I doubt I will be derailed on this latest leg of this metaphysical marathon, since I still managed to rewire some more neuron net even while dealing with a building fire drill, and all the management and engineer type, including some property poombahs. Spend most of my shift just trying to stay grounded, and not spin my wheels until I snap an axle... again.
All over there only being one cat, or one cat consciousness. I kind of feel bad about that, since it was yet another anti-discursive mispocheh with the Native Pagan (who we will call NP from here on, even though referring to NP in my blog will probably get me into even hotter water,) which I can own I started by my defensive response. Funny thing, is he gets so mad at me for not listening to his ideas, when in the end, my resistance to his ideas tend to birth better clarity of my ideas. I doubt I would even be in this growth space if I didn't constantly bicker with him. Even more ironic, much of this is over the fact he believes so wholeheartedly in the power of conflict against the Man and the mindless masses. And then the one cat consciousness came from how he took offense at "What the [Bleep] Do We Know?" this movie on the metaphysical impact of changing definitions of thought brought on by quantum physics. NP said something along the lines that even a six-month old cat knows that is real. And I said that not only don't cats have human consciousness, but all cats are one cat. And he has no idea how helpful he's been for all that.
Has nothing really to do with a single cat consciousness, but with whether a dog has a Buddha-Nature. There runs a famous Zen koan: A students asks his Master, "Do dogs have a Buddha-Nature?" The Master replies, "Mu! (No!)" What the koan taught me was that not that dogs have no consciousness, but the truth is Buddha-nature is the answering of No to "Is what is abstract, real?" The Zen Masters I've read recommend that you use "Mu!" as a mantric exercise to deny reality the power of the real, and open yourself to the immediate presence of the real that is taken for the abstract. Nothing really exists outside ourselves that we can really know, because we only accept one abstraction as what is real, when all the abstractions of quantum possibility are just as real at that time. Nothing is. Nothing is not.
Just getting really fucking wild how much alot of things that I learned in my life, are making so much more sense. Honestly, I've done a good job of shutting out my past, as if I could obliterate it by disowning it. Well the past doesn't exist, true.... but that doesn't mean it isn't real, if the experience of it still resides in the pathways of my mind. But again, maybe all my time resides there, since I don't touch time. I touch the experience of time.
In my first year at San Francisco State University, I took the first of several meaningful classes in the NEXA program, which focused the impact between developments in science, with the greater human experience, in the arts, literature, and culture. It was the equivalent of my junior-level English Composition class, and the main theme was the interaction of modern man with the environment. We read this awesome non-fictional chronicle, "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer, which told the story of a tragic journey of a young suburban adult lost in modern society whose journey through America ended up with his death, alone, by starvation, in the backwoods of Alaska. For the essay, the class was asked a simple question, "Was his journey worth it?" Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the class answered that it hadn't been, he was some confused affluent kid who didn't know what he was doing, and ended up dying because he was ill-prepared. Always the contrarian, I had to find a way to make the answer, yes, and prove it. Outside of college studies, I was discovering the wonderful world of Joseph Campbell, and was reading his most read comparative mythology study, "Hero of a Thousand Faces", which explored the meaning and the shared myth of the hero's journey as a globally shared allegory for journey of human discovery. So, I said that the guy was better off that he had answered the call of his soul and mind to pursue something beyond his small childhood world, and made the journey even if he didn't "finish" it and return to share it with others. And it got me an A on the paper, and a comment from the professor that she had never read anything like it before. I had never gotten an A on one of my essays before. It felt all proud. But now I know I didn't understand what I had written. I had said that the experience of the journey, is the journey.
That spun off even further back into the nebulous mists of my past, to the height of the worst years of my life, when I started public high school, when my religion, my culture, and my family couldn't connect to me, and I hurt so deep for it. My hyperactive meds at the time were so strong that they murdered my appetite, and my bottomed-out sociak status meant the library was the least dangerous place to spend my lunch, since I didn't eat. I didn't eat lunch for three years, solid, in fact. And I really thought I could find the answers in all those books to explain why "the universe hated me." Alot of what I found in those books, I retaught myself later, believing that I was so set on my quest to escape my pain by going even deeper into my head, that I misinterpreted to make it fit what I wanted. But now... I'm not so sure that I can say that. Just I buried some seeds so deep that they've only come to fruition this many years later. I never let myself value that is where my love of abstraction began, with the Greeks.
I went all Western back then, looking to the "great founders" of Western civilization. Socrates and Plato. Socrates would later lead to my belief in the power of always asking questions. But Plato, well, little did I know, he'd make a relativist of me. I really liked the concept of the Platonic forms. That every thing that exists is formed from a perfect astral model, and I could really never know that perfection. I've always thought Plato adviced that even though perfection could never be known, that shouldn't stop the pursuit of it. But back then, I was more into abusing the Allegory of the Cave, where the other chained guys beat up the unchained guy for telling them there was more than the shadows of the objects seen on the back cave wall. It was a neat package to justify why I was better than everyone else, I could see the objects, and they hated me for it. I still let that headtrip screw with me, and I understand that I never saw the objects. I was too busy looking for the objects to see them. The journey was lost on me, believing I'd find the real without appreciating the abstract.
Like I said, it was a big idea day. But know what? I think I enjoyed working on the ideas.
All over there only being one cat, or one cat consciousness. I kind of feel bad about that, since it was yet another anti-discursive mispocheh with the Native Pagan (who we will call NP from here on, even though referring to NP in my blog will probably get me into even hotter water,) which I can own I started by my defensive response. Funny thing, is he gets so mad at me for not listening to his ideas, when in the end, my resistance to his ideas tend to birth better clarity of my ideas. I doubt I would even be in this growth space if I didn't constantly bicker with him. Even more ironic, much of this is over the fact he believes so wholeheartedly in the power of conflict against the Man and the mindless masses. And then the one cat consciousness came from how he took offense at "What the [Bleep] Do We Know?" this movie on the metaphysical impact of changing definitions of thought brought on by quantum physics. NP said something along the lines that even a six-month old cat knows that is real. And I said that not only don't cats have human consciousness, but all cats are one cat. And he has no idea how helpful he's been for all that.
Has nothing really to do with a single cat consciousness, but with whether a dog has a Buddha-Nature. There runs a famous Zen koan: A students asks his Master, "Do dogs have a Buddha-Nature?" The Master replies, "Mu! (No!)" What the koan taught me was that not that dogs have no consciousness, but the truth is Buddha-nature is the answering of No to "Is what is abstract, real?" The Zen Masters I've read recommend that you use "Mu!" as a mantric exercise to deny reality the power of the real, and open yourself to the immediate presence of the real that is taken for the abstract. Nothing really exists outside ourselves that we can really know, because we only accept one abstraction as what is real, when all the abstractions of quantum possibility are just as real at that time. Nothing is. Nothing is not.
Just getting really fucking wild how much alot of things that I learned in my life, are making so much more sense. Honestly, I've done a good job of shutting out my past, as if I could obliterate it by disowning it. Well the past doesn't exist, true.... but that doesn't mean it isn't real, if the experience of it still resides in the pathways of my mind. But again, maybe all my time resides there, since I don't touch time. I touch the experience of time.
In my first year at San Francisco State University, I took the first of several meaningful classes in the NEXA program, which focused the impact between developments in science, with the greater human experience, in the arts, literature, and culture. It was the equivalent of my junior-level English Composition class, and the main theme was the interaction of modern man with the environment. We read this awesome non-fictional chronicle, "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer, which told the story of a tragic journey of a young suburban adult lost in modern society whose journey through America ended up with his death, alone, by starvation, in the backwoods of Alaska. For the essay, the class was asked a simple question, "Was his journey worth it?" Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the class answered that it hadn't been, he was some confused affluent kid who didn't know what he was doing, and ended up dying because he was ill-prepared. Always the contrarian, I had to find a way to make the answer, yes, and prove it. Outside of college studies, I was discovering the wonderful world of Joseph Campbell, and was reading his most read comparative mythology study, "Hero of a Thousand Faces", which explored the meaning and the shared myth of the hero's journey as a globally shared allegory for journey of human discovery. So, I said that the guy was better off that he had answered the call of his soul and mind to pursue something beyond his small childhood world, and made the journey even if he didn't "finish" it and return to share it with others. And it got me an A on the paper, and a comment from the professor that she had never read anything like it before. I had never gotten an A on one of my essays before. It felt all proud. But now I know I didn't understand what I had written. I had said that the experience of the journey, is the journey.
That spun off even further back into the nebulous mists of my past, to the height of the worst years of my life, when I started public high school, when my religion, my culture, and my family couldn't connect to me, and I hurt so deep for it. My hyperactive meds at the time were so strong that they murdered my appetite, and my bottomed-out sociak status meant the library was the least dangerous place to spend my lunch, since I didn't eat. I didn't eat lunch for three years, solid, in fact. And I really thought I could find the answers in all those books to explain why "the universe hated me." Alot of what I found in those books, I retaught myself later, believing that I was so set on my quest to escape my pain by going even deeper into my head, that I misinterpreted to make it fit what I wanted. But now... I'm not so sure that I can say that. Just I buried some seeds so deep that they've only come to fruition this many years later. I never let myself value that is where my love of abstraction began, with the Greeks.
I went all Western back then, looking to the "great founders" of Western civilization. Socrates and Plato. Socrates would later lead to my belief in the power of always asking questions. But Plato, well, little did I know, he'd make a relativist of me. I really liked the concept of the Platonic forms. That every thing that exists is formed from a perfect astral model, and I could really never know that perfection. I've always thought Plato adviced that even though perfection could never be known, that shouldn't stop the pursuit of it. But back then, I was more into abusing the Allegory of the Cave, where the other chained guys beat up the unchained guy for telling them there was more than the shadows of the objects seen on the back cave wall. It was a neat package to justify why I was better than everyone else, I could see the objects, and they hated me for it. I still let that headtrip screw with me, and I understand that I never saw the objects. I was too busy looking for the objects to see them. The journey was lost on me, believing I'd find the real without appreciating the abstract.
Like I said, it was a big idea day. But know what? I think I enjoyed working on the ideas.
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