Pure Reason

Can one be certain at any time that one is thinking clearly?  If thought is the only measure of that, then, self-evidently, the answer is “no.”

Somewhere above thought there is a place of pure Reason, as Rumi said. Perhaps we may meet there?

Raven

Raven against the blue sky

   his dark shadow flickering

over green pine boughs.

Two Questions To Ask of Every Public Servant

It’s truly a marvel that we don’t speak more about the fact that our government officials, especially in Congress, in the Federal Courts, and in the white house, are mostly of wealth and privilege. Many have never lived from pay check to pay check, or had to pay for unexpected car repairs or medical needs with a credit card, unsure whether it will ever get paid off. How can they possibly relate to what most of us are going through? How could a person, secure in their comforts and influence, truly act to alleviate the suffering of many of us at the possible cost of those comforts? In all honesty, how many of us who aren’t wealthy have been, or would be, willing to risk our own comforts and advantages to help others?

So, clearly, this truly is the blatant conundrum of public service. And, although it may seem obvious, it may be time to refresh one’s active understanding on it. As Paul Simon said, “Why deny the obvious, child?”

One way to address it might be to ask two questions of every individual in office, or running for public office. Is the person truly qualified, of course, is the most basic question (although clearly there are many in office distinctly unqualified). But also, can he or she specifically relate to my problems?

The second question is one we often ask, but almost unconciously — it’s really time now to ask with greater understanding and resolve. You can bet that lobbyists ask that question and are very clear on what the answer should be. We need to be as clear and more insistant that our public servants truly serve the interests of we, the people. The evidence that they don’t has become such a towering mass of stinking filth that it is a true marvel there are not major acts of civil disobedience everywhere. It is a testimonial to the power of the doctrine of consumerism, the debilitating nature of debt and employment, and the pandering of our media to power that these things are not wide spread, and indeed that revolution is not in the air. Perhaps we have not yet suffered enough.

Wake Up Now

“Wake up now, dear traveler.  The night is almost over and the light of the stars is fading.  Your sojourn here is like one’s stay in an inn, where one’s arrival is inevitably followed by departure.  You do not even now listen to the beat of drums signaling your departure.” -Bulle Shah

Wisdom Needed

There’s a wholeness in life, in matter, in space and time, that, while perceptible,  is not dissectable.  There is no analytical framework which may provide holism.  The term “framework” self-evidently declares that this is so.

Nevertheless, we are capable of perceiving not only wholeness, but patterns and energy flows within a wholeness.  These patterns and flows aren’t analytical, they are as harmonic participants in a whole.  These holistic patterns influence and even to some extent determine our actions in order to preserve the whole, whether within the political, ecological, geological, or cosmological spheres, and whether or not we’re aware of it.  Again, these analytical terms (vis. politics, etc.) are merely approximate references to perceived patterns that are not at all separable from the whole matrix with which they constitute an integrated totality.

It is an error in thought and judgment, a sure sign of lack of awareness, to treat any analytical conclusion as final or unconditional.  Action based on analytical fundamentalism will lead to disaster.  Wisdom must temper all action.  Wisdom provides the wholeness within the sphere of perception and action.  Action without wisdom creates or perpetuates separation, division, pain, and grief.

These are simple, most basic, and profound principles, but in our rush to control life, to secure various temporary pleasures and victories, we overlook the simple and profound in favor of an apparently gratifying domination of the moment.  The problem is that, just because we act in ignorance, this doesn’t mean we will not have to pay a price — it doesn’t mean that the wholeness “takes a vacation” and allows our petty behavior to transpire apart from the “system of being.”  Balances must occur to make sure that the wholeness of everything remains and persists.  There is no compromise because, obviously, there is nothing but wholeness.  There is clearly no separation anywhere.  All things co-exist, whether we talk of the mental and emotional personal sphere, or the sphere of matter, energy, space and time.

Wisdom must be the focus of any individual and of any society that truly wishes to succeed, if we define success as actions and results leading in a self-feeding cycle through continually evolving harmony and fulfillment.  Holistic awareness is another term for wisdom, for how can one be aware of the whole in its continually interacting nature and not temper actions accordingly?  Wisdom, once experienced, cannot be denied.

Lucius Seneca Advises the Earnest

“…the minds of the preoccupied, as if harnessed in a yoke, cannot turn round and look behind them. So their lives vanish into an abyss; and just as it is no use pouring any amount of liquid into a container without a bottom to catch and hold it, so it does not matter how much time we are given if there is nowhere for it to settle; it escapes through the cracks and holes of the mind..”

-On the Shortness of Life; Life Is Long If You Know How to Use It by Lucius Seneca (c. 4 BC – 65 AD)

[ with credit to Jeff VanderMeer and his 60 books in 60 days project]

Rebellion

Rebellion is nothing but a forceful reassertion of the self, or the present concept of the self.

Spinoza Was/Is Great

If men’s minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every king would sit safely on his throne, and government by compulsion would cease; for every subject would shape his life according to the intentions of his rulers, and would esteem a thing true or false, good or evil, just or unjust, in obedience to their dictates. However,… no man’s mind can possibly lie wholly at the disposition of another, for no one can willingly transfer his natural right of free reason and judgment, or be compelled so to do. For this reason government which attempts to control minds is accounted tyrannical, and it is considered an abuse of sovereignty and a usurpation of the rights of subjects, to seek to prescribe what shall be accepted as true, or rejected as false, or what opinions should actuate men in their worship of God. All these questions fall within a man’s natural right, which he cannot abdicate even with his own consent.

–Baruch de Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus, ch. xx (1670)

Winter Solstice 2008

Winter Solstice is the start of the new year.  The sun, having completed his descent toward the earth, begins to rise back heaven-ward, to look up.  And, like him, we feel renewed as the residue of the old year settles down into the sleeping grass, the cold rock, enveloped in a transformative cloak of white snow.  It becomes the fuel that feeds the living year.

But, like the Solar King, we don’t look back, we look up and we raise ourselves towards a higher goal, pushing against
the past as a counter-balance to keep our forward motion stable.  The past informs, but need not bind.

And with each year, the weighty cloak of personal history grows less troublesome, as the body of the Now grows stronger, exercising its developing skill to navigate the challenges of life while drawing from its further wisdom the power of the Philosophers’ Stone, converting all experience to Golden Grace.

Simple Sound Solution

Start with principle
     And understanding,
End in love and
     Reconciliation.