Immutable and Attractive. Determinative and Living. How's that?
One way of looking at it is to say that humans are always subject to two temporal "forces" or "streams," which we might call Fate and Destiny, the former more "exterior" (or imposed from outside ourselves) the latter "interior" (in which something inside us is "awakened" to its nature or essence).
Both dimensions imply That Which Must Be, but it seems that it is indeed possible to turn away from, or be denied, our Destiny, hence the reality of tragedy.
Those two words -- Immutable and Attractive -- also remind me of Absolute and Infinite, and therefore Male and Female in their cosmic dimensions.
Immutable is what? Strength, majesty, nobility, firmness, stability, authoritative, unwavering, rock, unconquerable, indomitable, incorruptible. Math. Geometry. Particle. Justice. Word.
Attractor is what? Radiant, beautiful, luminous, appeasing, liquiescent, dissolving, melting, nurturing, encompassing. Spirit. Wave. Mercy. Music.
All human beings are descended from one male and one female. Might we say the same of our vertical descent?
Interesting that as the soul ascends toward the source, it too becomes simultaneously Immutable and Radiant, i.e., centered and attractive.
For me, the "community of saints" -- and sages -- serves this function, for they are like fixed stars that radiate and attract us from above. They never compel, they attract.
Or, they are "compelling," but compel our assent in such a way that our freedom is never compromised. Indeed, our assent to this radiant attraction is the height of freedom, for it is a freely given assent to truth.
The Immutable Attractor defines the contours of existence, since it also implies the circularity that constitutes the human journey. For the Immutable is detachment, elevation, and eternal, in the face of which our lives are nothing but transient shadows on the horizon of nothingness, fleeting lessons in evanescence.
But there is elevation and there is compassion: "by elevation it withdraws from things, and by compassion it comes back to them" (Schuon). This is the divine circularity that saves us from cosmic absurcularity. Thankfully, God inhales: he ex-pires creation and in-spires (through) us.
Which is reminiscent of the bodhisattva principle, whereby the enlightened being renounces liberation until every person is so freed of his existential entanglements and ontological coagulations.
Or in other words, love overcomes death and returns to the battlefield of existence.
We'll leave off with a passage by Schuon, which goes to Immutability and Attraction:
God has opened a gate in the middle of creation, and this open gate of the world toward God is man; this opening is God's invitation to look towards Him, to tend towards Him, to persevere with regard to Him, and to return to Him....Unbelief and paganism are whatever turns its back on the gate; on its threshold light and darkness separate....
[W]hat a waste and a suicide -- to slip through the human state without truly being man, that is, to pass God by, and thus to pass our own souls by...
And some aphorisms:
Everything is trivial if the universe is not engaged in a metaphysical adventure.
Values are not citizens of this world, but pilgrims from other heavens.
The thirst for the great, the noble and the beautiful is an appetite for God that is ignored.
Only the theocentric vision does not end up reducing man to absolute insignificance.
God is infinitely close and infinitely distant; one should not speak of Him as if He were at some intermediate distance (NGD).
17 comments:
Both dimensions imply That Which Must Be, but it seems that it is indeed possible to turn away from, or be denied, our Destiny, hence the reality of tragedy.
A lot of people have been discussing the recent drop in IQs across the West. If true, there are probably many reasons for this, but likely one of them is the fact that almost all children go to public schools, and public schools seem to be more in the business of proselytizing and intellectually hobbling today's students than in actually cultivating their intelligence. It doesn't matter how smart a kid is, if he is taught and encouraged to believe things that simply aren't true; his intellect, no matter how towering, is built on a foundation of sand. In this manner, generations are indeed being denied their destiny, and it truly is a tragedy.
This was a great post, gave an uplifting effect. It is packed with wisdom. As your Schuon verbiage recounts, it is a waste and a suicide to slide through life without reaching out to God.
Schuon nails it, however he could have leavened this heavy message with the good news that however badly a person muffs this life, there is a likely another life lined up and ready to go; the chances to get it right are multifarious and therefore despair can be side-lined as irrelevant. As many Yogins have pointed out, the one thing not to do is despair. All else is permitted.
Unless you think there is only one life per customer; in that case despair becomes harder to ward off.
I would add to your great post that a comprehensive submission to the will of God answers all questions, solves all mysteries, and brings great peace. The fact is, you don't need to know everything, and attempting to do so impedes the ability to conform to the will of God.
If you feel strongly you need it, go after any specific category of knowledge, but if it is mere curiosity for its own sake it is not a good use of your time. The mind is a powerful tool but it is a only a tool, and it is not the master.
So say the wise ones.
however badly a person muffs this life, there is a likely another life lined up and ready to go
No way to know that, and only a fool would count on it to be so. Even so, there is no need to despair - there is hope, that no matter how badly one muffs this life, even until the last moment there is an opportunity for repentance. When it comes down to it, every one of us is one of the thieves crucified with Him on Good Friday: all are condemned to death. But we can die with Him, and thus also share in His resurrection. Or we can scoff. Your choice.
Hi Julie:
The opportunity for repentance plan is problematic. Repentance has to be renewed periodically to be effective. In other words, if you wait until the last minute of your life to repent for the first time, your reception by St. Peter is likely to be frosty. He's not going to buy it; Jesus would have to do a review to ensure sincerity was there. If it wasn't, well then....
This is why the automatic reincarnation plan is relied upon by millions, as it is foolproof. It does not require any input or actions. There is nothing foolish about counting on this at all. Is it really there? Chances run about 50/50, same as the repentance plan.
The best plan is to practice repentance sincerely, and love and obey Jesus. In addition, do surrender Yoga for optimum communion with God and expect reincarnation as a matter of course. Then you get the best of both worlds.
God will likely give to each what they want, one or more lives, a personal choice as to how many you want to do.
You go ahead and keep telling yourself that. I'd add, "see how that works out," but of course, you'd have to die and be reborn, so...
I am with you, Julie. God forgives us, but we have to repent and ask in this lifetime.
Mrs. G
Julie, Leslie:
There is no evidence to support your one life hypothesis, or mine of multiple lives. It is all conjecture. The founding essential text of Christianity, the Bible, could be entirely fictitious. Sorry. The Vedas are unverifiable as well, except by personal experience.
However, I understand the Christian faithful have to defend themselves against doubt, and putting on blinders or however they want to do that is a wise choice. People of all faiths do this. It is better to believe one faith perfectly than to believe in many part way.
Yoga has a slight edge over all as it is heavily weighted towards direct contact to O, sans texts or belief systems (or family members of O such as His son).
Christians do Yoga, beyond a doubt. Every prayer is Yoga. So this is the overarching meta-religion, as it were. And the Yoga does not fail.
"...the Christian faithful have to defend themselves against doubt..."
I disagree; a faith that can't bear to be questioned is no faith at all. Peter walked on water; how quickly, even in the midst of the miracle, did he lose faith? Yet the Lord did not leave him to drown, and over time he became the Rock.
Why does God prefer conservative Christians over liberal ones? Are liberal Christians not really Christians, and thus going to hell?
Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.”
So He told them this parable, saying, “What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’ I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
“Or what woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!’ In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
In the Christianity of the leftist Christian, one of the two elements sooner or later eliminates the other.
In the Christianity of the leftist Christian, one of the two elements sooner or later eliminates the other.
So natural law dictates that either Christianity or leftism must win to take all. It'd sure help if we back this up with some scripture.
It can be reasoned that as American governmental mandates have become more economically conservative (favoring the wealthy), so has declined the appeal of Christianity (favors the meek and poor).
Conservatism always favors the poor, both spiritually and economically. To put it conversely, the gnostic unreality of the left always favors a special class of people.
Since it appears that no Bible verses can be forthcoming, do proofs exist in the gnostically scientific realm?
One can argue that an intelligent designer encouraged the propagation of tribal genes resulting in the human race winning out over every other species of the time. Among these traits appears a genetics which ‘wants’ an elite caste to collect and manage the results of surplus labor for the betterment of the whole, and, should any elite caste fail at such, the masses revolt and try again with a different elite.
Are conservatives are better at resource management? I’d agree with conservatives from a previous age, say the paleocons. But modern conservatives? National debt, endless wars, offshoring of jobs and technology, obliviousness to man-caused catastrophe... don’t seem very conservative or beneficial for today’s poor.
Over a billion souls have been lifted from poverty since 1990, largely as a result of embracing freedom and rejecting the man-caused catastrophe of socialism. You are blinded by ideology and inhabiting a secondary reality of your own projection.
You are blinded by ideology and inhabiting a secondary reality of your own projection.
And you know this how? I'm far too skeptical to engage in such thinking. Agnostic China is kicking our economic butts, by doing what Americans used to do, except for the "Christian" and "conservative" parts. And then China still ranks very low on any published freedom index, not good news. Sorta flies in the face of a free christian nation, doesn't it?
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