The Logos

The Logos is eternal
but men have not heard it
or men have heard it and not understood.

Through the Logos all things are understood, yet men do not understand as you shall see when you put acts and words to the test I am going to propose:

One must talk about everything according to its nature, how it comes to be and how it grows.
Men have talked about the world without paying attention to the world or to their own minds,
as if they were asleep or absent-minded.

-Heraclitus

Heraclitus is making the point, while describing the utterly profound Logos itself, that men, confined to limited perception and therefore to regressive cycles of thought, do not actually see the “nature of things,” but rather only the content of their own limited minds.  Therefore, when we talk from that limited domain of knowledge (the mind), we talk like a person asleep and vainly dreaming of things which do not actually exist.  The Logos is what delivers one from that vicious cycle. 

In Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Socrates is quoted as commenting on the tendency of men to attempt to reason out the fundamental causes behind nature:  “To trouble one’s brain in this way is to play the fool. Do these investigator’s feel their knowledge of things human so complete that they betake themselves to such lofty speculations?  Do they arrogate that they are playing their proper parts [by] rising above the basic issues of being human to speculate on the concerns of God?  Amazing they see not how far beyond mortality lives the source of nature’s law.  Even those who pride themselves most on their discussions of these points differ from each other, as do madmen.”

Here, too, a Master is pointing out not that the individual ought somehow be barred from speculating on the causes behind phenomena for moral reasons, or out of some narrow holier-than-thou attitude, he is pointing out the profound truth that one is incapable of understanding the incredibly deep reality underlying nature without first understanding the incredibly deep truth underlying one’s own being.  “Know thyself” was more than a nice idea.  Socrates put this forth as the absolute first principle of all worthwhile philosophy, and indeed, all worthy living.  It’s through knowing one’s self that one can start to see what is behind the veil and “show” of nature (assuming one even cares at that point to find out — because having achieved self realization, it may be rather trite to inquire into the mechanics of creation when you have begun to knock on the door of the Creator Itself!)

So, when Heraclitus observes that men have “not heard it,” or “hearing it have not understood,” he again is talking about the individual soul and awareness, and scoffing at the efforts of men to understand with limited awareness and thought the vastly awesome principles underlying nature.  “Through the Logos, all things are understood.”  And Socrates said, “All learning is simply remembrance.”  In other words, through one’s awareness, one gains the Logos and hence all understanding.  “The Kingdom of God is within.”

Let it All Go

You can’t write happiness or fulfillment.  You can’t write meaning or truth.  All of these words are like footprints in the mud along the great Sea of Life.  You have to dive in yourself to realize It’s All.

Ineffable, splendid, loving, all-encompassing, singular and multitudinous, melodious and silent, profound and humble, magnificent, gracious, forceful, yielding…  the words are endless to describe, description itself is from ineffible experience.  Shared internal awareness… well, that’s the goal of the writer — futile in the extreme, except for those special days when mind walks behind Soul, giddy and drunk with the fragrance of Its splendor!

Love’s Shadow is Lost in Love

Daily I marvel at the futility of my own mind’s machinations in trying to grasp understanding with the purpose of increasing its control. It’s a reflexive response of the mind. I’ve found that only when I allow myself to bathe in the Beauty of Life itself, call it Love, only then does the mind relax its constant straining for control and domination of its body, its world, the political, social, environmental milieu in which it believes itself confined, even imprisoned. It’s the ubiquitous love that frees me.

We walk through a refreshing garden of love and enlightenment, but so often the weight of one’s mind wallowing in its habits, bends the head to the dirt path, to the shadow of the great Love that enfolds one with its beauty and its affirmation of Life. That shadow exists and it must be negotiated. But it cannot be negotiated by the cunning of the mind, for thought is limited, just as is perception limited to the senses of the body unless one has reached a higher level of consciousness, above the mind itself, above the body and its mechanical nature. But the only means for escape from the shadow and into that higher level of consciousness where the fragrance of God’s flowers uplifts and inspires is through the means of Love — living, breathing, being Love.

Vigilance and effort, gentle and forgiving, is undertaken by one in a loving purpose to see everything within the light of that Love, its splendid beauty, its healing melody, and recognize that that is all of Life, that there isn’t anything else. The shadow of life, that being death and hatred, struggle and fear, is dissolved in that Love. Though the world truly struggles, its weight is an illusion. We are all free, floating in the pure breezes of boundless bliss. The task is not to understand and thus control the shadow, but instead to move awareness into the Love that passeth all understanding where the shadow is put in its place beneath one’s feet. There, we tread that shadow as the dirt path, while we walk in the free garden, breathing deeply, enjoying a bliss unknown before that makes all right and good.

Truth is Love is the Remedy All Seek

Truthfulness is the greatest gift one can give. It frequently involves tremendous self-sacrifice to give one’s truth rather than some manipulative variation of it. But, what greater gift could you give? Even if it isn’t an absolute truth, at least the goal is truth. One can go forth from there on loving ground.

The constant fruit of love is to grow ever surer in truth. While chaos and violence reign, love’s truth moves every soul. Truth is simple. Only deception is complex. And maintaining falsehood’s intricate “Tower of Babel” requires ever greater resources, sucking life from the soul. The simplicity of truth is like a highway for love. Love flows freely in the domain of truth, unhindered by the maze-like secretive passages of guile.

Some Halloween Reading

He met a hound that came from Hel.
That one had blood upon his breast,
and long did he bark at Baldrs father.
Onward rode Odin – the earth-way roared -
till he came to the high hall of Hel.
-The Eddic poem Baldrs draumar

“Husband’s coffin kills woman on way to cemetery”
The Library of Dust
The Library of Dust (Author’s Site)
Samhain
Samhain Image 1
Samhain Image 2
Samhain Image 3
Dia De Los Muertos
A Halloween Gallery (art of Lewis Barrett Lehrman)
A Halloween Poem
Haunted Libraries

A couple of Good Books for Halloween:
H.P Lovecraft (very good anthology)
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
The Fantastic Art of Beksinski
Brushfire: Illuminations from the Inferno by Wayne Barlowe