Will to Truth

The lack of desire to solve complex life problems is a result of a lack of will. A powerful will takes these opportunities to grow and become even more powerful, though this transpires as an organic process, a natural unfoldment, rather than a pathological lust for power. The weakened or diminished will, will ossify or stagnate, and essentially give up. A powerful or relentless will desires to know the truth at all costs, because understanding brings liberation.

All liberation must be fought for.

Understanding brings transcendence and expanded awareness. The same problems no longer weigh on the conscious and subconscious minds, freeing up more mental and emotional resources to take on larger, more complex, increasingly universal (as opposed to egoic or personal) problems to be understood and overcome.

The diminished will "lives" life just going through the motions, constantly feeling weighted down, trudging through like a zombie, often seeking all kinds of stimulation, thrills and escapes to reduce anxiety. The greater will, embracing the ups and downs of life, eventually breaks through unencumbered―having transmuted all of life's poisons into fuel.

This process is also impossible to go through without embracing vulnerability.

Those with the facade of invulnerability learn and understand nothing of real value. Their skill is only in repetition, like a robot; something that isn't alive.

Moral of the story: Embrace pain, don't hide from it, but perhaps even more importantly, make sense of it on your own. Create your own narrative which is based on evidence, reason, experience and self-reflection while also being patient with yourself.

Don't be afraid of hell. Map that sucker out while you're there. See how far down the pit goes. Feel how hot it gets.

Originally published on my Facebook page May 23rd, 2017.

When the Cat's Away, the Mice Will Play

"Materiality bestows death in that it benumbs or clouds those faculties of the human soul, which should be responsive to the enlivening impulses of creative thought and ennobling virtue. How inferior to these standards of remote days are the laws by which men live in the twentieth century! Today, man, a sublime creature with infinite capacity for self-improvement, in an effort to be true to false standards, turns from his birthright of understanding―without realizing the consequences―and plunges into the maelstrom of material illusion. The precious span of his earthly years he devotes to the pathetically futile effort to establish himself as an enduring power in a realm of unenduring things. Gradually the memory of his life as a spiritual being vanishes from his objective mind and he focuses all his partly awakened faculties upon the seething beehive of industry, which he has come to consider the sole actuality. From the lofty heights of his Selfhood he sinks into the gloomy depths of ephemerality. He falls to the level of the beast, and in brutish fashion mumbles the problems arising from his all too insufficient knowledge of the Divine Plan. Here in the lurid turmoil of a great industrial, political, commercial inferno, men writhe in self-inflicted agony and, reaching out into the swirling mists, strive to clutch and hold the grotesque phantoms of success and power.

Ignorant of the cause of life, ignorant of the purpose of life, ignorant of what lies beyond the mystery of death, yet possessing within himself the answer to it all, man is willing to sacrifice the beautiful, the true, and the good within and without upon the blood stained altar of worldly ambition. The world of philosophy―that beautiful garden of thought wherein the sages dwell in the bond of fraternity―fades from view. In its place rises an empire of stone, steel, smoke and hate―a world in which millions of creatures potentially human scurry to and from in the desperate effort to exist and at the same time maintain the vast institution which they have erected and which, like some mighty juggernaut, is rumbling inevitably towards an unknown end. In this physical empire, which man erects in the vain belief that he can outshine the kingdom of the celestials, everything is changed to stone. Fascinated by the glitter of gain, man gazes at the Medusa-like face of greed and stands petrified.

War―the irrefutable evidence of irrationality―still smolders in the hearts of men; it cannot die until human selfishness is overcome. Armed with multifarious inventions and destructive agencies, civilization will continue its fratricidal strife through future ages. But upon the mind of man there is dawning a great fear―that eventually civilization will destroy itself in one great cataclysmic struggle. Then must be reenacted the eternal drama of reconstruction. Out of the ruins of the civilization, which died when its idealism died, some primitive people yet in the womb of destiny must build a new world. Foreseeing the needs of that day, the philosophers of the ages have desired that into the structure of this new world shall be incorporated the truest and finest of all that has gone before. It is a divine law that the sum of previous accomplishment shall be the foundation of each new order of things. The great philosophic treasures of humanity must be preserved. That which is superficial may be allowed to perish; that which is fundamental and essential must remain...

Regardless of consequences."

― Manly P. Hall

Life is for the Living

There are inherent risks to being alive. In our earlier, more humble beginnings, these risks were more immediate and physical in nature; perceived primarily through the 5 senses. Being attacked by a warring tribe, walking off a cliff, starving to death, exposure to the elements, being gored by a boar while hunting etc.

Generally, the strongest/most intelligent (ie: adaptable) in these conditions would be the ones that survived and perpetuated their superior genetic heritage.

In the modern era, the threats we face are not so immediately perceived or understood, and so for most of us (at least the ones reading this), we do not have the same dilemmas of our primal ancestors that brought them to an early, often messy, grave. Today, the main risks and types of death we face are intellectual, psychological and spiritual. Many people die before their bodies do, and a vast majority of those seemingly prior to the age of 25.

Today, the proverbial perilous cliffs, waterfalls and predators - both man and animal - that naturally gave rise to modern man are in the realm of false ideas, false perceptions, false ways of living and general ignorance.

The death of the body is just an ecological formality for the incurious.

Originally published on my Facebook page March 26th, 2016.

Solve et Coagula

A significant component to effectively solve problems of any kind is the ability to accurately identify and isolate relevant variables. If we're working on a problem which throws 100 variables our way and we incorrectly conclude that all 100 are important to the problem in question, our conclusions are going to be wildly erroneous and nonsensical. In short, we would be spinning our wheels and getting nowhere - which could be described as the true "overthinking", or what I've come to call "overnonsensing". Garbage in, garbage out.

Remember all that math and algebra we thought was "useless" in public school? Yeah, turns out it wasn't as useless as we thought it was. Not that everyone who did well in these classes will carry over the skills and apply them to real world circumstances, but what it does do for serious students of life is wire the mind in such a manner as to break things down into simpler fractions, and identify what is important and what isn't; by parsing out useful information from nonsense, from what is true from what is false, which keeps the solidity/integrity of rationality and a foundation of truth intact. We will not be successful getting to the highest peaks of truth by building on a foundation of garbage. Truth must be built upon truth.

Having a strong ability to discern between relevant and irrelevant variables allows us to make sound inferences about situations and events.

This is also how scientific theories and discoveries are made and developed.

God didn't come flying down from the clouds and bestow us with the wealth of knowledge we've amassed thus far by authoring everything. No. These were normal human beings who obsessed and thirsted relentlessly, wanting to understand why things happen the way they do. They recognized the patterns and sought to make sense of them through their ability to reason, the scientific method, and articulated their findings with the creation of new theories, or by building on existing ones. Though it wasn't God that came soaring from the heavens to save Man from his own ignorance in a literal sense, it could be argued that those who made discoveries were divinely inspired. This is why Einstein referred to curiosity as Holy.

"There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see."

― Leonardo da Vinci

Originally published on my Facebook page March 14th, 2016.

Children of the Flame

The world of tomorrow will likely have in it persons who no longer live with the central orientation of fear, like savages, that place the material world as the be all and end all of existence.

That is to say, it will be a population centered heavily around the capacity to reason - as Fromm defines it below. In Man's slow and painful, yet continued evolution, this is the stock of human that will (or should) be selected for.

Why? The prerequisite to a peaceful Earth is an enlightened population. And there can be no enlightenment without the life-flame of reason. Reason taking precedence is what raises the savage human to a higher standard of being.

"Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man."

― Erich Fromm

“Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates into schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions.”

― Ibid

"By intelligence I mean the ability to manipulate concepts for the purpose of achieving some practical end. The chimpanzee -- who puts the two sticks together in order to get at the banana because no one of the two is long enough to do the job--uses intelligence. So do we all when we go about our business, "figuring out" how to do things.

Intelligence, in this sense, is taking things for granted as they are, making combinations which have the purpose of facilitating their manipulation; intelligence is thought in the service of biological survival.

Reason, on the other hand aims at understanding; it tries to find out what is behind the surface, to recognize the kernel, the essence of the reality that surrounds us. Reason is not without a function, but its function is not to further physical as much as mental and spiritual existence.

However, often in individual and social life, reason is required in order to predict, and prediction sometimes is necessary for survival."

― Ibid, The Sane Society

Originally published on my Facebook page March 15th, 2017.

Divine Uncertainty - Quantum Thinking

Binary or black and white thinking (ie: "Yes, this is a fact/no this is not a fact") is extremely basic and is a sure way to destroy one's mind or relegate oneself to automaton status, which occupy the lower rungs of society. On the surface it appears that it is 33% less computative or less powerful, but I suggest it may be upwards of 90%, perhaps even orders of magnitude greater.

Let me explain.

Most people decide yes or no based on very simple, readily available, easily accessible data, and generally desire the immediate relief/comfort to decide as quickly as possible whether a thing is true or not - as uncertainty brings discomfort. And so in many ways, this hinders or shuts down the contemplative capacities of the mind.

Unfortunately for them, this is also where the beauty and magic lies. In the grey. That's where the fun is. It's also where all the action is, because absolutes like "yes" or "no" kill the possibility of any journey of "...maybe, let's investigate!"

Few venture into the realm of possibility, of uncertainty, because it requires courage, humility, letting go, and hanging on to nothing except the trust and confidence in themselves. In a world full of lies and deceit everywhere we turn - as it has been for thousands of years - we have nothing else to believe in and trust, except ourselves.

The most powerful minds thrive on uncertainty. Being rationally skeptic and curious. This is the path to discovery. They can accept not knowing or understanding, yet have the confidence in themselves that they can one day figure it out and will put forth a gargantuan effort to do so. They know that accepting the hand-me-down answers from God-knows-where in a society built-on-lies is akin to death and darkness.

Originally published on my Facebook page Sept. 4th, 2016.

Navigating the Undead

"I should add…that just as it is important to avoid trivial conversation, it is important to avoid bad company. By bad company I do not refer only to people who are vicious and destructive; one should avoid their company because their orbit is poisonous and depressing. 

I mean also the company of zombies, of people whose soul is dead, although their body is alive, of people whose thoughts and conversation are trivial; who chatter instead of talk, and who assert cliché opinions instead of thinking.”

—Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (1956)

Artwork by Gustave Doré for Dante's Inferno (1855)