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This was taken at our timeshare in Breckenridge. I had to put five shots together in Microsoft Paint but it stills barely captures the drama…
Rocky Mountains From Our Balcony
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Monthly Archives: July 2010
Rhizome
Entangled mesh, you dirt-dark roots
‘going under’; unseen, cool earth
Rising up, you praise-filled ascension
Boughs outstretched; mirrored mesh
Sun soaked self
Sunk deep from night
We trees are thoughts
We leaves our passions
We forests; worlding
Budding moments
Whirling wind
On spinning orbs
Exploding out
We fertile voids
Shirley Sherrod – A Teaching for Conservatives and Liberals
For those who would seek virtue:
The news media is not the only ones that edit, conservatives and liberals are editing what they hear and see all the time. We tend to pick the facts that validate us, our ideology and worldview. The world presents us with a smorgasbord of perceptions that we can establish our truths on. As the Buddhists maintain, we attach ourselves to these perceptions to create ourselves, define who we are, cling to our desires. What we need to always remember is what Alan Watts called the “wisdom of insecurity”. The roots of our inhumanity to each other lies in our need to be certain, to be a self defined by truth and thus, situated securely in our being. Whenever we cling to our truths we also create an underside, a possibility for being wrong, for being untrue. This shadow follows all that would truly “be”. The inhumanity comes when we forget that we essentially have the capacity to be wrong, to be untrue, to lack. The “wisdom of insecurity” is a letting go of our forgetfulness, our need to cling to our truths and insist that we are true, right, holy, pure, etc. Carl Jung talked about the psychological assimilation of the shadow self. The Buddhists talk about release from samsara (playful illusion of birth, death and rebirth). Lao Tzu tells us:
If you want to become whole,
first let yourself become broken.
If you want to become straight,
first let yourself become twisted.
If you want to become full,
first let yourself become empty.
If you want to become new,
first let yourself become old.
Those whose desires are few get them,
those whose desires are great go astray.
“Tao Te Ching”, Section 22
Nietzsche, speaking of virtue writes:
And others are proud of their modicum of righteousness, and for the sake of it do violence to all things: so that the world is drowned in their unrighteousness.
Ah! how ineptly cometh the word “virtue” out of their mouth! And when they say: “I am just,” it always soundeth like: “I am just—revenged!”
With their virtues they want to scratch out the eyes of their enemies; and they elevate themselves only that they may lower others.
And again there are those who sit in their swamp, and speak thus from among the bulrushes: “Virtue—that is to sit quietly in the swamp.
We bite no one, and go out of the way of him who would bite; and in all matters we have the opinion that is given us.”
And again there are those who love attitudes, and think that virtue is a sort of attitude.
Their knees continually adore, and their hands are eulogies of virtue, but their heart knoweth naught thereof.
And again there are those who regard it as virtue to say: “Virtue is necessary”; but after all they believe only that policemen are necessary.
And many a one who cannot see men’s loftiness, calleth it virtue to see their baseness far too well: thus calleth he his evil eye virtue.—
And some want to be edified and raised up, and call it virtue: and others want to be cast down,—and likewise call it virtue.
And thus do almost all think that they participate in virtue; and at least every one claimeth to be an authority on “good” and “evil.”
But Zarathustra came not to say unto all those liars and fools: “What do YE know of virtue! What COULD ye know of virtue!”—
But that ye, my friends, might become weary of the old words which ye have learned from the fools and liars:
That ye might become weary of the words “reward,” “retribution,” “punishment,” “righteous vengeance.”—
“Thus Spake Zarathustra” XXVII. THE VIRTUOUS
Jesus admonishes us to “watch out that the light in you is not darkness.” Luke 11: 35
Orwell and beliefnet.com
A case of Orwellian Double-Speak:
The site http://www.beliefnet.com/ is a part of the Fox Entertainment Group.
The first statement under their “Rule of Conduct” states:
“Welcome to Beliefnet! Beliefnet is committed to protecting a high level of freedom of expression, and to maintaining a welcoming and safe community in which that expression can flourish.”
http://www.beliefnet.com/About-Us/Rules-of-Conduct.aspx
They further state in their “Rules of Conduct”, “We will not censor members for expressing an opinion, within the limits of these Rules of Conduct.”
I posted the text of my blog, http://mixermuse.com/blog/2010/01/29/the-greater-good-and-scott-roeder/, on their abortion debate forum at http://community.beliefnet.com/go/forum/view/43971/68559/Abortion_Debate. The moderator, justme333, deleted my post stating, “Anti-abortion is not an acceptable term – the only terms that are acceptable are Pro-life and Pro-choice.” This rule was not on the overall “Rules of Conduct” but on the local “guidlines” post for the thread. After consulting the local boards “guidelines” I found this:
“With regards to this board’s guidelines, yes, they are the same as the old board.
The same guidelines apply for the new boards.
That terms describing the two sides of the abortion debate are limited to
Pro-Life and Pro-Choice.
After that, the same general Bnet Rules of Conduct apply just as on any
other Forum board.
But do realize that not all boards have individual board guidelines, only
certain boards which are not set-up to be a debate environment so are thus
considered a “protected” board where the local guideline would indicate such.
Or certain boards that are hot-topic debates like this one for instance.
Different boards may have different guidelines so on each new board, one
can find a sticky thread which should show in the title, “Local Guidelines.””
The main boards “Rule of Conduct” says nothing about “certain boards which are not set-up to be a debate environment so are thus
considered a “protected” board”
The thought police on this thread insist that everyone on the thread call folks against abortion “pro-life”. They further insist that folks do not use the term anti-abortion or anti-choice. Can we say – Christian censorship? I think we can add certain forms of Christianity under the totalitarian regimes that Orwell criticized in “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Folks, this is a case and point why the dark ages are thankfully behind us. However, it still exists behind the curtains in certain fundamentalist, Christian groups. It usually just takes a little logic and facts to get them to show their true face. My preference would be to call the “anti-choice” movement “pro-death” because that is what I really think it is but in the interest of keeping the debate alive I call them “anti-choice”. I know they would love to get the double-speak points by having us call them “pro-life” but for reasons I have stated elsewhere on this thread, I think that would be like calling a circle a square and I would not want to propagate that highly deceptive mind think. These folks insist on imposing their god on the rest of us and are willing to go to any extremes to do it – remind you of other zealots? I love it when they get radical and lie, censor, act badly because it cuts through their “spiritual” façade. I have also officially registered a complaint with the main board but since we are talking about the Fox Entertainment Group I do not expect any action (prove me wrong beliefnet).
The moderator also stated that I could not have the links to my blog (in the original article) which I understand and would have edited out. justme333 stated he/she tried to edit out the links but when he/she saw the banned word speak violations (my embellishment) deleted the post.
If you would like to protest the thought police censorship at beliefnet you can send an email to:
community@staff.beliefnet.com
If I hear back I will update this post.
Fun with Math – NOT
Professor Loy writes about the Diamond Sutra and the logic form utilized by the teaching as:
A is not A, therefore it is A
So, “Purity is not purity; that is why it is purity.”
This is transformative as we come back to purity with a different approach as a result of the process.
This has a striking similarity to Hegel’s aufheben – sublation from thesis and antithesis.
It also makes me think of integration in Calculus:
A is not A, therefore it is C where C is equal to (I have to write this out without mathematical symbols due to limitations of text):
…the integral from minus infinity to plus infinity of A AND Not A (or A – A)
In math, the result would be zero or cancel each other out. For Hegel, the cancelation keeps or holds the terms vis-a-vis lifting them up, synthesis (transformation of the integral).
So, for all instances (or dynamics of) the master AND Not Master (or Slave), the successful integration results in full self-consciousness (or the dissolution of subject-object in social acceptance of authority and responsibility). The master and slave find their freedom only in their positive acceptance of their dependence.
In calculus differentiation takes us in the opposite direction from, in Hegelian terms, the synthesis to thesis and antithesis. Of course, not all functions have known solutions and some converge to a limit and some diverge towards plus or negative infinity. I guess in Hegel sometimes the master and slave kill each other and synthesis is never obtained. I suppose some bone head could work out the calculus of Hegel for their doctoral dissertation but…
I think I prefer Zen. Hegel gives me a headache.
An Analysis of Necromancy
In the post on Necromancy, Necromancy – When We Dance with death, I tried to illustrate some arm chair thinking I have been doing on psychology. Since I am not a paid sophist with a vested interest in defending a particular point of view I can play a little.
I think that the external and the internal may be somewhat artificial designations. Sure valid distinctions may be drawn but the question may always be posed regarding the hermeneutics and canonization of certain historical ways of thinking on such matters.
In the interest of play:
It seems to me that in light of galactic black holes and sub-atomic, black holes that pop in and out of existence there may also be, at least metaphorically, psychological black holes. Black holes in physics are severe space time distortions that defy our current understanding of the universe. Physicists use the term “singularity” to describe the phenomenon. They also use this term to describe the state of the Big Bang before the bang. In physics a singularity is a mathematical failure and generally speaking, highly undesirable for new theories. Black holes defy our imagination and put us into question.
I think certain extreme traumas may also create physiological black holes. The death of a mother, a bad LSD trip, a lost love, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, etc. can be the mechanism for their genesis. The immediate results are not the consumption of stars and planets but the consumption of what I have called “Soul”. The consumption dominates and errodes our childlike capacity with the five stages of dying:
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
These symptoms have a cyclical effect. They tend to be obsessive and highly infused with emotion. Just as all matter is drawn into orbit around the vortex of a black hole – symbols, projections, and erratic emotions are cyclically drawn into the psychological black hole. The brain was designed by evolution to solve problems but these types of traumas are unsolvable. The brain recoils on itself and a whole litany of deep rooted emotions seem to be enmeshed in the trauma.
At the event horizon of a black hole everything including light is inescapably drawn into a black hole. I take this as Freud’s Mystic Writing Pad – the unconscious. Light cannot illuminate the unconscious by definition. For psychology, we only see its effects in behavior like the trenches made on the writing pad after lifting the plastic (consciousness) has concealed the initial trauma. When the trauma becomes unconscious it can take on a kind of life on its own. It can come out in dreams and un-expectant emotions years later. Yet it is undecided whether or not therapy can ever resolve the dilemma. It can allow one to live more peacefully beside the condition but the perforation and psychological scar may be permanent.
I think that from a more philosophical point of view it may be that these psychological black holes are perforations of infinity. They defy our best theories and best attempts to shed light on them. They gain a kind of independence from the spotlight of consciousness. Perhaps this makes possible the human capacity for reflection, awareness of death and finitude. I have just started reading David Loy’s book on “NonDuality” but, for now, perhaps the possibility for duality is rooted in the fact the humans can be unconscious of themselves and yet peripherally aware of the absolute split in their being. The Other, the radical disjuncture, the diachrony that Emmanuel Levinas writes of may also have an essential component within our own psyche.
I would also add that I do not think the traumas I am thinking about are common and numerous as some neurotics would have it. I think that the frailty of the human psyche may only be able to deal with a few of these such traumas before the possibility of soul, of residing in “hobbit-land” are diminished and human behavior gets more and more like the randomness of an act of nature, a tornado. Perhaps criminal behavior and Republican, fundamentalist Christians can be explained with such an analysis (;-).
In any case I think it is possible that our “experience” of God or the radical alterity of the Other may acquire an ally in our own fragmented and de-severed mode of being in the world. I would be hesitant to reduce God or the Other to the human psyche because that philosophically bites off too much but I do think that the windows through which we gaze into the infinite may be none other than the black hole of the psyche.
Mamma Grizzles Beware!
This is what Sarah Palin does to grizzles:
http://www.grizzlybay.org/SarahPalinInfoPage.htm
This is what Sarah does to grizzly’s homes:
http://www.ontheissues.org/2008/Sarah_Palin_Energy_+_Oil.htm
Any mamma grizzly that cares about her cubs should run fast and far from Sarah Palin!
Necromancy – When We Dance with death
HER EYES
Two galactic black holes
Space-time smear
Whirling, Swirling Vortex
Time, space melting into cosmic goo
Dwelling, meaning, home – soul tossed asunder to cosmic wind
Event horizon, going under
Weight of absolute necessity – Desire
Singularity
Infinity
Eternity –
“Now man has become like one of us…”
Inanimate animates
Anima seduces
Shards of Dust awaken to dance
Down is up, small is large, dream no more – marvelous rabbit hole
Then, I reach out to touch…
The spell collapses into silence
I dance in the tears of years and dust
All that remains is a hole, a black hole, nothing escapes, this vortex mine
Epilouge:
10 years the hole remains, the pain goes under, mystic writing pad
But, sheer decision and painful truth prevail.
The enchantress wears a mask, a he or a she but really – it.
It only hungers and thirsts for soul – what it cannot be.
It devours and seeks absolute obedience – control
Lucifer smiles
Black holes creating black holes
To go under is to pass from apprentice to sorcerer
The enchantress must feed her torment with the matter of stars and planets – soul food
Her thirst is the yearning ghost for something more than raging, violent emptiness
She eternally longs what she can never have because only souls can love each other
She keeps a book of her conquests – I have seen it
Once bitten by the black widow never cured BUT
Soul is revenge
Building the humble life of a mortal with simple integrity, a hobbit’s hole
For my children:
Lies may start small but the grandiose promise of everything based on nothing will tear your soul asunder in the end. You will lose the precious holiness of your infancy in the insignificant, seemingly harmless, sacrifice of integrity – the banal lie. Do the work of integrity my angels and your soul will dwell in simplicity and happiness all the days of your life.
Heidegger and Buddhism
Check out this article:
http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-MISC/91932.htm
The title is “What’s Wrong with Being and Time: A Buddhist Critique” By David Loy
Not only does it elucidate Heidegger but it also points out and contrasts Heidegger’s philosophy with Buddhism.
Here are a few tidbits that occurred to me while reading it:
As one gets older a certain kind of “inorganic” deflation of one’s illusions overtakes experience. The notions of youthful ambition such as wealth, passion/love – the heroic in this article, lose their force. The “Will to Power” is dispersed and the past as construct is not reconstituted but deconstituted – deconstructed. In occidental culture age and wisdom have been relegated to the non-consequential. Youth and illusion are brought to the fore and age is content-emptying. However, no refutation need be made to reinvigorate age – age brings its own possibilities. It opens by allowing illusion to age, to lose impact and therefore, its insanity.
The desperation of meaning-assertion becomes unraveled and space/rest/repose creep into our historical narratives. Emptiness, sunyata, is not a threat but a companion, a “me” when I am not “me”. In this way, a certain kind of authentic experience is not forced by dread or heroic effort but shows itself as the distance in narrative, the release/letting go of self and of neurotic, obsessive, drive to be. A certain kind of peace, not framed (or undergirded by enframing) but more like breathing out is organically brought to experience and the “inorganic” is merely a byproduct of the prolonged death of youth.
I suppose the critique of these thoughts could be pressed into this analysis by suggesting the old simply give themselves over to everydayness or in Freudian terms the unconscious. However, this seems to me to revive the youthful illusion of polarities, good/bad, differentiation/repression, etc. Being-towards-death or the death wish contrast as authenticity or dispersion. Does “Will to Power” age? Is authenticity the heroic possibility or passivity? Is death about the possibility for authenticity or about realizing what one always was? – Or both…
I think there are hints in this article and in Buddhism of a kind of utopist view of extinction. Realization ushers in a kind of non-articulated paradise. This may not be accurate but I think the allusions to such an experience of realization may create more problems than it solves. In the oriental tradition of Buddhism, a whole collection of Hindu theologies (reincarnation, karma, higher/lower worlds, demons, superstitions, etc.) have crept into Buddhism. Contrarily, Siddhartha Gautama started Buddhism to get away from the “metaphysics” of Hinduism. Buddhists commonly state that they are not a religion but a practice which implies that no theologies need be stated or accepted.