The Meta-Psychology of Tension
Welcome!
In the natural order of things being preceded doing. But before there can be either there must be conditions conducive to both. There must be a situation with the potential to make or allow both to happen. The before is the subject of ontology, a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being. The after is the subject of phenomenology, a branch of science that deals with phenomena – stuff happening. The thoughts that follow are based on two primal distinctions: between pre-existing conditions and Happening and between the Happening of being and doing.
‘Tension’ refers to a pre-existing condition that’s pivotal to the Definition of Creation, both in the expression of what it is – metaphysical – and of what it is not – physical. Initial caps are intended to help with the distinction between the former, Reality, as distinct from the latter, virtual reality or life on Earth.
‘Meta-psychology’ is a contraction of ‘metaphysics’ with intuitive Jungian ‘psychology’. It’s intended to convey an understanding of tension that’s not limited to either expression so we can trace the nature and effects of tension in everyday human affairs back to its origin. Back to the earliest ideas that preceded everything in the sequence of evolution. To the primordial soup of pre-existing conditions and to their sorting out that laid the foundation for everything. That today – this minute — are the controlling considerations for everything.
Tension between what? Between what is and what isn’t. The situation at the beginning, that set the mold for tension between Movement forward and resistance to it. The former Character that’s functional: questioning, Creative, relational, integrating. The latter negativity that’s one big wrong answer: dividing, inert, absolute, corrupting, and dysfunctional. The former what is, the latter what isn’t. Two sides of one Definition: the upper side what is, the lower side its reverse-opposite. The upper side Positive / possibility, the lower side negative / impossibility. One Real, the other its implication – a derivative with no definition of its own. Unreal.
If all it takes is questioning and insights from intuition to think creatively about answers let’s have fun theorizing and go have a beer. Welcome to tension in the here and Now! Reality. But if that’s not all – if what it takes is winning a contest of wills — then let’s not think about it. Let’s waste our time arguing instead and get into a fight. Welcome to tension where there is no here and now! To virtual reality trapped in time. In its psychological cage: Life on Earth.
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Herd Mentality vs. Person
Back to Bunker Hill!
Pull up a chair. What for? Ringside seat. Oh good – a fight! Not the kind you’re thinking of but, yeah, it’s definitely a thing. King George and his redcoat mercenaries vs. us good guys. The American Revolutionary War was woven into conflict among European countries for empire. The general idea was to bring the Brits down off their perch, but it was all tiddlywinks compared to the larger contest. What could be larger than France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Great Britain vying for dominance? Something unresolved. Tension imprinted on the human Psyche that extends way beyond the petty limits of empire. That rounds on the turntable of Life as though one more go might resolve it. But it never does.
Split decision? Sort of, only there are no referees to decide the ‘winner’. There’s no gong to end the bout and it’s not really a bout. What is it then? A situation. I’ve got a ringside seat to a ‘situation’? Pah! Where’s the fight? As in “we’ve got a situation here.” Whatever it’s called is in and all around us. Working itself out whether or not it has our attention. Nowhere and everywhere. Does it matter? The stakes couldn’t be higher. If they weren’t you wouldn’t be waving your American flag from atop Bunker Hill. Oh, I heard about that. Downtown Los Angeles where General Howe was taught a lesson. Right general but wrong Bunker Hill. There’s another Bunker Hill? Charlestown. A neighborhood on the opposite side of the continent. In faraway Boston, where the Spirit of ’76 showed what it’s made of. Yeah, right. In 1775.
Is the lesson why we’re in our ringside seats waiting for something to happen? As good a place to start as any. Exploitation of opportunities and resources is OK. When it’s exploitation of another kind it’s not OK — of one people’s ability to take from another without permission or compensation. It’s theft. The violation of moral Order that underlies the ‘grandeur’ of ‘empire’. An act of naked aggression by a bully. Arrogance.
I don’t like arrogant. Why? It does whatever it wants and doesn’t care what I think. Persons can be like that. Yes, and I stay away from them. Pretty hard to do when there’s a whole bunch. When regiments in flashy uniforms show up at Bunker Hill with the theatrics of intimidation. Of superior strength and superior worth, the tactics of ‘empire’. The tactics of manipulation that has its way with people when they buy into the lie.
General Howe’s mistake was the classic mistake of arrogance: the assumption of supremacy. Entitlement to lord it over others because they’re inferior, less than human. Worthless. At Bunker Hill he was taught the classic lesson of respect: that the ‘superiority’ of arrogance is an empty pose. A manipulation that’s no match for Worth and substance standing up to it. For Character. He thought all it would take to beat the enemy was to show up. Americans stood up to him. Made him regret his mistake. Put on a show of their own, and it was moving, inspiring. Showed what we’re made of. Character. The kind of thing that could define a nation and did, with Integrity. The Spirit of ’76.
King George’s Empire lost its American colonies because it was arrogant. Now we’re fighting arrogance again, only this time the enemy is us. Time to refresh our memories as to who we are. Go back to Bunker Hill and re-think which side we’re on. Because this time we’re succumbing to the theatrics. Identifying with the redcoats instead of standing up to them. Buying into appearances. Into the lie behind the manipulation, that we’re helpless without King George telling us what to do. That we need a ‘savior’ because we’re worthless.
The mother of all glitz
Empires, sovereigns, and generals lose battles and wars when they don’t show respect. Respect for what? The sovereignty of Person. What we’re here to witness in our ringside seats is how it got started. What? The not-contest contest between Person and herd mentality. Between Character and corruption, Integrity and manipulation. The colonists vs. the Brits were an example? Yes. That came down through history as a clash between inhumane authoritarian tyranny and humanitarian respect for individual rights. Between the inhumanity and weakness of arrogance and the humanity and strength of flesh and blood Person. Character motivated by thoughts and feelings of its own.
The state of our Psyche that’s inviolable. Vulnerability that arrogance violates every chance it gets. As it did when two herd mentalities clashed in the last century, between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. When communism threatened class warfare the labor movement raged at ownership for manipulating its workforce like cattle. “Robber barons” stealing from one another and their employees like empires stealing from other countries. A throwback to the feudal system and slavery that equated people with property and powerlessness. Systematic assaults on human sovereignty, self-Worth, and Integrity by unquestioned authority: body-centered, territorial and arrogant.
What started it? You mean what are we looking at from our ringside seats? Nothing. I’m waiting for something. Yes. Something to Happen, and it will. The mother of all happenings. What we have a ringside seat to is the main bout and the preliminaries. Two-Ton Tony Galento. You might say — the bums of the month that the champ had to fight to stay in shape and pay the bills. Joe Louis. A celebrity! Can we talk about him? Sure, another time. The ‘nothing’ we’re not-looking looking at has attributes even glitzier than celebrities. It’s the mother of all glitz.
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Not-Mindedness
The folly of the hare
Hold on! “Not-contest contests.” “Not-looking looking.” What’s that all about? The original situation and the limits that define it. Does the beginning of everything have to be a situation? What else could it be? ‘Situation’ sounds contingent, like it’s a passing thing. It is. Is there a better way to describe the beginning? You tell me! “There she is, Miss America!” Perfection. A thing of beauty. A beauty pageant? A masterwork by everyone’s master of ceremonies: Bert Parks. Everything filled out and answered for. Peace and perfection. Grandiosity and glamour too. No different points of view to contend with one another. Just one big . . . .
You’re searching for a word? Uh, one big. . . I can’t find one. Why? Because what I’m trying to put into words can’t be put into words. At least one I know of. Why not? Bert’s ‘paradise’ has no limits. Not even the limits of Definition, and that includes words whose meanings have no limits. The word I’m looking for is a variant of ‘view’ that’s unlimited. Any kind of ‘view’ would contradict the idea I’m trying to get across. How about ‘panoramic’ and ‘omniscience’? I googled it. Then it’ll have to do, because Bert’s ‘paradise’ is ultimately an expression of ‘not-Mind’. And if it’s not-Mind it’s not-idea and not-expression. Without idea and expression where does that leave words? What language is there to speak of it?
There’s no visual? It’s not-visual. No wonder you’re so hard to understand! I’ve been describing the behavior of not-description. Absolute negativity. Without limits which means without comprehensibility. One of different ways that Bert’s ‘paradise’ of impossibility ensures its permanence in a fraught environment as a derivative. Always dependent on positives and their possibilities for its non-existence ‘existence’. Always contending with things in motion, constant change along a spectrum where there’s comprehensibility and no absolutes at one end and absolutes and incomprehensibility at the other.
Another way is indivisibility, but we’ll get to that later.
Slow motion. Yes. Comprehensibility evolves logically step-by-step and Mind thinking takes a while to get us there. It requires patience. I’d prefer the hare. OK, but the tortoise is a better bet. Why? The hare is faster and flashier, but it cuts corners and doesn’t finish what it starts. Folly that’s lack of Character. The tortoise is one step at a time, the wisdom of Character. Both animals have the run of the human Psyche and offer the same choice: ‘speed’ that gets distracted or patience that stays on course.
What happened to the elephant?
Provided that absolute negativity doesn’t get in the way. Not a witless rabbit but predatory animal instinct. We’re in our ringside seats to witness the origin of this beast? Or is it to not-witness the not-birth of a not-beast? Either way, it’s us messing ourselves up. A situation for us to manage, not a beast to slay. Or a relationship to manage either, because there’s no relating with a beast. What is there then? A component of Creation that’s essential to its Movement even if it can never be part of the Family of Creation. Self-Awareness needs it. The metaphysical Self that we are belongs to its Family of Creation. All of Reality needs it and virtual reality too.
We need to need to know how to deal with it. How? By understanding its nature. Then we’ll have to become a lot smarter than we’ve been. Goethe’s Faust was an academic who thought he knew its nature. What happened? He bargained with Mephistopheles — the ‘devil’ – and got burned. His academic life went from arid and loveless to one big love-affair relationship mess. We should be careful what we ask for. A mouthful!
Its nature is unawareness. How can we be aware of the opposite of awareness? “Absolute negativity” gives itself away. It can run but it can’t hide. Exactly! By being the reverse of positivity.
We can go to where the light is instead of the darkness and infer what the light isn’t. We haven’t done that? Classical Greek philosophers respectful of their sixth sense took that approach. Made remarkable progress using Logic without experimental science, unaware that Logic and Love are inseparable or they might have gone farther. Since then misguided minds have been trying to figure out the great questions of Life by studying the darkness. Deluded by their professions and their bodies – by tribal and body idolatry – into disrespect for the Mind’s eye. Into fear and suspicion of their intuition, the source of the very insights that ultimately enabled their progress.
Beginning with Aristotle, whose Lyceum replaced Plato’s Academy and with it, Mind open to a critical possibility. What possibility? That Reality belongs with Mind not matter. They can’t both be real. Aristotle took Western thought in another direction, the conviction that what our body-brains’ senses are detecting is definitely, actually there. Though he couldn’t deny the Reality of Mind he parted with his predecessors’ doubts about the reality of matter. Of course it’s real! It is in a sense. Appearances we can’t deny — bodies and their material environment. But only to distract us from detecting what is there behind appearances. Mind and ideas.
Still, we’re learning. Coming at our destination through the back door. Taking a lot longer to identify an elephant by starting with its tail instead of its trunk. Learning, finally, that it’s only an appearance. Conceivably the reason why the illusionist Houdini could make an elephant disappear if it was just one more illusion. A hallucination for a skilled hypnotist-magician to manipulate.
The ultimate security setting
Mind wouldn’t be what it is without Movement and perspective. What I struggle to put into words is the idea of not-Movement, not-perspective. The idea of everything wrapped into one that has no limits. The madness of Stephen Hawking’s boundaryless universe from A Brief History of Time. Why madness? Bert Parks’ dream world of peace and perfection, like Hawking’s boundaryless universe, is a not-argument against Definition. Mind that’s Movement and perspective is function or it wouldn’t exist, and one of the things that it does – one of its functions — is to define. To set limits.
What we’re looking at from our ringside seats is the mad idea of not-Definition. By placing itself entirely outside the scope of Mind the not-situation we’re not-looking looking at is imagining that it’s safe and secure. Beyond Mind which is all about Definition which is all about limits. Invulnerable. Unintelligible more like it. Unintelligible and crazy but not all my fault. Who can conceptualize a situation that can’t be conceptualized by definition? I’ll google it. Right. Artificial intelligence – the not-answer to everything.
Is looking not-looking because this is all make-believe? Make-believe is a way of characterizing the reverse-opposite of everything. Therefore mis-characterizing. Everything? Yes. Since Bert Parks’ ‘paradise’ is impossibility — of eternal beauty, peace, and perfection, everything rolled into one without boundaries, without anything to define, limit, or contradict it and therefore having nothing to do, no function – what is possible is Function that can be defined. And if it is, its Definition to be complete must logically include what it isn’t along with what it is. What it doesn’t do as well as what it does do. Where what it isn’t is a kind of reverse mirror-image. Make-believe. Possibility and its reverse-opposite impossibility cover everything.
So the original situation was something Happening that you call “Movement.” Yes. The effect and its cause. Happening because of the coming together of conditions that made the original situation conducive to it. Let there be light! No. Let there be Spontaneity.
The nature of what happened would be indicative of arrogance if it could be determined. If we knew when and where in its sequence it happened, but it can’t be determined. Not if it was the activation of Mind and not an act of Mind. Not if it preceded and enabled the thinking and feeling, the being and doing, of Self-Awareness. There’s no code to be broken. No operating system or program that can be hacked into and corrupted it so it’ll do what hackers will it to do. Make-believe is an act of will making stuff up – not happening. The original Happening is beyond the will of anything to control or know it.
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Process and Structure
Substitutes
Phooey! We’re not going to witness a rumble in the jungle. Or a thrilla in Manila. Smokin’ Joe Frazier is holed up in his dressing room and Muhammad Ali is invisible. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t any action. There’s plenty of it with Movement if it’s Happening by Definition. Perspective that’s situations all with their meanings and causes. We just can’t witness it with these eyes or hear it with these ears.
Why not? We have to be able to see and hear all around us, not just what’s in front of our noses. Our senses are configured to detect what’s out there and in front of us. Objects to serve bodily needs one way or the other, for whatever it takes to dominate and survive. A sliver of awareness that functions like a mouth and a stomach, that allows unawareness to receive nourishment and that’s all. Where the action really is, awareness doesn’t have to be limited to bodies and their surroundings. It can expand to include everything.
Great visual! Make it happen! Don’t I wish. If awareness can’t detect unawareness by definition there’s no way that unawareness can detect awareness. Bringing darkness to the light shines it away, but that’s not the idea here. What is the idea? Sensing everything within the light. Which requires exchanging the sensory perception of time-limited virtual reality for faculties suited to another dimension: the here and Now. Reality that’s not time-limited.
I’ll stick with my eyes, thank you. The attitude the professions stick to – science, philosophy, psychology, and theology. The basis not only for body idolatry but also for tribal idolatry. Tribes and their physical members all in agreement that they’re ‘there’ because the same senses built into ‘there’ say they’re ‘there.’ Self-worship. Sensory perception filling the void left by unawareness of the Self-Awareness of Creation. The role of Parents for which idolatry is supposed to be a substitute. Of Family for which tribe is supposed to be a substitute. Of whole Person – the sovereign not-physical Self – for which the body is supposed to be a substitute. The mad idea of ‘God’. ‘Divinity’ fantasized by herd mentality. A bizarre substitute for the Love and Logic of Creation.
From the bottom up
Work-arounds motivated by fear. Why fear? Disorder. The absence of limits throws the human Psyche into a panic at the same time that absolutes lure it into the ‘security’ of addiction. An illustration of how alarming the idea is of not-Mind and alluring too. Erich von Stroheim – “the man you love to hate”. Terror and love of the Bomb — Dr. Strangelove and Jack D. Ripper.
The split between Freudian arrogance and Jungian introspection – between the finality of ‘scientific’ quantitative absolutes and the Spontaneity of qualitative insights from intuition — was a tectonic shift in the humanization of ape. In the evolution of animated self-unawareness toward Self-Awareness beyond animation. Of brutality toward differentiating and empathizing civility. But so was another split. Between the absolutes of Isaac Newton and the relativity of Albert Einstein. Upsetting different professions and the human Psyche in the same way: depriving virtual reality of its allure. The promise of absolutes in a magic kingdom of anything goes where freedom, power, and wealth without limits are possible. In a make-believe paradise without definition.
Where Newton got one thing right: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. An echo from the original situation and its aftereffects. The fracas that our ringside seats can’t treat us to so long as we’re blinded by our bodies’ eyes: Movement Happening in the absence of not-movement not-happening, that did away with any possibility of absolutes. There being no gravitational center to the way things are, no coordinates other than the moving parts of Movement, the process and structure of Creation can only be relational. Centered not on Bert Parks alone atop his ‘paradise’ of poses and makeup but on Relationship. The actuality of Family being there for one another. An Ideal.
The way it is. The fusion of two incomplete ideas that needed the Spontaneity of Energy in the Now to complete them. That needed Mind to think them: Love and Logic. Two functions that together ignited Movement, evolution, and Creation. Needing Self-Awareness to perform them. To share and express the sheer joy of Happening through Creation and to complete the process and structure of Family. By an act of Parenting a Child: the function of Guidance. An extension of Self-Awareness that’s its own Self-Awareness. Integrity freely choosing and independently questioning. Without which ‘creation’ would be just another outpost of Bert Parks self-imagery, lacking the authenticity and Worth of Character.
The entire process and structure of Creation’s Happening built from the bottom up. Not in the sense of hierarchical corruptibility — inferior to superior — but in the sense of engineering integrity: foundational. True to the nature of evolution: before coming before after, after following before in logical sequence. In the Reality of Creation before its inversion in virtual reality was put to use for the training of Guidance. And the cart was put before the horse. To train rationality how to turn things around in a state of irrationality.
Outrage
Reality doesn’t sound like anything Bert would want. ‘Bert’ is a term for the alleged victimhood of our original Family’s Psyche. The Soul of Self-Awareness and its Creations, grievously ‘wounded’ by what evolved from the original situation. Happening that’s not only definitive of all that’s Good but also Movement that’s also definitive of all that’s full of Life and Creativity. An affront to arrogance, condemned by the Logic of Definition to oppose all of it.
‘Bert’ is a term for the mindset of a personality type that carries on the cause of obstruction in virtual reality. Our life on Earth, where Guidance in its formative stage is learning what Character, Integrity, and Free Choice are all about. Needing to be earned and freely chosen from the bottom up against the importunities of an attitude dead set against it. Outrage, that the innocence of victimhood and the arrogance of authority should be questioned. A byproduct of Movement’s ignition at the beginning. Its “equal and opposite reaction” that reverberates throughout the trials of Guidance in virtual reality. In our everyday lives, in case you were wondering.
Why outrage? Because of all the alleged strikes against negativity’s ‘existence’. So unfair! Its dependence on positivity for having any claim to recognition. For its attributes derived from its host that don’t entitle it to definition of its own. For being a reflection without a reflection. So viscerally insecure, so driven by fear of exposure, that any pose that make-believe strikes for its self-protection must be accepted as absolute. Fact for its own sake on its own terms and nobody else’s. Beyond limits. Beyond questioning. Because that’s all its poses have to stand on. Their will. Their say. They have no argument and therefore no need for reason to support it. What they ‘have’ in virtual reality is herd mentality’s mindless insistence. The adamance of arrogance: that they’re right and you’re wrong and it’s because they say so. That theirs is the only authority and it’s absolute.
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Re-Reversal
Another purpose
Was this attitude built into the original situation? Did it have to be? There were ingredients like a recipe or a chemistry experiment, some of which were in the mix only because the end product was an unknown. To be refitted for another use if they didn’t make the cut. Who was the chef? The chef or chemist was a catalyst: a process triggered by an intervention that pulled the ingredients together into an end product. A dish with flavors or a chemical with properties that set them apart.
It couldn’t have been Bert! Definitely not! It was Spontaneity. As in spontaneous combustion. Happening. Spontaneous what? Attraction between the functions Love-Freedom and Logic-Order that were incomplete without the other. In the primordial soup of becoming — possibilities and impossibilities, good ideas and Looney Tunes – these two thoughts had the potential to feed the multitudes and inspire creativity forever if they mated. If they became inseparable, which they did. Everything flowed from that.
Including attitude? Arrogance? Eventually yes but not at first. Once lightning struck things were the way they were because that’s how they had to be. The Rubicon was crossed. We had ignition, all the elements of Creation were in motion, and there was no turning back. And here we have the first inkling of Bert. What? The original situation didn’t produce its end product by cherry-picking ingredients and tossing some away. Until the Spontaneous nuptials of Love and Logic set church bells ringing it gathered everything. The end product that began its evolution with Movement contained only those elements that it needed. The rest were filtered out of the mix by the catalyst and redirected into another purpose. One that had a role for Bert and his magic kingdom of make-believe. His ‘paradise’ of razzmatazz — glamour, glitz, and garbage.
No evildoers
All this positivity couldn’t move forward with the underside of its Definition dragging it down, yet it couldn’t part with it either since positivity and negativity are conceptually inseparable. What happened? The same Spontaneity that mated Love with Logic conceived their Child. The function of Creation’s Definition that’s needed for its Integrity and Worth: Character questioning with Free Choice. The Conscience and constitution of Creation backed not only by Necessity – the laws of cause and effect – but by the wisdom and compassion of Guidance. Learned and earned by trial-and-error experience where else? — in virtual reality. The magic kingdom of hierarchy, competition, and corruption. Not trade-marked “The Void” for nothing. A waste land of absurdities and contradictions where none other than our friend the flim-flammer practices his art. Bert. Attitude, arrogance, and all.
Our teacher? Bert’s default function. Nothing exists in Creation without Function. The usefulness of Guidance is no more evident than in its genius for finding a constructive use for everything. Helping us recognize that everything is a learning device including the reversals perpetrated by Bert’s mindset. What Guidance would have us do with reversals of the way things really are is to re-reverse them. My purpose, to reverse reversals. To deny the denial – double negatives. Confusing! Yes. Put into our midst by Bert’s benighted acolytes here on Earth, who hark back to the original situation when the Starship Enterprise launched with an unhappy camper on board. An implication of Logic: the reverse-reflection of Movement and its situation at the beginning.
No evildoers? You were expecting something different? Creeps. A Hallowe’en yard display. Fun! If we trace the worst cruelty of Bert’s acolytes back to its origin we have to accept that it ends not with anything scary or scabrous but with the stuff of Logic. Which includes Definition of the way things are, but also with Love. Love? Yes, and Freedom. Spontaneity, because these are attributes of Love. What Love brought to the equation Love + Logic + Energy-Now = Self-Awareness. Function, the source of all that followed, which, because it flows from Function, must be and do Function. What is and what isn’t conceptually joined at the hip while functionally segregated. One minding its own business, the other questioning it when it isn’t trying to divide it. Attacking it.
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Questioning
Understanding
We have a purpose or we wouldn’t be here. Built into our nature. The appearances put here by Bert’s bees – his acolytes – say otherwise. That our universe is pointless and we’re nihilists. Just one of their reversals that we’re to undo. That Character is to use to build itself from the ground up, by converting lies back to truth, fiction back to fact. The lies have been fashioned by arrogance to be as difficult to re-reverse as possible, but Integrity wouldn’t be Integrity if it didn’t climb the highest mountain. To show that it had done the impossible. Like Psyche, when she took on every impossible task assigned her by Aphrodite and did it with help. Where Guidance comes in: we have help when we’re receptive to it and ask for it.
Our ‘mission impossible’ is Bert, his ‘paradise’ of peace and perfection and the absolute security of not-mind. A sales pitch for an alternate ‘heaven’ that’s actually hell. Everything about it the reverse of what it appears to be because it’s the idea of reversal. Reversal of Movement. Which connotes something more consequential than ‘opposite’. Why? Reversal, too, of questioning, the function that had to accompany Movement at the beginning and be part of Creation’s Definition. Why? Because of the nature of the fallacy that was Bert’s ‘paradise’: that it was the idea of answer. Everything in place and taken care of and therefore no need for Movement. No need either for questioning or learning. And every ‘answer’ things the way they aren’t. A lie.
More consequential than a flea market curio that can be stashed in a drawer or put away in the attic and forgotten because of where it is. Initially an appendage of Movement once it ignited. Stored in the baggage compartment where it couldn’t get into mischief. But with the act of procreation that produced Child Guidance it found a use. In the Mind of a Function in training. In a state of self-unawareness. Of dreaming, that serves the dreamer and the occupants of its dream as a classroom or laboratory. Or an ivory tower where ideas of every stripe can compete for logical authenticity. For ascendancy where even the harshest objections, the most heated protests, can do no harm.
Where Bert’s answers – all of them wrong, all of them hurtful or potentially so – must be filtered out by questioning. With help from Guidance, our connection to the origin of the talents we need to succeed. Logic differentiating, that can’t function without the feelings and values of Love to tell it what anything means. Love empathizing, that can’t function without the boundaries and limits, the navigational markers and direction, of Logic. Without the sharing of itself through Relationships. Together Guidance toward Understanding without which Meaning is beyond our grasp.
Adrift among phonies
That’s important? The original situation was just a huh? until Happening gave it meaning. Life on Earth presents itself to Bert’s embodiments as a huh? that can be turned to any use that a nihilist wants. A fertile seedbed for arrogance in all its forms. That Character must convert to Meaning if it’s not to fail in its purpose. By discerning with differentiation and empathy – with help from Guidance – what each of our situations are all about until we grasp what our whole species’ situation is all about. The “meaning of life.” The “origin and fate of the universe.” The great questions of science, philosophy, psychology, and theology for which Bert’s answers are all bogus. If we’re still searching for answers it’s because we’re not asking the right questions.
From our ringside seats. Yes. Giving us visibility to commotion in this experience we call ‘life on Earth’. Grand entertainment for those maybe who have nothing better to do but meaningful for others. Who understand what it’s about: a search for meaning. The title of Viktor Frankl’s book. Man’s Search for Meaning. By a Holocaust survivor put through hell where Character proved itself. Where another Holocaust survivor, Edith Eger, learned how to keep Integrity from being dis-integrated by fear and hatred. Emotions forced upon the victims of cruelty and injustice who then must choose how to respond to it. Whether by allowing themselves to be deceived by appearances or by choosing to relate to the reality behind appearances.
To remain true to themselves by relating to Guidance within instead of to masks of arrogance without. To the Persons behind the masks, the Psyche that prevailed through her trial by Aphrodite and achieved immortality instead of succumbing to victimhood, the eternal excuse for vengeance. For woundedness, the eternal excuse for self-pity and specialness. Stocks in trade for Bert’s mirror of self-regard. The Meaning of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces: his Loving Friendship with Guidance. With Psyche, a role model for our own Relationship with Guidance, sharing with us the face of innocence and honesty until we learn to part with our masks. With the phoniness and arrogance of victimhood. The meaning of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye: the innocence and honesty of a child, Holden Caulfield, adrift among phonies on the streets of corruption.
What we seek from the mirror
No easy task when Child Guidance must be roughed up on a playground of bullies to accomplish what it’s here for. When Bert’s not-personators, personable and likeable while they insinuate themselves into our affairs, reveal themselves when they’ve captured their prey. Predatory herds of beasts. Goose-stepping their way to their ‘triumph of the will’. Stagecraft with the look and feel of a work of art but in any case whatever intimidates its victims the most.
The reverse-opposite of everything Mind including Self-Awareness sharing. Transformed by Bert’s ‘paradise’ of not-limits into arrogance entitled to steal, possess, and control, preserve and protect, whatever it wants. A truly terrifying idea: absolute wildness. Jaws. Bert’s ‘paradise’ of maximum terror up close and personal. Your demon and it’s coming for you.
Our teacher. The lesson learned from surviving the pits of hell, setting up the choice identified by Viktor and Edith: whether to accept things the way they aren’t, to go along to get along, yield to the force of negativity – our own feelings that demand vengeance, more pain and suffering — or to accept Guidance from Definition. Helping us do what Free Choice can only do for itself, to build Character with Integrity. The lesson taught by a one-two tandem from both sides of Definition: the way things are and the way things aren’t. Until we understand the wisdom of the prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Change what? If life on Earth — the commotion we’re witnessing from our ringside seats – is self-unawareness, a state of Mind, then it’s to change our Minds. From seeing what’s not there to seeing what’s there. From hallucinating to Self-Awareness. Awakening. Understanding that our idolatry of tribes, bodies, and body-brains’ senses; our conditioning by animal-kingdom hierarchy to venerate instead of relate; to envy and distrust, fear and hate, whatever isn’t ‘us’; to consume, digest, and waste our gifts; to arrogate power, freedom, and wealth that’s there to be shared, doesn’t define who we are. It’s mischaracterization by a mischaracterization. An image in a mirror feeding us answers. All of them wrong.
When what we seek from the mirror is questions. For Character to ask of itself: Who are we really? Who am I? Waste or Worth? Pointless or Meaning? Questioning is the function of Mind that’s self-discipline, self-guiding and judging. Why do we need it? To avoid the pitfalls of the limitless: absolutes. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” as Lord Acton put it, and absolute freedom as well. Entitlements to cross boundaries put there not only to protect property but Conscience, the difference between civilization and the law of the jungle. Between ‘human’ and beast.
Creation in Reality will always need questioning so long as its structure is fraction, an unending source of tension between enumerator and denominator. Constant motion above pestered from below: Where to? Whither goest thou? Do we know? The enumerator is the prototype Self-Awareness, the doing part of Mind-Relationship being. Extending and expanding. Procreating, Where everything is a call for Love, the doing of it along with Logic is a call for limits. Limits inherited from the original situation that can never be enough in the presence of Movement.
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Dividing
Learning how to fly
What do you think? Seen enough? It was boring at first. The situation at the beginning, when church bells were ringing and there wasn’t a peep out of Bert. But it got interesting later, I’ll admit. When the Parents got out of the way and their brat took over. Yes. The sound and fury of the darkness. When Bert was turned loose, bodies started throwing tantrums, and we got some action. Uh huh. “Stuff happens.” So you’re OK with reversal. I’m OK with irrationality. It does seem to make things more interesting. People coming to blows. Sucking up to one another like fools. Cartoon characters made for entertainment. But, sure, let’s leave it there.
Only there’s one more consideration, and you might like to reflect on it while you choose your way ahead. Or not choose. Not choose? Yes. Leave your future in the hands of fate. Take the path of least resistance. Let passivity settle you into your comfort zone. Get as comfortable as you want and let things take care of themselves. Grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change and forget about the rest. Yes. Concentrate on games of competition that make a mockery of meaning; entertain yourself with conspiracies that make a shambles of trust and let feckless irrationality account for your time here.
That’s fun? It is if it’s accompanied by bodily pleasures and camaraderie with the like-minded. Joviality goes a long way for many of us. Manipulators who enjoy theatrics. The meaning of The Truman TV Show: manipulation is fun for everyone. For its audience and its producers anyway. The manipulated and their manipulators. But not for Truman, the Person.
Or for Guidance if it got manipulated into self-unawareness. How did it happen that the Parents’ Child lost Self-Awareness if its reverse-reflection didn’t knock it out? It was in the nature of the credentials that Guidance had to earn that it couldn’t perform its Function straight out of the womb. Life on Earth is a kind of extended gestation period outside the womb. A suitable condition for training when self-unawareness lends itself to manipulation. To being thrust by reversal into a hallucination of virtual reality, a training cockpit where we can blunder and crash as long as we want since it’s not happening in Reality. Until we learn how to fly. The idea anyway since we don’t seem to be in a hurry.
Hands off!
What credentials? Character with Integrity that goes with Free Choice. It won’t build up much of a clientele in Reality or virtual reality if it’s not trustworthy, and needing to learn its trade in the company of human-animals of questionable character won’t help until it proves itself. We’re the Choice part of Guidance that needs to learn how to choose freely. Guidance connected to Definition doesn’t need to ‘prove’ anything; it’s the principle of trustworthiness among other things or we wouldn’t seek its help. It’s only when we’ve earned our stripes up against corruption in the school of hard knocks that we and Guidance can complete one another.
How so? By fusing two functions into one that can’t function independently. Definition that can’t translate its laws of cause and effect, its principles and values, into Guidance without the Character and Integrity of Choice that’s Free because it’s incorruptible. Free Choice that can’t guide without the Awareness of Self embedded in Creation’s Definition, its laws of Necessity, principles, and values. It’s then that we and Guidance, together, can come into Self-Awareness of our own that’s safe for Creation and the Self-Awareness of our Parents. It’s why we hear, over and over, the importance of Loving Friendship with Guidance and the folly of flirting with Bert.
Sounds like the way the Parents came together. Yes. Another way that their experience can serve as a template for how we handle ours and another reason why our venturing into metaphysics isn’t trespassing on the ‘sacred’. An affront to the ‘holiness’ of ‘almighty God’. It’s a natural part of evolution bringing the mind of Sapiens farther away from self-unawareness toward Self-Awareness. The Child’s Parents are doing their part to enable Free Choice without compromising it, which they would do if they meddled in choices we’ve got to learn to make on our own. Doing so hands-off through Guidance, a function of Definition, the law under which all of Creation operates including the Parents. Put there by the Spontaneity of the original Happening where nobody can meddle with it.
Indivisibility
What’s this ‘consideration’? The nature of reversal when it applies to questioning. Where the rubber hits the road in life on Earth. Where Character is up against it. Which is. . . ? Division.
The underside of Definition implied by the original situation was like the denominator of a fraction. A mathematical expression whose attributes we need to be aware of, because this is where Meaning comes from. Guidance and Bert both. A choice, yes, but between two elements of the same entity that cannot be separated. Or, more precisely, that cannot be divided. Not only enumerator divided by denominator but denominator by its own reverse-opposite. Requiring a response that’s not death to the infidel! but management. One part questioning, the other its reverse-opposite: dividing. The manipulator. Earth’s design flaw and the master of Plato’s Cave.
The difference matters? Questioning is Creativity thinking. Reasoning susceptible to persuasion so it can support choosing that’s logical. Susceptible to movement forward – evolution. Change. Dividing is arrogance. One-sided and one-dimensional. A manipulator that’s not susceptible to persuasion, change, or evolution forward. Like our animal brain, the amygdala: unevolved and unevolving, unmoved and unmoving. A stick-in-the-mud.
To deal with arrogance in a personality type is to learn that it’s a killing field for serenity prayers and potentially for us. What makes it lethal? The nature of it. Its Logic when carried to its extreme: indivisibility. Not the Person behind the mask but the mask mistaken for the Person. The manipulator. Mistaking itself for commander-, definer-, and creator-in-chief. ‘God’. Indivisibility is the defining attribute of division because its Logic-origin is reverse. This is its nature.
The glorious ‘victory’
Then what does it do? Wield the power of life and death. Divide 1930s Germany into ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ races, into the persecuted and their persecutors, survivors of Auschwitz and victims. Divide America today into haves and have-nots so that it can be taken over by the haves. Divide foreign lands into warring factions so they can be conquered by empire. Divide the loyalties of subordinates so they can be manipulated. Divide Psyche between Conscience and Machiavellian expedience, Person and tribe, so that it can be corrupted by hierarchy.
Life on Earth is ‘virtual’ reality because the Mind hallucinating it was entered by its reverse-opposite, the mad idea of division. A divider that, finding itself with agency inside self-unawareness, concocted a slew of absurdities. For example, that it got there with a knockout blow. In the tenth round, after a flurry of left jabs and right uppercuts. That divided its hapless host’s Mind in two. More consequential than splitting an atom. Causing the Big Bang and the origin of the universe.
Great entertainment! Go on! A glorious ‘victory’. Child-Guidance, an integral Function of Reality and an extension of its Parents’ Mind, was knocked out by its reverse-reflection! Not only that, its Parents were pushed aside and its reverse-reflection now rules Creation. Only the truth is the divider was mistaken for a ‘savior’ and given the run of the place. Whereupon it fabricated its own ‘creation’ where it could replicate its ‘achievement’ ad infinitum. An impossibility. Thus virtual reality, life on Earth, and our entertainments. Every manner of division including boxers parted from their senses by knockout blows. Every palooka down for the count another glorious ‘victory’, adding yet more ‘virtual’ to ‘reality’.
The wolf in grandma’s nightgown
The consideration to reflect on is the idea behind life on Earth. This situation that advertises itself as anything goes when the reality is nothing goes. The ‘ideal’ it gravitates toward — nothing changes. Very good at what it does because it can never be anything else. Like a cat that’s very good at being a cat, our training ground for Guidance is what it is and we aren’t going to change it. The unchangeability of the meaningless is its ‘meaning’. The inaccessibility of the nihilist; the permanence of impermanence; the reality of appearances; the reverse of everything including itself. Herd mentality’s apotheosis in the idea of ‘God’. Monolithic and inaccessible. Indivisibility.
Corruption that divides is itself indivisible. So while we’re led to believe that self-dividing corruption can be stopped the idea behind it – the reverse-opposite of Character questioning – cannot. The wisdom to accept that what’s to be changed is us. Yes. The lesson of Edith Eger’s book, The Choice: Embrace the Possible. Auschwitz and Mengele will always be what they are. Manipulators and manipulations in a long-running play that pop up when learning and growth call for them. Impossibilities that are impossible to change. Learning devices that can’t be taught themselves. Not the Persons within but their manipulators without. Externalities. Appearances. Dividers that are themselves indivisible.
What’s possible is changing the Minds that engage with them, where learning and growth needed. Always with the understanding that the indivisibility of arrogance isn’t ‘them’. Isn’t who they really are, and so we needn’t be misled by it. It’s another facet of us. Our reversals. They and us together that both divide and unite us in one Self. When what we’re to ‘see’ in ‘others’ isn’t only Character questioning – innocence functioning for the Good. It’s also corruption-dividing. Guilt functioning for the bad. One conceived out of Happening, an act of Spontaneity, the other put there by its reverse-self, an act of will. A manipulation by a manipulator. Indivisibility. The ‘almighty god’ of herd mentality. Bad dressed up like Good. The wolf in grandma’s nightgown waiting to devour Red Riding Hood, to be recognized and managed for what it is: an appearance.
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The Role of Guidance Questioning
Insight
The Spontaneity of the original Happening that ruled out any possibility of arrogance having a role in Creation has a reverse-reflection. An opposite: a divider whose indivisibility rules out any possibility of Spontaneity having a role in its not-happening. In the appearance of reversal of Creation: an act of will by arrogance, lord and master of all that is not.
The big lie that’s make-believe: negativity came first. Impossibility is possibility; dysfunction is function; waste is worth; captivity is freedom; and it is who it pretends to be. A real Person behind the phony manipulator. Our real self and guide, an absolute know-it-all. Omniscience with an unlimited view of its unlimited domain. Number one. Unmoved, unmoving, and unmovable.
Lesson
The lesson of wisdom from Eastern and Western Thought. Shared by the Tao in The Book of Changes. By Parmenides and Plato guided by their sixth sense. Their Mind’s eye. Wisdom and compassion exemplified by Edith Eger and Viktor Frankl, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoeller, C.S. Lewis, Carl Jung, and Jesus. Character and Relatability learned and earned from the crucible of experience.
- That there are no limits that the limitless Spontaneity of Love cannot cross
- No barriers of negativity and darkness that can prevent the Self-Awareness of Relationship from relating
- No appearances of make-believe that can deceive Logic and Love discerning together
- No form of paralysis that can immobilize Energy in the cause of Movement and evolution
- No pretense of lifelessness that can deny the facts of Life staring us in the face.
Question
Why is Guidance questioning everywhere? Because Bert’s reversals are everywhere in virtual reality.
What is the role of Guidance questioning in the management of tension? Mediator and psychotherapist to two sides of Definition. The original Odd Couple whose ongoing tension energizes Life and Family, Creativity and Harmony, when it isn’t doing its best to enervate it. Requiring the deft touch of management, wise in the ways of the Tarot Hermit. A questioner and spiritual descendant of Socrates:
- Questioning arrogance in virtual reality, the ‘creator’ of make-believe, whenever and wherever it insults our intelligence with its appearances. To expose fiction to fact, magical thinking to reason, so that ‘human’ may choose to become better than ‘animal’.
- Questioning the giving of Self-Awareness to Reality, to ensure that Creativity and its Creations are not a given. That they stand for the Worth and Integrity of Character, earned and learned by the work and play of Happiness in service to an Ideal. Family functional and not dysfunctional. Being there for one another.
An equal opportunity offender. Indeed! Not content with ruffling feathers in virtual reality Guidance questioning must do so in Reality as well. Both sides of Definition: what is above and its reverse-opposite what isn’t below. Cheeky! Not if it’s in the nature of questioning to question everything. Character with Integrity doesn’t do half measures. Doesn’t stand up to arrogance one minute and kiss its ass the next. Doesn’t compromise with principle when the very structure of Creation stands on it.
What is the question that Guidance is asking while it mediates between enumerator and denominator? While it manages tension at the dividing-uniting line? “Are we uniting or are we dividing?”
Set the church bells ringing!
Bottom line? We’re here to change ourselves. Forget about ‘saving’ anything or being ‘saved’. About negotiating with reverse feedback from a mirror that can only take us back and down. Our opposites – manipulators. We’re here to change our Minds with help from Guidance. To share our gifts for learning, what we think we’ve learned, and move forward.
The only way to ‘own’ our gifts. To perform acts of kindness that validate and empower the Persons behind our masks that we really are. Then relate to them in conversation because it is they who exist. To leave untouched by our rage at injustice the manipulators that torment us, because they don’t exist. The Berts and their ‘paradises’ of not-happening. The Joseph Mengeles and their Auschwitzs of horror. As Edith Eger did through her practice of psychotherapy, a victim of the Holocaust who chose not to be its victim but its beneficiary instead. Possessed of compassion and wisdom, the capacity to be useful. To Persons instead of useless to their manipulators.
Bottom line? Relate to Guidance in Loving Friendship. A prerequisite toward relating to others in Loving Friendship – learning to Love ourselves instead of our masks. Re-enact the situation at the beginning when Love and Logic related to one another. Formed a lasting Relationship and set church bells ringing. Let that be our ignition. Our Happening that sets church bells ringing.
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Epilogue: More Irrationality
Taunts from Coach Lombardi
I don’t get to see who wins? You were expecting a fight? What else? Between Movement that’s Happening and Bert’s ‘paradise’ that’s not-happening? Between possibility and impossibility? Between a student and a learning device? OK. Then show me who loses! I WANT ACTION!
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What’s that? Caesar’s Palace. Where the ‘action’ is. Losing. That’s not enough. I WANT VIOLENCE.
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Where’s that? The Buffalo Bills stadium. The global epicenter of heartbreaking loss and the eternal graveyard of hope. Plus taunts from Coach Lombardi and skull-crushing violence.
YESSSS! Season tickets!