Another You?
Timeout for frozen glop
Will-U-B-Mine? Certainement, Monsieur Grand-Pere! Avec plaisir. Baisir baiser! Seras-tu a moi? Mais oui, Mademoiselle. . .
Wait a minute! Why are we speaking French? So I can practice speaking it. Don’t tell me. Your next gig will be selling weird stuff to French-speaking highway bandits. Yes. Wearing bandoliers and flicking Gauloises cigarette butts into hors d’oeuvres trays.
What will these numbskulls be paying you for? To stuff carnations into their bandoliers. How sweet! Perfect for Valentine’s Day. Not so sweet if the carnations I’m stuffing into them contain French military intelligence. What? And I’m Mata Hari and it’s 1917. 1917?? And I’m working for the Germans.
Timeout. Why? So my demure Valentine isn’t snatched out of my arms by an agent of the French Deuxieme Bureau and hauled off for interrogation in Paris. What’s so bad about that? Carousing with Bohemian artistes on Montmartre sure beats planting my face in frozen glop at Yogurt Land.
With the flexible grace of a wild animal
Mata lost her invitation to join them. Why? She lost her head. So what! I get along fine without using mine. The Nouvelle Athenes Café didn’t admit customers if they weren’t properly attired, especially female doyennes expected to wear fancy hats. Our femme fatale put one on where her head used to be and hoped the maître d’ would be distracted by her seductive charms. He wasn’t? Sadly no. Seductive charms and heads with hats were OK but hats without heads weren’t. Poor Mata!
Wait a minute! Women who lose their heads are all over the place. Why should I care about this one? When you get a better look at her, you might see a bit of another exotic dancer. Moi? Yes. This is from Wikipedia:
“Mata Hari brought a carefree provocative style to the stage in her act, which garnered wide acclaim.. . . . Her act . . . broke new ground in a style of entertainment for which Paris was later world-famous. Her style and free-willed attitude made her popular. . . . One journalist in Vienna wrote that . . . Mata Hari was ‘slender and tall with the flexible grace of a wild animal.’”
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A Victim of Circumstance
Charged with treason
Mata Hari’s joining us for Valentine’s Day and the way she joined seem significant. No question! Your thoughts were with the Valentine you actually yearn for. While professing undying “love” for me. Cad! (smek)
“Mata Hari” was nowhere in my thoughts until the instant your voice just now resurrected her memory. Spontaneously. Was she still protesting what might have been a betrayal of integrity and fairness then? Or raising her voice to alert a soulmate to another betrayal that might be in progress now? Betrayal of the woman of intrigue she pretended to be on stage, wild and untamable, or by the “bad woman” she actually was?
Focusing our awareness on a time and place of unprecedented cruelty: World War I France. And a victim of the unprecedented fear and suspicion that accompanied it. An exotic dancer who may have done nothing wrong but was accused of it, found guilty, and punished anyway. What was she accused of? Treason. Spying for France’s enemy, Germany.
The beast of distrust
She didn’t do it? By being born Dutch instead of French; an independent woman, self-made and self-supporting; close to influential men on both sides of the war; a potential threat to lives and careers herself, Mata could have been James Bond’s older sister.
But even more arresting is the pall of fear and suspicion that hung over everything at the time. Circumstantial evidence that the accused was betrayed by a belligerent’s paranoia rather than it’s being betrayed by her disloyalty.
Acting the part of a woman of intrigue was a magnet for audiences craving entertainment. But when the pall descended it became a magnet for attention of another kind. From mobs driven by distrust, craving death to anyone causing it. Anyone not dressed in the French tricolor, Mata’s last choice for a cool outfit on stage.
Innocent scapegoat?
Thus outfitting her for her last act: scapegoat. For prominent men affecting good character, who may have had something to hide. Needing to silence someone who knew too much by shifting blame onto her. Easily done if her stage act had already drawn suspicion for its air of wildness, obedient to no limits on behavior but her own. If so, theirs would have been a betrayal of trust and good character even more repugnant than hers.
Men lured by the mystique of the “bad woman,” flaunting her feminine powers, notorious for humiliating her male inferiors. As Lola-Lola did, the headliner at the cabaret The Blue Angel, to Professor Immanuel Rath. Mata capable of any offense including treason. Meaning only to flaunt her originality, artistry, and independence, incapable of it. Still to be silenced so men of questionable character wouldn’t, by firing squad and beheading.
Crushing an exotic dancer, role-playing “bad woman” to entertain love-drugged men, under the heels of hypocrites to save their butts, goes beyond scapegoating. It’s human sacrifice. A fate with nothing to justify it.
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Artemis
Or predator?
The image of a wild Siberian tiger projected by your exotic dancing is a predator. A combination of striking beauty with danger to be admired from a distance. Because to bend its admirers to its will its threat must be real. And so, too, its pose of wildness. Never to be prey, forever beyond capture.
Unless by prey that it’s taken captive first, owns, possesses, and can do with as it pleases. Tantalizing men with hints of ecstasy, along with reminders that it’s the captor, not its object. Wildness belongs to nobody.
Why would a dancer wrap herself in its aura? Perhaps because in a wilderness of predators competing for dominance, a woman who wants to win cannot allow herself to be dominated. Like a wild beast, she must make it clear to other predators that she is her own master. And if they get too close, she will make them pay for it.
Goddess of the hunt
An intriguing pose whose inspiration could be a figure from ancient Greek mythology. Artemis, goddess of the hunt. An archer notorious for having no hesitation to aim her weapon at men as well as beasts. Fools who betrayed her trust by relating to other women.
It was at Madison Square Garden’s Café Martin, in 1906, that Stanford White, a notorious exploiter of feminine vulnerability, was famously shot and killed by Harry K. Thaw for exploiting his chorus girl wife, Evelyn Nesbit. Directly beneath a statue of Artemis above the Garden’s rooftop theatre. A detail from the 1955 film, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, that I never thought relevant until now.
Artemis is unique among the many archetypes of femininity that a man can choose from for a friend or mate. For her accentuating the potential of injury instead of softening it. The pursuer daring her pursuers to take her captive, needing their attention while letting them know that she can do without it.
Irresistibility vs. invincibility
A stance that a man would find appealing if he’s content to admire a woman’s strength and independence. From a distance, but not appealing if he needs to relate to her close up.
Because despite its brilliance the shine on this gem is for eyes only. An object that’s not complete without a man’s craving to possess it. Its purpose to capture prey for a beautiful but cunning predator, an irresistible force of nature to be feared. Like the bright colors of toxic creatures, dazzling but inedible.
A woman’s independence, free-spirited and admirable, comes with a caveat: that if her independence requires that a man give up his, he can’t be her friend. Not if his passion is commitment to friendship rather than to a contest of wills. Especially one that the woman insists that she’s already won.
Things that matter
The disparity between masculine and feminine physical strength made Mata Hari’s intrigue a distinctly feminine tactic for attracting the opposite sex. By treachery and betrayal. By poison instead of clubs. Faithful to the religion of body idolatry in pursuit of absolute power and freedom. While Mark Antony ended his dream of empire with a sword Cleopatra ended hers with the venom of an asp.
A personification of the “ideal” of conquest by the physical power of attraction to harm and take. The reverse of Love that has no need of bodies meant to attract prey. A huntress like Artemis, armed and dangerous, still isn’t someone a man would want to dance with even if she isn’t a wallflower.
The “ideals” of wildness and willfulness, however romanticized, are enemies. Of compassion and consideration, empathy and giving. Things that matter to both of us.
Getting better acquainted
I’m intrigued! How can I learn more? By checking these out, just a few of many titles she’s inspired:
- Mata Hari: The True Story (1986), by Russell Warren Howe
- A Tangled Web: Mata Hari: Dancer, Courteson, Spy (2017), by Mary W. Craig
- Mata Hari: The Controversial Life and Legacy of World War I’s Most Famous Spy (2017). Charles River Editors.
Or you may do as I did and check out past life regression. Not now but later, when it could help bring clarity to personal issues in need of it. Like what? Like help with healing a broken heart.
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Other Lives, Other Selves
Hints to another life story
Mata Hari can’t be your soulmate. So why didn’t I hear an echo from her fate? Endless possibilities. Maybe I was one of her accusers in a past life and she’s still mad at me. Ah! Now I can relate to her!
A book called “Other Lives, Other Selves” took me to a regressionist while she was being mentored by its author, Roger Woolger. Helping me recall fragments of stories from about a half-dozen past lives. Though I have no recollection of living them, the characters and their experiences were undeniably “real.” Why? For being “there” in the first place but also for the way they made me aware of it.
Instantly. Spontaneously. While I was on my back, when the therapist slammed her hand on the bare floor beside my head. Asking as she did so, “Where are you?” In a voice like a drill sergeant waking up a new recruit. Or a shaman, waking up a spirit that’s been snoozing for an eternity. And it worked? Spectacularly.
What made it delightful?
Nothing premeditated, like everything in this essay except for the first sentence. Why spectacularly? Because the story that each “other self” had to relate brought more awareness to my self. And to effective ways of solving problems related to their stories, that otherwise I wouldn’t have thought of. From other perspectives, always there to help but inaccessible until they were asked for it.
So Mata Hari was one of your past lives? No, though her fate was no worse than most of the others, especially the first. The last one was pure delight. Dare I ask what made it delightful? Of course! A lifetime of joyfulness with you, my one-and-only Valentine. Awwwww.
An uncanny talent for emulating
Then Mata was one of my past lives? For you to say. When might that be? Maybe when your heart is broken and it would be helpful to find out. More likely that Mata came to me because my mind has been opened to such experiences. Spontaneously rather than willfully. And she knew “I did nothing wrong” could be given at least one plausible translation when relayed to you.
And a reason for listening if you’re not resistant to past lives lived by other selves. Who may only be another way that Guidance within offers help for troubled psyches needing understanding. Like Mata Hari, the past life of an intriguing exotic dancer like you.
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Contagion
The fragility of trust
Great entertainment or something that actually happened, we can’t tell. But if there’s a possibility that it might happen again in another context, maybe we do need to tell.
Be afraid! No. Be aware. Not the same as beware. Aware of what? Of how a make-believe artist’s creativity with facts can be used to excuse being creative with facts about her. So if she’s not careful to avoid exploiting the trust of her audience someone in her audience could decide it’s OK to exploit her.
The door to “badness”
Then it’s about trust. Yes. About the pandemic of fear and suspicion that’s gripping the world now. That accounts for the popularity of news outlets, politicians, conspiracy theorists, and others feeding it with deliberate lies. Forgetting that WWI wouldn’t have started if trust hadn’t been demolished first. Or WWII or the Cold War either. And all the wars and threats of war to follow, up to now.
Too much to be aware of? It is overwhelming. But not too much if all that’s called for is to be aware that playing with facts comes at a cost. Even when it’s part of the act. As courting intrigue was for an exotic dancer long ago, unaware of what it would cost. An exhibitionist and courtesan-to-be, courting an audience with performance art. An arresting exhibition of questionable character and morality based on the display of a woman’s body.
Immorality presented as performance art that came to be viewed minus the “art.” Once the door to “badness” is flung open there’s no telling how far it will go or what it will cost.
Victimhood’s refrain
For Mata Hari it was to be forever unable to prove the innocence of a courtesan of guilt. At the cost of her life. Just as she asked for it the warrior courts defeat and death. As incompetence and irresponsibility do when laziness, distraction, neglect, corner-cutting, and selfishness court disaster.
Once disrespect for the truth takes root distrust takes root. Next thing the entire social order splits into warring factions. All certain that they’ve being lied to, treated unfairly, disrespected, and exploited. Blah blah blah. Victimhood’s refrain: poor me!
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Femme Fatale
Intriguing
Mata Hari’s genius for convincing her audience that she was who she pretended to be distinguished her as a good actor. Whether it convinced her, doubtful or not, it gave her something in common with prominent men in time of war.
Whose lives and careers depended on it. Needing to be good actors on the stage of life when their audience was hyper-sensitive to being tricked by bad actors. Their ability to suspend disbelief hair-triggered to go off with belief. Evidence of suspicion being sufficient to convict and execute the accused without proof.
The condition that a pandemic of distrust puts everyone in, of being unfairly judged. Tempted then to retaliate with the rage and hatred of a victim who actually has been wounded. Against wrongdoing hypocrites pretending it. A perfect recipe for replacing friendly relations with combat. No longer mocked by games of competition but made real by war.
No joke!
To be swept up in its madness inevitable for a stage talent synonymous with intrigue. A “femme fatale” which the dictionary defines as a ‘deadly woman’ or ‘lethal woman’. . . [trying] to achieve her hidden purpose by using feminine wiles such as beauty, charm, or . . . in many cases, [an] attitude towards sexuality [that] is . . . intriguing. . . .”
For Curly Howard, being a “victim of coicumstance” was a joke. For Mata Hari it was no joke.
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Inside the Reverse “Thinking” of a Beast
Playing games
An innocent waif like me knows nothing of such things. No “femme fatale” you. I only know how to toss rose buds from my basket. As you skip innocently down Pleasant Street.
An exotic who dances in a style resembling not just a wild animal of mystery but a wild woman of mystery. With an intriguing hint of danger that can become a lure for danger on the stage of life. Bait for attracting wild men who aren’t just pretending to be dangerous.
Is my nice kitty in danger? Could be later if not now. If her innocent waif’s passion for winning games while posing as a wild animal flirting with men, should one day attract predators. Men with their own nice kitties who aren’t playing games.
Taken by the dark side
Mata Hari’s “intrigue” was a lure for human-ape psyches made impure and characters made bad by their loss of integrity. Making of her body an object to be exploited for its power to bring men under its spell. Flipping off the conventions of morality by being “bad” on stage and off stage, immersed in a culture of toxicity of her own making.
Getting what her act asked for: rule over her own “creation.” Toxicity that did what toxicity does: asphyxiate everyone in the theatre including its creator. The fate guaranteed for those so taken with the spellbinding allure of bad that they’re taken by it. By the “dark side,” as Adam Skywalker was.
Taken by Travis Kelce
You mean I have to pretend to be good when I dance? Ugh! You’re my adorable Valentine without being Taylor Swift. But worth noting that she fills her theatre to overflowing effortlessly, not having to pretend to be who she isn’t but by being who she is: good.
Amazing! Yes. Truly. By nourishing the hopes of human-ape psyches for being innocent again, relieved of guilt. Of split minds and characters for being whole again. Independent and erect with the strength of integrity instead of dependent and prostrate without it. Degraded and disgraced by bowing down to others, their “superiors.” Predators lacking humanity, good at pretending to be human so they can possess and consume it.
This and that and that
Telling a story requires that it be told from different perspectives, aware of the differences between the personalities of one character and another if they’re to be believable. Which requires differentiation. An impossibility if awareness is limited to the either-or “thinking” of a beast. Aware only of the one possibility that instinctive action demands rather the many possibilities Mind can choose from.
Because it’s open to seeing things differently. Rather that closed when it’s replaced by animal instinct willing either-this-or-that. Ruling itself off-limits to the faculties of Mind we all have but don’t always use: to choose among this and that, and that, and that.
Projection of madness
No surprise that many types of human-apes have yet to evolve beyond willing like animals instead of thinking like humans. Or that humans fall back onto willing when forced or tempted to do so by circumstances.
That change, as Earth has changed from a wilderness fit for wild beasts into a metropolis of sophistication fit for Sapiens. From choice limited to “to be or not to be” to a tiny electronic device choking itself and its bewildered users on too many selections.
I’ve done nothing wrong! Yes, easier to ignore if coming from another life’s story. Easier to resist the temptation to do what Mata’s accusers may have done: shift blame onto someone else. The tactic rooted in an unwell psyche identified by Sigmund Freud as “projection of guilt.” Employed by a Mind split in two and attacking itself. Projecting guilt into another world to get rid of it. Madness.
The urge to laugh
What was Mata’s downfall? Ape-humans who will either-this-or-that are two-faced as all human-apes are, one face an individual human, the other the reverse, a tribe of gorillas. Except that the either-or version is the choice.
That’s already been made for it, and the consequence of being locked into it is to be forever wary of others two-faced like them. Their idea of “love” being to make their captives two-faced if they aren’t already, so they can be “welcomed” into their tribe.
Why do I feel the urge to laugh? Because willful thinking like a two-faced beast is ridiculous. Hilarious. So have a good laugh.
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The Logic of a Shared World
Forever denied a choice
Mata was a penniless performer, a nobody with a nondescript stage act. Until she hoked it up with lies no one should have taken seriously and became a somebody. Then taking her act offstage once its potential took off for putting her in the rarified company of social prominence and power. Unwilling to part with the power of intrigue that put her conquests under its spell. I would be too. If I can’t turn the spellbinding power of my irresistible feminine charms to make men grovel at my feet the show’s over.
Mata’s career of intrigue peaked at the wrong time. When it put her in the crosshairs of distrust among wartime enemies, unsure of which side she was on. Had she said so it would have broken the spell. No longer intriguing, she would have returned to anonymity, penniless once more but now with no prospects. Having made no choice, to forever be denied a choice.
Her destiny to be manipulated by wartime circumstances beyond her control. An acclaimed performing artist, once a free-spirited pseudo-spy, privileged with citizenship of the world to be on no one’s side. Free to cross boundaries with an Obi-Wan Kenobi “Let her pass,” now convicted of treason. An odious version of trespass, crossing the boundaries of loyalty. Never to cross a boundary again.
Once a somebody manipulating men, now manipulated off her throne of fame in glamorous Paris back to where she started: a nobody. Left for dead but un-dead. In a limbo of justice suspended, as if in a “present” that’s neither past nor future but never Now. In the mud of shell craters in no-man’s land, her voice like a cry for help from the wounded. Echoing “I did nothing wrong,” forever unheard and answered.
Why do I feel the urge to cry? Maybe because you’re under the spell of another master of intrigue. A thought that at one stroke turns pitiful cries for help into gales of laughter.
Where strength lies
The hand holding my pen was provided by my body. The insights it shares come from my mind. If the potential for creative writing is to work, then a good choice of personality type would be one that’s aligned with Mind.
Not wild and willful? No. Nor invulnerable like a beast aware of its domain, vulnerable like a beast unaware of itself. Rather to be disciplined and conscientious. Aware that we live in a shared world. Where “strength” may seem to lie in conquest but draws itself instead from loving friendship. The only way it can in a shared world. Who said that? I did. Wanna make something of it?
Dabbling in “realism”
Are we “dabbling in the occult” when our thoughts venture beyond the physical universe? “Realists” might think so, suspicious of their native psychic abilities and so resisting their use. But those accustomed to using theirs wouldn’t.
I put “realists” in quotes to convey the idea that, by denying themselves the use of a function of Mind essential to Sapiens’ evolution, they’re reversing it. To prevent our going beyond being animals. Not so much dabbling in the occult as trying to make an absurdity respectable: an idyllic state that preceded Mind: its reverse. Boundaryless, undefinable, unthinkable, and so utterly meaningless.
The LAUGH prompt just came on.
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The Great Motivator
Uncle Remus’s companion
“Loving friendship” sounds like a flower in a vase, a nice touch with a Valentine. “Not to me it don’t,” said the Maine farmer. A frill. Isn’t strength more important? Yes, O Stands with Fist. What am I missing?
Everything. You’re thinking that loving friendship is the nice touch with a Valentine when all’s well already and you don’t need anything else. Icing on the cake. Yes. The cherry on top. That being strong and willful put there, not a bluebird on anyone’s shoulder.
The bluebird didn’t wind up there because Uncle Remus was already having a wonderful day. Uncle Remus was having a wonderful day because the bluebird wound up there. Spontaneously.
Not the same as willfully but the exact opposite. Spontaneously, in fact, just so willfulness can’t possibly have anything to do with it. “Spont” being Latin for “willingly” or “voluntarily.” Meaning no one forced it to happen. It happened on its own.
With everything satisfactual
The bluebird that appears to be a trifle is in fact the source of unlimited power. Energy, that helps us meet our needs without going to so much trouble if we work with it. Strength that’s voluntary works with us. “Strength” that’s willed works in reverse. Aiming its opposition against everything including itself. Until there’s nothing left, since that’s the only thing willfulness is for: to be against. To take anything moving forward and reverse it back.
To understand where that leads check the cascade of calamities getting banner headlines everywhere today. Our country tearing itself apart because trust has been replaced by fear and suspicion. By willfulness that chases the bluebird of Spontaneity away along with facts. With everything satisfactual. So it can be in charge and play “god.”
The great motivator: relatability
Everything that matters to our species is an implication, a derivative, of loving friendship. It’s the mother of all values. The controlling consideration that integrates all considerations around it.
Nothing exists or could exist without it. It’s the ideal that ignited movement and creativity with force at the beginning.
Because nothing happens unless it’s Relationship. Love-boundaryless couldn’t get anywhere at the beginning until it connected with Logic-boundaries. Loving friendship is the product and expression of that spontaneous event. The great motivator, relatability.
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The Great Un-Motivator
Is there “life” after the Super Bowl?
Whereas “willful” is unrelatability, the great pretender. To choose the company of “will” striving to hog everything alone at the top is to deprive ourselves of motivation. Because alone at the top is the “ideal” driving willfulness. Of there being nothing left to do, so why leave our comfort zones?
Hierarchy promotes comparisons, comparisons promote competition, competition aims for winning, and winning aims for being alone at the top — with no more competition. Kissing the Lombardi Trophy from the dais after winning the game. Season over. Creation, Energy, motivation – everything gone. The screen goes blank. The buttons on the remote go dead. Life is over.
A whole bunch of LAUGH prompts just came on.
“Willfulness” is meaningless. “Wildness” ridiculous. An obstruction to getting things done with minimal effort instead of making it easier. To having a wonderful day, because a bluebird was welcome to land on our shoulder of its own accord. Instead of willed by selfishness demanding to possess it so it would be the one-and-only to have a wonderful day.
Very interesting. The first time I’ve seen a BOO prompt.
To be good or good for nothing?
It’s easy to distrust when human-ape is still evolving from either-or instinct-driven acting instead of awareness thinking. Obsessed with winning in tribal combat instead of committed to loving friendships. When using others as dumpsters for our own guilt is “normal.” What takes more thought is being aware of the creative possibilities of minds open to change. Open to other perspectives, learning from them and using them to grow and become stronger.
The ”everything” that a willful animal brain is so anxious to capture can’t be found out “there” when it’s already in here. In the Mind that went from offline in our animal kingdom to online. When a new sub-species of ape, endowed with differentiation and choice, appeared on the scene.
Taking over from ape at the top of Earth’s food chain, from there to evolve as it chooses. Because it can. Forward toward Reality in Mind-Relationship Life-Creating that’s good. Or backward toward an “origin” of truth-reversals. Absurdities good for nothing.
A Valentine for all seasons
What if Curious George chooses to go backward? He might “understand” only what he hears through the voice of his manipulator. Instinct “thinking” in reverse, against what it seems to be for. Self-sabotage instead of self-interest. Finding it hard to understand while being easily misunderstood. A reverberation from intrigue long ago, leaving itself open to be misunderstood.
A stage-act of ambiguity by an exotic dancer. Courting ambivalence and receiving mischaracterization in response. Who may still be courting redemption from a miscarriage of justice by overturning history’s verdict of guilt.
Finding in me a sympathetic juror since I, too, am a veteran of mischaracterization, professional and personal. I know the feeling. Perhaps finding in you a kindred spirit who may need help avoiding it. Both of us together, the beneficiaries of a Valentine from the present as well as the past. An opportunity to put our loving friendship to work in a worthy cause. Both of us learning and growing.
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Getting It Right in the Language of Ideas
In the language of Ideas
So nice to have you with me on this special occasion. Sorry, but I stopped paying attention hours ago. Why? The snoring from your loving friends in the audience drowned out your voice. Aha! A call for prolonging my performance that demands a response. To explain why I go on so long. A call for the ushers to serve your audience Kool-Aid.
The length of my letters, my writing style, correspondence in paragraphs that look more like lyrics from music or stanzas from poetry. may seem like affectations. Self-unawareness for overlooking readers’ preference for convention, thinking I’m special. When what I am is a thinker, poet, and former pianist whose mind happens to think that way.
Help from an interpreter
My wordiness isn’t for love of words. It’s for love of the ideas they represent. For the wondrous ways that they free-associate and interrelate to find meaning, and for Guidance from Mind. their source. Relationship. In all things consistent with love for metaphysics, originality, and creativity.
Hard to understand when I no longer think or speak so much in the language of words as in another language. The language of ideas. Hard to understand, too, when it’s not spoken here but only in the Mind imagining it from the real here. Needing help with translation from our interpreter, Guidance, and ourselves through our sixth sense.
What’s “right”?
Yet I’m still a sub-species of ape like everyone else. Happier with quiet and solitude, though crankier than most for being a born contrarian. A metaphysicist and Socratic ethicist whose mission is not to stick with convention but to question it. When convention stifles the passion within for creativity and conscience that depend on questioning. When it so often serves as a cover for wrongdoing, hiding it behind what “most people” do. An obstacle to getting it right.
What is “right”? Here’s a snapshot of object from subject that are both always in motion, subject to change. Striving with changing circumstances toward an always elusive Ideal:
- Striving to understand the way things really are until the penny drops.
- Relationship between Spontaneity-Love and Order-Logic.
- The cause of Life-Creation under the protection of a constitution from willfulness not for
- Guided by the vision of Loving Friendship within Mind that’s Relationship shared and sharing.
- Its integrity affirmed by Choice freely learned, earned, and applied to the work and play of Creation.
- Having nothing whatsoever to do with “commandments.” With matter, bodies, wildness, willfulness, or any other hint of hierarchy from make-believe.
Getting it right is:
- to learn to play our part in Creation while we’re here.
- In Relationship with Guidance accessible to every mind that asks for it.
- In alignment with the way things are, by questioning every aspect of the way things aren’t. In a magic kingdom of reverse-facts: contradictory, hierarchical, combative, and unrelatable. Striving not toward loving friendship but toward its opposite: supremacy alone and inaccessible at the top. One-sided, insensitive, and thoughtless.
The two faces of unrelatability
A definition that implies no love for physical embodiments, personifications, or substitutes for ideas rather than for the ideas themselves. For appearances whose source is a Mind under the influence of its reverse-reflection. Split in two, corrupted and two-faced, that can’t be trusted.
Two-faced because not thinking but acting on inherently insensitive predatory instinct. A one-sided, one-dimensional, binary one-or-the-other beast. Loveless, thoughtless, self-centered, and domineering. Represented by a sub-species of ape. Its embodiment in a hierarchical kingdom of body-brains fluctuating between tribal masks of sociability and phantom menace. The two faces of unrelatability.
Getting it wrong
Then that’s getting it wrong? Yes. A mind that’s at or near the extremity of the body-centered personality type thinks in reverse. Wild and willful. The “enemy” of Mind and its personality type, Mind-centered.
Logic is thinking not in reverse. By a mind at or near the extremity of the Mind-centered personality type. Its purpose not to defend or retaliate but to explain. To reverse the reversal by contradicting it. Best attempted by a contrarian gifted at it from birth.
So that acts of will posing as threats of harm can be understood for what they are. Meaningless. Riduculous. Unreal. Appearances no more what they appear to be than the hoked-up characters of a movie and the set made up for them. All of it to be taken down like the set of a Broadway show, setting the stage for the one to follow. Or not if Logic does its thing: re-reversing “The show must go on” to “Wake up to Reality.”
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Back to Mind, Logic, and Metaphysics
An affront to common sense
My aversion is to appearances and embodiments. For the arrogance they project and the disrespect they imply for ideas and facts. For the truth whose denial is seen for what it is: a reversal by a corrupted Mind’s reverse-reflection. Undefinable, with no boundaries of its own. The reverse of Love whose boundaries are the boundaries of Logic, her mate. And therefore unreal.
Obvious to me but not to reverse-“realists” imagining themselves inhabitants and creators of their own made-up realities. Ordained by the religion of appearances — make-believe – to defend and preserve it in perpetuity against trespassers. Against idealists, their sworn enemy.
Causing my seeking its re-reversal to be misunderstood as a reversal. An out-of-touch affront to common sense. As all questioners of tribal dominance and hypocrisy are misunderstood. No different than the truth-denying, two-faced “realists” who misunderstand them.
What is Real?
Your answer when I asked what is “right” does sound kind of like a conspiracy theory. It can. But the similarity stops there.
Its object isn’t chaos and conflict. It’s for a unique species of animal to put the Mind to use that makes it unique for a better purpose. Questioning appearances until it gets to a better understanding of who it is than an animal. To a better cause than deceiving itself to sew chaos and conflict.
Physics, the study of matter that makes up our universe, was once expected to explain everything about it. To produce another elegant equation like E=MC2, Einstein’s formulation for Energy, only this one to explain the universe it’s made.
But what it produced instead was books entitled “What Is Real?” and “Reality Is not What It Seems.” By physicists at the top of their profession. Who’ve known for over a century that they’ll have to rely on theory to pull it all together since experimental science can’t. Theory that physics can’t produce by itself, so it sought help from philosophy. And where that’s led is to openly questioning whether matter might be a kind of illusion.
An impressive pedigree
Taking thinkers back to where they started. With ancient Greeks who invented metaphysics over 2,500 years ago. A branch of philosophy dedicated to making sense of our universe using Logic. Its inventor was Parmenides, who concluded that matter is illusory. Millennia before the invention of experimental physics.
Parmenides founded the Eleatic School of Logic. A major influence, along with its founder, on the philosophy of Plato, the father of Western thought. If going beyond appearances to make sense of what put them there seems weird it’s not. It has an impressive pedigree.
Burnished by the findings of physics
Now being burnished by the findings of physics. A profession rooted in the work of Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher and protégé of Plato, who turned Western thought away from metaphysics and Logic. So it could look for answers where they should be easier to find, in the study of matter.
A seismic shift in humanity’s search for meaning away from Mind, Logic, and metaphysics to matter, experimental science, and physics. Now concluding like a river that dries up before it reaches the ocean. Calling not for giving up on science but for bringing Mind, Logic, and metaphysics out of retirement to retake the lead. The cause that my work and these thoughts happen to have joined. Spontaneously.
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For and Against Mata Hari
For
My sympathy lies with the Innocence of the Child within. Whose self-corruption by choice was by a Mind deprived it its ability to choose freely and rationally. An honest mistake that might even have been part of the training it needed to perform its role in Creation.
Not at all the dishonesty and malignance attributed to it by “realists.” A mischaracterization of far greater cruelty and consequence than the miscarriage of justice imposed upon an exotic dancer. For what may only have been departures from convention mischaracterized as treason, yet of the same kind.
Mischaracterizations that I’ve experienced in my work perpetrated by sides in conflict I had nothing to do with. Caught as Mata Hari may have been in the politics of reversal fueled by fears and suspicions. By the beast of distrust: undisciplined, unmanaged, incontrollable.
Against
This from thinking biased against judgments of guilt in general and against men abusing women in particular. Yet with no love for female abuse of men either. Who sees in the example set by Mata Hari the cruelty and folly of preying on others instead of relating to them in loving friendship.
Let the goddess of wild and willful entertain us with her cartoonish exploits on Mount Olympus. Artemis, archer and huntress, set free in the wilderness of mythology to slay man and beast as she wills. Just make sure she stays there.
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Meaning
Happy Valentine’s Day, Mata!
Being human-animal we can’t avoid being willful. But being Free Choice in Reality we can also strive in all things to be mindful. The dark side is an act drawn toward the personalities of characters drawn in turn toward acting – make-believe. Drawn toward a “realist” like itself, unreal pretending to be real.
If human-ape suffers from a fatal flaw it would be the many ways that its self-unawareness expresses itself in lack of awareness. In lack of clarity, whether to be alleviated or not by my sharing of insights not for me to say. Only for me to understand that I’m the one meant to learn from them.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Mata. And Happy Valentine’s Day to our loving friendship!