 262).1 In this passage 'comes [ercheta] is in the present tense, just as in the Gospels the messiah is called ho erchomenos, 'he who comes'- that is, he who never ceases to come. Having perfectly understood Paul's meaning, Walter Benjamin once wrote that, 'every day, every instant, is the small gate through which the messiah enters.'

Time takes us to the end, and yet we can end our customary image of time and liberate ourselves from it. What interests Paul (and Agamben) is not the last day or the end of time, but the time of the end—the inner transformation of time that the messianic event has produced!

Agamben says in another related book,

The paradox of the Church is that, for the eschatological point of view, it must renounce the world, but it cannot do this because, form the point of view of the economy, it is of the world, which it cannot renounce without renouncing itself. But this is exactly where the decisive crisis is situated: because courage…is nothing but the capacity to keep oneself connected with one’s own end.

This lack of courage creates a bland humanitarianism that delegitimizes the messianic vocation of the Church and overemphasizes bureaucratic legalism of the institution. The Church becomes supernaturally dry, aimless in its ontological moorings, and fragile from internal corruption like most secular institutions. In kneeling before the world, it begins to fall from religious relevance. 

I’m reading another terrific book on The Idol of Our Age (which by the way is not Taylor Swift—not yet anyways—but secular humanitarianism) in which the author makes this relevant point,

The Christian God is both transcendent and incarnate. He promises something much more precious than bread and circuses, or even social justice, which in its quasi-socialist forms is inseparable from an excessive passion for equality, and even an encouragement of envy. We must not confuse sincere love of the poor, an undeniably great injunction of the Gospel, with a humanitarian or socialist political project to bring about heaven on Earth. That is the dangerous path pursued by Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, who remains so far from the authentic spirit of the Gospel.

The heaven on Earth project, as noted by Agamben, should not be a political one but a deeply spiritual one. By severing our ties with messianic time, we undermine our sense of reality and capacity to be enchanted with temporal reality. We attempt to control the temporal at the expense of given freedom of the Eternal. We sojourn as disembodied beings buffered by time and space, instead of foreigners always available to inhabit our true home.

Thursday, January 4, 2024

It's Always An Inside Job

Writing is sometimes difficult while marinating in Being. I feel words can get in the way of something they point to. And I am always trying to point to THAT on this blog. Many today are searching for purpose and meaning through words without realizing the paradoxical nature of this search. Often purpose and meaning is turned into a conceptual story for the self, which becomes more about self-absorption and mere self-expression. This keeps us away from the immediate experience of the NOW, and theo-drama of the ETERNAL. It is only through our surrender to THAT, where purpose and meaning expresses itself as YOU in RELATION to the NOW and ETERNAL. 

There are always obstacles in the way, which is always THE way. These experiences can “feel” soul crushing, but they’re anything but that in Reality. I was amused by Allen’s test for a dying soul. I have felt all these things at moments, now seeing they are all reactions to a conditional self exhausting its own limits to Truth.

Is Your Soul Dying?

Nothing really seems remarkable. You can go whole days without ever being astonished.

You have very little curiosity. You’re interested in novelty, food for the restless me, but genuine curiosity, and discovery of the genuinely original, this is not something you seek or experience very often.

You don’t notice much, and therefore you don’t recall very much. Nothing is very vivid, so nothing really impresses itself into your depths. You remember facts with your surface mind, particularly the useful ones, but there are few qualities to recollect in your heart.

You don’t sing and dance. You can go days, weeks, without wailing with joy or throwing absurd shapes. You don’t draw, either, or write poems, or make beautiful and difficult things, a bit of craft perhaps, dib-dab, dib-dab, but just as a hobby please.

You laugh infrequently. The last time you cried with laughter, holding your sides, begging it to stop — when was that?

Your love life is problematic at best, disastrous at worst. Probably tamely okay, alright, you know, can’t complain! Love affairs occasionally inject some excitement into your life, some romance, but it soon fades, after six months usually, sometimes after a few minutes.

In fact opportunities for love, for opening your heart, seem to be rather thin on the ground. You cannot tear yourself open at school or at work, that’s for sure, but your friends and family are not that interested in your soul either.

The days pass slowly, the years quickly. Nothing really happens, and so time concatenates into the few vague happenings the year offers.

Your mind constantly returns to the same subjects. You go over and over the same old junk. You love to complain, and you love even more to get together with others who love to complain, so you can all wank yourselves up into a lovely big lather of moaning.

Anxiety rules you, or, the cannibalistic indulgence of the moribund soul, despair. These two feelings never touch the intensity of profound self-contempt and shattering horror at the grim condition of your existence, because that would mean real change.

You are becoming numb. Bright lights, loud noises, clashing colours, violence and porn do not cause you great pain. Indeed you seek them out.

You cannot be alone without stimulation; without chatter, shopping, televisual entertainment, giddy excitements. You are afraid of looking into the cellar of your heart, and seeing the dead body you’ve got hidden down there.

If you're aware of this, then THAT which is aware is gently nudging you from the futility of this posture. You have to move toward THAT, or you continue to fall down into the despair. The separated thinking mind has become the false guide, allowing you to be contracted from the Real. 

So where can we find the living soul that is uncontracted from life? That's the inside job that is always available moment-to-moment beyond the divided mind. I just discovered a beautiful book by Clarise Lispector. It reads like one raw sutra wholly with immediate experience. Near the end of it she reveals,

Now—silence and slight amazement. 

Because at five in the morning, today July 25th, I fell into a state of grace. 

It was a sudden sensation, but so gentle. The luminosity was smiling in the air: exactly that. It was a sigh of the world. I don’t know how to explain just as you can’t describe the dawn to a blind man. It is unutterable what happened to me in the form of feeling: I quickly need your empathy. Feel with me. It was a supreme happiness. 

But if you have known the state of grace you’ll recognise what I’m going to say. I’m not referring to inspiration, which is a special grace that so often happens to those who deal with art.

The state of grace of which I’m speaking is not used for anything. It’s as if it came only for us to know that we really exist and the world exists. In this state, beyond the calm happiness that irradiates from people and things, there is a lucidity that I only call weightless because everything in grace is so light. It’s a lucidity of one who no longer needs to guess: without effort, he knows. Just that: knows. Don’t ask me what, because I can only reply in the same way: he knows.

There is much JOY with being with a LOVER that never leaves. I often take some time during the year-end to seek out any noted “best-of” films in culture that may be worth exploring. I recently saw the film Past Lives, and loved it for the simple masterpiece that it is. It is special, and in the same vein as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Linklater’s Before Sunrise/Sunset, Lost in Translation and Once. All these films were some favorites of mine in the last few decades, and I notice a common theme that ran across all of them. On the surface, they appear as well-crafted love stories that don't fall into conventual Hollywood tropes. Digging deeper, we see these films echo the pull toward the Eternal through the beauty of pathos in human longing, authentic and magical connection, and providential synchronicities that come from vivid beings relating-in-love. We all yearn to genuinely relate with another that offers some promise of perfection; and yet at some point we also come up against the finite realities of our fallen natures. It is only when we can see where this points to—beyond the object of our desire—that the momentary beauty of the instant is where our soul truly comes alive! The LOVER that never leaves verses the one who can only point to THAT.

That instant can never truly be found in the external world, but perhaps touched upon through these sacramental guideposts that may send us within. Just look!

Tuesday, October 17, 2023

The Song of Mahamudra

As a past practitioner of the “Great Gesture” Tibetan tradition known as Mahamudra (via my recently deceased teacher, Daniel P. Brown), I found this translation by Garma C.C. Chang to be completely and uniquely beautiful. Had to share...

The Song of Mahamudra by Tilopa 

(translated by Garma C.C. Chang)

Mahamudra is beyond all words
And symbols, but for you, Naropa,
Earnest and loyal, must this be said.
The Void needs no reliance,
Mahamudra rests on nought.
Without making an effort,
But remaining loose and natural,
One can break the yoke
Thus gaining Liberation.

If one sees nought when staring into space,
If with the mind one then observes the mind,
One destroys distinctions
And reaches Buddhahood.

The clouds that wander through the sky
Have no roots, no home; nor do the distinctive
Thoughts floating through the mind.
Once the Self-mind is seen,
Discrimination stops.

In space shapes and colors form,
But neither by black nor white is space tinged.
From the Self-mind all things emerge, the mind
By virtues and by vices is not stained.

The darkness of ages cannot shroud
The glowing sun; the long kalpas
Of Samsara ne’er can hide
The Mind’s brilliant light.

Though words are spoken to explain the Void,
The Void as such can never be expressed.
Though we say "the mind is a bright light,"
It is beyond all words and symbols.
Although the mind is void in essence,
All things it embraces and contains.

Do nought with the body but relax,
Shut firm the mouth and silent remain,
Empty your mind and think of nought.
Like a hollow bamboo
Rest at ease your body.
Giving not nor taking,
Put your mind at rest.
Mahamudra is like a mind that clings to nought.
Thus practicing, in time you will reach Buddhahood.

The practice of Mantra and Paramita,
Instruction in the Sutras and Precepts,
And teaching from the
Schools and Scriptures will not bring
Realization of the Innate Truth.
For if the mind when filled with some desire
Should seek a goal, it only hides the Light.

He who keeps Tantric Precepts
Yet discriminates, betrays
The spirit of Samaya.
Cease all activity, abandon
All desire, let thoughts rise and fall
As they will like the ocean waves.
He who never harms the Non-abiding
Nor the Principle of Non-distinction,
Upholds the Tantric Precepts.

He who abandons craving
And clings not to this or that,
Perceives the real meaning
Given in the Scriptures.

In Mahamudra all one’s sins are burned;
In Mahamudra one is released
From the prison of this world.
This is the Dharma’s supreme torch.
Those who disbelieve it
Are fools who ever wallow
In misery and sorrow.

To strive for Liberation
One should rely on a Guru.
When your mind receives his blessing
Emancipation is at hand.

Alas, all things in this world are meaningless,
They are but sorrow’s seeds.
Small teachings lead to acts;
One should only follow
Teachings that are great.

To transcend duality
Is the Kingly View;
To conquer distractions is
The Royal Practice;
The Path of No-practice
Is the Way of Buddhas;
He who treads that Path
Reaches Buddhahood.

Transient is this world;
Like phantoms and dreams,
Substance it has none.
Renounce it and forsake your kin,
Cut the strings of lust and hatred,
Meditate in woods and mountains.
If without effort you remain
Loosely in the "natural state,"
Soon Mahamudra you will win
And attain the Non-attainment.

Cut the root of a tree
And the leaves will wither;
Cut the root of your mind
And Samsara falls.

The light of any lamp
Dispels in a moment
The darkness of long kalpas;
The strong light of the mind
In but a flash will burn
The veil of ignorance.

Whoever clings to mind sees not
The truth of what’s
Beyond the mind.
Whoever strives to practice Dharma
Finds not the truth of
Beyond-practice.
To know what is Beyond both mind and practice,
One should cut cleanly through the root of mind
And stare naked.
One should thus break away
From all distinctions and remain at ease.

One should not give or take
But remain natural,
For Mahamudra is beyond
All acceptance and rejection.
Since the Alaya is not born,
No one can obstruct or soil it;
Staying in the "Unborn" realm
All appearance will dissolve
Into the Dharmata, all self-will
And pride will vanish into nought.

The supreme Understanding transcends
All this and that. The supreme Action
Embraces great resourcefulness
Without attachment. The supreme
Accomplishment is to realize
Immanence without hope.

At first a yogi feels his mind
Is tumbling like a waterfall;
In mid-course, like the Ganges
It flows on slow and gentle;
In the end, it is a great
Vast ocean, where the Lights
Of Son and Mother merge in one.

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

The Flow to Nowhere

I read a short, interesting book called Non-Stop Inertia by Ivor Southwood. It makes many good points about how our mono-culture of work has atrophied. The jig is up as many of us now know much of it lacks the genuine doing of something relevant; but instead has become more performative and less constructive. To compensate, the perception of “busy-workers” and positive psychology has overtaken many sectors. We see these people a mile away. They make it known that negativity is taboo (during interviews, reviews, company outings, etc.), even if the Truth may bear things we just don't like... 

So regardless of whether the work itself is directly concerned with the production of affect, it contains elements of emotion management and virtuosity, both in covering over true anxieties and hostilities and in summoning a contrived enthusiasm and commitment.
And do we even get to the root of things when issues arise (or are we even allowed to). Most interestingly, the more we are connected (by technology), the less we are connected (as beings). We have outsourced humanity and diminished it in the process with canned jargon.
As demonstrated by the email-obsessed office or interminable call centre, in many ways the informational era has engineered a repression of real social conflicts by a new bureaucratic system which endlessly circulates anxieties rather than confronting and resolving them. 
So not only are we asked to not show courage or conviction, but we are subverted from having any original thought or no-thought. Instead we fake feeling (as institutional statements) so we don't have to really face our feels in order to gain real insight or authenticity.
The lack of glamour or strangeness in current popular culture is symptomatic of the need to defamiliarize the roles handed out by the state and business scriptwriters, and rekindle hostilities between the centre and the margins. Reality TV and social media eliminate offstage space, destroying mystery and celebrating banality; art slides into decorative commerce; rebellion is commodified and marketed like a fashion brand, as in supposedly alternative rock groups whose superficial revolutionary posturing is belied by a deep musical and cultural conformity and a tiresome job-interview positivity. Former punk icons are now insurance salesmen and property developers. New cultural forms based upon “distance and reflection” rather than “empathy and feeling” are called for, to break this stalemate.
What is Southwood's solution to this diagnosis?: Don't go with the flow. (But isn't flow what all the HR mc-mindfulness trainings gear us toward? Ultimately these inner technologies are about seeing through resistances rather than feeling good; however, even that superficially gets watered down in today's work culture.) The flow we don't want to go along with is anything that takes us away from our True being; and that can only happen when each individual finds his or her right relationship to God first, and then the world with all its beauty and evil. We shouldn't settle for meaning through work cultureespecially in an environment that expects us to compromise so much ourselves. The system wants you to play nice, act happy, find & keep your vices to yourself, and pretend we are all doing something very significant. It may try to enslave you, but there's no need to enslave yourself. 

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

Grandma Trounces Your Muddled Complexity

“Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which you are accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked.... It may be that your grandmother was an extremely lively and vital animal, and that you are a paralytic.” — G. K. Chesterton

I like it when someone can make complex things simple or simple things simple. But that's hardly the case with most academics or leftist intellectuals these days. Even the spiritual seeking dillentants engage in some form of intellectual hedonism. I myself have been guilty of this; perhaps a by-product of being a thought addict much of my life. Thought becomes a sort of buffer from facing reality, and the better it sounds, the more I get to run away from myself. 

But at some point, you realize much of it is trivial fodder. Darren Allen makes the great point that,

Modern writers and thinkers might tell us we need to decentralise, use green tech, build resilient communities, transcend the ego, merge with the eternal or design comprehensive solutions to omni-considerate, integrally developed psychosocial structures, but the hip theorist has no idea how to exit the simulated thought forms these ideas appear as; because his consciousness is a simulated thought form. This is why his speech and writing are boring and mystifying. They give the impression of having content, or of expressing something which is beyond the grasp of mind, but that content, that thing, turns out to be itself, like a birthday gift comprising a hundred layers of wrapping paper.

There a bunch of these guys in the meta-modern community and others movements similar to it that I find excruciating to listen to these days. I'd prefer not to name anyone, but some of these people can say so little by saying so much. That's probably why I prefer our aphorist-types these days. We of course have the quintessential Aphorist a.k.a. Mr. Colacho, who says so much in saying so little. I could unpack his quips over a lifetime and never exhaust the Truth he is expressing. Some of my favorites that fall in line with this post (thanks to Bob for curating):

A few lines are enough to demonstrate a truth. Not even a library is enough to refute an error.

The learned fool has a wider field to practice his folly.

Foolish ideas are immortal. Each generation invents them anew.

The great imbecilic explanations of human behavior adequately explain the one who adopts them. 

The greater the importance of an intellectual activity, the more ridiculous is the claim of certifying the competence of those who exercise it. A diploma of dentistry is respectable, but one of philosophy is grotesque.

I also recently got exposed to Darren's little zingers, such as:

The most effective propaganda is not the master telling lies. It is the slave building his own counterfeit world from facts.

You can't 'think outside the box.' Thought is the box.

Beware of any idea that you don't need to be in love to understand.

A room full of Shakespeares on typewriters, will, in infinite time, end up beating their chests, swinging from trees and going 'ooh ooh ooh'.

Nietzsche was one of the first moderns or postmoderns to get the ball rolling. Roger Kimball notes in his book Experiments Against Reality:

For Nietzsche, the aphorism was the favored medium of insight: nimbler and more eloquent than discursive argumentation. “I approach deep problems like cold baths,” he confided: “quickly into them and quickly out again. That one does not get to the depths that way, not deep enough down, is the superstition of those afraid of the water, the enemies of cold water; they speak without experience. The freezing cold makes one swift.”

A favorite Nietzsche quip: One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed. I know I've become very embarrassed by the MSM these days. 

Most of these pithy wisdom quips, much like Zen koans, are used to shock and break us open without thinking too much about it. They are sharp and blunt, like a cold bath, but also can cultivate a second simplicity—where all the complexity of life and understanding can converge into a simple knowing that goes beyond thought. 

The inability to see Reality or to overly complexify things is not a question of intelligence and definitely not of taste, class or education. The most college educated are often morally and spiritually blind, while the uneducated and working class are often the most intuitively perceptive when it comes to seeing the true nature of things. I watched the following video showcasing some of the people living and making their way in the deep Appalachia of West Virginia. While there is a lack of sophistication some would see in their use of language or customs, I tend to see a simplicity of knowing something Real that they may not be able (or need) to convey into a lot of fancy jargon. Rudolf Steiner would use the phrase folk wisdom to demonstrate the simple way of being that did not overly rationalize but implicitly knew what mattered—whether or not they were poor and uneducated. 


We sometimes complicate things too much. Grandma had it right. Keep the simple things simple; and if you can't, then keep the complex things simple.

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Hidden Life

“Bene vixit qui bene latuit [He who has hidden his life has lived well]” — Ovid 

I often feel I am not made for this world, but for the Eternal. It's just that I don't truly fit in with anything, or at least I am often resigned to the fact that very few things will satisfy me in worldly affairs. Sure, I still occasionally yearn for the great romantic love, or a decent steak. But I've had a taste of these things and seen others have them to know they are not enduring. Only Truth endures.

The contracted ego is driven for preservation or augmentation. So it does not concern itself with the things that matter: love, art, death, reality, morality, tradition, myth, consciousness. 

And most of us are operating from the vantage point of the contracted ego, so we muddle by half awake. Have noticed how trivial and banal most conversations have become? The only vivid thing I can connect with people on is humor. Humor does open the cracks, but only for a moment.

Technology is no longer neutral, and probably never was. On this, Heidegger was right. We can see how it overwhelms us with utilitarian priorities, numbs our awareness, debases nature and love, and overtakes all spheres of humanity that make us alive!

To this I say silence—or the elegant performance of it—is the only revolutionary act left. Any other 'plan' would be overdetermined. We can balk as reactionaries to all the stupor in the world, but in the end, that is mere ironic performance being enacted on the unstoppable momentum of entropy. 

The hidden life can not be corrupted. It engages with life and is enchanted by it, but is not overcome with it. 

“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” — George Eliot

Monday, May 15, 2023

How Am I (Not) Doing?

We are always sorting ourselves out, or allowing God to sort us out. So I found a good questionnaire by Darren Allen that keys in on our vitality in life. It reflects back on my prior post; in regards to how much we are in relationship to Life! So here I try to take a stab at radical honesty, although my shadow self would be better sub/objectively observed by others. So I'll only try... 

Ultimately — that is for matters of real importance — I derive the meaning of a spoken utterance from what is not said (tone, implication, quality of gesture, etc). Even as a child I recall doing this. I was never a great verbal communicator, but intuitively I always picked up on nuance, body and facial language, and energetic sensibility. Still do today.

I am comfortable with non-literal language (metaphor, comedy, myth, dream, art, etc). Yes. With art it depends on the modality. I enjoy paintings, film, music, and novels in this regard. Poetry (which sometimes tries too hard with non-literalness) and photography (which works too hard with literalness) not always as much.

I’m comfortable with uncertainty, lack of closure, nothing quite decided and open-endedness generally (e.g. I do not worry about money, even when I may soon have nothing). My edge! I do worry about living comfortably, as stability was sometimes in question during my childhood. But I do prefer being with the poor than the rich, as long as they are not overly boorish. But in regards to general open-endedness beyond financial security, bring it on!

I can easily tell if someone else wants to enter a conversation, if they are feeling uncomfortable, or what they might want to talk about. Mostly indeed. Again, I tend to read people somewhat well—except for a few women that I fancied in the past whom I believed may have fancied me.

I find it easy to explain to others things that I understand. I am not a great verbal communicator. Writing is more my comfort area that I excel at. 

I enjoy caring for other people. I am usually considerate and thoughtful. And I definitely care for people in need and who may suffer in a non-narcissistic way, but my willingness to sacrifice my presence comes only when receptive by the other. 

I find it easy to know what to do and say in social situations. Yes, I suppose. But I do find myself less willing to engage in too much trivial small talk. 

I find it easy to let go of the past — to ‘shake off’ unpleasantness, to release my grip on desire, to drop grudges and regrets, etc. When someone criticises me I don’t take it personally. I can ‘let go’ of justifying anger. More so now than in the past. Anger needs to be seen as it arises, and yes it does still arise on occasion (with justification). 

I never go too far in driving my point home in a discussion. I can back off easy enough. I can't convince anyone to think differently; only perhaps optimistically plant a mustard seed on occasion. 

I don’t get swept up in other people’s emotions. I can ‘maintain frame.’ Definitely yes. So many crazy people these days, and it would be awful to take on all the entropy myself. 

I find it easy (in face-to-face interactions) to judge if someone is rude or polite. This seems obvious to me. 

I don’t require an authority (teacher, therapist, policeman, etc.) to tell me what to do in order to do things. Mostly yes, but I do respect some authority—not because of their role in society but their presence of being and character.  

I don’t do much on autopilot — I notice subtle qualities around me (like birdsong) and can usually remember journeys. Most moments yes. Sometimes forgetfulness takes over. 

It upsets me a great deal to see an animal in pain. Almost excruciatingly so. 

I can easily perceive the unique character of an animal or a young child. Indeed. The true essence of diversity. 

Talking is fine, but the time soon comes when you have to act. By their fruits you shall know them. At yet, I still always stretch myself to understand more so I can act appropriately in the context that presents itself. There are always competing commitments, but I try to make my yes a 'yes' and my no a 'no'.

I trust my first impressions. I can read faces very well. Again, yes. 

When I dance I tend to do so unselfconsciously. Definitely when I dance alone. I know I dance badly, and give less shites that others know that too. 

I have strange, enjoyable or suggestive dreams. Strange indeed, but never nightmarish. They sometimes appear as if they are not my own. 

I can relax completely. Let it be.

I’m not a worrier. Less so about me and more so about existence.

I am aware of the subtle sensations in my body. I can ‘read’ when they are telling me to stop doing something. Oh yes.

I often feel good for no reason. I often feel grateful. Thanks be to God.

I can immerse myself in my senses completely, without distraction. With intention comes attention.

Men and women are fundamentally different, and I’m glad they are. Will this cancel me? Of course then.

My God I love the simple things. I am the mayor of simpleton.

When I am in a partnership I make love a great deal — despite how I feel. Hmm, if memory serves me right... :)

For the remaining questions, I will say mostly yes. Death is real, and so is love. Both are part of life and serve each other. I would like to be understood, but have probably received more praise. I'm not easy to understand, even to myself. I could be a tad more spontaneous and yet I love routine.

When I walk down a crowded street, I often ‘pull back’ from my focusing, naming mind and experience the entire event (rather than looking, naming and thinking about bits of it). 

I tend to avoid experiences which make me ardently want or not want (pornographic sex, violence, video games, etc.).

I am not easily offended. People who are depress me.

I love being in nature.

I do not defend my negative emotions, or attempt to suppress them, but act to understand and deal with them.

I do not blame my unhappiness on other people or things outside my control (my parents, society, genes, illnesses, ‘the patriarchy’, ‘my ex’, ‘them’, etc, etc, etc.).

I easily feel the quality, tone or atmosphere of situations, rooms, people, works of art and so forth.

I make plans, but let go of them easily.

I am spontaneous (but not ‘wacky’).

‘Death is part of life’ — this is a truth which I endeavour to live.

I would prefer to be understood than praised.

I look into other people’s eyes; but I don’t stare. I know the difference between looking and staring.

I do not need to fill time up with ‘fun’. I am happy without stimulation. I don’t need a phone.

Saturday, April 22, 2023

Dying to Be Alive

As someone once said: Jesus Christ did not come to make bad people good, but to make dead people alive.

Is it true? I would say definitely yes, only because we need to be alive to be in relationship with Life! And only when we're truly in relationship with Life, we can be aligned with the good, the true, and the beautiful. 

But most people are contracted from Life, maybe not fully dead but half-dead. There are moments of vividness, but these are often conditioned on worldly successes and pleasures. And once those conditions close up, the dread and anxiety can easily consume one's outlook. 

Which is probably why culture today is easily seduced under some mass formation psychosis, as posited by Mattias Desmet. In the name of safety and control from dread and anxiety, society creates more haphazard rules and norms which in turn reduces human bonds, spontaneity and generosity. This results in an ongoing frustration and aggression that goes unventedlooking for a scapegoat of the Otherwhile placing its faith in the so-called managerial experts in power. 

As Desmet says, “Why is mankind so hopelessly seduced by mechanistic ideology? Partly because it's under the influence of the following illusion: that one is able to remove the discomforts of existence without having to question oneself at all.” Boom, mic drop!

Further exasperating this human condition is today's digital and atomized culture. Many of my colleagues report zoom fatigue, not always aware of the fact that it takes a lot of energy to be present to someone's absence. Our minds are tricked that we are together, but our bodies know better. The digital world creates a simulacra of communal fakery on a superficial level, where instinctually we know it is not embodied. 

Which is why I don't believe AI will truly ever catch up to us on a deeper level; however we're doing a pretty good job allowing it to seize us with our lack of self-awareness. 

If people only knew how precious it means to be a human being, much like Eve Keneinan:

What is a human being? A human being is neither a free-floating autonomous self mysteriously stuck to a physical body that can contradict who that self "truly is"; nor a soulless, will-less mechanical body that for some reason produces the useless illusions of freedom and thought; nor a mere brute animal sunk into mere nature; but rather a being who in her being stands open to What Is; a being who knows beings as true, who loves them as good, who is pierced by them as beautiful; a wholeness of essence and existence, of soul and body, who faces other persons as a person, whose being is to be both a who and a what; a being of seeing and saying, who sees the intelligible eidetic structures of reality and who bespeaks these in language; who is open to wonder and awe and the mystery of Being; a being who chooses and acts within her freedom to be; a being who is finite, fallen, broken being; who is infinitely precious; who is an image of God.

As Christ was the Truth, he was also a human being—and only a human being can truly be consciously alive! But in order to be alive, we need not place our attention on the things that deaden us, but allow our relationship to these things to die within us so we can see clearly.

I've been reading this great book on Tantrik Shaivism, where the author makes this direct point: Some people, of course, don't know they're on the path. either they are still accumulating enough pleasure to realize that accumulated pleasure don't lead to fulfillment, or they are still in the process of accumulating enough suffering to motivate themselves to seek a different paradigm.

The problem is it takes a lot of courage to seek a different paradigm all together, and not just replace one belief system for another. To give up the control that has either falsely externally manufactured for us, or internally allowed to rule us. All that needs to happen is that it really needs to be seen as it truly is. Everything needs to be seen. Everything wants to be seen—to be seen alive.

Monday, March 6, 2023

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.