Unawareness is cool?
For some, ‘meaning’ is the flip of a light switch. For others a switch that never comes on. For most of us a light that comes on fitfully without our being aware that we’ve turned anything on. Just working our way through the murk a day at a time. Grateful at the end of it that there might be a tomorrow. ‘Meaning’ is no more resistant to inquiry than any other idea, except that it’s usually the object instead of the subject. When what we’re looking for is the looking it tends to shake things up. Make us aware that our prowess with awareness isn’t what it’s made out to be. A wonder at discovering all sorts of things despite the darkness. Despite our blindfolds.
Seeking meaning in the way things are by looking where it isn’t? In the dark instead of in the light. Yes. While unaware that we’ve added two-factor authentication. Blindfolds, so there’s no chance of finding it even if it’s broad daylight. What ‘blindfolds’? Unawareness. Self-imposed unawareness of who we are. We’re whatever looks back at us in the mirror. It would be if we looked at it. But we either avoid mirrors or we fixate on the image in the mirror imagining it to be someone or something else. That’s not self-love? Only in the perverse way we think of as narcissism. It’s infatuation with an ideal ‘other’. So beguiling that we surrender everything to it. Our identity.
The fairest of them all has misled the queen. Yes. The queen thought the mirror would do her bidding and instead it replaced her. With Queen Unfair. The queen didn’t resist? ‘Mirror’ like anything is function, but before that it’s an idea. Ideas live, along with their source, Mind. Source and thoughts both defined by their function. Everything purpose. And when willfulness intervenes, like the self-regard of the queen, it’s messing with the way things are. Bad enough if it knows what it’s doing but it doesn’t. It can’t know and, in fact, wills itself not to know. Really? Why would it do that? Brace yourself: because it thinks self-unawareness is cool.
The Beauty of Adaptability to Change
A blindfold designed by Giorgio Armani – I could go for that. The mirror is a prompt. Its creative purpose, to keep thoughts and feelings from getting too comfortable in their surroundings. Why would that help? By helping with Self-Awareness, the benefactor and beneficiary of Creativity. Keeping the agents of Creation on their toes, when the living Source of ideas and ideas growing with Movement are constantly changing. Constantly rounding to situations that call for vision and listening, recognition and hearing, the Meaning implicit in them. Awareness that makes it possible to answer its call with a response that fits. Creatively and sensitively, lovingly and logically. Spontaneously, within the protection and discipline of Order. Beautifully, when Movement is an idea; every idea is Life; every Life is Self-Worth; and Self-Worth is beautiful.
How does the mirror prompt? By questioning implicit in reflection. When subject regards its reflection on the surface of a lake it will find help with recognition if what it seeks is Self-Awareness. Understanding that perfection is beyond reach in the presence of Movement. An impossibility at odds with the idea behind it, of Relatability, and therefore in constant need of self-questioning. Adaptability to change. The prerequisite to functioning in Creation that’s satisfied by an act of self-discipline: Self-questioning in a mirror. Periodic self-examination to make sure we’re keeping pace and not wishful-thinking our flaws and difficulties away.
The know-it-all
And not projecting an image of who we will ourselves to be instead of taking and receiving an unsparing look at who we are. Making of ourselves objects alien to our surroundings, alien to those who need for us to be here and now at their sides. Instead of off in another reality. If object blindfolded by self-unawareness were to approach the lake a mirror-image questioning couldn’t be of any use. Not when it’s willed not to be there. Willed not to contradict the beholder’s answers.
The know-it-all. A self-appointed, self-sufficient ‘god’. An object distant and inaccessible. That owns and possesses, dominates and controls, the make-believe of its own invention. A bull in a pasture. Who could never accept or survive a brush with honesty. Questioning from a mirror or the Meaning of its reflection. That the ‘bull’ is a herd of many members. Isolated, separated bodies. Many selves, that makes no sense in a Reality of one Self. One Mind interconnecting, one Life-Creation interrelating. Of one Function: Self-Awareness, extending and expanding, sharing and illuminating itself. Through the Worth and Integrity of Life-Creation: one System, enabled, empowered, and integrated by the timeless, spontaneous Energy of Movement.
If ‘separation’ were possible in any sense then the particles of particle physics would not be ‘entangled’. But they are. And to think that they should be separate is what’s ‘spooky’, not their interconnectedness.
Attributes of Mind and Creation, each functioning with the Character and Integrity of Free Choice, are prerequisites of Worth that can’t be given. That must be earned. By risking the stakes invested in getting it right if it gets it wrong. By accepting the consequences when it is wrong, learning from its mistakes, and moving on. The Reality and Beauty of Learning and Growth, that could never be shared with the willfulness and self-unawareness of a herd. With the mentality of a Machiavellian beast. ‘Strength’ per-versed into weakness, kindness into cruelty. By self-imposed ignorance: the enemy of Self-Awareness, Learning, and Growth. Of Mind and Relationship, Reality and Creation. Self-unawareness. The enemy-all-things-bad of Movement-all-things-Good.
The special effect
The guiding principle of the flip side of Movement is comfort. What it’s used to – its comfort zone. Which translates into resistance to Change. Hysterical and ruthless, when ‘self’ is resistance to Movement-Change and nothing else. When anti-movement is comfortable with self-unawareness. The reverse of Movement propelled, motivated, by functions that together seek Self-expression through Self-Awareness. Where ‘Self’ is all that Mind-Relationship is and does: Everything.
Meaning that whatever anti-movement ‘self’ is and does isn’t and doesn’t. And, crucially, it’s unaware of it. As unambiguous a definition of negativity there can be if negativity can’t even define itself. Can’t even admit to the existence of an idea for fear that it would arouse its arch-enemy: Mind. Self-unawareness: what a blessing! The gift of blanket deniability. Protection from prosecution for life. Hey fellas! I can do anything I want and get away with it! Exactly. The flip side of Psyche’s vulnerability — Innocence trusting, forgiving, and shared. Twisted into the wrongdoing of self-unawareness. Invincibility distrusting, unforgiving, and unshared. ‘Exoneration’ of guilt by the magic of self-pardon. Like everything about opposition to forward progress: an absurdity.
‘Definition’ is by definition the most positive of ideas. The idea of being definitive. Taking a stand. Accepting the limits of the way things are. Of who we are as individual Persons and the consequences. The costs along with the benefits.
The meaning of negativity not doing so, not accepting Definition and being definitive is that it’s the Joker with a thousand masks. That can’t be pinned down. Evasive and cunning. It’s the magician who traffics in magic. Finding comfort in make-believe. In pretense that excuses itself and its onlookers from awareness of the way things are. From responsibility for managing the way things affect Reality and Lives in their Movement. From managing Movement while the magician attends to make-believe. To the magic of its act. A special effect possible only in the condition of self-unawareness.
Reversal’s ‘ideal’ of chaos
Herd mentality is separation. Fear finding safety and comfort in numbers. Size of herd its defense against the way things are: Movement, Change, Progress, Evolution. If it has enough votes it can negate, resist, and deny anything contrary to its will. It can be change-proof, its ultimate ideal. By being the biggest in the hierarchy of size: of apes in a culture of genuflection to physical superiority. Beyond challenging. Beyond questioning. An ideal that’s only achievable by separation – denial of interrelationships – when it can amass higher numbers of bodies on the field of competition. A bigger herd.
Bigness is everything. To be the biggest a constant preoccupation in the presence of Movement. Of Growth that’s constantly expanding, when enemies are conspiring in self-unawareness to poach its herd. To achieve supremacy in size. All that matters to hoist the Lombardi trophy, whatever it takes to win in competition, to do better in hierarchy and rise to the top, won’t matter if the Joker-magician’s herd of beasts is the biggest in numbers. The strongest, for then it can own the Lombardi trophy and never give it up. Can write the script any way it likes. Make up stuff because all rights are the prerogative of might. The only source of guidance that’s needed. The comfort of not being limited by the boundaries of Definition or Conscience either one.
Negativity revels in its state of reversal against Movement. Why not, if anything-goes has no boundaries to contend with? Indeed! The flip side of boundaryless Love, that’s not complete, not a functional self without its mate, friend, and companion. Logic. Boundaries. The Ideal of Order. Everything fitting together in harmony against reversal’s ‘ideal’ of chaos. Nothing fitting together, everything coming apart.
Management training
The Meaning of Movement forward is the value and necessity of management. When Meaning is defined by its cause, the Ideal of Relationship. Its expression Loving Friendship, all things positive and Good, in the absence of a static big-picture big-answer know-it-all. In the implied condition of anything goes. Requiring the faculties of Mind thinking and feeling, guided by the principles of reasoning and the values of Conscience, choosing freely with Character and Integrity. Among possibilities that may include impossibilities if Mind is in a state of self-unawareness. As the function of Free Choice must be if it’s to Learn from its mistakes and Grow with wisdom without disrupting Movement. The way things are.
The Meaning of Forgiveness is that it’s one way to manage one aspect of the flip side of Movement. The susceptibility of the agents of Movement – the elements of Creation – questioning with open Minds, to being flipped if they aren’t functioning in concert with Guidance and Free Choice together choosing freely. Aware of the possibility of impossibility. Of unreality where anything goes is explicit instead of implicit, active instead of inactive, Choice is no longer free, and Character is corrupted by self-defeat in an animal kingdom of hierarchy. Ruled by a know-it-all unrelatable beast. Herd mentality.
The susceptibility of Movement to reversal when, to be Free, Choice must be free to choose in error. Our condition of life on Earth being proof that Choice can choose in error when it’s doing so much of the time if not all the time. Even if in doing so it’s only in training to learn how to manage the implication of reversal.
What makes Forgiveness work
The agents of Movement-Creation questioning with open minds can be flipped into self-defeat when the door is left open to a reversal of the story of Movement-Creation. Of its Meaning. From the sequence of Logic-Order, of Movement forward toward expansion-Growth of Life, of Self-Awareness Love-Logic — Free Choice Definition Character Conscience Good Loving Friendship Ideal – into a false narrative of treachery and betrayal, abandonment and neglect, wrongdoing and guilt. Into injury by victimhood wreaking vengeance.
Causing emotional pain and psychological wounding that can only be assuaged by Forgiveness. Letting go of the offense and agony of injustice, thereby letting others off the hook in order to attain inner peace. “Peace at any price” – the cry from the heart after a lifetime of woundedness and wounding, regrets and remorse. Guilt. Both the curse and the blessing of religion. The narrator of the story.
What makes Forgiveness work is empathy combining with differentiation – Love with Logic – to understand that we are one Self redefined by its imagination into many selves. Herds. ‘Human’s’ classification by zoology as ‘tribe’. A sub-species of ape. Whose members being one Self are but mirrors of one another. Undifferentiated. There being no difference, empathy can then express itself unimpeded by any suggestion of resistance or hostility from an ‘other’. An enemy. Thus ‘Love your enemy” not because enemy is lovable but because ‘other’ isn’t ‘enemy’. And because Forgiveness pulled off by empathy and differentiation has removed all trace of guilt. Thus the phenomenon of ‘other’ perceived as ‘Christ’. Innocence. Self-friend-brother, rather than guilt-enemy.
Dismissal with a laugh
For minds-questioning susceptible to self-delusion by Meaning, flipped from cause-effect into the chaos of anything goes conspiratorial herd mentality guilt, Forgiveness is effective management. For minds that aren’t susceptible to herd mentality storytelling, Forgiveness makes no sense. Undoing guilt is undoing psychopathy of a particularly debilitating and noxious form. When the root of it goes beyond managing an effect. It’s managing the cause: the absurd premise triggered by Movement. One basis for its implied self-questioning, that Movement was preceded by its reverse. Anti-movement. Paralysis. A cesspool stinking of stagnation. T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land.
The idea implicit in the grotesque image of a static big picture presided over by a know-it-all, king of make-believe. Everything reverse-opposite to Movement forward. Meaning per-versed from the Good of Character with Integrity to ass-kissing corruption in hierarchy. Nihilism. The M.O. of herd mentality and its provocation du jour: the flagrant abuse of civility. Ruthless, senseless, undifferentiating cruelty masquerading as ‘strength’.
Forgiveness has its moment when personal relationships require it. Management of the rule of an absurdity, the know-it-all ‘God’, requires something else. Deployment of the one attribute that it can never deploy: the honesty of Self-Awareness. Awareness that ‘herd’ is a myth and so is its invention, ‘God’. The bully whose ‘might’ consists of numbers of body-brains, fabrications as unreal as itself. Clones lifted from the drawing board of the know-it-all, a cartoonist. Without purpose or substance, motivation or Meaning, beyond manipulation. The gulling of self-unaware minds with mindless provocations. Until the truth comes home at last: they’re doing this to themselves. Betraying the Ideal of Strength with artifice. With weakness in all its manifestations.
The ’army’ deployed against its ‘enemies’ made up by its own provocations is an act. The “triumph of the will” nothing more than theatrics given form and force by fools deluded by it. Herd mentality is neither ‘herd’ nor ‘mentality’. It’s a mindless Hallowe’en ghost, no more to be feared than ‘beware’ mouthed by a front-yard skeleton. No more in need of Forgiveness when the point of it is a joke. What the situation calls for is dismissal with a laugh.
The way things really are
Or would if herd mentality’s crowning achievement hadn’t taken root in the human Psyche. The idea of ‘God’, the ‘supreme being’ of religion. The “bad thing” of psychology and the face of psychopathy. That all venerate with love when it’s nice and fear to hate when it’s not. An impenetrable labyrinth of reversals made ‘relatable’ by the human-ape body. The universal understudy for all ideas that come from Mind: Body idolatry. Performance art on the altar of Self. The ‘artist’ a herd. Violator of Psyche triumphant. No self. An imposter, absurdity, and joke.
The works of Movement, evolution, and Creation have nothing to do with hierarchy and everything to do with Relatability. With Relationship that’s Mind. Thinking with Logic and differentiation. Feeling with Love and empathy. Acting with the Energy of Spontaneity in the timelessness of Now. Relating through Guidance that makes Choice with Character and Integrity Free and the Ideal of Worth in Loving Friendship possible.
Present in the idea expressed by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address. All the poetic inspiration that resistance needs to put herd mentality and its theatrics of the absurd where they belong. At the top of the list of propositions to be questioned.
Let Meaning be found in the idea of Forgiveness when we reflect on Christmas. The birth of Jesus. One manifestation of Guidance. Always at our side to help with managing Movement and its flip side. Let it also be found in something more basic. More attuned to the dynamic of reversal behind it. Of negativity, and able to manage it. Questioning. Rooted in Guidance from Definition.
The way things are. That’s integrated instead of fractured, definitive instead of deceptive, transparent instead of devious. The one response that questioning can’t handle when it’s based on a joke, a magic act, hidden behind self-unawareness. The comeuppance to herd mentality getting away with murder. The reflection in the mirror that it can’t bring itself to look at. The plain fact of Movement and the Ideal moving it. Of Loving Friendship. Relatability. Character with Integrity. Worth earned, Learned, and Freely Chosen. The way things really are.
An act of futility
Forgiveness starts with the assumption of guilt. With having bought into the false narrative of conspiracy. Incipient herd mentality, when cruelty is afoot and the perpetrator skulking about can’t possibly be one individual. There is no such thing. The only ‘self’ is herd. To the gallows with all who deny it! Indeed. Managing the flip side in its entirety requires questioning. That questions liar as well as lie. The know-it-all ‘God’. The ‘supreme being’ and its unquestioned rule over hierarchy. Animal-kingdom ass-kissing corruption. This the ‘heaven’ of herd mentality. We’re living it: body idolatry. Life on Earth.
Jesus’ example was, and continues to be, a reflection on injustice by psychopathy among individuals. Awareness of the Real from Guidance limited the scope of his ministry; ‘herd’ had no Meaning for him. Unaware of the unreal, he ventured onto its turf, aroused the fury of the beast, and took the brunt of its cruelty. The motive attributed to him in the Bible rings false, of founding a movement with a religion and its church. There’s none of that in A Course in Miracles. No exhortation to associate with anything ‘herd’, ‘Christianity’ or its ‘Church.’ Certainly not with anything hierarchy. But it’s a call for Love and Forgiveness, as full-throated and compelling as you’ll find anywhere. Unmistakably Jesus. Unmistakably authentic.
Plato, on the other hand, was not so limited. His “Allegory of the Cave” was a reflection on injustice by the psychopathy of herd mentality. The authorities of Athens, dishonorable, mindless beasts in his view. Rulers of dissipation and hierarchy, who forced their will upon an honorable person. Socrates, a personification of the idea of questioning that can’t be silenced. Unable to silence the idea, they silenced his body. An act of futility that, like the crucifixion of Jesus, only amplified idea and questioning both. The Reality of Mind differentiating with empathy. Meaning with Purpose. Strength with Endurance.
The allure and insanity of wildness
Jungian intuitive psychology opens analysis to herd mentality through personality type theory. That allows for ordering and re-ordering traits until they tell their story: divergence between Mind- and body-oriented, individual- and group-oriented, Self-Awareness and self-unawareness, conscious deliberation and animal instinct. Crucially between inward and outward: the difference between Spontaneous reflection – intuitive insight from Mind’s sixth sense — and the five senses of the body. Wild and willful.
The allure of wildness being central to both.
- Love in its boundaryless state before joining with Logic to form Life-Creation’s Source, Mind brought to Self-Awareness and Definition by Relationship.
- The mythical big picture-answer at the ‘beginning’: boundaryless make-believe. Its know-it-all pretender a law unto itself. An absurdity: absolute freedom beyond the limits of Definition.
Everyone wants it anyway. Yes. So much so that willfulness periodically goes all out to impose wildness onto the way things are. On the mistaken notion that appearances are real; ‘triumph’ is an appearance; will is the ‘creator’ of appearances; and ‘triumph’ can therefore be achieved by an act of will. By an act of force.
Why force? Herd mentality is constitutionally unable to get the message. There’s no reasoning with a bull in a pasture. No point to philosophizing about mind-changing. Its nature is self-unawareness. Reinforced by the nature of its origin: the reversal of movement. A logical implication triggered by Movement in the absence of a static big picture-answer. The implication of self-questioning which, when its reversed to its flip side, questions self-questioning. The psychopathy of self-defeating.
The know-it-all make-believer brought into the human Psyche with one overriding purpose: to manipulate for the preservation of itself and its made-up domain. Through the psychodynamic of self-destruction. The insanity of questioning self-questioning so that all Movement will stop. Including the half-baked idea of not-movement that accompanied it.
There will be Movement
No wonder Jesus lets herd mentality alone! Plato saw the self-destruction inherent both in the occupants of the cave – a herd – and in the member who aspired to freeing them. The solution lies in the metaphysics of the story of Mind, but sensory perception wouldn’t let him explore it.`
And the solution is. . . ? Holding on. To what? To Relatability, Because herd mentality is every ounce of effort anti-movement can pour into its self-defense. The defense of unrelatability. And it begins and ends with self-unawareness. So long as it keeps its would-be enemies off balance with its talent for make-believe it will be safe. Guidance is Relatability. And when individuals relate to it – hold onto it – they will be guided to where Movement knows no boundaries. Can penetrate any barriers including make-believe.
Where is this? A state of Mind that’s free of willfulness and therefore at rest. When the power of Spontaneity-Love inseparable from Logic-Order can initiate Change. From a place of calm. Of peace that has no ‘enemies’ and knows of none. Serenity that knows of no struggles to endure, no mountains to climb. Only connections to be made where friends abide.
Body-sensing herd mentality, being an act, is but an appearance meant to hide the Psyche that dwells within it. Within all ideas and their expressions living. How to connect, how to relate, can’t be an act of will. An act of magic. But it can be a re-enactment of the ignition of Movement. By the power of attraction, whose human version is holding on. For dear life. Yes. Because in the mess that’s the human Psyche there are many hands prying us away. Too many distractions to count. But if we hold on . . .
You have a prediction? There will be Movement.