Friday, December 17, 2010

Remembering to Forget to Remember: The One Thing Needful

For Tomberg, all subsequent acts of creation are fractals of the first day, just as all miracles -- or vertical interventions -- are related to the seventh: "Just as the first day of creation in essence contains and encompasses the entire account of the creation, so does the seventh miracle of St. John's Gospel contain and encompass the other six miracles" (Tomberg).

Tomberg begins with the idea that sleep, death, and forgetting are all related to one another (cf. mortician, morphine and morpheus): just as sleep is the "younger brother of death," forgetting "is the younger brother of sleep."

Forgetting is "a partial sleep of the conscious mind, while sleep is a complete forgetting of consciousness." Conversely, to re-member is to "resurrect" something from unconsciousness, while awakening from sleep is the re-collection of our conscious self. Each day we are miraculously born again through the sacred Raccoon ritual of the holy caffeinated water.

Today the resurraction is taking a little bit longer, because I was up later last night, having attended the school Christmas show, which went on and on and on. I don't understand. The parents only care about seeing their own kid perform, if that. Why put them through the torture of watching all the others? I mean, every grade, K through 8th, and the kindergarteners were perversely put on last! May I be frank? It's things like this that remind me of why I didn't want to have children for all those years.

Anyway, just as life requires metabolism (building up) and catabolism (tearing down), our minds also require various kinds of forgetting in order to function. For example, in order to concentrate or meditate or pray, one must temporarily forget everything in consciousness with the exception of the non-doodling at hand.

If everything in consciousness were simultaneously present -- if one had no forgettery to complement one's remembery -- one could accomplish little. Things would very quickly grow overwhelming. Many people have difficulty distinguishing the foremost from the treevial. Taken to an extreme, this becomes obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is a kind of systematic preoccupation with surfaces to the exclusion of essences. But most people miss the Point (ʘ) in one way or another.

The process of writing these posts is much more analogous to the way art is created, in that we are essentially calling things up, down, and in from the wider realm of consciousness as such, somewhat like the spider that spins an external production out of its own substance -- which it then inhabits. And uses to catch living food. As the posts develop, they become like attractors that draw in what they need in order to complete themselves.

We all do this -- that is, crawl around in the psychic webs we spend our lives spinning -- some of us more consciously than others. But where does the material for the web come from? As ShrinkWrapped has noted on many occasions, the most naive and clueless people are those sophisticates who believe their minds are completely rational (in the profane sense) and that their psychic webs are spun from "pure reason."

Such individuals tend to be markedly tedious and shallow, as they are alienated from the larger and most vital part of their being. They tend to be on the obsessive-compulsive end of the spectrum, holding tightly to their little spotlight that is fixed upon a small area of darkness, instead of the vast -- even infinite -- interior cosmos that extends beyond the range of the spotlight, both "up" (into supra-sensory realms) and "down" (into the unconscious). In holding so tightly to their point, they miss it altogether.

One can also see how this type of obsessional thinking is analogous to one who "cannot die," for just as there is pathological forgetting (i.e., Alzeimer's), there is pathological remembering (i.e., scientism, rationalism, leftism, etc.). In both cases, a psychic death occurs: the Alzeimer's patient because he cannot remember, the materialist or doctrinaire leftist because he cannot forget. Because as soon as you successfully forget that rationalistic bedtime story, your local mind can die and your nonlocal being can hang out where the resurraction is.

This is one of the reasons why religious people in general and conservatives in particular tend to be so much happier than leftists and irreligious people. They also live longer and healthier lives, probably as a result of the deadly stress hormones produced by trying to live in a manner that is unnatural to -- and unworthy of -- human beings. Leftism is a recipe for unhappiness, if only because of the envy.

Just as human beings can only survive and flourish in a certain type of external environment (even if our technology is able to artificially maintain that environment in hostile climes), they also only flourish spiritually and psychologically in a certain type of "interior environment" that facilitates vertical recollection of the soul -- resurrection again.

Science begins with the known (k) and tries to extend it into the unknown (O), whereas religion begins in the infinite unknown (O) and tries to give voice to it in a more or less structured way. Revelation and theology represent more structured representations of O, while these daily bobservations are more spontaneous ones.

In a way, the process is analogous to free association in psychoanalytic therapy. The first and last rule of psychoanalysis is to disable your censor and to say whatever comes to mind, no matter how bizarre or trivial. By listening with "even hovering attention," a good analyst is able to apprehend a deeper order that is governing the patient's associations -- perhaps even catch a mind parasite in flagrante delicto, which is always a thrill.

With these posts, it's as if I am free associating, except "from above" rather than "below." As I continue associating, an order spontaneously emerges, but it is the same teleological order that was covertly guiding the process all along. The psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas refers to it as "Giving up narrative control to become a certain sort of subject within a process guided by the intelligence of the other" -- or the nonlocal m(O)ther and (F)author, as the case may be.

You might say that with the down-and-Incarnation, the eternal Christic order went from being implicate to explicate. The order was there as potential, but a human intermediary is required for it to manifest locally, so to speak -- just as Mary was required in order for God's word to assume biological life.

Obviously, it wasn't as if Christ (who is eternal) weren't present prior to the Incarnation, much less afterwards. But it was implicate existence -- wave rather than particle, so to speak. The revolutionary wave became particle for some 33⅓ years, in so doing, roiling the waves of deep history.

As I have mentioned before, those temporal waves continue to lap upon our distant shore, something which sounds strange but which is manifestly true even to the most metaphysically blind and dense individual. Leftists would like to eliminate that particular wave from history, but the effort is as vain as trying to clamp down on the ocean to stop tsunamis. Good luck. The rest of us will just enjoy the metaphysical surfing.

Your very self is a chaotic attractor that abides in the future, drawing you toward it, but only if you abandon your own alternate plans for your existence. Bollas describes the self as an "inner sense of destiny" which "seeks lived experience to realise its own particular aesthetic intelligence." "We sense this drive to present and represent our self as if it were an intelligent life force" which reveals itself through the way we uniquely make use of the objects (and subjects) of life. For example, cut a page of Lileks' bleat, and it sheds his blood. No one else could possibly use those particular objects and words in that particular way. His unique idiom is the exteriorization and realization of his equally unique self.

Now more than ever, because of the vast overabundance of infrahuman trivia and propaganda that surrounds us, it is necessary to live a life of disciplined forgetting in order to remember -- and therefore resurrect -- "the one thing needful."

Schuon was very adamant on this point, which can sound austere but is actually the doorway to liberation. In a letter to an initiate, he wrote, "The chief difficulty of the spiritual life is to maintain a simple, qualitative, heavenly position in a complex, quantitative, earthly setting." Only in so doing will we have the musical uppertuneity to hear the song celestial and disriminate between the Real and the illusory, which is the whole point of the spiritual life. It is quite difficult to remember the Real when one's very life is plunged into the unreal, with no space to breath in the ambiance of the Absolute and the Eternal.

This distinction between the Real and the illusory will determine how we use the only certainty given to humans aside from death, judgment, and eternity, which is the present moment, which ultimately determines the others. For the one moment given to us is the "liberating center" of the cosmos, into which eternity flows and death is therefore transcended.

Alternatively, if we are tied with all our being to the relentless machine of time, it simply drags us along in its wake until we are ground down or torn apart. Lucky ones will simply smash into the wall of death without ever knowing what hit them -- which is to say, their life.

Schuon sets out some simple godlines for avoiding frittering away the moment, and therefore, your sorry life.

"One must not waste one's time with worldly, unnecessary and often trivial distractions."

"One must not regularly read a newspaper from one end to the other, above all in the morning."

"One must not habitually watch television."

"One must not read novels, profane, unhealthy, trivial literature (although it is obviously permissible to inform oneself, to read books worthy of interest in historical, cultural, aesthetic, etc., subjects, but with measure and without losing oneself therein; and to enjoy art or music that is noble and which elevates)."

"One must control one's curiosity."

"In short, one must live 'in a little garden of the Holy Virgin,' without unhealthy curiosity and without ever losing sight of the essential content and goal of life. That is 'holy poverty' or 'holy childlikeness'; it is also, so to speak, 'holy monotony'.... dominated by the proximity of the sacred, and on the margin from the uproar of this lower world.... This seems obvious, but most believers take no account of it."

Such a life is hardly monotonous in the way that word is typically understood -- much less boring -- but it is disciplined. I especially like the advice about "controlling curiosity," which is surely a vital component, for either you will control it or it will control you and drag you around by the eyes and ears.

There are so many psychic avenues and nul-de-slacks that one should not even take the first step down, but as soon as you say that, people think you're trying to diminish their freedom.

Plus, the last thing people want is to have their conscience awakened, which is why Job One of the left is the annihilation of the personal conscience and its replacement with a collective one. This allows, for example, Hollywoodenheads to lead such depraved lives while feeling morally superior to the rest of us because they believe in manmade global warming or want their taxes raised. This dynamic is the entire secret of leftist moral preening, and answers the perennial question, "how can such perverse people be so fascannoyingly sanctimonious?"

41 comments:

Open Trench said...

GW trump other considerations because it is universal, pervasive, and significant.

This is what makes it a distinct dividing line between red and blue.

Americans can be quickly sorted into camps based on whether they believe in GW. The two camps have certain mass psychic maps or complexes that reliably distinguish them.

Also, you can ask "50's or 60's?" The snap answer is diagnostic.

50's will be non GW, 60's will be + GW.

Having arrayed the two sides, we can assess their qualities and make certain predictions.

On issue you brought up is a life-discipline which aids the growth of spirit. I don't think people pay attention to this, as a rule.

You can see raccoons with luxury cars, big homes, Tempur-pedic beds, and stuffed fridges and say--

"They are living the Lefty life." They are being assimilated.

Van Harvey said...

"Each day we are miraculously born again through the sacred Raccoon ritual of the holy caffeinated water."

Amen.

Back to reading.

Van Harvey said...

"Today the resurraction is taking a little bit longer, because I attended the school Christmas show last night, which went on and on and on. I don't understand. "

Went through it last week. Rachel's group, the youngest, was the only decent one... I wanted to throw things at the rest... wife wouldn't tolerate it.

Sigh.

julie said...

"One must not waste one's time with worldly, unnecessary and often trivial distractions."

"One must not regularly read a newspaper from one end to the other, above all in the morning."

"One must not read novels, profane, unhealthy, trivial literature..."

"One must control one's curiosity."


Thwack!!

Ow.

From that, it's fairly easy to surmise what he'd say about spending one's free time reading news online. Though to be fair, I spend a lot less time reading news these days, and a lot more finding things that are spiritually nourishing. Or so I tell myself...

Speaking of which,
There are so many psychic avenues and nul-de-slacks that one should not even take the first step down...

Having stepped down a few too many of those in days past, I find it a lot easier to want to remain blissfully ignorant when someone says, "omg you have to see this!!!"

No, if it's that exciting I can most certainly live happier without it. Too much has been seared into my brain already, thanks...

***

Why put them through the torture of watching all the others? I mean, every grade, K through 8th, and the kindergarteners were perversely put on last!

Oh, that sounds like a special sort of torment right there. I take those occasions to practice meditating under adverse conditions. Still, why can't the school at least break up the performances so parents don't have to stay for the whole thing?

julie said...

If everything in consciousness were simultaneously present -- if one had no forgettery to complement one's me-mory -- one could accomplish little. Things would very quickly grow overwhelming.

As a tangent, this is also true of dealing with the changes and upheavals life throws at us. If we cling too strenuously to what is and has been, we run the risk - or perhaps, the near certainty - of missing out on the big uppertunities O throws our direction.

Your very self is a chaotic attractor that abides in the future, drawing you toward it, but only if you abandon your own alternate plans for your existence.

If we are rooted to the ground of the past, then our future can't very well draw us to it. This resonates with me today. Within the past couple weeks, I've learned that the next year or two is going to involve a massive upheaval. I'm not looking forward to it, but then again I can ride that wave to a new adventure, or I can cling to the ground of here and now, and surely drown. But as long as the roots are aloft, I know that it will probably turn out to be the best thing that could happen. No matter how rough the transition may be.

mushroom said...

Complete OT, but I won't be online tomorrow:

When historians look back on 2010 and begin to piece together how Western Civilization came back from the brink, they may cite the Tea Party, but this is how it happened.

'Cause Mohammad don't surf.

Gagdad Bob said...

An early punk surf classic!

Gagdad Bob said...

Talk about conserving our precious cultural heritage!

mushroom said...

OK, you did mention surfing but I didn't know it was there.

Also, for those within driving distance of Anaheim -- which, the last time I was in SoCal, started somewhere around Albuquerque -- well, at least the backup started there -- Junior Brown and the Trashmen will be headlining the annual Deke's Guitar Geek Festival at the Anaheim Plaza Ballroom, January 15, 2011.


If everything in consciousness were simultaneously present -- if one had no forgettery to complement one's me-mory -- one could accomplish little. Things would very quickly grow overwhelming.

This is not funny on a personal level. My wife does this. She can't sort things from really important to no-big-deal. For one thing, there is no such thing as NBD if it is in her consciousness.

And her favorite television show is "Monk".

Leslie Godwin said...

It would have been ideal to have each classroom do their own mini show... 15 minutes would have been great. The kindergartners were really adorable, though, but to drag it on, feature many solos, and have the youngest go last was very disappointing.

Tristan and his fellow shepherd got a laugh when he forgot the second of his two lines. He put his finger to his lip with a smile and blank stare. And the other shepherd whispered his line to him twice til he got it.

Another classic moment was when one of the angels' belt loosened and her wings fell to the floor while she was about to deliver her line.

I don't have a source willing to go on the record for this, but those close to Schuon say he subscribed to Center Ice and followed the Hartford Whalers til they moved south.
Leslie

ge said...

mortician, morphine and morpheus...what about 'mortgage'?

oh yas the Surfin' Bird---one of my earliest album buys just prior to British invasion

Gagdad Bob said...

Deepak's laughty spiritual advice of the day:

"Responsibility means not blaming anyone or anything for your situation, including yourself."

In short, being responsible means not being responsible for oneself. Now you know why he's a leftist.

julie said...

I don't have a source willing to go on the record for this, but those close to Schuon say he subscribed to Center Ice and followed the Hartford Whalers til they moved south.

:D

Now I'm picturing him in a hockey jersey...

Re. the angel's belt, is that what happens when a bell rings backwards? Sounds very cute - I bet her expression was priceless.

Re. Deeply Cracked, I think he got the title to his article wrong - shouldn't that be "Effortless Irresponsibility"?

Gagdad Bob said...

Can't be. It takes real effort to be that irresponsible.

julie said...

Good point. I'd come up with something else, but that would take too much effort...

Magnus Itland said...

Heard from friendly thought in my head, when I found that I had become overly distracted: "Collect yourself - you never know when you will need you."

Van Harvey said...

"One can also see how this type of obsessional thinking is analogous to one who "cannot die," for just as there is pathological forgetting (i.e., Alzeimer's), there is pathological remembering (i.e., scientism, rationalism, leftism, etc.)
... Leftism is a recipe for unhappiness, if only because of the envy."

Reminds me of one a Woody Allen movie... any of them... the character's constant chatter about their headaches, how some food doesn't agree with their stomach, the temperature, the weather, how cramped or too spread out things are, how noisy or quiet things are... it seems as if the only thing that is really ever being noticed by them... is them.

Unremittingly they are noticing and obseccesed with themselves.

Don't they get on their own nerves?

[Picturing Woody Allens face]

Oh... never mind... duh.

julie said...

[Picturing Woody Allens face]

Oh, that's never a good idea.

Joan of Argghh! said...

Will our own resurrection be likened unto God's not forgetting us; our dis-integrated molecules being re-membered as He turns his mind back to our person?

I wonder what He's concentrating on while we slip into His state of holy unconciousness. I can't wait for Him to re-member me.

Jesus, remember me
when you come into your kingdom.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"Only in so doing will we have the musical uppertuneity to hear the song celestial and disriminate between the Real and the illusory, which is the whole point of the spiritual life."

Great word that! Uppertuneity.

Mushroom: I hear ya. I never knew a combination of OCD and ADD was possible but my lovely wife somehow manages to do it (or not do it) at times. :^)

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Magnus Itland said...
Heard from friendly thought in my head, when I found that I had become overly distracted: "Collect yourself - you never know when you will need you."

Great advice, Magnus! :^)

Jack said...

OT...I mentioned an article the other day entitled "Is There Anything Good About Men?". I am reading the book--by the same title and author--and am finding it very useful.

Within its own realm (with perhaps a few exceptions) I believe this to be a very Raccoon friendly book--and it goes far beyond what its somewhat cheesy title suggest. And reviews I've read by feminists seem be generally negative, if that's any recommend!

Is There Anything Good About Men?

ge said...

WV=
snotleg
no foolin!

Sad related News from the world of Music: Beefheart bit the dust!
Woe is a me-drop Om dropareebop Om!

Hoosiernorm said...

Bob, is there any way to follow you on facebook via a feed yet?

Gagdad Bob said...

There's nothing to follow. I have an account but have never used it.

Hoosiernorm said...

I have been following your blog after a friend recommended you over at Free Republic. I have read your book and have also used it as a reference due to the number of items and books referenced in it ie. From Plato to Nato and Hero with a thousand Faces. I was hoping that I could subscribe to your blog via a facebook account due to its ease of use. Oh, well. I do enjoy your blog site and you have quite the crew of followers (I lurk more than post). Thank you for the quick reply

Gagdad Bob said...

I'd rather not impose myself on people. They know where to find me.

Jack said...

GB-

You were absolutely right...

I just came back from a party here in my ultra-lefty college town. A portion of the partygoers were talking politics--and these same almost ALWAYS talk politics-the majority of which now claim to "hate" Obama. Exact words, emphatically stated, "I *hate* Obama". The inevitable story of the "euphoria" of the inauguration now leading to HATE.

You called it. I must say I was somewhat skeptical at the time of the election-- thinking that they all couldn't be *that* deluded...but they are.

phil g said...

"...but the effort is as vain as trying to clamp down on the ocean to stop tsunamis"

You could say trying to alter the course of weather by managing human economic behavior...vanity, all is vanity.

Tigtog said...

To: GE
Re: Beefheart

I guess he is in heaven listening to R&B and yelling at his mom to get him a Pepsi. I will miss him. Zanzinspark lost.

ge said...

ah, van vliet:
i saw him live at least twice---in the Spectrum [huge philly arena] mildly tripping [the memorablest part of their show was a sudden ending --signalled by the Cap.-- due to lackluster crowd response i felt, & executed in a dazzle of precision imploding razzle]...
then a few years later in a tiny club where the set started with a 5 minute Rockette Morton doubleneck bass solo w/ body-english contortions and from mere feet away i marvelled at the band's deconstructed & reput-together-again improbable riddims & riffs...a monocled and suit vest-over-bare skinned Artie Tripp [Drumbo] was on the killer skins that night

Open Trench said...

Deepak is correct. To take responsiblity or blame for things is egoism.

Our circumstances, physical parameters, and happenstance were not decided by us and therefore it is absurd to recieve blame (or credit) for anything that happens.

One can understand a problem and say "Well next time I'll do things differently"

To look at a bad decision with a bad outcome and say, "I chose to do an evil bad thing by my free will, and that makes me guilty" will almost always be found to be incorrect.

Usually there were forces applied to you that pushed you in certain directions. The agents behind these forces must take the lion's share of responsibility.

Bad parenting that produces bad outcomes must be layed at the feet of the parents, not the child, for instance, if justice is to be served.

Deepak is not the light weight y0u make him to be.

Jack said...

Grant said: To look at a bad decision with a bad outcome and say, "I chose to do an evil bad thing by my free will, and that makes me guilty" will almost always be found to be incorrect.

You set up a false choice. Regardless of whether one consciously chooses an evil action or not it still originates within oneself. Certainly bad parenting may have originally created this tendency...but with your logic what created the bad parenting other than more bad parenting down through the generations?

Where does it stop? Perhaps it's all the fault of the first one-celled organism...it failed us all!! I am a victim of bad molecular chemistry!!! The injustice! It's not my fault!

Much simpler, more effective, and in my view much truer is to say "I may not have consciously intended for said negative action to take place but I am still fully responsible for it."

There is no other way--at least if one wants to be an adult-- to ever change these tendencies other than by taking full responsibility.

More to the point, if I am not required to take responsibility for myself than how can I ever think I could hold anyone else responsible? They can be seen equally as "victims"--at least much as one believes oneself to be, maybe even more so.

This is the victim mentality in a nutshell and once the blame starts there is no logical place for it to end--because it isn't logical. It simply becomes a contest of dueling grievances...something the left knows quite a lot about.

John said...

OT:
slack[er?] insult alert @
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/19/model-charged-with-excessive-use-of-forcing/
DirkH says:
December 19, 2010 at 3:50 pm
That being said – the job of the modelers is even easier than i thought. They are all natural born slackers. We’ve all been taken for a ride.
Excellent post on ´climate´ models.
from Costa Rica,¿Bob, is there a slack/slacker relation?

julie said...

Just remember, there's a difference between slack and s'lack...

Jules said...

Great post as usual. Shall try to limit my curiosity re internet.. one can spend hours in virtual space. Also teens on facebook... this can be tool for being absent from life.

Open Trench said...

Jack, to respond to your thoughtful reply:

I see your point. All bad choices are generated internally, and you can pass the potato back up the chain to the first cell, which solves nothing, or you can take responsibility.

However, I would like to substitute the word "action" for responsiblity. Responsibility implies blame, and that is what I wish to attack.

Human beings are ever prone to blaming themselves for the predicaments they find themselves in, where in fact these predicaments are produced by fundamental facts and forces outside of their purview.

The blame must be attributed to the enemy. The enemy is sloth, gluttony, avarice, lust, envy, anger, etc. These are universal forces found inside and outside the being. They are to blame.

Every sin is an attack by an enemy soldier. Every response of virtue is a counterttack by a soldier of God, the yogin, the raccoon, or even the well-meaning citizen.

We don't take blame. We get even. We crush the enemy with the force of our virtue and goodness.

The enemy wins one sometimes, but we do not beat ourselves up for it.

We do better next time.

The only failing is cowardice. One must get out of the foxhole and press the assault, unfailingly, for a lifetime. It gets tiresome.

But that, again, is the fault of the enemy. They should not exist.

Van Harvey said...

grunt maker said ""

Open Trench said...

Well Van, what about what I said?

That all you got, punk?

Van Harvey said...

Yep.

Open Trench said...

Well that's not good enough. You lose.

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