I'm still making my way through the 1,100 page The Spiritual Ascent, a "compendium of the world's wisdom" organized into three main sections that mirror the universal stages of purification, illumination, and union, but with dozens of subsectional byways.
In a way, you could say the book is fractally organized, in that each section is a part of the whole, even while the whole is in each part. Likewise, every day of our lives is a microcosm of the lifelong spiritual adventure, i.e., an ongoing process of purification, illumination, and union, at least if we are consciously aware of this onetime uppertunity to right our wrungs on Jacob's ladder.
Like life itself, the book gets off to a very promising start, with chapters on divine creation, the process of manifestation, man's primordial birthright, and similar felicitous topics.
I suppose this is only fitting, being that the Creator's main excuse for the creation was that "it seemed like a good idea at the time," i.e., "God saw everything he had made, and indeed it was very good." But you know what they say about how the beast waylaid the plans of lousy men. Very soon the karmic wheels fell on the creation, ironically due to its crowing achievement , homo sleepy one. Soon enough paradise is paved over for this barking lot of mongreloid idiots.
This remands us to the prism of Finnegans Wake, which begins with a sentence about Adam and Eve ("riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay"), but by the third paragraph is in fullfall ("the fall of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all Christian minstrelsy"), and by the fourth paragraph is ringing in the full scale war of each against all ("arms apeal with larms, appalling. Killykillykilly: a toll, a toll").
Similarly, The Spiritual Ascent hits a bit of a rough patch with the chapters on illusion, sin, suffering, sacrifice, damnation, hell, and the like.
Nevertheless, these sections do emphasize the existential stakes involved, as well as the fact that "purification" is somewhat analogous to the manner in which a diamond is made. Just take a lump of coal, put it through unimaginable fire and pressure in the middle of the earth, then chip and chisel away what is impure and unnecessary, and you've got a luminous little gem fit for eternity.
What a bi-cosmic coincidence that the name diamond derives from the ancient Greek adamas and that most of them originate from Africa. Reminds me of the Johnny Cash song (written by Billy Joe Shaver):
I'm just an old chunk of coal / But I'm gonna be a diamond some day.... / I'm gonna spit and polish my old rough-edged self / 'Til I get rid of every single flaw / I'm gonna be the world's best friend
I just finished a couple of fascinating sections, Pilgrimage -- Descent Into Hell and Holy War. The section on Holy War is particularly interesting, as it emphasizes that jihad is not just for jihidiots. Rather, there is Jewhad, Buhad, and Crusad, in both the interior and exterior senses, as well as above and below. Quite simply, war is not just inevitable but necessary, with roots extending deep into the very structure of the cosmos.
Conversely, it is pacifism that is not only unnecessary but highly narcissary to boot; sanctimonious pacifists are usually just people unaware of their viciousness and cruelty, like, say, Jimmy Carter. Pacifism is essentially to surrender -- not just in war, but in the struggle of existence itself. For as written in Exodus, The Lord is a man of war; or in the words of Jesus: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword; or in the words of Krishna: Nothing is higher for a [member of the warrior caste] than a righteous war.
In his introduction to the subject of Holy War, Perry cites Guenon, who wrote that the essential reason for war -- legitimate war -- is "to end a dis-order and re-establish order; in other words, it is the unification of a multiplicity, by use of means which belong to the world of multiplicity itself.... War understood in this way, and not limited in an exclusively human sense, thus represents the cosmic process of the reintegration of the manifested into the principial unity." This reintegration necessarily involves destruction, as catabolism is to metabolism.
Guenon continues: "The purpose of war is the establishment of peace, for even in its most ordinary sense peace is really nothing else than order, equilibrium, or harmony, these three terms being nearly synonymous and all designating under slightly different aspects the reflection of unity in multiplicity itself.... Multiplicity is then in fact not really destroyed, but 'transformed'..."
In another sense, legitimate war is none other than justice, being that justice is really an "equilibrating function" which is "directed against those who disturb order and [has] as its object the restoration of order." The reason we catch and punish bad guys is ultimately to restore order -- to the community, to the wronged individual, within the disordered psyche of the perpetrator, and ultimately to the Cosmos itself.
Compare interior warfare to the Black Liberation Theology which so attracted the weak-souled Obama: "Many have been asking what Liberation Theology is all about. Well, it is not very complicated! It is the simple belief that in the struggles of poor and oppressed people against their powerful and rich oppressors, God sides with the oppressed against the oppressors."
Thus, it precisely inverts the true meaning of holy war, in that it imagines that God sides only with "the poor" instead of the righteous, or that he is angry at the wealthy instead of the evil (we should say that the righteous side with God). The "great holy war" is the struggle of man "against the enemies he carries within himself, that is to say, against all those elements in him which are contrary to order and unity" (and dynamic unity is not unicity, the latter being top-down coercion and conformity).
In short, our "unity candidate" is anything but. We will become the ones we've been waiting for only once we become more like the One who's been waiting for us.
46 comments:
Thus, it precisely inverts the true meaning of holy war, in that it imagines that God sides only with "the poor" instead of the righteous, or that he is angry at the wealthy instead of the evil (we should say that the righteous side with God).
Well that explains a lot. See, the reason the current administration is ruining the economy is to make everyone poor so God will be on our side. Yeah, that's the ticket...
My favorite FM stations play classic rock.
Quite simply, war is not just inevitable but necessary, with roots extending deep into the very structure of the cosmos.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
And the worst thing is, as you point out, missing who real enemy is. Patton famously said that he had read Rommel's book. Montgomery, I believe it was, carried a photograph of Rommel.
I simply carry my driver's license.
In this way I think we begin to touch on the meaning of man and woman, of which male and female are a type. With man we have war and with woman we have life -- action and contemplation, as the hymns would have it. Humanity is no less united to God by being man and woman... only if one holds too strongly to Plato does it become necessary.
If we dismiss war entirely the man becomes like a damaged female with a bad attitude: can't have kids, always wants to fight. But also we ignore the 'spear' - the fact that even if we strip away all weapons that the man is a weapon himself, or so the Greek symbol would have it. You might say humanity has the power of life and death: Woman is life, man is death. Christ must be man because he walks the path of death, but he undoes its evil and reconciles the two halves of humanity by transcending the contradiction of life and death.
But I think this topic has been thoroughly covered many times!
Maybe so, River, but I like your take on it. Speaking of which...
"Since new readers will never catch up with the Arkive..."
I'm waiting for the movie to come out. I hear it's being filmed in 6D.
Yeah, but you might want to avoid the "smell-o-vision" dimension...
Especially during the Battle of the Trolls scene.
I respect Our Lady of Sorrows for sticking to their principles.
This is on-topic with the mention of Vatican II as well, since that is one of the issues between the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X.
However, you could argue that baseball is a little different. I have a girl cousin who played shortstop on the JV boys' baseball team way back in the '60s -- not because of feminism or anything. She was like Ozzie in the gap, had a rifle arm, and was a very good contact hitter.
She didn't shower with them or anything -- in fact, I'm not sure she showered at all. Bless her heart. She is three or four years older than I am, and we were both the youngest in our immediate families. She would routinely come over and beat the daylights out of me for fun.
I knew a girl in Jr. High and High School who played on the boys baseball teams. As I understand it, her mother was something of a crusader for getting her in there; I was never sure if it was her wish to play with the boys or her mom's, but it seemed like there was some element of attention-mongering going on. Which didn't seem to work much at the student level, the kids didn't care as long as she was good enough to be on the team. I seem to recall a lot of parents were upset, though.
If the kid has the skill, I don't much care when girls play on the boys' teams (although the reverse would be problematic, for reasons that should be obvious). That said, I'm with you, Mush - there are also good reasons not to allow it, and good for Our Lady of Sorrows for standing up for their ideals.
Tough spot for the girl, though - stick to her guns and refuse to sit it out, and the whole team loses, even though they "win;" sit it out, and she'll feel as though she's betrayed her own ideals. Ideals which have probably been vociferously supported by everyone with a desire to see girls play on the boys' teams, and which she has every reason to believe are correct, such that she would feel like she was betraying not just herself, but women everywhere. Either way, she loses.
There's always a couple of good lady fighters - its just an example of how a bit of the masculine and feminine are in all of us. If we had to be totally one or the other, it would probably eliminate our microcosmic-ness, methinks.
We tend to think too biologically, methinks, while the woman is body, man is head, so while woman-ness gets its seal from something bodily - the potential for producing life, man-ness gets its seal from something spiritual - the spirit of warfare.
When we consider that women can fight if need be and wonder how fighting can be man's thing, I think we forget that bodily speaking - it is not beyond possibility for a man to be bodily altered to possess a womb. There might be some strange circumstance in the wild imagination of science fiction where this arrangement might make sense - but then this tracks, methinks, more to man's control over his strength.
When I played soccer, the girls were much more violent and competitive than the guys. This didn't make them better - it was as though they weren't entirely comfortable with strength - as if the power came only with anger. As a man (and I can see this in my son) violence is almost an ordinary expression of your being. My son, for instance, shows his affection by smacking things with his hands (not too hard, of course) because he is excited and happy. So I try to teach him to be a bit more gentle.
This also explains the male magnetism towards all things violent - without a good outlet, it becomes a vice. I guess you could say the same thing for a woman's life-bringing potential as well.
OT, but not really...
Thank you for your prayers asked for for the mom and dad-to-be a few weeks ago. Baby was born and had heart surgery about 5 days later. Everything has gone so well they may all be going home next week already. Two more surgeries to go over the next couple of years is the plan.
I was blown away enough by all this until the new dad drew a picture for me of how the baby's heart and system had adapted to the 3-chambered pumper before it was even born and how the doctors had supported that adaptation with still more re-routed plumbing with the surgery. He has effectively a one-chambered heart now. Beats will be a bit quicker and blood pressure a little higher and blood chemistry will, if not already, change to meet demand.
Now the doctors did not add anything mechanical or artificial to the baby's system. They re-routed some plumbing with parts the baby already had and the re-routing was something that had already begun BY ITSELF.
This is amazing to me -- a human body apparently has back-up plans to systems as fundamental and critical and primary as the heart. And the plan B system is knowledge that lies waiting somewhere for somewhen. To me, it is ANAZING ENOUGH that the body can follow through on Plan A. It has Plan B? What else does this body know that I don't know? Why am I always the last to find out?!
Happy Morher's Dad, indeed!
"a human body apparently has back-up plans to systems as fundamental and critical and primary as the heart."
Rick,
I took a class on the mathematics of System Stability. In the textbook, there was an essay on system stability in the Human Body called 'Homeostasis'. I wish I could recall the details of the article, but all I can say is that the I received the impression that the body is rather robust and hard to shutdown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_homeostasis
You would be amazed at all the different 'systems' working within your body trying to keep things as normal and moderate as possible - which is similiarly reflected in the truly moderate climate of Earth (comparative to other planets).
Yes, balance, adapt to environment. That I can understand, and completely amazed by all that. But this seems radically different. I mean, accepting someone else's kidney is amazing but generally the same idea. Getting by in one kidney - same. I'm at a loss for a sufficient analogy here.
A good analogy might be the way you'll see a little weed growing out of what appears to be solid asphalt. Life finds a way.
Re the body, it has an innate drive toward wholeness. Medicine would be powerless to cure us in the absence of this drive. It can only enlist it, not create it.
It is the same, BTW, with intellect, psyche, and spirit. We all have a drive toward "wholeness" of knowledge, of mind, and of being. But of course, this drive would be meaningless in the absence of the attractor, otherwise we'd be designed to seek something that doesn't exist.
Maybe a better analogy would be how the Professor on Gilligan's Island could make a radio out of seaweed and a coconut shell.
Indeed, it is a drive. Forces at play. Giggling, if we could hear them. My cells get the joke even if I don't.
Hats off to the Doctors btw. I'd have thought it would have been a more simple plan to reconstruct the 4th chamber. Instead the Doctors "saw" the direction the body was already going and pitched-in.
As Hippocrates said, "the physician merely amuses the patient while nature heals him.”
This begs the question of why anyone would find it amusing to be cut open.
Interesting -- there are all sorts of theories as to why psychotherapy "works," at least when it does. I think it just comes down to Hippocrates' observation.
It's also amazing how a patient can interfere with the body's own healing. It's like Hippocrates in reverse. The workers comp system is overflowing with patients who don't get better because they don't want to get better. There are actually objective statistics to support this. For example, if someone likes their job, they heal much faster and more completely. But if they hate their job, they end up with a lot of permanent disability.
Maybe the Tommy John surgery only works so well because pitchers love their work... Likewise, especially in the playoffs, hockey players can heal overnight...
And of course, the American economy is so robust that it takes a genius to f*ck it up.
Just as I was leaving that comment, I thought of another example, the Catholic Church. In reading this page-turning history of Vatican II, it is striking how the institution has survived in spite of some of the men who were in charge of it. It's also incredible that Vatican II occurred at all, because the salutary changes it introduced were in the teeth of a fierce opposition that amounted to less than five percent of the Bishops. For a host of reasons, the Church is "healthier" today than it was before V2. Vatican II and Pope John Paul II were providential in the extreme.
"Interesting -- there are all sorts of theories as to why psychotherapy "works," at least when it does. "
I sometimes wonder if all some of those patients need is a friend who will listen to them.
...heh... just thinking out loud, Bob. :)
And apparently, it just popped into Pope John's head in 1959 -- a few months after taking office -- "hey, why not have council?" Completely spontaneous vertical ingression, with no prior rumination, and indeed, no clear agenda and no crisis that needed to be addressed (as in past councils). It's almost like he "smelled" the 1960s approaching....
"the American economy is so robust that it takes a genius to f*ck it up."
Now that's reassuring, Bob. Think I should vote for Obama next year? :)
Cond: The "medicalization" of psychotherapy is an interesting subject in itself, because it didn't have to be that way. One could argue that 19th century Christian Science Practitioners were the first psychotherapists. Because what did they do? They took the time to sit with generally hysterical females with a lot of mysterious somatic complaints, and by having an intimate spiritual relationship, they got better.
"In reading this page-turning history of Vatican II, it is striking how the institution has survived in spite of some of the men who were in charge of it."
Its got a good foundation via the Bible (thus get built and rebuilt ad infinitum)?
I think the foundation is the Holy Spirit....
In other words, over the long haul it corrects and re-inspires things....
"They took the time to sit with generally hysterical females with a lot of mysterious somatic complaints, and by having an intimate spiritual relationship, they got better."
Life can sure be cold. Sometimes all it takes is someone who cares: the Presence of anOther which ... invokes the One, I suppose.
"I think the foundation is the Holy Spirit...."
Yea. Nice. Better. its not merely in the Holy Book, but in the Wholly Book.
LOL... now I'm talking like you!
@ Rick - that's great news about the baby! Thanks for the discussion it inspired, too - good Sunday reading :)
@Rick
Childhood can be such a joyous time if you are loved. Looks like the Baby-boy is off to a good start in that capacity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cole_Thomas_The_Voyage_of_Life_Childhood_1842.jpg
"An infant is safely ensconced in a boat guided by an angel. The landscape is lush; everything is calm and basking in warm sunshine, reflecting the innocence and joy of childhood. The boat glides out of a dark, craggy cave which Cole himself described as "emblematic of our earthly origin, and the mysterious Past."[1] The river is smooth and narrow, symbolizing the sheltered experience of childhood. The figurehead on the prow holds an hourglass representing time."
It's nice to be able to share it. It's the kind you want to run down the street with, grabbing people by the lapels.
Other Good News Dept.:
Discovered a nice little movie recently, The Butterfly. It's French (I'm sorry) so it's originally titled, La Papillion. The little girl will steal your heart. So will the old man.
Oh, and it's on Netflix Instant.
Speaking of discoveries, I just found out about Esperanza Spalding. Check out the samples. Eary enough that she's such a prodigy, but she also has such maturity and assuredness in her voice.
Rick,
That is great news. Bob just told me about it this morning. I'm way behind on reading comments lately.
Happy Mother's Day to all. This morning I told Bob that I feel that Tristan has carved the parents he needed out of us like the Colorado River did to the Grand Canyon. It was a slow, steady, painful, but perfect process. You'll hear more about it when he steals my idea and posts about it, I'm sure ;)
Thank you Bob...you do so much to give me the opportunity to be a better mother. And happy 28th anniversary of our first date :)
love,
Leslie
(Mrs. G)
Happy Mother's day, Mrs. Godwin (and 28th Anniversary of _the_ first date).
A twice Blessed Day.
Praise the Lord. That is good news, Rick.
Re the body, it has an innate drive toward wholeness. Medicine would be powerless to cure us in the absence of this drive. It can only enlist it, not create it.
When my FIL had one of his knee replacements, he was right at 80. The doctor who did the surgery urged us not to leave him in the hospital. He said that patients with borderline dementia have trouble with the general anesthetic anyway. Being at home helps them recover more of their memory. I will never forget him explaining to the concerned family members his role as a doctor. "I'm just a carpenter," he said. "The body heals itself."
I've been away for many posts, but had the chance to skim today, which, is like a loofah scrub to the face. Refreshing. Thank you. :)
It is also like a compass-check in/realignment. I've thought that and used it that way for a long time. Once the compass is at N., and the other points are at right angles, it is like stepping under the shade of wide branch which lets the right amount of light in, and has the right amount of speckled shadow.
"It is like", being the blog. I sort of had thought this about the blog when I read:
"I realize that 2,000 posts is a major commitment to a mere *blogger*..."
and thought -- uh hu ho! Contraire! And silently laughed out loud, a silent full belly chuckle, thinking 'how funny, that sounds most reasonable.' It is still my elusive goal, but I realize there is something to the nowness surfing stream, and that if needed, one can always pluck a chord or two at random, or by topic search, even. So that's that. The good OC!
Hey all, been gone a while, but I've been lurking again for a couple weeks.
Perhaps it doesn't need saying, but I will say it anyway: war making is not inherently righteous. Discuss.
I continue to be amazed at how you are able to read timeless wisdom, explicate it pretty well, and then proceed to interpret it as an unequivocal endorsement of the standard WSJ line. I try to avoid assuming bad faith, but sometimes it's difficult.
And lest you assume that I am some pinko-commie pacifist tree hugger, know that this passage changed my life:
"'Oh, you kings, you kings!' cried out Adam, in a burst of scorn. 'How humane you are, how tender, how considerate! You will make war for a frontier, or the imports of a foreign harbour; you will shed blood for the precise duty on lace, or the salute to an admiral. But for the things that make life itself worthy or miserable—how humane you are! I say here, and I know well what I speak of, there were never any necessary wars but the religious wars. There were never any just wars but the religious wars. There were never any humane wars but the religious wars. For these men were fighting for something that claimed, at least, to be the happiness of a man, the virtue of a man. A Crusader thought, at least, that Islam hurt the soul of every man, king or tinker, that it could really capture. I think Buck and Barker and these rich vultures hurt the soul of every man, hurt every inch of the ground, hurt every brick of the houses, that they can really capture. Do you think I have no right to fight for Notting Hill, you whose English Government has so often fought for tomfooleries? If, as your rich friends say, there are no gods, and the skies are dark above us, what should a man fight for, but the place where he had the Eden of childhood and the short heaven of first love? If no temples and no scriptures are sacred, what is sacred if a man's own youth is not sacred?'"
- The Napolean of Notting Hill
I don't doubt that the holy wars never ended, and will never end until Our Lord returns. But the drones in Yemen and Pakistan are not restoring any order besides the order of the cemetery, and yet you think the problem with the Left is that they are pacifists.
I don't think I would have said it the same way today, but I didn't have time to re-formulate what I was trying to say back then.
Gabe, really? That's all you got out of that?
Considering that at the time Bob wrote this, we were still suffering through the protesters screeching "No blood for oil!" and "Unilateral war!" it strikes me as a fairly accurate observation for the time it was written, based on what most on the left claimed they wanted.
The left's problem isn't pacifism per se, but rather that they preach pacisfism and demand it from their ideological opponents - and pacifism is a very bad idea which often masquerades as a good one - yet they themselves are not only not passive, they are willing to turn a blind eye to just about any type of violence so long as it supports their own agenda. They are more than happy to make war, but what they fight for is decidedly not righteousness nor transcendence, no matter what they claim. By their fruits shall ye know them...
Fair enough, but I would say that there has been a pretty unexpected (if you believe the TV) continuity in the USG's foreign policy, from the last administration to the current one. It's just a matter of opening your eyes. For what it's worth, it took the actions of this administration to make me see it.
As to the purpose of these wars, if having a leader who was elected, calls himself (or herself!) a president, and wears a suit is indicative of order and civilization, then I guess everything's going to sort itself out for the best sooner or later. But you need to ask yourself whether this outcome means that we have advanced the cause of the angels in the holy war.
And don't hold up idiots as the standard by which you judge your own understanding of the world. That idiots objected to it for spurious reasons doesn't mean there are no reasons (or even that those objections were spurious, in some instances). If there's one mental tic that I could efface from the conservative hive mind, it would be the reflexive recourse how annoying the Left is, the habit of defining oneself in opposition to something. That is not an argument.
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