And to know "good/harmony/coherence" is to experience it through embodied awareness as organisms are given to know from inception. Feeling feelings of satisfaction, fulfillment, while recognizing the contrasting of negative prehensions as I understand that, not as in black or white, right or wrong, but as continuum of feelings that move the organism forward towards greater and greater coherencing of said feelings of satisfaction and fullfillment. My two cents
a bit confused by your beginning story of the Aztec tradition, BUT with what follows you may have just begun a most important conversation pointing to the living 'becoming" processes that include oscillations, and choosing valuing, from the possible as it emerges new always new and from the constantly changing becoming life. With agency by all, we may begin to witness our own oscillations in learning, unlearning and acting with renewed insights towards greater and greater harmonization, not homogenization, but holding the ability to know the consequences of acts without compassion. And then choosing again and again. Life evolves itself and we are of it and in it learning and creating from what presents, and from what role we each and collectively play in that creating. Wisdom does not surface from "black or white" or "one way only" thinking, but from the ability to recognize the whole spectrum of the "oscillations between both poles of all categorical contrasts." (RS. Hartman and N. Hirst)
Beautifully written, Matt, Arthur. There is so much to be gathered from BOTH essays, yet I am still happy to be part of a conscious world. :-)
This discussion reminds one of William Blake’s theory of contraries, articulated in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (circa early 1790s during the French Revolution), which posits that progression is impossible without opposition, asserting that antithetical forces such as Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, and Love and Hate are indispensable to human existence and cosmic development.
Blake rejects the suppression of one pole in favor of the other, arguing instead for their dynamic interplay as the generative engine of reality, where Energy (active, creative, associated with Hell) and Reason (passive, ordering, associated with Heaven) must coexist to avoid the inertia of stasis.
Blake’s doctrine challenges static philosophical systems that seek harmony through homogenization, insisting instead that true human fulfillment and artistic creation require the perpetual friction of these opposing states, a concept he further explored through the contrasting poetic voices of "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience."
Nature is BOTH enchanted with apparent purposive beauty (Immanuel Kant) AND "red in tooth and claw. (Tennyson)" ... as a "phenomenal presence (Segall)."
This dynamic tension works on many levels (eg, geopolitical and psychological):
"Our economies always mirror these cosmic energies, whether pathologically or productively. The surplus must be spent, whether as war or as art, with a pile of slain bodies or a festival jubilee, mass extinction or evolutionary transformation. (Segall)." This description of our current economy seems like a proper indictment of Capitalism (and techno-feudalism) under neoliberalism and neoconservatism. We continue to choose the former (ie, war) as more profitable.
"Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered," José Saramago, in his book The Double (2002). The quote underscores Saramago’s broader philosophical inquiry: that human identity, memory, and individuality, often assumed to be stable and unique, may be more fragile and constructed than we believe. The chaos of self-doubt and identity crisis ultimately reveals an underlying order shaped by chance, perception, and narrative.
Carlos Castaneda taught (Journey to Ixtlan, 1971) that death is a presence that lingers just behind the left shoulder, a concept he learned from his teacher, the Yaqui shaman Don Juan Matus. This view transforms death from a distant event into a palpable entity or fleeting shadow that can be perceived out of the corner of the eye, serving as a constant companion in daily life. I think this is a wise way to live a reflective life. So, at 78, I am both reflective and happy to be in a conscious world. But not too much, as to avoid a paralyzing stasis. :-) Cheers.
I have noticed that God does seem to have a thirst for horror movies. Of course, the fact that we humans enjoy them could not be based on any other foundation.
I do experience and know, both intuitively and analytically, that consciousness is foundational. Yet, I am still sad, sorrowful, often depressed, about the world, even as I love the beauty of nature and the richness of both social and natural experience. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was perhaps the original and inescapable in our current material shape, hallucinogen.
Yet, we each have a chance to create meaning. In fact, we can't help but create meaning. It may be uplifting, or distressing, but whether we act intentionally or not, we add our stand of experience to the universe / multiverse / whatever.
Your explanation, and (still, with difficulty) my slowly plowing through ANW's P&R, the idea that God lures us to ecstatic and horrifying experiences, is uplifting. Because, the fact is one simply can't exist without the other. They bring themselves into simultaneous being.
I love the teachings of Osho. He shared greatly helpful advice to get through social life. And I am sure he is right that the cheerful, humorous personalities have the most impact. Yet, I have apparently been called on to experience the "negative" side of things. I'm not saying my life is bad. It's not. I am blessed and lucky. But still, for whatever reasons or non-reasons, I must bear willing witness to God's love of horror.
And no, The Shining was the only and last horror movie I actually watched. I had scary flashbacks for years. The "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" stack of reams of paper was the scariest part of that movie. :>)
God that's good! So beautifully expressed. And I absolutely love how you don't downplay the darker side of things. Your sentences "We only exist because the joy outweighed the genocide" and "Crucifixion is the cost of creation" really struck me. You touch on reincarnation. Do you take the possibility of reincarnation seriously? I find it very intriguing, but it also always makes me thing of what you called its "no escape" aspect. So it draws and fascinates (me, anyway), but at the same time I don't want it.
It seems you want a 'christ', but one of your own imagination.
Your work reminds me of Zizeks 'Christian Atheism' and I saw him at the royal institute in London last week, and I must say as loveable as a narcotically infused gorilla can be, he is peddling sophisticated nonsense. I thought Rowan Williams handled him well.
There is no animism without Jesus Christ. You have it upside down! and you have it upside down because you make 'creative chaos' the fundamental axiom. It seems to me it's your 'self' that comes first here, and although you talk about sacrifice have you actually considered sacrificing your own ideas? I'd imagine there would be more room for the truth if you did this.
Jesus Christ is the alpha and omega…the ultimate reality. I believe all attempts to rewrite/distort the truth only serve to confuse. I would think it’s best to say “The universal became the particular”
You are right to resist dead mechanism. But you flatten the asymmetry between participation and source. A living cosmos is not therefore self-grounding.
When you dream, the field is saturated with agencies, gods, grasses, ghosts, wounds, renewal. No matter how hard the dream-character meditates, he does not become the Dreamer.
That is the structure of our relation. Asymmetry. That asks of us something different.
First, humility. A living field is not a self-grounding one.
Second, relation without collapse. The Dreamer can be encountered within the dream. Never exhausted by it.
Third, panpsychic inflation. Participation is not equivalence. The grass may be alive with relation. But it is still inside the dream. Its greenness does not explain the Dreamer.
Excellent, and beautifully written. Thank you for this response.
Deserts on the March:” (Sears 1960a):
The face of earth is a graveyard, and so it has always been. To earth each living thing restores
when it dies that which has been borrowed to give form and substance to its brief day in the
sun. From earth, in due course, each new living being receives back again a loan of that which
sustains life. What is lent by earth has been used by countless generations of plants and animals
now dead and will be required by countless others in the future. (Sears 1935:1)
And to know "good/harmony/coherence" is to experience it through embodied awareness as organisms are given to know from inception. Feeling feelings of satisfaction, fulfillment, while recognizing the contrasting of negative prehensions as I understand that, not as in black or white, right or wrong, but as continuum of feelings that move the organism forward towards greater and greater coherencing of said feelings of satisfaction and fullfillment. My two cents
a bit confused by your beginning story of the Aztec tradition, BUT with what follows you may have just begun a most important conversation pointing to the living 'becoming" processes that include oscillations, and choosing valuing, from the possible as it emerges new always new and from the constantly changing becoming life. With agency by all, we may begin to witness our own oscillations in learning, unlearning and acting with renewed insights towards greater and greater harmonization, not homogenization, but holding the ability to know the consequences of acts without compassion. And then choosing again and again. Life evolves itself and we are of it and in it learning and creating from what presents, and from what role we each and collectively play in that creating. Wisdom does not surface from "black or white" or "one way only" thinking, but from the ability to recognize the whole spectrum of the "oscillations between both poles of all categorical contrasts." (RS. Hartman and N. Hirst)
Re: Aztec’s — be sure to read what I am replying to
A metanoia, indeed
Beautifully written, Matt, Arthur. There is so much to be gathered from BOTH essays, yet I am still happy to be part of a conscious world. :-)
This discussion reminds one of William Blake’s theory of contraries, articulated in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (circa early 1790s during the French Revolution), which posits that progression is impossible without opposition, asserting that antithetical forces such as Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, and Love and Hate are indispensable to human existence and cosmic development.
Blake rejects the suppression of one pole in favor of the other, arguing instead for their dynamic interplay as the generative engine of reality, where Energy (active, creative, associated with Hell) and Reason (passive, ordering, associated with Heaven) must coexist to avoid the inertia of stasis.
Blake’s doctrine challenges static philosophical systems that seek harmony through homogenization, insisting instead that true human fulfillment and artistic creation require the perpetual friction of these opposing states, a concept he further explored through the contrasting poetic voices of "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience."
Nature is BOTH enchanted with apparent purposive beauty (Immanuel Kant) AND "red in tooth and claw. (Tennyson)" ... as a "phenomenal presence (Segall)."
This dynamic tension works on many levels (eg, geopolitical and psychological):
"Our economies always mirror these cosmic energies, whether pathologically or productively. The surplus must be spent, whether as war or as art, with a pile of slain bodies or a festival jubilee, mass extinction or evolutionary transformation. (Segall)." This description of our current economy seems like a proper indictment of Capitalism (and techno-feudalism) under neoliberalism and neoconservatism. We continue to choose the former (ie, war) as more profitable.
"Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered," José Saramago, in his book The Double (2002). The quote underscores Saramago’s broader philosophical inquiry: that human identity, memory, and individuality, often assumed to be stable and unique, may be more fragile and constructed than we believe. The chaos of self-doubt and identity crisis ultimately reveals an underlying order shaped by chance, perception, and narrative.
Carlos Castaneda taught (Journey to Ixtlan, 1971) that death is a presence that lingers just behind the left shoulder, a concept he learned from his teacher, the Yaqui shaman Don Juan Matus. This view transforms death from a distant event into a palpable entity or fleeting shadow that can be perceived out of the corner of the eye, serving as a constant companion in daily life. I think this is a wise way to live a reflective life. So, at 78, I am both reflective and happy to be in a conscious world. But not too much, as to avoid a paralyzing stasis. :-) Cheers.
Beautiful contributions, thank you!
Thank you for your beautiful thoughts, Matthew.
I have noticed that God does seem to have a thirst for horror movies. Of course, the fact that we humans enjoy them could not be based on any other foundation.
I do experience and know, both intuitively and analytically, that consciousness is foundational. Yet, I am still sad, sorrowful, often depressed, about the world, even as I love the beauty of nature and the richness of both social and natural experience. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was perhaps the original and inescapable in our current material shape, hallucinogen.
Yet, we each have a chance to create meaning. In fact, we can't help but create meaning. It may be uplifting, or distressing, but whether we act intentionally or not, we add our stand of experience to the universe / multiverse / whatever.
Your explanation, and (still, with difficulty) my slowly plowing through ANW's P&R, the idea that God lures us to ecstatic and horrifying experiences, is uplifting. Because, the fact is one simply can't exist without the other. They bring themselves into simultaneous being.
I love the teachings of Osho. He shared greatly helpful advice to get through social life. And I am sure he is right that the cheerful, humorous personalities have the most impact. Yet, I have apparently been called on to experience the "negative" side of things. I'm not saying my life is bad. It's not. I am blessed and lucky. But still, for whatever reasons or non-reasons, I must bear willing witness to God's love of horror.
And no, The Shining was the only and last horror movie I actually watched. I had scary flashbacks for years. The "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" stack of reams of paper was the scariest part of that movie. :>)
God that's good! So beautifully expressed. And I absolutely love how you don't downplay the darker side of things. Your sentences "We only exist because the joy outweighed the genocide" and "Crucifixion is the cost of creation" really struck me. You touch on reincarnation. Do you take the possibility of reincarnation seriously? I find it very intriguing, but it also always makes me thing of what you called its "no escape" aspect. So it draws and fascinates (me, anyway), but at the same time I don't want it.
I so love reading everything you write. Thank you.
The good King is kin.
It seems you want a 'christ', but one of your own imagination.
Your work reminds me of Zizeks 'Christian Atheism' and I saw him at the royal institute in London last week, and I must say as loveable as a narcotically infused gorilla can be, he is peddling sophisticated nonsense. I thought Rowan Williams handled him well.
There is no animism without Jesus Christ. You have it upside down! and you have it upside down because you make 'creative chaos' the fundamental axiom. It seems to me it's your 'self' that comes first here, and although you talk about sacrifice have you actually considered sacrificing your own ideas? I'd imagine there would be more room for the truth if you did this.
The particular can never encompass the universal.
Christ is historical, not the ultimate reality.
Jesus Christ is the alpha and omega…the ultimate reality. I believe all attempts to rewrite/distort the truth only serve to confuse. I would think it’s best to say “The universal became the particular”
You are right to resist dead mechanism. But you flatten the asymmetry between participation and source. A living cosmos is not therefore self-grounding.
When you dream, the field is saturated with agencies, gods, grasses, ghosts, wounds, renewal. No matter how hard the dream-character meditates, he does not become the Dreamer.
That is the structure of our relation. Asymmetry. That asks of us something different.
First, humility. A living field is not a self-grounding one.
Second, relation without collapse. The Dreamer can be encountered within the dream. Never exhausted by it.
Third, panpsychic inflation. Participation is not equivalence. The grass may be alive with relation. But it is still inside the dream. Its greenness does not explain the Dreamer.