"And the priestess spoke again and said:
Speak to us of Reason and Passion.
And he answered, saying:
Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgement wage war against your passion and your appetite.
Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.
But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?
Your reason and your passion are the rudders and sails of your seafaring soul.
If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining: and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.
Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing;
And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.
I would have you consider your judgement and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house.
Surely you would not honor one guest above the other; for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and faith of both.
Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows - then let your heart say in silence, "God rests in reason."
And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, - then let your heart say in awe, "God moves in passion."
And since you are the breath in God's sphere, and a leaf in God's forest, you too shall rest in reason and move in passion."

from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet

I was thinking about the whole universe as a brain thing from a couple days ago. I really don't put much in the idea of a sentience behind the cosmos or least a sentience that we could even remotely comprehend (it would be like trying to smash atoms by banging two rocks together.) Yet I have some faith that universe, and all within it, have a purpose. What if the the universe had a single thought and that thought was the purpose for the 10,000 things between heaven and earth (and those too?)
Still that's installing reason on something that probably transcends the need for rationality. What if the universe is not a unified single thought, but a collective emotion? Music can capture a singular emotion sometimes, so how about if the united vibrations of all matter and all life produces an Aristolean song, the music of the spheres? Could any ephemeral being hear that song, and feel that emotion?
Alright, I confess I'm out on a serious round of conjecture here. So even if there was this emotion, we couldn't feel it, and I render myself moot. Still, it's my conjecture. Taking a wild stab, based on my faith, I'd say that feeling was not singular, but more a complex mood. Something like detached bemusement.

More thoughts from work....

Sitting lobby watch. I feel disturbed by how easily I dismiss those passing by me as mundane. How do I really know? High weirdness abounds. That guy in the ugly yellow shirt? Maybe he's a conspiracy theorist that believes the country is run by the psychic messages from the cryogenically preserved body of Walt Disney. The young woman with the walking cane? She might be here to see a lawyer about suing her former employer, a nut processing plant, after a debilitating accident where a stale filbert locked up a gear which led to a conveyor belt snapping. How about the older black guy with the lilting voice who mutters to himself as he leaves the building? Could have been mentally unsound since his half-Italian and half-Sengalese ex-boyfriend took vengeance by tossing his partner's most beloved iguana in the neighbor's woodchipper. I can't let myself forget that anything really is possible, and I can't take anything at face value. Especially when I believe the when possible, the most absurd happens.

Some random thoughts I recorded in my little work notebook today:

Free Will = Perception of intrinsic potentialities + Sense of dynamic and organic extrinsic movement (time/space) + Power of individual consciousness + Trust in spiritual/suprasensory instinct

Chardin defines consciousness as not just reflection but the understanding that we can reflect.

If the universe is made of potentials, then does the universe destroy and rebuild itself from moment to moment?

The human brain develops intelligence through perception and experience "teaching" which neurons fire and which die. Is the universe like some brain where all the neurons fire or just in which no neurons truly die?

(don't even ask me where this next one came from. I was just THAT bored.)
If God farted, would everyone smell it?

Some cultures believe that the mad are holy because they must be closer to God. The unknowable spoken through the generally incomprensible. Then sometimes, you can mistake someone talking on a hands-free rig for a cellular phone for someone mentally unstable talking to the voices in their heads. What is the mad are simply going hands-free on the line with God?

Absolutism is the tyranny of rationalized conceit.

"For me, imagination is synonomous with discovery. To imagine, to discover, to carry our bit of light to the living penumbra where all the infinite possibilities, forms, and numbers exist. I do not believe in creation but in discovery, and I don't believe in the seated artist but the one who is walking the road. The imagination is a spiritual apparatus, a luminous explorer of the world it discovers. The imagination fixes and gives clear life to fragments of the invisible reality where man is stirring...

The imagination is not limited by reality: one cannot imagine what does not exist. It needs objects, landscapes, numbers, planets, and it requires the purest sort of logicto relate those things to one another. The imagination hovers over a flower, wafted on the breeze, but tied, always, to the ineffable center of its origin."

from "The Irresistable Beauty of All Things" (exerpt from lecture "Imagination, Inspiration, Evasion") by Federico Garcia Lorca, in Harper's Magazine