on the one hand, there is a quality of lie, absolute deception which pervades all existence — on the other, every pain leaves a longing for something not there, every joy only a temporary satisfaction, the greatest deceptions are somehow laced with an ineffable trace of the great beyond — i guess this is faith
enlightenment is not perceived, never mind felt. at that point at which the self and the one are transparent there is no longer that dichotomy which allows for perception. you are not aware of enlightenment. however you are not unconscious either, rather at some level of being which there is no awareness but something greater — mere life itself bursting with agapaeic willing
admittedly this post will be less than coherent, but these thoughts have been forcing their way into my mind all weekend and warrant some form of release — we have this existential idea, that we are both absolute being and absolute nothingness. now it seems that this principle is necessary in order to effect and sort of ontological change. if one was to take this principle to heart, that his being might at any moment be entirely recreated due to its radical attachment to nothingness, then we encounter some problems. among these are habit and memory. of memory, if we could simply by force of will choose not to wedded to our memories then we would be able to choose to become non-human. it is clear that those who lose their memory due to physiological clinical causes at foremost lose any sense of self and eventually and sense of humanity. to some extent memory can be repressed, forgotten. but if all memory were under the gauntlet of willful non-being, man would become a nightmare of his former self. infact man would become nothing in the strictest sense, inhuman, unaware, unconscious. now it seems that so long as we are human, there remains some snowball of memories that constitute some actual being. this might be the closest thing to a self that we might find. a peculiar sort of thing that what is most “the self” is a queer phenomenon of that which is usually understood to be that which is most “other”. that is, we experience, the experience becomes the memory. usually the self is associated with the agent that is experiencing. however this goes to show that we should forget the self, or at least when one says this, what we mean more closely is that one should forget the ego, or the traditional “enlightened” understanding of the self found in the west. what we find is that the self is more and more coextensive with the world around it, the boundaries between who we are and what the world is are needless to say, not well defined. one might turn to habit and say, well since we have a particular affective reactions that are built of habit, we can see that since the affectivity colors the viewing of the world then something ontologically subordinate must reside beyond a self that is coextensive with reality. however it seems that this would be a misunderstanding of the causal links involved. it is only through experience that the affective habits are informed. perhaps, but we wind up going in circles with this thinking. the point is we are both all things and both one thing. not all things and no things. both of these articulations work to provide both the metaphysical foundations for change as well as perception itself. so the question remains, when we say we must fight to forget ourselves, what is meant by this statement? it seems at the most basic level it is to remember that whatever the self actually is, it is something that is at that point where the Singularity and the Plurality meet. the self is the revolving door of existence. it is that point at which all things flow from infinitude to finitude, from incomprehensible ineffability into compressed understanding. it is this point, under the constant force of agapeaic dynamics, that is where ‘the person’ resides. now when we forget the self, we strive to become this revolving door of being. when we are a ’self’, an ego, existence flows into a one way street of being. no longer is there any sense of dynamic return with the plurality of being, but rather finitude infinitely compresses being into itself. it is in this very particular sense that the idea of nothingness rears its head. however, we see that this is not nothingness in actuality, but infinitely compressed finitude. when we forget the self, we endeavor on a journey of purification, the first and last step being the realization that our will must not strive to bottle that which could never be bottled. to realize our unique position in being, at that revolving door of finitude and infinitude, we are the conduit. it is not that there is no self, but there is no self in the way we have grown accustomed to understanding self. in fact, there is no no-things. but we exist in a ontology beyond conventional logic. we are both all things and one thing. the self resides as this dynamic point at which these poles swing. to strive to forget oneself, is most to strive not to strive, to will not to will, to let ourselves merely be what we are — witnesses to the great agapeaic flow between these poles of being. each uniquely beholding world and self as one and all.
8/8/8
do you believe in fate?
do you believe theres more than our weak wills governing this world?
better start believing
this is not an endorsement of numerology, jack.
I can only hope there is a God, so that some day someone will be able to share in all the absurd moments I have when no one is around
I’m deeming the term passive-aggressive to be null and void … no one knows what tf they’re are talking about
death cab for cutie - soul meets body
blue oyster cult - don’t fear the reaper
think about it