that this post will make almost no sense.
“Nothing is more precious to the thinking man than life itself;
yet in spite of this, the greatest voluptuary is he who best practices
the difficult art of making it pass quickly.
It is not that he wishes to make life briefer;
Rather, he wants amusement to make him unaware of its passing.”
--Giacomo Casanova
Yes, that comes from the infamous ladies’ man himself. It turns out that that cat knew a lot of things about stuff. In the seventeenth century, the Church replaced the vague sin of "sadness" with sloth, which ought to explain a lot of things from the simple fact of its is-ness. When idle, the mind and body have all sorts of recourse to experience those things which it would much rather not: investigation into itself (which naturally reveals nothing but perpetual isolationism). This one fact tends to make the self sad, which is why sloth actually gets at the heart of the matter.
I don’t know what people do with their days. What do they think about? What are they invested in investigating? Do they investigate anything? What do they think about? How is a day in the life of an average human being passed?
“Ulysses” is one of my all time favorite books, because it is simultaneously a day in the life of average men and un-average men. These are just guys doing their work, getting paid, and trying to make it through as best they can; however, it is not generally in the scope of your average guy’s day to stay away from home all day in order to allow your wife to have an affair; similarly, it is not in the average guy’s day to find the apparition of a savior in the man who has stayed away from home all day to allow his wife to have an affair (and, almost simultaneously, masturbate to a lame girl sitting on the beach while hiding behind a bush).
Or, is it rather that this is exactly what happens to us every day without our full comprehension of it?
I have spent most of my day contemplating the question: “What is time?”
I don’t know how many people do this every day, but today it happened to me, and any time this question pops up (which it sometimes does with surprising, disturbing frequency), I find myself face to face with a fundamental, unanswerable question.
It should also be understood at the outset here that these fundamental, unanswerable questions are essential to existence—in my view of things, and it is not the answering of them that matters, but rather the attempt. There is no way to describe in words what time is because it is something that is experienced, combined with something measured. There is no way that words can touch that: the impotence of my chosen career suddenly becomes manifest.
But, looked at in terms of some of my own definitions of things, Time, then, illustrates a certain truth. Time is the theory that things succeed each other in simultaneousness. There is no way, except for in the world of comic books and science fiction that two times can exist simultaneously. There is no way that 2010 and 2009 can exist, especially for me, at the same time. It is precisely this sequential habit we have of dealing with time that forms its reality as infinite and singular. In practice, it occurs as moment to moment. The moment that I am currently involved in gives way to the moment that will follow it, and this has been so much the historical case with me that there is absolutely no reason to believe that at some point the moment I am experiencing now will be followed by the moment that immediately proceeded it. That is absurd. I will be the first to admit that absurdities are fun, but when dealing with things in earnest, absurdity ought to play a very insignificant part.
What is the difference between the idea of a thing and the thing itself?
To answer this question, it is probably most appropriate to look at the nature of inter-human relationships.
The idea of the relationship I have with my significant other is often far, far more appealing that the actuality of it—whether we choose to acknowledge this fact or not. Sensual and emotional comforts are very appealing, and when the choice is between having physical/emotional comfort and dealing with the pain of aloneness. In the sage like wisdom of Bradley Nowell:
“Sleepin’ by yourself at night can make you feel alone.”
However, the idea of being able to share the pain of being a human being (“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”) is sometimes not a technically effective remedy for the maladies of the relationships itself: constant verbal battles, physical confrontations, emotional drainage, etc. Even still, the mind most frequently, almost consistently errs on the side of combating its reality with a cohort. What is that about?
Perhaps Casanova had it right: it’s not that we devalue life because of its necessarily fleeting nature, it pains us so intensely to understand fully—all in a moment—the monumental reality of that which is passing us by.
And perhaps that’s where time comes into play: we wanted some kind of way to be able to measure the experiences of the human character. Then, after reflection, we found this measure flawed: like attempting to divine which line was greater, the longer one or the shorter one. They are both simply degrees of the same thing. They are both lines and there is no way to decide with one is greater. There is only the possibility of applying an artificial title on one such as “longer” and the other as “shorter.” Even here we run into trouble because we are dealing with comparisons and there is nothing intrinsic about these delineations—which sort of automatically renders them derivative. There is nothing about line A in particular that makes it longer. It is only in comparison with line B—a measurable distance shorter—that this distinction is even possible, which makes it an artificial designation.
For example, take two line segments. One of them is four inches long. The other is two inches long. Which one is greater? Perhaps neither, they’re both lines after all. Which one is longer? Artificially, the one that’s four inches long. Introduce into this situation a circle whose circumference is five inches. Which is greater? That’s apples and oranges! What is a circle but a continuous but measurable line? It is line that is five inches long surrounding a space. What’s incredible here is that the distance from one side of that space to the other is less than two inches (line B). Which is greater? Which is longer?
These are the questions that plague my days.
In short, I think that Casanova is right; however, I think it deserves an amendment in the form of direction. Perhaps man may seek amusement in order to avoid the fact that the most precious gift he has been given is slowly, steadily wasting away in front of his eyes; however, it ought to be noted that the particularities of the amusements are more important than the amusements themselves. Consider if you will the state of two men who have been similar disposed to amusements, but one finds his in the digital imaging of the television and the other in the quest for an understanding of the self that he is through personal experience and investigation of what others have written. Can you imagine which one is going to actively seek out new and varied instances of personal growth and development? Can you imagine which one will probably develop a kind of eating disorder and tendency towards sloth?
I have seen the former and I have seen the latter.
From personal experience I urge you to seek out those amusements that develop the understanding of the self. I fail to see how American Idol induces this urge. Who among us, in this day and age, is actually attempting to understand how we understand ourselves?
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Let Them Come
Flow comes to mind here. At no point should expectations be raised. Co-ordinate desire with the pleasures of the flesh? Is this possible? No. Desire is, by definition, a non-physical entity.
Who would guess that I waded through the cold uphillness of the path to get here?
Make up words and write them over top of other words. Do it Now!
Essential freedom of thought in this place.
Can a pink melodica change the face of things? Maybe it can. Accept the reality of that possibility.
Keep contained within yourself the seeds of greatness, and trees cannot coagulate into full-grown entities.
Compositionally speaking: the human character is perpetually separate.
Hopeless recombination!!!
Can you re-consult oracles?
Will they tell you something different? Or
can they? Are they forced to tell you consistencies?
Do words have to be linear, or is it simply to aid in comprehension.
It’s funny the power music has. Start a tune. Maybe people don’t know it, maybe they do. It turns out that I can play “Caress Me Down.”
Convince yourself that which isn’t… is. Consultations are free
in Birmingham.
“Love of mine, someday you will die, but I’ll be close behind, and follow you into the dark.
No blinding light, or tunnels to gates of white, just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark.”
“The light wraps you in its mortal flame, abstracted pale mourner, standing that way against the old propellers of the twilight that revolves around you. Speechless, my friend, alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead, and filled with the lives of fire, pure heir of the ruined day. A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment. The great roots of night grow suddenly from your soul and the things that hide in you come out again so that a blue and pallid people, your newly born, takes nourishment.”
Misunderstood significance runs rampant here. Does it mean? Yes. What does it mean? Recognize the fleeting and let it be fleeting. I hate Coldplay. I love having a pen in my hand… comfort. Free play meaning fluid. This place is where you learn to accept the fleeting reality that is human existence.
Obvious, isn’t it, the radical shift in tone?
Brainwaves have this way of jumping around, especially when channeling the sub-conscious that is entirely unpredictable—a bit like the path of a tornado. I think only the consciousness is allowed to concentrate. It would probably defeat the purpose if our sub-conscious was allowed to concentrate. Its job is to move quickly and file everything. It is the most efficient secretary ever conceived. Then, when everything is filed, it turns itself around and around like an enormous rolodex, speed reading everything over and over and over, faster than it is possible to comprehend, until it comes to understand whatever it is it’s possible to understand.
It throws the trash away into dreams—or at least the stuff it doesn’t want to deal with anymore—which is why dreams are usually so entertaining and useful.
It makes people pop into your head at precisely the moment they are supposed to. Over a week ago I received an email from a very dear friend that lives in New York City. It was an important email. It had a lot of information in it, and it certainly required a response, but not immediately. Time wears on, and a couple of days ago, for no reason whatsoever, her name popped into my head as if the sub-conscious was done sorting through whatever it had needed to sort through and the appropriate time for a response was now.
What is that about? How can we get more in touch with this mysterious brain process? Can we? It’s probably not worth it. We would never be able to understand it anyhow.
Let it be what it is. Those simple words are all too difficult sometimes, aren’t they? It is almost human nature to want to mold things, shape things into an image of our own, but the reality is that things, left to their own devices, are usually better off without human interference. Most endangered species wouldn’t be endangered in the first place, and nature has this funny way of knowing which animals ought to survive and which oughtn’t that is so outside the scope of human knowledge that…
A thought: can humans be said to be a part of nature? We are the only animal that attempts to mold nature to our own will. We keep people alive that, in the natural order, would die. We mow down trees and plants to build ghastly metal structures. We destroy the beautiful to erect the disgusting. Perhaps this is the essential fallacy of humanity: we ARE a part of nature. We have just spent so much time attempting to convince ourselves that, somehow, we can win. There are ways to defeat little bits of nature here and there, but nature likes to give us little warning signs like hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, tsunamis and volcanoes that ought to illustrate how quickly Mother Nature could tear us down to our real size (which is pretty puny if you think about it) if she so desired. To her, time is nothing. The average human lifespan doesn’t even register as a blip on the surface of her history or her future. The sun is going to die. OK… IN FIVE BILLION YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!! Some quick math: what’s 5 billion, minus 100 (and we’re being VERY generous with a human lifespan here)?
499,999,999,900. That is a very big number my friends.
No. Humanity won’t last that long I’m afraid. All is pointless, hopeless, and fleeting. BUT THAT’S ITS BEAUTY!!! That’s where the beauty comes from, not this immortality everybody thinks they want. In immortality, all is pointed, hopeful and enduring. If only for the fact that, to me, living in a state of hope forever sounds like the worst torture anybody could endure, it seems like the dread of the knowledge, the truth, that things will come to an end, seems like a far, far better thing than living in the dream world of hoping that they won’t. So let them come, whatever they be. Let them go, whatever they are. Let them do whatever they will.
Who would guess that I waded through the cold uphillness of the path to get here?
Make up words and write them over top of other words. Do it Now!
Essential freedom of thought in this place.
Can a pink melodica change the face of things? Maybe it can. Accept the reality of that possibility.
Keep contained within yourself the seeds of greatness, and trees cannot coagulate into full-grown entities.
Compositionally speaking: the human character is perpetually separate.
Hopeless recombination!!!
Can you re-consult oracles?
Will they tell you something different? Or
can they? Are they forced to tell you consistencies?
Do words have to be linear, or is it simply to aid in comprehension.
It’s funny the power music has. Start a tune. Maybe people don’t know it, maybe they do. It turns out that I can play “Caress Me Down.”
Convince yourself that which isn’t… is. Consultations are free
in Birmingham.
“Love of mine, someday you will die, but I’ll be close behind, and follow you into the dark.
No blinding light, or tunnels to gates of white, just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark.”
“The light wraps you in its mortal flame, abstracted pale mourner, standing that way against the old propellers of the twilight that revolves around you. Speechless, my friend, alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead, and filled with the lives of fire, pure heir of the ruined day. A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment. The great roots of night grow suddenly from your soul and the things that hide in you come out again so that a blue and pallid people, your newly born, takes nourishment.”
Misunderstood significance runs rampant here. Does it mean? Yes. What does it mean? Recognize the fleeting and let it be fleeting. I hate Coldplay. I love having a pen in my hand… comfort. Free play meaning fluid. This place is where you learn to accept the fleeting reality that is human existence.
Obvious, isn’t it, the radical shift in tone?
Brainwaves have this way of jumping around, especially when channeling the sub-conscious that is entirely unpredictable—a bit like the path of a tornado. I think only the consciousness is allowed to concentrate. It would probably defeat the purpose if our sub-conscious was allowed to concentrate. Its job is to move quickly and file everything. It is the most efficient secretary ever conceived. Then, when everything is filed, it turns itself around and around like an enormous rolodex, speed reading everything over and over and over, faster than it is possible to comprehend, until it comes to understand whatever it is it’s possible to understand.
It throws the trash away into dreams—or at least the stuff it doesn’t want to deal with anymore—which is why dreams are usually so entertaining and useful.
It makes people pop into your head at precisely the moment they are supposed to. Over a week ago I received an email from a very dear friend that lives in New York City. It was an important email. It had a lot of information in it, and it certainly required a response, but not immediately. Time wears on, and a couple of days ago, for no reason whatsoever, her name popped into my head as if the sub-conscious was done sorting through whatever it had needed to sort through and the appropriate time for a response was now.
What is that about? How can we get more in touch with this mysterious brain process? Can we? It’s probably not worth it. We would never be able to understand it anyhow.
Let it be what it is. Those simple words are all too difficult sometimes, aren’t they? It is almost human nature to want to mold things, shape things into an image of our own, but the reality is that things, left to their own devices, are usually better off without human interference. Most endangered species wouldn’t be endangered in the first place, and nature has this funny way of knowing which animals ought to survive and which oughtn’t that is so outside the scope of human knowledge that…
A thought: can humans be said to be a part of nature? We are the only animal that attempts to mold nature to our own will. We keep people alive that, in the natural order, would die. We mow down trees and plants to build ghastly metal structures. We destroy the beautiful to erect the disgusting. Perhaps this is the essential fallacy of humanity: we ARE a part of nature. We have just spent so much time attempting to convince ourselves that, somehow, we can win. There are ways to defeat little bits of nature here and there, but nature likes to give us little warning signs like hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, tsunamis and volcanoes that ought to illustrate how quickly Mother Nature could tear us down to our real size (which is pretty puny if you think about it) if she so desired. To her, time is nothing. The average human lifespan doesn’t even register as a blip on the surface of her history or her future. The sun is going to die. OK… IN FIVE BILLION YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!! Some quick math: what’s 5 billion, minus 100 (and we’re being VERY generous with a human lifespan here)?
499,999,999,900. That is a very big number my friends.
No. Humanity won’t last that long I’m afraid. All is pointless, hopeless, and fleeting. BUT THAT’S ITS BEAUTY!!! That’s where the beauty comes from, not this immortality everybody thinks they want. In immortality, all is pointed, hopeful and enduring. If only for the fact that, to me, living in a state of hope forever sounds like the worst torture anybody could endure, it seems like the dread of the knowledge, the truth, that things will come to an end, seems like a far, far better thing than living in the dream world of hoping that they won’t. So let them come, whatever they be. Let them go, whatever they are. Let them do whatever they will.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Static
Sometimes we become static, and the thing about static is that seems to be moving, but it’s reality is stationary: all those lines on the TV ARE moving, but they’re moving no farther than the screen will allow them; all those sounds are moving around, but they’re confined to the space the headphones will allow them; all those feelings between people exist only so long as they’re allowed to exist. The essential irony of static is that it seems to be something much more than it is. It pretends to take up all this time and space, but it’s pulling a French Drop and you’re missing the whole point.
Life can get very caught up with the static is involved in, and this causes the person who is in the unfortunate position of dealing with the static the sense that they’re dealing with something truly important; however, when it becomes possible to step back, the affected person sees clearly that what they were dealing with was bullshit.
I suppose that what I’m talking about here is the liberation that comes from turning off the TV, putting down the headphones, and letting those feelings go. It turns out that the scope of complication to which we subject ourselves is precisely our own doing.
Ancient practitioners of the phrase “first, take care of the self,” would practice three things in the attempt to develop the self and understand how much of our mental anguish is brought on us by ourselves.
First, they would test themselves. These tests would take the form of deprivation and exercise in poverty. For example, one documented test of the self was to develop a hunger through doing sport, present oneself with a table full of delicious and savory foods, then turn away and be content (if not happy) having the same food as the slaves. Granted, the people giving themselves this test were usually well-off men of some station in society, but could you imagine the aristocracy or the upper sector of the bourgeoisie in America practicing poverty in this way? The question would come up: why should I? The answer would come back: “We shall be rich with all the more comfort, if we once lean how far poverty is from being a burden.”
Second, they would interrogate themselves. Interrogate has a lot of negative connotations, but what it means in this context is more like cross-examination—although that particular word seems to be AS loaded with negative connotations as the other. Essentially, it means that when you wake up, you ask yourself what you plan to get accomplished that day in terms of the development of the soul—not just a list of chores that need tending to. How will you expand your understanding of truth? How will you find your way to that which is consistently good? How will you move gently correct your brother who has gone astray? Once you have prepared yourself for the day, go through your day with these goals in mind, and before you go to bed, review. What did I do today to help develop my soul? What did I do today to expand my understanding of truth? What bad habit have I cured today? What fault have I resisted? In what respect am I better? The facts of human reality are that we are the only creature capable of developing itself into something better. Birds do not try to be better birds. Dogs, left to their own devices, will only seek out food and the occasional hump. Humans are in the unique position to become better humans through the development of their character.
Finally, they would focus on the labor of thought with itself as goal. This is related to the fact that man is the only animal that is capable of thinking about thinking. In other words, if you take the unique structure of human consciousness, it allows for this metacommentary of thought. It is the consistent check-up on the representations we have in our minds. When we see something, it represents something else to our minds, and is that secondary image appropriate, unbiased, tuned to the development of the good? The best example is money. In the time before money was as standardized as it is and there were variations in coinage—the nascent stages of money—a vendor would spend a long time verifying that a coin was what it was claiming to be. They would bite it, they would throw it in a metal bowl and listen to the sound, and they would take as much time as necessary to ensure that what they were getting was the genuine article and not something derivative. The same care ought to be taken with the thoughts that course through us. Is this something wholesome? Is it derivative information? Where does the image that I’m forming actually come from? Am I simply repeating a formulaic seeming-truth given to me from outside, or am can its veracity be determined through my combination of theory and experience.
These practices were taken very seriously by those who chose get involved with them. After all, if you’re going to be a great runner, then you should probably take care of your feet and exercise often. If you’re going to be a great wrestler, then you should practice frequently and take care of the body. If you’re going to be a great man, then you should develop the soul daily, and take care of the mind.
It is precisely at this point that static comes back into play: we live in a society of spectacles, distractions from a reality that is possible to develop. What happens when we choose to focus on the spectacle nature of society is that we delve balls deep into the static, we leave the TV static running at a very loud volume, we turn up the headphones, and we take our gaze away from the development of the self.
I don’t know why, but I feel like it is important here to state that this development of the self is in terms of the society that the self is inside. It is every man’s duty for the development of the society to develop the self. This is very different from the selfish ambitions of those who would radically attempt to take charge of their lives and thereby take control of others—I guess I’m thinking of Smith’s stupid hand and all those ruthless business bastards whose only goal is making money…this is not the development of the self for the betterment of society. I hate you Adam Smith. At what point did you forget that the reason humans have to develop themselves is because they essentially suck at living.
I guess what I’m here to advocate is the turning off of the TV—in a literal and metaphorical sense, the taking off of the headphones—is that a gasp of horror from iPod advocates everywhere that I hear, and returning the gaze to the development of the self. Take back control of your life by cutting through the bullshit static that seems to expand the more we allow it to gather. It is almost as if, once we give it a foothold in our life, the complacency and laziness that comes with unessential drama mushroom clouds until it is all we see. The point is, of course, to not let things get that far. Start practicing selfness now. Start waking up and making sure that you have a plan for making yourself better.
If you don’t know how, take some advice from the ancients, because the development of the character of the self necessarily involved reading, writing and physical activity. Start up a simple regiment of thinking in the morning. Find a good meditation book like “The Art of Living” or “The Tao Teh Ching” or “The Art of War” and start your day off by thinking about HOW you can make yourself a better human being… just thinking. That goal being accomplished (and it shouldn’t take any more than fifteen or thirty minutes), watch one less TV show and use the time to go running. If you can’t run, go for a walk. Join the gym. Start a yoga class. The body is the seat of the mind and a healthy body aids in the health of the mind. Finally, do some writing at the end of the day and recount what you did to make yourself better. Recall the words from the book you had read earlier. Write about the things you thought as you walked. Were they wholesome? Were they directed to the essential challenge of nature for the human being: how can I be better at being? Follow this simple regiment for one month and see if anything comes of it. Put down Dan Brown and pick up Epictetus. Turn off American Idol and go for a walk. Write.
Life can get very caught up with the static is involved in, and this causes the person who is in the unfortunate position of dealing with the static the sense that they’re dealing with something truly important; however, when it becomes possible to step back, the affected person sees clearly that what they were dealing with was bullshit.
I suppose that what I’m talking about here is the liberation that comes from turning off the TV, putting down the headphones, and letting those feelings go. It turns out that the scope of complication to which we subject ourselves is precisely our own doing.
Ancient practitioners of the phrase “first, take care of the self,” would practice three things in the attempt to develop the self and understand how much of our mental anguish is brought on us by ourselves.
First, they would test themselves. These tests would take the form of deprivation and exercise in poverty. For example, one documented test of the self was to develop a hunger through doing sport, present oneself with a table full of delicious and savory foods, then turn away and be content (if not happy) having the same food as the slaves. Granted, the people giving themselves this test were usually well-off men of some station in society, but could you imagine the aristocracy or the upper sector of the bourgeoisie in America practicing poverty in this way? The question would come up: why should I? The answer would come back: “We shall be rich with all the more comfort, if we once lean how far poverty is from being a burden.”
Second, they would interrogate themselves. Interrogate has a lot of negative connotations, but what it means in this context is more like cross-examination—although that particular word seems to be AS loaded with negative connotations as the other. Essentially, it means that when you wake up, you ask yourself what you plan to get accomplished that day in terms of the development of the soul—not just a list of chores that need tending to. How will you expand your understanding of truth? How will you find your way to that which is consistently good? How will you move gently correct your brother who has gone astray? Once you have prepared yourself for the day, go through your day with these goals in mind, and before you go to bed, review. What did I do today to help develop my soul? What did I do today to expand my understanding of truth? What bad habit have I cured today? What fault have I resisted? In what respect am I better? The facts of human reality are that we are the only creature capable of developing itself into something better. Birds do not try to be better birds. Dogs, left to their own devices, will only seek out food and the occasional hump. Humans are in the unique position to become better humans through the development of their character.
Finally, they would focus on the labor of thought with itself as goal. This is related to the fact that man is the only animal that is capable of thinking about thinking. In other words, if you take the unique structure of human consciousness, it allows for this metacommentary of thought. It is the consistent check-up on the representations we have in our minds. When we see something, it represents something else to our minds, and is that secondary image appropriate, unbiased, tuned to the development of the good? The best example is money. In the time before money was as standardized as it is and there were variations in coinage—the nascent stages of money—a vendor would spend a long time verifying that a coin was what it was claiming to be. They would bite it, they would throw it in a metal bowl and listen to the sound, and they would take as much time as necessary to ensure that what they were getting was the genuine article and not something derivative. The same care ought to be taken with the thoughts that course through us. Is this something wholesome? Is it derivative information? Where does the image that I’m forming actually come from? Am I simply repeating a formulaic seeming-truth given to me from outside, or am can its veracity be determined through my combination of theory and experience.
These practices were taken very seriously by those who chose get involved with them. After all, if you’re going to be a great runner, then you should probably take care of your feet and exercise often. If you’re going to be a great wrestler, then you should practice frequently and take care of the body. If you’re going to be a great man, then you should develop the soul daily, and take care of the mind.
It is precisely at this point that static comes back into play: we live in a society of spectacles, distractions from a reality that is possible to develop. What happens when we choose to focus on the spectacle nature of society is that we delve balls deep into the static, we leave the TV static running at a very loud volume, we turn up the headphones, and we take our gaze away from the development of the self.
I don’t know why, but I feel like it is important here to state that this development of the self is in terms of the society that the self is inside. It is every man’s duty for the development of the society to develop the self. This is very different from the selfish ambitions of those who would radically attempt to take charge of their lives and thereby take control of others—I guess I’m thinking of Smith’s stupid hand and all those ruthless business bastards whose only goal is making money…this is not the development of the self for the betterment of society. I hate you Adam Smith. At what point did you forget that the reason humans have to develop themselves is because they essentially suck at living.
I guess what I’m here to advocate is the turning off of the TV—in a literal and metaphorical sense, the taking off of the headphones—is that a gasp of horror from iPod advocates everywhere that I hear, and returning the gaze to the development of the self. Take back control of your life by cutting through the bullshit static that seems to expand the more we allow it to gather. It is almost as if, once we give it a foothold in our life, the complacency and laziness that comes with unessential drama mushroom clouds until it is all we see. The point is, of course, to not let things get that far. Start practicing selfness now. Start waking up and making sure that you have a plan for making yourself better.
If you don’t know how, take some advice from the ancients, because the development of the character of the self necessarily involved reading, writing and physical activity. Start up a simple regiment of thinking in the morning. Find a good meditation book like “The Art of Living” or “The Tao Teh Ching” or “The Art of War” and start your day off by thinking about HOW you can make yourself a better human being… just thinking. That goal being accomplished (and it shouldn’t take any more than fifteen or thirty minutes), watch one less TV show and use the time to go running. If you can’t run, go for a walk. Join the gym. Start a yoga class. The body is the seat of the mind and a healthy body aids in the health of the mind. Finally, do some writing at the end of the day and recount what you did to make yourself better. Recall the words from the book you had read earlier. Write about the things you thought as you walked. Were they wholesome? Were they directed to the essential challenge of nature for the human being: how can I be better at being? Follow this simple regiment for one month and see if anything comes of it. Put down Dan Brown and pick up Epictetus. Turn off American Idol and go for a walk. Write.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Three Fingers
In what seems like a fantastic fact, I haven’t done any writing in quite a while, but I woke up today (already awake of course), and the urge to deflower a perfectly innocence blank space with characters and metaphors sprang up from the time fog.
It’s an almost primal urge. The need to create, I mean. What is it from human history that instills in all of us the drive to create something out of nothing? It is probably related to the fact that the consciousness, subconsciously, feels the need to illustrate to itself exactly how it came into being. It looks at itself and wonders how there was nothing there, then there was this thing, and a thing to recognize that thing apart from other things. So, when we create something, we take essentially nothing and make it something.
Midnight on Sunday, there is three fingers of whisky next to me in a small glass, and that will probably serve me throughout this entire writing process.
Life is sometimes only about focus. What the human character focuses on is the road that particular character is choosing to walk down, and it is always a choice. You can choose to focus on anything, but I think there’s a funny sort of turnaround that happens when your focus is on the big picture—and I’m not talking about in a business sense because even that is not broad enough.
One generally thinks of focus as a pinpoint. When you focus all of your energy and attention on this one particular thing, that is focus, which is true; however, it is also entirely possible to focus on one particular thing like existence. What is it like when your focus is entirely on what this thing existence is? It’s a focus of a different kind, isn’t it? There is very little that doesn’t fall under the scope and scale of existence, and when you focus on a full existence, only wanting to become yourself, an endless hallway lined with doors seems to open up right in front of your eyes. Existence is every one of those doors and none of them simultaneously. Each door is a part of existence and the whole of it. Each one of them has to represent the infinite eternal present instant. That is where existence takes place, in the present progressive reality of the human being. Humans are not present simple—something immortalized, usual or always true. Humans began at some point in the past, are moving through something, and that something is expected to continue until an unknown point in the future. I am living.
Sartre’s idea that we don’t use language like a tool (some kind of hammer for a metalworking experiment), we exist language is never more apparent than in the unfortunate area of grammar. Why do we need grammar? It is an illustration of the state of the human character. Oh, you ought to know that USING proper grammar is not important except in the area of thorough information conveyance, but grammar itself is an invaluable peak at the inner workings of human beings.
What are the easiest things in life? Things we know are always true. Things that happened at some point in the past and have been immortalized—either in writing or scheduling. Things that are even usually true are pretty simple. This is why, most of the time, the present simple for most verb forms is the easiest—very few oddities.
What is the most difficult thing in life? Life. To be is pretty difficult. I know that in at least three languages, “To Be” is always an irregular verb form. What does that tell you? In Korean, they separate something that is inherent inside of you (something you have—I have 26 years inside me… “I am 26 years old”) from something that you do (“I am a teacher”). They both translate to “I am,” but they are rendered differently in Korean.
What about the future? We don’t know a whole lot about the future, and the form is usually some form of the present simple: I will talk to you later. The unknowable future manifests itself in its connection with the present.
The past, especially in English, is probably the most difficult verb tense to get your head around. There are so many irregular past tense verbs that it makes the head spin. Smack that together with the past participle, and your left in the lurch. If we take a look at that, the past is complicated, isn’t it? And I’m not talking about grammar any more. We carry the past around with us, but it’s always changing based on new information that we have gathered or how our memory has retained the information we learned.
If you’re confused, imagine the difficulty of teaching these things to children. Well, to be fair, I don’t have to teach children that they ARE language and this manifests itself in grammar, but the reality of teaching that to them makes it a very daunting task. While they don’t need to know it, they need to understand it at some level. All of us understand it at some level. That’s why we use the language we do. It is we. This is probably why one of my favorite pastimes, one of my favorite hobbies is wandering through meaning. What does something mean? What can a single word mean? What does it mean to ask a question instead of making a statement?
I have been told, more than once… recently, that it can sometimes be no fun talking to me because my questions are always really difficult, and this can be a little off-putting. I remember that one of those times it was after asking what constitutes a coincidence, whether it’s related to an accident, and if one is a derivative of the other. I find that defining words as thoroughly as possible is a great workout for the brain, but sometimes people actually want to talk a lot of rot. If you were a toaster, what would you say to the person that owned you?
These are the questions that pop through my head. Even the fact that most of what happens in my head happens in the form of a question is an illustration—from a grammatical standpoint—of my character. For anybody that wanted to know, that’s pretty much how I go about living: questions. What happens when I do this? Okay. Lesson learned. What happens when… this? Okay. Life is a question that isn’t meant to be answered, but is sure as hell meant to be asked.
This week is a big question for me. Something new is starting, and I understand that vagueness can be a very irritating thing for people—especially me. I’m off and wandering into a world of meaning again, and there is excitement for me at a soul level because this is something that I have wanted for a long time. It doesn’t mean anything technically, but it means what it will. I wrote that line in a poem a long time ago: “It means what it will in the future,” and I have found it more and more true as time has passed. Most things that happen only develop meaning as time washes over it. What does that mean from a grammar standpoint?
I guess the last thing I’m going to say is that art is in the same tense as the human being. Art was created at some time in the past, is moving the present and will continue until an unknown time in the future. Even performance art started, is affecting, and will continue to affect. How many people were affected by something they saw and made a change in their life that will continue into the future?
What will you investigate over the course of three fingers of whisky?
It’s an almost primal urge. The need to create, I mean. What is it from human history that instills in all of us the drive to create something out of nothing? It is probably related to the fact that the consciousness, subconsciously, feels the need to illustrate to itself exactly how it came into being. It looks at itself and wonders how there was nothing there, then there was this thing, and a thing to recognize that thing apart from other things. So, when we create something, we take essentially nothing and make it something.
Midnight on Sunday, there is three fingers of whisky next to me in a small glass, and that will probably serve me throughout this entire writing process.
Life is sometimes only about focus. What the human character focuses on is the road that particular character is choosing to walk down, and it is always a choice. You can choose to focus on anything, but I think there’s a funny sort of turnaround that happens when your focus is on the big picture—and I’m not talking about in a business sense because even that is not broad enough.
One generally thinks of focus as a pinpoint. When you focus all of your energy and attention on this one particular thing, that is focus, which is true; however, it is also entirely possible to focus on one particular thing like existence. What is it like when your focus is entirely on what this thing existence is? It’s a focus of a different kind, isn’t it? There is very little that doesn’t fall under the scope and scale of existence, and when you focus on a full existence, only wanting to become yourself, an endless hallway lined with doors seems to open up right in front of your eyes. Existence is every one of those doors and none of them simultaneously. Each door is a part of existence and the whole of it. Each one of them has to represent the infinite eternal present instant. That is where existence takes place, in the present progressive reality of the human being. Humans are not present simple—something immortalized, usual or always true. Humans began at some point in the past, are moving through something, and that something is expected to continue until an unknown point in the future. I am living.
Sartre’s idea that we don’t use language like a tool (some kind of hammer for a metalworking experiment), we exist language is never more apparent than in the unfortunate area of grammar. Why do we need grammar? It is an illustration of the state of the human character. Oh, you ought to know that USING proper grammar is not important except in the area of thorough information conveyance, but grammar itself is an invaluable peak at the inner workings of human beings.
What are the easiest things in life? Things we know are always true. Things that happened at some point in the past and have been immortalized—either in writing or scheduling. Things that are even usually true are pretty simple. This is why, most of the time, the present simple for most verb forms is the easiest—very few oddities.
What is the most difficult thing in life? Life. To be is pretty difficult. I know that in at least three languages, “To Be” is always an irregular verb form. What does that tell you? In Korean, they separate something that is inherent inside of you (something you have—I have 26 years inside me… “I am 26 years old”) from something that you do (“I am a teacher”). They both translate to “I am,” but they are rendered differently in Korean.
What about the future? We don’t know a whole lot about the future, and the form is usually some form of the present simple: I will talk to you later. The unknowable future manifests itself in its connection with the present.
The past, especially in English, is probably the most difficult verb tense to get your head around. There are so many irregular past tense verbs that it makes the head spin. Smack that together with the past participle, and your left in the lurch. If we take a look at that, the past is complicated, isn’t it? And I’m not talking about grammar any more. We carry the past around with us, but it’s always changing based on new information that we have gathered or how our memory has retained the information we learned.
If you’re confused, imagine the difficulty of teaching these things to children. Well, to be fair, I don’t have to teach children that they ARE language and this manifests itself in grammar, but the reality of teaching that to them makes it a very daunting task. While they don’t need to know it, they need to understand it at some level. All of us understand it at some level. That’s why we use the language we do. It is we. This is probably why one of my favorite pastimes, one of my favorite hobbies is wandering through meaning. What does something mean? What can a single word mean? What does it mean to ask a question instead of making a statement?
I have been told, more than once… recently, that it can sometimes be no fun talking to me because my questions are always really difficult, and this can be a little off-putting. I remember that one of those times it was after asking what constitutes a coincidence, whether it’s related to an accident, and if one is a derivative of the other. I find that defining words as thoroughly as possible is a great workout for the brain, but sometimes people actually want to talk a lot of rot. If you were a toaster, what would you say to the person that owned you?
These are the questions that pop through my head. Even the fact that most of what happens in my head happens in the form of a question is an illustration—from a grammatical standpoint—of my character. For anybody that wanted to know, that’s pretty much how I go about living: questions. What happens when I do this? Okay. Lesson learned. What happens when… this? Okay. Life is a question that isn’t meant to be answered, but is sure as hell meant to be asked.
This week is a big question for me. Something new is starting, and I understand that vagueness can be a very irritating thing for people—especially me. I’m off and wandering into a world of meaning again, and there is excitement for me at a soul level because this is something that I have wanted for a long time. It doesn’t mean anything technically, but it means what it will. I wrote that line in a poem a long time ago: “It means what it will in the future,” and I have found it more and more true as time has passed. Most things that happen only develop meaning as time washes over it. What does that mean from a grammar standpoint?
I guess the last thing I’m going to say is that art is in the same tense as the human being. Art was created at some time in the past, is moving the present and will continue until an unknown time in the future. Even performance art started, is affecting, and will continue to affect. How many people were affected by something they saw and made a change in their life that will continue into the future?
What will you investigate over the course of three fingers of whisky?
Monday, December 21, 2009
A Letter
Dear Christmas~
I guess I officially don’t understand you. I mean, I think I understand, but I understand the sentiment holding you up even more.
Sometimes, aren’t you a giant excuse to remember the loved ones you forget about all year long? That’s actually sad, but what if you weren’t there?
No, I think we’re definitely better off with Christmas in our lives; however, I also think that the manner of Christmas ought to be redefined.
In Korea, Christmas amounts to a bank holiday, a day off from school, and little more than a nice lunch with the family feeling good about life.
In America, Christmas lasts almost two months (sometimes more), costs a crap load, and has become the time of year that businesses rely on to pull them out of the red.
Okay, seriously, there has to be some kind of balance we can reach—Chanukah seems like a nice balance: one week, candles, remembrance, a few gifts, okay.
But why does religion have to get all mixed up with you?
So many people go to church one day a year.
Oh, and, um, Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25th, but it’s tradition isn’t it?
This is just something that I’m throwing out into the winds of possibility and might eventually regret: could you ever be about simple celebration of the beauty of being there and alive? Santa being the cartoonish representation of the giver of the free gift of existence?
You know, the more I think about it, you probably started as precisely that: a simple celebration in the heart of winter to remind humanity of the warmth that perpetually burns in the breast of all who are alive.
But Pagans and Christians all wish to have to their stamp on things and we wind up with the mind-bending reality of seeing the juxtaposition of a magic cartoon octogenarian master of breaking and entering and the birth of the son of god.
In what world would these two things normally be allowed to be together?
Or…
is it just me or do those two things suddenly make perfect sense?
Ah, there’s my cynicism coming back through again and I apologize because this was meant to be a serious epistle of thankfulness for your existence.
Once, a while ago, I went through a period of serious appreciation for everything around me, and I do mean everything: the pencil I was writing with, the couch I was sitting on, the door I walked through, everything and everybody received a certain amount of love energy from me.
I have since stopped this practice (although I’m not sure why), and what I want to say right now is that I appreciate the reality of you.
The fact that you are instead of aren’t is enough to win you some appreciation from the mind of this thought wondering wandering Ulysses of ideas.
I’m not sure if you’re meant to be celebrated with lights and presents or simple dinners or nothing or fruitcakes or family or friends or lovers, but I do know (from somewhere in my spiritual existence) that you are meant to be celebrated.
What would happen in a world where you were celebrated with everybody everywhere doing a rhythmic rock riot fist to Metallica’s Battery?
What would happenin a world where you were celebrated by everybody picking up the nearest text of intense philosophical inquiry and quietly searching into their existence?
Ah, you’ll once again have to excuse me, but I have this penchant for unanswerable questions.
There is beauty in you. I can see it. I think it’s hiding beneath the layers of meaning that various groups are attempting to ascribe to you, but you are a day like any other.
On any other day you could give gifts to your loved ones (and they might even mean more for their unexpectedness).
On any other day you could get the whole family together and have a loving family meal where you genuinely appreciate each other.
But this is what holidays are for, and what does that illustrate?
At some level I’m almost certain that, for the most part, we don’t want to spend time and money on our family and friends, but there is this one day every so often that tells us we ought to, and so we do.
The human character is essentially a super-selfish character with walls built up around itself to deflect the pulsing arrows of those who would call it out.
--No, I’m not. See what I give when I’m supposed to give?
There is none holy, no not one.
Do you know why I think that there is not one holy person in the world?
Because people aren’t holy, days are, and that’s why you are special: humans are spiritual, but they exist inside the holiness of days.
What’s unique about you is that almost every group of humans all over the planet has decided that you are an especially holy day.
Let me restate that in different words: every single day we can exist our spirituality is a holy day (making every single day of our life special and important and real), but some days are holier than others by virtue of… something-or-other.
A personal day is a personal holiday, a personal holy day in which something is more special than other days, and there is great beauty in that.
What’s in a day?
Only everything, by which I mean nothingness, by which I mean the foundation for building whatever you want it to be.
O, Holy Christmas, I hereby thank you for your existence and make a pact with you that I will celebrate my existence and the existence of the human characters around me and the existence of the planet and the existence of every pine needle that has fallen to the ground with a little bit more fervor than on other days.
You win.
I will probably not decorate a tree or my room or my house until I have children whose cries of “Daddy, why?!” need placating, but know that inside my heart there will be great joy in your holiness.
If there is indeed magic in you, and let’s just assume for the sake of argument that there is, could you send a little of it to all those I would say I love, all those I would say I like, and all those others I don’t know.
That’s a tall order, for sure, but let’s just say I believe in you.
Cheers
e
I guess I officially don’t understand you. I mean, I think I understand, but I understand the sentiment holding you up even more.
Sometimes, aren’t you a giant excuse to remember the loved ones you forget about all year long? That’s actually sad, but what if you weren’t there?
No, I think we’re definitely better off with Christmas in our lives; however, I also think that the manner of Christmas ought to be redefined.
In Korea, Christmas amounts to a bank holiday, a day off from school, and little more than a nice lunch with the family feeling good about life.
In America, Christmas lasts almost two months (sometimes more), costs a crap load, and has become the time of year that businesses rely on to pull them out of the red.
Okay, seriously, there has to be some kind of balance we can reach—Chanukah seems like a nice balance: one week, candles, remembrance, a few gifts, okay.
But why does religion have to get all mixed up with you?
So many people go to church one day a year.
Oh, and, um, Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25th, but it’s tradition isn’t it?
This is just something that I’m throwing out into the winds of possibility and might eventually regret: could you ever be about simple celebration of the beauty of being there and alive? Santa being the cartoonish representation of the giver of the free gift of existence?
You know, the more I think about it, you probably started as precisely that: a simple celebration in the heart of winter to remind humanity of the warmth that perpetually burns in the breast of all who are alive.
But Pagans and Christians all wish to have to their stamp on things and we wind up with the mind-bending reality of seeing the juxtaposition of a magic cartoon octogenarian master of breaking and entering and the birth of the son of god.
In what world would these two things normally be allowed to be together?
Or…
is it just me or do those two things suddenly make perfect sense?
Ah, there’s my cynicism coming back through again and I apologize because this was meant to be a serious epistle of thankfulness for your existence.
Once, a while ago, I went through a period of serious appreciation for everything around me, and I do mean everything: the pencil I was writing with, the couch I was sitting on, the door I walked through, everything and everybody received a certain amount of love energy from me.
I have since stopped this practice (although I’m not sure why), and what I want to say right now is that I appreciate the reality of you.
The fact that you are instead of aren’t is enough to win you some appreciation from the mind of this thought wondering wandering Ulysses of ideas.
I’m not sure if you’re meant to be celebrated with lights and presents or simple dinners or nothing or fruitcakes or family or friends or lovers, but I do know (from somewhere in my spiritual existence) that you are meant to be celebrated.
What would happen in a world where you were celebrated with everybody everywhere doing a rhythmic rock riot fist to Metallica’s Battery?
What would happenin a world where you were celebrated by everybody picking up the nearest text of intense philosophical inquiry and quietly searching into their existence?
Ah, you’ll once again have to excuse me, but I have this penchant for unanswerable questions.
There is beauty in you. I can see it. I think it’s hiding beneath the layers of meaning that various groups are attempting to ascribe to you, but you are a day like any other.
On any other day you could give gifts to your loved ones (and they might even mean more for their unexpectedness).
On any other day you could get the whole family together and have a loving family meal where you genuinely appreciate each other.
But this is what holidays are for, and what does that illustrate?
At some level I’m almost certain that, for the most part, we don’t want to spend time and money on our family and friends, but there is this one day every so often that tells us we ought to, and so we do.
The human character is essentially a super-selfish character with walls built up around itself to deflect the pulsing arrows of those who would call it out.
--No, I’m not. See what I give when I’m supposed to give?
There is none holy, no not one.
Do you know why I think that there is not one holy person in the world?
Because people aren’t holy, days are, and that’s why you are special: humans are spiritual, but they exist inside the holiness of days.
What’s unique about you is that almost every group of humans all over the planet has decided that you are an especially holy day.
Let me restate that in different words: every single day we can exist our spirituality is a holy day (making every single day of our life special and important and real), but some days are holier than others by virtue of… something-or-other.
A personal day is a personal holiday, a personal holy day in which something is more special than other days, and there is great beauty in that.
What’s in a day?
Only everything, by which I mean nothingness, by which I mean the foundation for building whatever you want it to be.
O, Holy Christmas, I hereby thank you for your existence and make a pact with you that I will celebrate my existence and the existence of the human characters around me and the existence of the planet and the existence of every pine needle that has fallen to the ground with a little bit more fervor than on other days.
You win.
I will probably not decorate a tree or my room or my house until I have children whose cries of “Daddy, why?!” need placating, but know that inside my heart there will be great joy in your holiness.
If there is indeed magic in you, and let’s just assume for the sake of argument that there is, could you send a little of it to all those I would say I love, all those I would say I like, and all those others I don’t know.
That’s a tall order, for sure, but let’s just say I believe in you.
Cheers
e
Sunday, December 13, 2009
What a Week
I have been thinking a lot, lately, about how the mind can manipulate itself, and, knowing this, if it is then possible to turn the mind into a tool the likes of which has never been seen. There was a conversation in a Bundang bar last Wednesday about Sartre’s concept of Bad Faith. Well, I haven’t thought much about Bad Faith since reading Being and Nothingness, but given my current life plans, it seems surprisingly relevant.
The principles of Bad Faith I have been using to reprogram my brain have been working. My upbringing caused me to believe certain things that weren’t true. Perhaps they existed as facts somewhere, but as nuggets of truth, there was certainly no experience with them that told me these facts were truth, and, as of late, I have been lying to myself about certain skills I have in order to make them a reality.
The principle of bad faith is pretty simple and pretty obvious: you habitually, subconsciously or consciously lie to yourself in order to accomplish a goal. Somewhere inside, the self is perfectly aware that this is not currently a fact, but we start acting like something long before we actually are that thing. If you think about the world of business, most big businesses in the modern age want you to start acting like the role you want to take on long before you actually step into the role. It’s like you’re always a little bit ahead of yourself, when you’re actually a little bit behind yourself. The only difference between bad faith and actual faith is the fact that you know you are lying to yourself in bad faith; whereas, in faith (such as religious faith) you are either not aware that you’re lying to yourself or you have had some kind of experience that has made the facts into a truth—so that you ACTUALLY believe.
Religious faith and I have not gotten along in some time, and it’s only because I have had no experience with religion that smacked of truth. The world is a spiritual entity, but I’ll leave the religion for other people.
I have experienced the truth of bad faith. I am not a guitarist. Why, then, do I play guitar every day? I am not a writer. Why, then, do I write ever day? Because I am continually lying to myself and telling myself that I am exactly not the thing I am is because my sub-conscious knows that if I knew full well that I was a writer and everything was fine or that I am a very accomplished guitarist, then there would be no drive and no desire. Bad faith is essentially the key to the ignition of desire. What do you want? What do you really want? I mean to ask: what does your soul want? What does your being want more than anything.
Here’s something I’ve discovered, if you focus on something long enough, and work at something long enough, that thing perpetually gets closer and closer. Even if you never actually achieve it, the journey toward it is impossible with the bad faith necessary to drive your desire.
A conveyor belt comes to mind. That’s what I want. I want a conveyor belt. That’s essentially a metaphor, but that’s what I want. Constant motion, constant newness, and the feeling that things are impermanent, that’s what I’ve been telling myself for a week. It has been sitting in the back of my brain for years, but the fact is that I have never possessed the focus to work through all my layers of programming to make it so. Now, I have focused my entire being on achieving this goal.
Have you ever noticed that we usually get what we really, really want? This is because when our soul wants something, it will move time and space to do it. Clock time doesn’t exist, but time has reality in the form of a construct—we’ll leave the question of time’s actual existence for another post—and it’s reality is in the life of the mind. When we want, time does not matter, and changes to whatever we want it to be.
A long time ago I watched a movie that unexpectedly changed my life. The Butterfly Effect is about a man who can change time, but every time he does, his entire brain re-wires itself—which hurts. That is a logical metaphor for the reality of what Bad Faith does to the brain. When we wrap ourselves in layers of sub-conscious padding in order to accomplish some goal we’ve got in mind, we wind up uprooting the whole system that’s already in place, because when you deal with the consciousness, every slight change changes everything because the consciousness and the spirit are related.
So, here we are. It’s been probably one of the most difficult weeks of my life, in terms of spiritual/consciousness upheaval, which has also taken its toll on my body—funny how those two are always related. When the spirit and the body are exhausted, man can sleep his deepest sleep: most restlessness and insomnia are caused by the mind or the body not being sufficiently exhausted; however, when man has exhausted both the physical and mental/spiritual aspects of his existence, there is really no way not to sleep. That is something I have had to learn from experience.
What we do now is keep up the lie. The way forward for me lies in wrapping myself up in layers and layers of cushy subconsciousness in order to accomplish my deepest desire. It is actually pretty strange to watch myself making decisions and focusing on things that I have never focused on before, and finding that when I turn the power of being toward a desire, all thoughts flow toward it, and with flow comes change. Where are you sending your flow? I guess that’s the big question, isn’t it? What are you looking at constantly? Where do you find your mind wandering to all the time?
That is actually the how of change: simple focus. Focus implies inside itself that this is a fairly constantly thing, and the only difference between change that happens quickly and change that happens at the level of the soul is time. When we focus on something for a little while, we get a little bit accomplished. When we focus on things with the radiance of the being for a long time, we get a lot accomplished. Here we encounter an area that perhaps Hegel never considered in his considerations about quantity, because the fact of the matter is that how much you invest in something does affect that thing. The more time you invest, the more you get returned.
For one week I have been focused at a soul level. For one week I have, basically, managed to lay the groundwork for what will be habitual over time.
I have wandered down many, many paths in my lifetime, and I’m about to wander down another one.
Sun Tzu says in the Art of War (and I am at war with my consciousness): “There are five essentials for victory…know when to fight… know how to handle both superior and inferior forces… ensure your army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks… wait to take the enemy unprepared… and have military capacity (i.e. not interfered with by the sovereign). If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
Wandering onto the battlefield, I have done enough research to know myself, I have done enough research to know the enemy, and I have my eyes trained on what is necessary for victory. Will I win? Yes. Yes I will. There is not a “No” in my world now, and no “Maybe” about it. Victory.
The principles of Bad Faith I have been using to reprogram my brain have been working. My upbringing caused me to believe certain things that weren’t true. Perhaps they existed as facts somewhere, but as nuggets of truth, there was certainly no experience with them that told me these facts were truth, and, as of late, I have been lying to myself about certain skills I have in order to make them a reality.
The principle of bad faith is pretty simple and pretty obvious: you habitually, subconsciously or consciously lie to yourself in order to accomplish a goal. Somewhere inside, the self is perfectly aware that this is not currently a fact, but we start acting like something long before we actually are that thing. If you think about the world of business, most big businesses in the modern age want you to start acting like the role you want to take on long before you actually step into the role. It’s like you’re always a little bit ahead of yourself, when you’re actually a little bit behind yourself. The only difference between bad faith and actual faith is the fact that you know you are lying to yourself in bad faith; whereas, in faith (such as religious faith) you are either not aware that you’re lying to yourself or you have had some kind of experience that has made the facts into a truth—so that you ACTUALLY believe.
Religious faith and I have not gotten along in some time, and it’s only because I have had no experience with religion that smacked of truth. The world is a spiritual entity, but I’ll leave the religion for other people.
I have experienced the truth of bad faith. I am not a guitarist. Why, then, do I play guitar every day? I am not a writer. Why, then, do I write ever day? Because I am continually lying to myself and telling myself that I am exactly not the thing I am is because my sub-conscious knows that if I knew full well that I was a writer and everything was fine or that I am a very accomplished guitarist, then there would be no drive and no desire. Bad faith is essentially the key to the ignition of desire. What do you want? What do you really want? I mean to ask: what does your soul want? What does your being want more than anything.
Here’s something I’ve discovered, if you focus on something long enough, and work at something long enough, that thing perpetually gets closer and closer. Even if you never actually achieve it, the journey toward it is impossible with the bad faith necessary to drive your desire.
A conveyor belt comes to mind. That’s what I want. I want a conveyor belt. That’s essentially a metaphor, but that’s what I want. Constant motion, constant newness, and the feeling that things are impermanent, that’s what I’ve been telling myself for a week. It has been sitting in the back of my brain for years, but the fact is that I have never possessed the focus to work through all my layers of programming to make it so. Now, I have focused my entire being on achieving this goal.
Have you ever noticed that we usually get what we really, really want? This is because when our soul wants something, it will move time and space to do it. Clock time doesn’t exist, but time has reality in the form of a construct—we’ll leave the question of time’s actual existence for another post—and it’s reality is in the life of the mind. When we want, time does not matter, and changes to whatever we want it to be.
A long time ago I watched a movie that unexpectedly changed my life. The Butterfly Effect is about a man who can change time, but every time he does, his entire brain re-wires itself—which hurts. That is a logical metaphor for the reality of what Bad Faith does to the brain. When we wrap ourselves in layers of sub-conscious padding in order to accomplish some goal we’ve got in mind, we wind up uprooting the whole system that’s already in place, because when you deal with the consciousness, every slight change changes everything because the consciousness and the spirit are related.
So, here we are. It’s been probably one of the most difficult weeks of my life, in terms of spiritual/consciousness upheaval, which has also taken its toll on my body—funny how those two are always related. When the spirit and the body are exhausted, man can sleep his deepest sleep: most restlessness and insomnia are caused by the mind or the body not being sufficiently exhausted; however, when man has exhausted both the physical and mental/spiritual aspects of his existence, there is really no way not to sleep. That is something I have had to learn from experience.
What we do now is keep up the lie. The way forward for me lies in wrapping myself up in layers and layers of cushy subconsciousness in order to accomplish my deepest desire. It is actually pretty strange to watch myself making decisions and focusing on things that I have never focused on before, and finding that when I turn the power of being toward a desire, all thoughts flow toward it, and with flow comes change. Where are you sending your flow? I guess that’s the big question, isn’t it? What are you looking at constantly? Where do you find your mind wandering to all the time?
That is actually the how of change: simple focus. Focus implies inside itself that this is a fairly constantly thing, and the only difference between change that happens quickly and change that happens at the level of the soul is time. When we focus on something for a little while, we get a little bit accomplished. When we focus on things with the radiance of the being for a long time, we get a lot accomplished. Here we encounter an area that perhaps Hegel never considered in his considerations about quantity, because the fact of the matter is that how much you invest in something does affect that thing. The more time you invest, the more you get returned.
For one week I have been focused at a soul level. For one week I have, basically, managed to lay the groundwork for what will be habitual over time.
I have wandered down many, many paths in my lifetime, and I’m about to wander down another one.
Sun Tzu says in the Art of War (and I am at war with my consciousness): “There are five essentials for victory…know when to fight… know how to handle both superior and inferior forces… ensure your army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks… wait to take the enemy unprepared… and have military capacity (i.e. not interfered with by the sovereign). If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
Wandering onto the battlefield, I have done enough research to know myself, I have done enough research to know the enemy, and I have my eyes trained on what is necessary for victory. Will I win? Yes. Yes I will. There is not a “No” in my world now, and no “Maybe” about it. Victory.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
What is Competition?
The very first rule in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is:
“War is of vital importance to the state.”
What is of vital importance to understand here is that, dealt with metaphorically, this is probably one of the most shockingly accurate statements about humanity that has ever been uttered. War as a metaphor for the competition that is existence has recently come to mind as an accurate way to explain things.
It is, after all, a fundamental question. Any time you can ask the question “What,” followed by an “is” or an “are” or an “am,” you are dealing with a fundamental question. Ontological investigation of existence has a way of encompassing things and forcing one to describe honestly that which defies explanation. What am I? What are you? What is love? What is truthfulness? What is truth? What is an orange?
Bearing all that in mind, “What is competition?” Well, competition is one of the most fundamental realities of the human experience. Adam Smith understood this concept. The Buddhists have a concept wherein the simple recognition of a thing changes it. Even this, in its way, is a competitive stance. By recognizing a thing, we are already attempting to control it, and what is an attempt to control but a competition? When two similar stores open up, the competition can begin. They will lie to themselves and say that it’s all about the customer, but the reality is that it is about being better than the other guy, because if they are better than the other guy, the customers will come. The underlying principle of Sartre’s gaze is the competition. When I look at you, we are locked in a competition of who will be the subject and who will be the object.
There are necessarily at least three variables in every competition, which is one more than you might at first imagine: two competitors and a prize. In your standard athletic competition, there are two athletes and the prize is a medal or the title “Champion.” When it comes to economics, the two competitors are the stores, and the prize is the dollar. It is important to understand that the prize is always a thing, and never a person. When two men are competing for the love of a woman it’s not actually the woman they’re competing over, it’s her body. There is no competition on the level of the soul. A soul mate is one in which there is no competition.
One of the most rational explanations for the soul that I have ever come across says that there is only one soul, and that people are simple different manifestations of this soul. In other words, there is a soul-goo that surrounds existence, and the human creature is simple a little piece of the soul that has raised up in the manner of a wave that will eventually swell and then break, returning to the level from whence it came. There is no competition in that which is one. Consciousness pulls people away from this understanding of the soul and rips us into three pieces: consciousness, sub-consciousness, and spirit. The spirit is that piece of our consciousness that reminds us where we came from, and the other two are the challenge.
It is our challenge to defeat the consciousnesses and stay focused on the spirit; however, in the world of humans, there are very few people who would willingly stay focused on the spirit because the universal soul is too huge to understand. It is much easier to deal with other human beings on a personal level. To all those who would say that dealing with other human beings is very difficult, this is true; however, the universal soul/spirit is infinite, and that is impossible to understand—comprehending the infinite is an exercise in insanity.
So, we do battle, on a daily basis. We wage war constantly with the consciousnesses of other human beings. It IS possible to come to some kind of understanding about another human being, and largely because you are asking the metaphysical question, “Why?” These kinds of questions might involve a shorter or longer list of variables, but the number will eventually be reached that creates a consensus, and concessions will be made. Why did you do that? Money. Why did you do that? Money. Power. Why did you do that? Well, you see, the fact of the matter is that I was dealing with some childhood issues of radical sub-conscious flavoring, and they made me think that money and power were the essential creatures in the world. Whatever. Why can usually be answered. Why questions end when the book ends. Why are we here? To die. That’s when we find out. It’s kind of a bummer, but would you have it any other way? Really? Why questions are a competition with somebody (or perhaps your own consciousness) to find an answer.
I have been dealing with the world of ontology lately and foregoing the world of metaphysics in order to deal with the reality of the infinite, but I recently been called back to the world of competition and metaphysics. I was once told that there is no morality in ontology. “What is this thing?” only asks that you observe it honestly. There is no morality in observation—just like there is no morality in pure science. Morality is imposed people by various people and places and institutions and this is a fact. Law and rules and morality are a competition between the state and you (which the state usually wins), your parents and you (which, up to a certain point, the parents usually win), and other people and you (which, up to a certain point, is quite a stalemate). Dominance, victory, and power hang in the balance. All of these things are illusions.
What kind of power do we have to stave off death? None. What kind of victory lasts forever? Not a single one. What kind of dominance is anything more than lived-for-a-while? None. They are not eternal and infinite because they live in the life of the mind.
In order to deal with human beings even more effectively, I will take it upon myself—i.e. I will begin a competition with myself wherein I will battle my intellect and other people to win the prize of understanding—to investigate this thing called competition. As a part of the normal human experience, it is important to understand. Most religions or spiritual sects would have to agree that the normal human experience is full of suffering and crushing defeat—otherwise there would be no need for them, and this is due largely to the fact that people are all clinging to the illusions they hold so dear. It wrecks the head. The consciousness is repelled at the fact that it has no existence without the body. The body is seemingly endowed with consciousness. From whence? To whence? Nobody knows for certain. So we live in our world of illusion, and it is more comfortable, by and large, than reality. Even the suffering we endure as a result of constant competition is nothing compared to the incomprehensible reality of infinite existence. Space goes on forever. Forever. Forever. What a word that is. Can you imagine forever? No. No, I’m afraid you can’t. That hurts. Bugger it. Moving on. Can you imagine what it would be like to get in her pants? Yes. Yes I can. Okay, let’s go with the second one. I hereby enter myself back into the human competition for the sake of inquiry and understanding. My textbook is Sun Tzu’s art of war. Let’s find some things out.
“War is of vital importance to the state.”
What is of vital importance to understand here is that, dealt with metaphorically, this is probably one of the most shockingly accurate statements about humanity that has ever been uttered. War as a metaphor for the competition that is existence has recently come to mind as an accurate way to explain things.
It is, after all, a fundamental question. Any time you can ask the question “What,” followed by an “is” or an “are” or an “am,” you are dealing with a fundamental question. Ontological investigation of existence has a way of encompassing things and forcing one to describe honestly that which defies explanation. What am I? What are you? What is love? What is truthfulness? What is truth? What is an orange?
Bearing all that in mind, “What is competition?” Well, competition is one of the most fundamental realities of the human experience. Adam Smith understood this concept. The Buddhists have a concept wherein the simple recognition of a thing changes it. Even this, in its way, is a competitive stance. By recognizing a thing, we are already attempting to control it, and what is an attempt to control but a competition? When two similar stores open up, the competition can begin. They will lie to themselves and say that it’s all about the customer, but the reality is that it is about being better than the other guy, because if they are better than the other guy, the customers will come. The underlying principle of Sartre’s gaze is the competition. When I look at you, we are locked in a competition of who will be the subject and who will be the object.
There are necessarily at least three variables in every competition, which is one more than you might at first imagine: two competitors and a prize. In your standard athletic competition, there are two athletes and the prize is a medal or the title “Champion.” When it comes to economics, the two competitors are the stores, and the prize is the dollar. It is important to understand that the prize is always a thing, and never a person. When two men are competing for the love of a woman it’s not actually the woman they’re competing over, it’s her body. There is no competition on the level of the soul. A soul mate is one in which there is no competition.
One of the most rational explanations for the soul that I have ever come across says that there is only one soul, and that people are simple different manifestations of this soul. In other words, there is a soul-goo that surrounds existence, and the human creature is simple a little piece of the soul that has raised up in the manner of a wave that will eventually swell and then break, returning to the level from whence it came. There is no competition in that which is one. Consciousness pulls people away from this understanding of the soul and rips us into three pieces: consciousness, sub-consciousness, and spirit. The spirit is that piece of our consciousness that reminds us where we came from, and the other two are the challenge.
It is our challenge to defeat the consciousnesses and stay focused on the spirit; however, in the world of humans, there are very few people who would willingly stay focused on the spirit because the universal soul is too huge to understand. It is much easier to deal with other human beings on a personal level. To all those who would say that dealing with other human beings is very difficult, this is true; however, the universal soul/spirit is infinite, and that is impossible to understand—comprehending the infinite is an exercise in insanity.
So, we do battle, on a daily basis. We wage war constantly with the consciousnesses of other human beings. It IS possible to come to some kind of understanding about another human being, and largely because you are asking the metaphysical question, “Why?” These kinds of questions might involve a shorter or longer list of variables, but the number will eventually be reached that creates a consensus, and concessions will be made. Why did you do that? Money. Why did you do that? Money. Power. Why did you do that? Well, you see, the fact of the matter is that I was dealing with some childhood issues of radical sub-conscious flavoring, and they made me think that money and power were the essential creatures in the world. Whatever. Why can usually be answered. Why questions end when the book ends. Why are we here? To die. That’s when we find out. It’s kind of a bummer, but would you have it any other way? Really? Why questions are a competition with somebody (or perhaps your own consciousness) to find an answer.
I have been dealing with the world of ontology lately and foregoing the world of metaphysics in order to deal with the reality of the infinite, but I recently been called back to the world of competition and metaphysics. I was once told that there is no morality in ontology. “What is this thing?” only asks that you observe it honestly. There is no morality in observation—just like there is no morality in pure science. Morality is imposed people by various people and places and institutions and this is a fact. Law and rules and morality are a competition between the state and you (which the state usually wins), your parents and you (which, up to a certain point, the parents usually win), and other people and you (which, up to a certain point, is quite a stalemate). Dominance, victory, and power hang in the balance. All of these things are illusions.
What kind of power do we have to stave off death? None. What kind of victory lasts forever? Not a single one. What kind of dominance is anything more than lived-for-a-while? None. They are not eternal and infinite because they live in the life of the mind.
In order to deal with human beings even more effectively, I will take it upon myself—i.e. I will begin a competition with myself wherein I will battle my intellect and other people to win the prize of understanding—to investigate this thing called competition. As a part of the normal human experience, it is important to understand. Most religions or spiritual sects would have to agree that the normal human experience is full of suffering and crushing defeat—otherwise there would be no need for them, and this is due largely to the fact that people are all clinging to the illusions they hold so dear. It wrecks the head. The consciousness is repelled at the fact that it has no existence without the body. The body is seemingly endowed with consciousness. From whence? To whence? Nobody knows for certain. So we live in our world of illusion, and it is more comfortable, by and large, than reality. Even the suffering we endure as a result of constant competition is nothing compared to the incomprehensible reality of infinite existence. Space goes on forever. Forever. Forever. What a word that is. Can you imagine forever? No. No, I’m afraid you can’t. That hurts. Bugger it. Moving on. Can you imagine what it would be like to get in her pants? Yes. Yes I can. Okay, let’s go with the second one. I hereby enter myself back into the human competition for the sake of inquiry and understanding. My textbook is Sun Tzu’s art of war. Let’s find some things out.
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