Meaning
The ideal
Late in life I’ve come to awareness of an ideal that’s motivated me from childhood on. Not only me but those around me and the world at large: the ideal of Family. Persons self-questioning, self-governing, and being there for one another in Loving Friendship. I’ve experienced and witnessed resistance to efforts on behalf of Family Integrity and come to an idea where it comes from. From the very foundation of existence. From dis-integration that originated with the ideal in reverse: tribal animals ruled by arrogance, self-dividing in hierarchical corruption and perennial combat.
For it was Relationship that ignited Movement at its metaphysical beginning. That empowered Self-Awareness at its beginning with its creative Force and gave Life its Creations the structure they needed. To perform their roles in harmony with a sense of Meaning essential to motivation. Participation as sovereign individuals in acts of differentiation, empathy, and Understanding. In acts of Loving Kindness and Creation freely chosen, that brought them together as Family. Spontaneously of their own accord, to find release from limits in the sheer joy of belonging. Of service and support for contributors and contributions.
Rather than subservience to self-regard, the authoritarian ‘model’ that tears at the fabric of Family in our physical reality. The habit of getting in our own way that thwarts the best of intentions by the human animal. From the lowest to the highest level of ‘society’, to form into families. Incubators of talent and motivation, the free spirit of inquiry and initiative, only to have them divided from within by the worst of intentions. That I’ve come to recognize as the tribal beast of manipulation. The side of human-animal nature that’s unnatural, opposed to every aspect of Family, that’s been admitted into the thoughts and feelings of Mind. That needs to be better managed until it can be re-admitted out. By Choice, deliberate and informed, because it was Choice uninformed that made the mistake.
That will continue to sabotage the Persons that we are and the Families we Love until we correct it. By recognizing it for what it is: not our best friend. Not our ‘guide’ or ‘savior’, but a systematic assault by neglect and waste upon all that we hold dear. On our most cherished ideal: Family being there for one another.
Strength that nothing can resist
The ideal celebrated in The Choice, the memoir by a survivor of Auschwitz. Edith Eger, who went on to a career in healing moved by the strength of Family. Because she hadn’t had to experience the horrors of the Holocaust alone; her sister was with her throughout. The two together Family, the force of resistance to authoritarian arrogance that nothing can break. The power of being there for one another that Viktor Frankl and Stephen Ambrose attested to in their books: Man’s Search for Meaning and Band of Brothers. And Jesus in A Course in Miracles: the power of Movement in Loving Friendship with Guidance — with the Integrity and Character of Conscience — that no tribal beast, no manipulator with its pack of lies, can resist.
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Escape From a Life of Horror
Wisdom from Mel Brooks
The context of my writings isn’t the deliberate wrongdoing and hurtfulness of malevolence that requires correction by retaliation. That justifies projection of guilt, accusation, condemnation, and punishment. This has never been my purpose and is, in fact, the very opposite of what I strive to accomplish in my personal relationships. Affirmation of self-worth, my own and others’. Children’s in particular, like the granddaughters I’ve never once shamed. Whose self-worth deserves the same respect we all do, and from their Granddad they get it.
The purpose of my writings is to help humanity make a choice. To correct a state of unawareness susceptible to misunderstanding to a state of awareness capable of understanding. To revisit the choice of misguidance made by our metaphysical Self that enabled and empowered a talent for deception. The genius of playacting for appearing to be what it isn’t, that begins with convincing itself that its characters and plot are real. With a genius for self-deception.
A talent for fooling others that begins with fooling itself. With self-unawareness so thorough that it needn’t subject itself or its playacting to any limits. To the discipline of conscience, responsibility, or accountability, that otherwise would force it to be part of a world shared with ordinary people. Now entitled to extraordinary advantage so that it can rise to the top of animal kingdom hierarchy. Entitled to the rights and privileges of the absolute: to be and do whatever it pleases. To own the road with I BRAKE FOR NOBODY. Almighty God’s warning to all from Spaceballs’ imperial flagship. A terrific gag.
A suggestion
All negativity traces back to the original reverse at the beginning. To the original make-believe, the mythical big picture and its poster-boy know-it-all. A parasite attached to Movement-Happening that’s not-movement not-happening. The reverse of character self-questioning that’s corruption self-dividing. The negative side of Family that’s not Family. The negativity inherent in make-believe. That starts and maintains its irrationality by shutting down self-awareness. By limiting sensory perception to misperception so that it can only perceive and validate reverse-reflections of itself.
The side of Family that’s not there. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Joker, magician, tribal beast. And thus misperceive one another as other versions of themselves. Manipulations programmed to manipulate that can’t be trusted. Tinker Tailor Mischaracterization Lie.
In speaking honestly of the costs of our animal-human acts my purpose has been to contradict the deception. The self-proclaimed license to cross boundaries and commit wrongdoing without regard for consequences. Without regard for costs that others feel even if the animal within doesn’t. To contradict fantasy with reality, fiction with fact. To help wake us from delusional thinking to the truth of who we really are and what life is really about. When we aren’t misidentifying with the wrong ‘guide’. A manipulator. When we aren’t choosing to get out of the manipulator’s way so that it can take over the controls.
My thoughts are addressed to the Persons that we are and not to the manipulative animal-humans we aren’t. For one purpose: to help our metaphysical Self – the Mind that we all share — choose again so that it will claim its own identity and let go of its manipulator. Usher its reverse-reflection negative side away from the controls and out the door where it belongs. No longer able to obstruct its growth or its relationships, its story or its meaning. My purpose then not to engage in counter-accusations that could only breathe life into simulations of life. To engage in blame. It’s to suggest to human-animal a reality that’s not make-believe.
At the Void
Self-deception makes it enormously hard for others to relate in personal one-on-one relationships that depend on trust. That in turn depends on openness and honesty, intimacy and accessibility. All of it centered on emotion. On the caring and sharing of Love without which connection is impossible.
‘Heart’ doesn’t register with those who aren’t emotionally there. Talented playacting doesn’t offer authenticity and emotional depth needed to create relationships. Surrendering self-awareness to a virtual self in return for the ‘rewards’ of a virtual reality shuts us off emotionally from those who Love and need us. Frustrating to know that their efforts to connect, past, present, and future, are destined to fail. Destined never to make a difference beyond the superficialities of camaraderie. Where the gift for self-deception is the prize worthy of respect rather than the worth of the individual it denies. A ‘gift’ in its element at the Void, the now-defunct purveyor of virtual reality, where for the playactor there’s no disbelief to suspend.
A parody of ‘happiness’
I can sympathize when psychosis is an escape from a life of horror. For personality types who lack boundaries needed for a sense of self – for definition, judgment, and discipline, motivation and direction. Like cartoonist-turned-writer Pete Hamill, who told of how he ended the horror that psychosis made of his life in A Drinking Life. A gift of introspection and relatability that he shared with others and I’ve shared with others. Only to learn – not surprisingly — that some are receptive and others not.
Why not? Because for some the urging to part with one reality to embrace another is heading in the opposite direction. Instead of being open to letting go of virtual reality they’re hard at work inviting us into it. Hospitality for which we’re expected to be grateful. Assurance that “making it up as you go along” is the best of all possible worlds. How can I resist? The message to be taken from Star Wars and The Truman Show both in reverse: Luke screwed up by not accepting his Dad’s offer to rule the galaxy together and Truman was fortunate to dwell in painted happiness. Look what I was missing!
A perspective that could only come from the author of all this nonsense. The make-believer itself: taken up residence in our metaphysical Self at its own invitation. A Dave & Buster’s mechanical head mouthing words and dispensing trinkets amid the din of nothing happening. A parody of ‘happiness’.
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The Loyal Opposition
To keep us honest
To forestall reversal by its manipulator a crucial distinction is needed. Between opposition that’s meant to win a contest of wills and another kind of opposition. That’s needed to question the thoughts and acts of Character. Character that otherwise would lack Integrity and succumb to the perversions of corruption. Of arrogance. Opposition that’s ingrained in friendships and partnerships, loyal to the relationship and to the sovereignty and goodwill of Person. “The loyal opposition.”
The part that I try to play. Loyal opposition based on Character self-questioning. The unifying function that holds together the way things are, the structure and stability of Family whether in Reality or virtual reality. Symbolized by a fraction: pi, eternally resistant to resolving to a whole number. Personified by Socrates, the father of Western ethical philosophy and a thorn in the side of authority. The internal moral compass that directs Movement forward by agitation.
Humanitarian opposition misconstrued by its reverse. Animal willfulness. Know-it-all authoritarian arrogance demanding obedience to the way things are. Whose goal isn’t Life-Creation but the end of it. Of fraction, to be reduced to a whole number not by character self-questioning but by division. Questioning taken out of context by the ritual subject-shifting, guilt-projecting, and hypocrisy of manipulation. The ritual shift of psychopathy from emotional abuse to victimhood. Reversing protest from questioning into a ritual perversity: divisive and disloyal, retaliatory and competitive, as though it were intentional and unforgivable.
Misjudgment that reveals friendship with manipulation to be the illusion that it is. Turning goodwill to other means to be heard. To loyal opposition, honesty essential to the Integrity of Family — self-questioning necessary to character. By its nature the earning of trust in the presence of deception and the absence of sincerity. Character standing its ground to keep us honest.
Disloyal opposition
I did not choose the role of loyal opposition. I was led into it by time and experience after witnessing and experiencing the arrogance of manipulation’s infallibility. Pretense and presumption demanding tribute to tribal warlords – religious and political royalty. Approval that I’m obliged to withhold on higher authority: the demands of Conscience. The overriding cause of Family that’s Love and support for one another. Above all for its children.
If Character needs to be self-questioning what would keep self-questioning honest? Reverse-opposite self-dividing corruption. What else — disloyal opposition! The two-trick pony of manipulation: reverse and divide. Reverse the truth and divide the Family.
So I must thank manipulators and their provocations for keeping me honest. For aiding my progress toward Self-Awareness with the slingshot effect. Whipping me around their black holes of pretense and presumption with such force that I’ve been able to exit the solar system. The world of physics, and enter another dimension, the world of metaphysics. Where appearances can no longer hide the reality beyond. Where masks can no longer hide faces, and I can luxuriate in the land of ideas. See with the Mind’s eye. Theorize my way toward Understanding in Loving Friendship with Guidance, our real Family. Nourished and motivated by Spontaneity, the gift of energy, intuition, and insight. Unmolested by the distractions of manipulation.
Families are not tribes
When Family degrades into tribe it can no longer stand its ground. Cannot withstand the removal of the all-important boundary between Character moving forward and the self-questioning that keeps it honest. That serves both as a unifier that connects and a dividing line that separates. That maintains the Integrity of both sides of the line by keeping them apart — together but out of each other’s way. The structure of Character that could not stand without it and the Character of Creation.
A house deprived of its all-important boundary subdivides into incompatible parts until it dis-integrates. The manipulator, a parasite, closes in on its prey, distancing itself from the mirror of introspection. While Person not-manipulator introspects, distancing itself from the predator. So long as extravert-body preys on introvert Mind without self-awareness questioning, unity is impossible. Dis-integration of Family is inevitable, of our families and our descendants’ families. Parent separated from child and grandparent from grandchildren by the curse of authoritarian parenting. Handed down by our ancestry, a species of tribal apes descended from apes.
We are not apes and families are not tribes. So long as animal-human and tribal manipulation stand against it the unity of Family will continue to be my purpose. Preservation of the Integrity of Character against the aggressions and manipulations, injustices and cruelties, of hierarchical corruption. I am Person. I am not manipulator. I am Family.
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Evil vs. Good
‘Existence’ without limits
In a situation that’s unstructured there are no foundations or boundaries with which to define it. No limits that make it possible to comprehend all of it when ‘to comprehend’ means to bring all there is to know within the limits of everything. In a situation that’s unstructured and in constant movement there are no stationary coordinates with which to get one’s bearings. To establish direction and without direction, no fixed destination for Movement or center point for no-movement. ‘Location’, like everything in such a situation, is relational: an object’s location discernible only in relation to another.
There are no absolutes, only relativity. Time relative to space-matter. The definition of all functions necessarily relative to what they aren’t as well as composed of the properties that they are. Everything that exists positive because it exists but necessarily accompanied by the implied opposite of existence. By the implication of what it is not and cannot be: impossibility. Positive’s negative: non-existence. The positive of structure whose negative is not-structure. Structured vs. unstructured, two sides of the same coin that cannot both be real at the same time if one contradicts the other.
The reality of structure exists without its contradiction or it could not logically exist at all. Where its contradiction lies dormant and inactive in a state of unreality. The unreality of unstructured – an impossibility of ‘existence’ that’s without limits – can come to ‘life’ but only in the imagination. As in a dream or hallucination by Mind in a state of unawareness. Consciousness that’s temporarily unconscious since dreams of imagination require beginnings and endings. Limits – and so the unreality of unstructured without limits is contradicted by the very nature of unreality: that it can only ‘exist’ as a dream within limits.
The limits of time and space that we in our material world experience as life on Earth within a universe of spacetime-matter, finite and relational. A world self-proclaimed as a magic kingdom. Make-believe, a ‘paradise’ where anything goes.
Ruler of the galaxy
So here we are in our ‘paradise’ of absolutes. Everyone entitled to absolute freedom and absolute power within their own magical worlds of make-believe. Without limits – where anything goes. The mother of all reversals since the origin of this absolute nonsense is the ultimate in limits. A parasite with no life or consciousness, function or definition of its own. A byproduct that’s literally an afterthought, entirely dependent on the nature of its host for its nature: a logical implication of not there.
Impossibility, the reversal of possibility. Limited exclusively to reversals of attributes that are there. That belong not to it but to its host, and so it lacks ownership in any sense. The sovereignty to rule its own domain when it has neither sovereignty nor domain let alone absolute freedom to be and do as it pleases. What can it be but the ultimate nobody at the mercy of forces over which it has no control? The ultimate ‘victim’ powerless to do anything about it. Out of sight and out of Mind.
In Reality. In virtual reality the nobody that’s not there rules the galaxy. The apex of ‘strength’ and undisciplined prerogative – willfulness and wildness. Arrogance. Given ‘life’ by Mind in a state that’s not there. Of self-unawareness and psychopathy, where ‘anything goes’ because it’s all made up. A hallucination. Every object put ‘there’ by nothing more than an act of will. Its credo “I will therefore I am.” A distortion of the way things are so grotesque, so perverse, that it can’t be taken seriously. That can only be the work of a talented joker and magician. Harmless entertainment.
Except for one problem. The host to which it’s the reverse is Self-Awareness with a Conscience. The ultimate in Good: Character and Integrity defined by principles of Logic and values of Love. Powered by the Spontaneity of Energy in the eternally evolving Now. Movement that can never be subject to any ‘will’. So what is the joker-magician behind its mask of harmless entertainment? What else can it be but evil? Palpatine, the tribal beast who rules the galaxy. The evil emperor who means to rule alone and quash all opposition for eternity. Adam Skywalker’s choice for a boss, his opportunity to scare everyone and to be cool.
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Body vs. Mind
The universe of Mind
Why ‘Mind’? Because everything that we speak of is ideas, and ideas need Mind to think them. Mind not only capable of fitting things together logically – differentiating – but also capable of discerning their meaning. Equipped with the values of feeling capable of empathy, guided by Conscience. In a dream of make-believe where anything goes, where all is appearances with no ‘reality’ but what’s on the surface, in the borrowed ‘mind’ of the make-believer, all exactly as it should be.
Being the reverse of what is – the way things really are – it could only have come into ‘existence’ by an act of will. Not by Mind thinking, Movement evolving, or Life-Creation growing, but by not-mind willing it. A ‘force of nature’ that’s instinct, in no need of reason or choice to tell it what to do. Being the author of its own made-up reality it already knows. And if it knows then what it knows must be flawless. The work of ‘god’ the ‘creator’ who must be perfect. Everything about this unstructured impossibility, its ‘creation’ and ‘creator’, all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfect.
No wonder then that its embodiments who populate its ‘creation’ have no need of self-questioning. No need for reasoning and choice if it’s perfect by definition. For looking into mirrors to introspect when all is on the surface. Nothing to explore below or within if there is no ‘below’ or ‘within’. No reflection and therefor nothing to edit. Nothing to question on the surface if an act of will cannot admit mistakes. Willfulness admits of no opposition and no contradiction. Being opposition it is already contradiction. If Reality can’t co-exist with its contradiction neither can contradiction co-exist with its own contradiction. It must be perfect beyond questioning. Absolute beyond limiting or correcting. Motionless beyond Movement. Status quo beyond change.
Don’t ask!
Why does the manipulator steer its captives away from Mind? Demean reason and choice, obstruct learning and growth? Because the flaw in the human Psyche is an idea of Mind. A reverse-reflection of the way things are. That came about through the Movement and evolution of positives. Of possibilities, not negatives and impossibilities. Ignition by the spontaneous attraction between functions, Love, Logic, and Energy in the Now, that could not have been initiated by dysfunction. Their opposite.
The manipulator doesn’t want its captives to reason or to choose, to learn or to grow – to ask questions – because of what it has to hide. The flaw in human psychology that sent Sigmund Freud, under the influence of his manipulator, looking for it where it can’t be found. In the body’s brain and genitalia. In the perverse twist of illogic that’s guilt, to distract from explanation that has no need of it. Of guilt or any other absurdity taken from mythology, mysticism, and religion. That only needs help from Guidance that isn’t a know-it-all from the magic kingdom of make-believe. From common sense.
These thoughts I would share with others the Persons that they are, on the assumption that what separates us is misunderstanding. This is not the assumption of our make-believing know-it-all manipulator. Its premise is there can be no misunderstanding. Not if the virtual reality of its ‘creation’ is perfect as is. If the correction that’s needed is in the eye of the beholder. Our eyes. There is only one voice speaking one truth. One-sided and one-dimensional. Arrogance. The manipulator. A reverse reflection with no reflection.
‘Guidance’ from the gut
My top priority has been to expose the contradictions of the manipulator’s script. To make it obvious that it’s a deception. Made-up. A manipulation meant to make fools of its captive audience. To play with their emotions, leverage their misperceptions and the feelings they evoke so it can manipulate motivation. Reverse aspirations and connections, convert Families into tribes and divide them until in fear and desperation they resort to force. To establish ‘order’ on the surface in denial of the psychological mayhem underneath. To ‘resolve their differences’ in the only way that manipulation knows how: on its own terms. By eliminating the opposition.
The manipulator’s top priority is maintaining the illusion that its made-up magic kingdom is paradise. A ‘paradise’ of hierarchy and corruption, competition and combat, cruelty, savagery, and depravity. The best of all possible worlds. Insanity to be taken seriously and its author to be thanked and venerated for its ‘creativity’. A preternatural talent for turning fiction into ‘fact’ and perversities into ‘normal’. The know-it-all presiding over the original make-believe: a self-proclaimed ‘god’.
Wherever the herd mentality of the human tribal animal holds sway over its Psyche and imagination manipulation has its way. The blood-sucking vampire has its way with its victim who welcomes its ‘kiss’, having mistaken addiction – an agent of reversal and division – for an agent of kindness. A ‘savior’ bringing ‘salvation’ rather than a predator. ‘Guidance’ from a ‘gut’ that knows nothing but self-consumption, digestion, and waste.
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The Nature of the Beast
Love in its formative stage
‘Evil’ would merit the intent to defeat it along with the effort it takes were it not for the fact that intent is no less a part of the illusion than its effects. Were it not for the fact that all the works of reversal and division have their origin in falsehood, because this is their nature. The ‘logic’ of what isn’t. Illogic, a derivative, that must start with the founding premise of all that is. Motivated at the beginning by the power of attraction between two functions incomplete without the other. Between boundaryless Love and boundaried Logic, to form Self-Awareness, the function of Mind assured of Goodness by Spontaneity.
That could not be what it is and do what it does were Mind itself not subject to the Conscience of Guidance. Old-fashioned, much-maligned morality. The constitution and Conscience of Creation. The laws of cause and effect above which there is no ‘higher authority’. Rule by law essential to Democracy that’s enshrined in our Constitution and memorialized by Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The cause for which humanitarian fought then and must fight again today.
Given legitimacy by the one and essential source of Movement behind all of Creation: the Spontaneity of the original Happening. Movement’s ignition by the power of attraction that could not have evolved had it not been initiated by boundaryless Love. The bluebird of Happiness on Uncle Remus’ shoulder that cannot be contained by any means. Not even by the limits of Definition if the first idea- and function-to-be began in its formative state. Freedom in Reality whose reversal is the absence of idea and function. The perversity that’s ‘anything goes’.
The original Happening was beyond the capacity of Mind itself to comprehend. It couldn’t be the handiwork of Self-Awareness if it was its activation. If Love instantaneous must be beyond control to be something goes — Happening that’s reliably Good. That could not be trusted otherwise to be beyond the reach of will and manipulations. Reality reverse-engineered to be what it isn’t. To ‘capture’ an illusion. The ‘enemy’ that can never be prey to any predator if “beyond the limits of definition” is forever free.
The sine qua non of Movement
The attribute that lies at the core of the Good. Of Character with Integrity. Of Free Choice, that it cannot be captured and compromised in any sense. Cannot be invaded and conquered as the manipulator would have its host believe. Its fools, because Love is boundaryless. The force of Life and Growth, Movement and evolution, at the beginning, that nothing can stop. Even though so long as Life truly is Good and the hallucination that ‘life’ on Earth lasts, ‘nothing’ is destined to keep on trying. The falsehood that’s ‘evil’ must continue to maintain the illusion that Good has a sworn ‘enemy’, the ‘enemy’ is Real, and the ‘enemy’ must ‘win’.
So yes, there’s Good and there’s ‘evil’. But no matter how convincing evil’s embodiments and their manipulations may seem on Earth, they’re playactors playacting in the ‘theatre’ of the absurd. Who strain to convince that theatrics alone will bring about the ultimate ‘triumph of the will’. When all it will actually take to undo it is a simple act of Choice. Freedom freely chosen once the ass-kissing corruption of hierarchy is replaced by the Integrity of Character. To the strains of real feeling instead of theatrics, sung by the Lincoln Brigade, American volunteers taking on the fascist beast in the Spanish Civil War. “Wir kämpfen und siegen für dich: Freiheit!”
What does this imply for the attitude and behavior of the fools? That so long as we accept the verdict of zoology, that we’re a tribal species of animal, so long as we divide ourselves into warring tribes and submit to endless splitting off that extends all the way down to Families and individuals, we will be fooling ourselves. Accepting the Machiavellian machinations of every iteration of ‘corporate’ as benevolence instead of the machinery of expedience that it is. Amorality, immorality, and injustice, self-dealing, unfairness, and inequality, instead of the all-powerful benevolence that it pretends to be.
Denying the truth and getting in our own way. Obstructing our own progress, not toward sipping tea with our pinkies extended like better behaved animals but toward ending the hallucination. Ending the canard that this is all we are and can ever be. Apes at home on a planet of the apes. Accepting the verdict of truth: evil is manipulation and manipulation is evil. Choosing again to be functional instead of dysfunctional. To have the satisfaction of Movement that’s actually going somewhere. Of Learning and Growth that’s its own satisfaction, because that’s what it takes for Family to be there for one another. To connect with where it all comes from: Guidance. The sine qua non of Movement. Of Love and Logic in Relationship.
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Turf
The big fight
When psychopathy picks a fight, to shrink from delivering the lesson it asks for isn’t just questionable character. It’s giving in to the wrong side of human nature. Helping the bad guys ‘win’. Are there ‘bad guys’? Human animals more animal than human? Schoolyard authoritarian bullies picking fights? Damn right! Must we let them have their way? Hell no! Is this one of the first lessons a kid has to learn? Hell yes!
Resistance to competition for the possession and control of personal relationships is one brand of irrationality to which we’re exposed, though there are many. Warning us away from its food dish with growls – friendships and Family relationships it imagines that it’s captured. As though it were a predator, because that’s what it is. The animal side of human animal seated within our animal brain, unevolved and unevolving. The master of Plato’s Cave.
To which some respond with avoidance. Commanded by their personal algorithms to absent themselves at the first whiff of unpleasantness. That might require differentiating between right and wrong and commit them to one side or the other — to stand for something. When their animal brain has willed them to do the reverse: to take no side. “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” Who, me? Giving the bully a pass when the meaning behind the deception is giving it a boost. With irrationality no less pungent and no less disruptive of Character, friendships, and Family.
The dogged pose
My first encounter with this nonsense was a minor shock to the system. Not because the damage intended was minor; it was potentially severe. But because my friendships were grounded in rationality and responded to reason. I learned a lesson. So when it happened again it was a shock I was prepared for. Aware that the potential for damage wasn’t amenable to diplomacy. My brush with psychopathy required something more. A crash course in human motivation. Plumbing the depths of Rodney King’s wisdom to understand why we can’t all just get along.
Since then I’ve become an armchair theorist and writer. With my own website, some three hundred essays so far on the metaphysics of human motivation, and a determination to unravel a mystery. Why dedication to Family can’t make a dent in its mischaracterization as ‘tribe’ by psychopathy equally dedicated to Family’s dis-integration. By animal-human, dedicated to Family’s de-humanization and dismemberment. Why, almost in my ninetieth year, I have yet to experience or observe a human Family that’s healed — free of psychological woundings and fully functional. That isn’t in some sense dysfunctional.
Despite our best efforts to be there for Family, with insight and honesty, compassion and effort, the mischaracterization remains. Tribal beast. A dogged pose at odds with loving kindness, reality, and common sense.
Person persistent
The same pose of forces butting heads here in America and in other countries. Linked inextricably not just by the flow of money and commerce but by habits of abuse. The human Family choking on the atmospherics of blame, so toxic with fear, suspicion, and recrimination that sensibility can’t breathe let alone connect with others. As though we’re all social media predators, threats to the fragile psyches of victimhood that can only be assuaged by ruling the galaxy. A psychological horror that would deserve a moment’s reflection if there were anything to it, but there isn’t. It’s all made up.
An act that can only be the work of a manipulator. With a talent for fooling people that isn’t fooling me. Whether I get this across now or in another life I’ll do it, because I’m not its victim. Its victims are the make-believers putting on their pose and the family they and their manipulators have confined in their psychological cages. The young and the aged in particular. In keeping with the nature of the wrong, that it’s not the work of human nature. It’s the work of the human animal. A tribal beast. Opposed to a world that’s shared. To Family integrated by Love from below rather than dis-integrated by arrogance from above.
By hierarchy that’s corruption and corruption that’s ass-kissing ape etiquette. By turf and the animal-humans determined to protect it. Ever on guard against the demonic machinations of Persons scheming to take over the galaxy. It takes some doing to accumulate a pile of manure this size. Put there not by a pony but by a pasture-full of bulls, and so it takes some doing to remove it. Thoughtfulness that a talent for fooling people wouldn’t know about. Couldn’t begin to understand or use, yet thoughtfulness persists.
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Terms of Unrelatability
Our hero!
There’s no situation where there aren’t considerations that pull in different directions. In theory or in practice, metaphysics or physics, where the state of being is not unrest and balance is not essential to its Integrity. For at the core of Creation is evolution that could not be Movement forward without agitation. The idea that its ignition could have happened in a state of perfect peace and harmony is make-believe. The situation where ignition could have happened would have been a state of self-questioning. Balance always in a state of becoming, not being. A work in progress, not work that’s done.
Whose implied reverse is self-dividing. The difference between unrest necessary for Movement and balance on one hand, and destabilization that destroys balance and ends Movement on the other. The proverbial house divided, forever unbalanced for want of character and Integrity that only self-questioning can provide. Family now turned against one another; function turned to dysfunction. Movement-Creation turned on its head by its reverse-reflection. By authoritarian injustice. Enumerator replaced by denominator-dividing now posing as a whole number. The end of days for fraction and unrest. For Movement and Creation and any need for character self-questioning. For structural Integrity now that structure itself is gone.
The ‘terms’ offered by authoritarian-hierarchical corruption are the appearance of order, justice, and balance, along with its acceptance. Unquestioning since that’s all there is: an appearance. One-sided, one-dimensional, and vertical: zoology’s animal ‘kingdom’ where the human-animal reigns supreme from the top. Offering no possibility of other perspectives, and therefore no awareness of, or accountability for, the ruckus that lies below. Disorder, injustice, and imbalance hidden by make-believe. By appearances and their one-dimensional champion, the authoritarian bully. Our Marvel Universe action hero.
Take it or leave it
So what’s to question? Nothing if these are the only terms possible. But of course they aren’t. If their author is all pretense, a cartoon bully, everything is to question. The duty of character self-questioning then to assert its own terms. Order, justice, and balance for Real. Protection of the vulnerable against a cartoon’s pretense of invulnerability. Protection of the innocent against the ‘divine’ right of victimhood’s arrogance – wild, willful, and infantile — to take vengeance upon anyone it deems guilty. Protection of grownups from two-year-olds. The obligation of Family honor to stand up to the bully.
Situations routinely greet us in our own and others’ homes, where Family, yielding to the fallacy and manipulations of authoritarian hierarchy, pretend balance while undermining it in fact. Through the inversion of character. The elimination of every consideration but themselves. Absolute power to rule absolutely. Authority beyond questioning. The abandonment of structural Integrity brought about by the abandonment of structure altogether. The elimination of character self-questioning so that it can be replaced by corruption self-dividing. The abandonment of balance since now there’s no need for it.
What’s not to like? Ein volk. Eine Deutschland. Ein Fuhrer. The natural order of things and its unrest gone. Replaced by whole number one. ‘God.’ Monolithic, inaccessible, and immovable. No more fussing over how to maintain balance. Everything simplified. One-sided and one-dimensional. The way things are and that’s the way it is. Animal kingdom hierarchy under the iron rule of arrogance. Take it or leave it.
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Justice
The impossible dream
The role of character self-questioning is not so simplified. Its natural order of things accommodates unrest by being both connecting and distancing:
- Connection with Family. Personality types drawn to one another by their nature: parts brought together by the force of attraction to form a whole. To complete one another in the cause of function and the intimacy of relationship.
- Distancing required by the character of Family that self-questions. By the nature of Integrity faithful to intimacy of another kind: with its own inner moral compass. With Guidance from independent judgment, in itself but not of itself, that may not compromise with external influence.
The structure of the way things are. In Reality composed of functions that may not overlap or interfere with one another that must nevertheless function as one. A formula for unrest. The source of constant agitation that’s Movement at the heart of Creation. Restlessness. Whose unattainable destination is coming to rest. Like the value of pi that can never resolve to a whole number, yet for the Man of La Mancha and character self-questioning there’s meaning in the attempt. To achieve the balance without which Family cannot function as one. To attain the Integrity that’s Family being there for one another.
Against the divisions of injustice
A role characterized by manipulation as its reverse. Dividing Family against one another. Prejudiced, unprincipled, and undisciplined. A mischaracterization that gets commitment to Family Integrity exactly wrong and manipulation’s too. The presumption of authoritarian perfection that’s arrogance. Unbound by any principle but its primacy uber alles.
Evidence of the manipulator and its wrongdoing can come unbidden and unhidden. Delivered in the clear without encryption that needs to be deciphered. Like the ‘God’ of Jerry Martin’s book, God: An Autobiography: a contradictor and contradiction no less obvious than the truth it contradicts. A situation that nevertheless requires balancing because of considerations pulling in different directions. Family needing to get along with Family in the presence of manipulators who won’t allow it. Their insistence on the primacy of fear and the denial of Love, leaving ‘authority’ in charge and others in cages. The psychological hell of considerations pulling not in different directions at different times but in opposite directions at the same time. As in ‘my way or the highway’.
Manipulation: arrogance that recognizes no limits to madness. The denial of every role essential to Family Integrity. Leaving innocents to suffer. Family needing support from those they depend on being deprived of it instead. An injustice that can’t go unanswered. That calls for a response that isn’t ruled by a manipulator. That relates to the Persons we are. That seeks the understanding needed for balance when considerations cause unrest. In the spirit of reconciliation and humility, when to end unrest otherwise is to end it with irreconcilability and arrogance.
The situation where we find ourselves: human-animal Family divided against itself at the mercy of agents of irreconcilability. Manipulators. Perpetrators of injustice. Abusers of those entrusted to their care.
Incompetents who need to get out of the way. To be replaced by Persons who belong. By flesh-and-blood humans who welcome Guidance in loving friendship in support of Movement’s cause. Better able to manage Family’s boundary between Movement forward and Character self-questioning. The line that divides and unites. Family being there for one another without compromising its own integrity or theirs. Self-questioning in support of character against the encroachments, cruelties, and divisions of self-corruption. The cause of justice.
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The Abomination
Winning isn’t the only thing
Life evolves through different situations that call upon different perspectives. Groundhog Days that come back around until minds change, resistance gives way to growth, and we get it right. Aided by new perspectives, unburdened of the old. Just as I’ve ventured beyond physics into metaphysics I’ve tried to tell the stories of personalities and perspectives beyond Family trees. As one individual flawed by bias, yet at the same time humanizing. For making an honest attempt at meaning and relatability. Understanding that Love for Family can’t be undone by youthful folly. By the foolishness and machinations of mistaken identity when the Persons that we are behind our façades of sociability are relatable. Minds and hearts reliably open, receptive, and self-questioning as Character needs to be.
Resistant to the ‘sociability’ that suppresses it. The bully that sublimates the differences that define us as Persons instead of ‘tribe’ so that we may be neutered, branded and corralled like cattle. Deprived of our perspectives. Deprived of our individuality, originality, and spontaneity. Rendered impotent like clones to be set upon one another in the heraldry of battle. Emblems on helmets and numbers on jerseys, humanity programmed to behave like beasts. Competing for supremacy in an animal kingdom of hierarchy to be number one. King of beasts.
‘God’ the ‘Creator’
The abomination that our metaphysical Self welcomed into its Psyche. A mock-up of Hermann Goering. Anti-sociability. Airlocked inaccessibility disguised as accessibility. Agreeable and reasonable, jocular and ingratiating. The ultimate in predatory deception: the regular guy you’d want to have a beer with. Animal-human adolescence, self-conscious and obsessed with appearances, thinking, perhaps, that a master-race lookalike will help it be who it wants to be. Tough and resilient. The ultimate in cool.
While a child. Mind struggling to grow in a state of self-unawareness and the absence of its Parents. Deprived of something equally fundamental to its function: the Self it had been before it had turned things over to the abomination. The Persons of its hallucination that we actually were and still are. Now owned, possessed, and controlled by another self. An alien promising to make us cool. No ‘guide’ but a predator. A wild animal-human whose idea of ‘relating’ is to welcome others into its cage. The only ‘home’ fit for an animal.
A ‘paradise’ of make-believe where anything goes. Ruled by a know-it-all with but one concern: the perpetuation of its made-up world. A manipulation, and the authority of its manipulator to make it up. Its power and freedom unquestioned and absolute. The abomination welcomed into the human Psyche: ‘God’ the ‘creator’.
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The Big Mistake
Why?
Why ‘manipulator’? When negativity completes definition with the implication of what positivity isn’t, it’s a derivative. Having no definition of its own. An implication dependent on its host for the only ‘existence’ allowed it: the reverse of its host and therefore the reverse of existence. Undetectable if its host is Mind awake and self-aware, detectable if Mind isn’t awake. Is self-unaware and thus capable of confusing what isn’t with what is. With what’s not there with what is there. ‘Living’ a dream so real that it’s virtual reality. A hallucination where self-unawareness ‘sees’ its own reverse image and can’t tell the difference. Mistakes it for itself.
The mistake that accounts for every mistake that’s ever been made. Welcoming a derivative – an implication with no abilities or powers of its own – into its host. Negativity the reverse of positivity, impossibility the reverse of possibility; make-believe the reverse of reality. Ushered inside Mind the fount of all that is: ideas and principles, feelings and values. Of all Movement. Life that’s Energy and Energy that’s Life, now brought under the influence of its reverse. A mere implication. A reflection of who it isn’t, what it’s not for, and what it doesn’t do. Empowered now to imitate life. To pretend to be and do whatever it wants now that it has a place at the controls.
Where it can manipulate its host. Apply powers and abilities to ends given to it that it reverses into stolen by it. Assume an identity turned over to it that it mischaracterizes as vanquished by it. True to form in every respect as definition allows it: reversal that can only reverse. Mischaracterization that can only mischaracterize. Miscreation that can only miscreate. Mistaken identity that can only ‘be’ who it isn’t. An elaborate composition of pretense and deception. The illusion of limitless that’s the ultimate in limited. Make-believe. A manipulation that can only be put ‘there’ by a manipulator.
To reveal itself in a world of virtual reality not as the Integrity of human-animal self-questioning but as the corruption of human-animal self-dividing. The manipulator of Family, arrogance hidden behind the mask of sociability. Anti-sociability seated in the animal brain: wild and willful, hierarchical and combative. The reverse of Mind: undifferentiating and unempathetic. Programmed to gain supremacy over its host and to rule its made-up animal kingdom alone at the top. ‘Number one’: the end of everything including its derivative self. The ass-kisser with no more asses to kiss and no one left to kiss its ass.
How?
How manipulation? In a one-dimensional world there is no definable Self, no voice, to question virtual reality. To question the Truman Show of appearances on the upper side of Definition, lacking an underside and therefore lacking depth. The virtual reality absorbed by self-unawareness is all surface: wholly external and therefore wholly unreal. Bingo – manipulatable! Into whatever the ‘creator’ of make-believe wants its made-up ‘reality’ to be.
What could a manipulation be other than worthlessness? Self-imagery, pretense, and lies. Stomach. Symbolic of consumption, waste, and neglect. A ‘creative’ black hole lacking in creativity and originality, initiative and motivation. If make-believe is the reverse of Happening it couldn’t happen. If it’s the reverse of Movement it can’t move. If it’s the big picture answer to everything it’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. If it’s limitless — lacking in boundaries — it’s undefinable and therefore useless. What is it then? A big mistake.
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Unfinished Business
Beyond the self-regard of immaturity
So long as human-animal tolerates its possession by a manipulator – so long as it plays the ingratiating ass-kisser bully – affirmation of the wrong self-worth, an imposter, can’t serve any useful purpose. Not if its manipulator is the source of harm to Family as well as to itself, now and potentially in the future. Who would in good conscience choose to be part of the mistake if they’ve witnessed and experienced it? If there’s anything they can do to prevent it, by role-modeling the right and the freedom to choose who they are. To stand up to the bully — to possession by who they are not. To serve as the mirror into which the manipulator has forbade Family to look. The reflection of who it isn’t, terrified of being found out. Of being recognized for having no reflection of its own.
The abomination opposes help with an honest self-assessment. Questions for Person to ask itself if character could look at its reflection in a mirror, to discern what it gets right but also to remediate what it gets wrong. Refusal to look is a mistake. The root cause of problems for Family and for members who depend on one another. Parents and children. All needing strength of character to be there for us instead of a pose of invincibility that’s not there. Instead of authority, absolute and beyond questioning. Movement brought to a standstill by presumption. By the arrogance of perfection that has no need of a mirror.
This the mistake of individual Persons that’s also the mistake of the Mind we all share. Unaware of its real self, imagining itself to be a sub-species of ape instead. A tribal animal whose wildness and willfulness, license and cruelty, are at constant war with civility and kindness. Attributes of the humanity in us that would be something better than ‘animal’. That would be who we really are, the same shared Mind when it’s not unaware.
Character exempted from self-questioning exempts itself from any need to grow beyond the self-regard of immaturity. To take responsibility for its behavior and account for the costs of its misbehavior. It displaces the difficulties of personhood and their unpleasantness onto others. All the while imagining itself safe in its airlock of denial. Its tower of authoritarian perfection, the infallibility of arrogance that’s make-believe. The implication of what subject or object isn’t, that completes the definition of what it is. The metaphysical origin of Newton’s law of physics, that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. As well as the origin of chaos anywhere that it’s taken seriously. Like here on Earth where the ‘law’ is anything goes. Chaos. The will of the manipulator.
The only Self that matters
To which I’ve tried to stand up in the way that the situation calls for. By being the mirror otherwise denied to Family by its manipulator — blood-sucking Transylvanian nobility equally averse to sunlight, wolfbane, and mirrors with no reflection. It isn’t self-regard that matters. The only ‘Self’ that matters to Family is each Person who belongs to it.
For which Trust welcomes Honesty with or without pleasantries. With or without ‘sociability’ that’s equally adept at feigning respect for truth and corrupting it so that it can perpetuate the lie. Weak on recognizing and taking responsibility for the costs of its behavior. To be questioned for any longer treating itself as a VIP entitled to seating without having to go through security. More than anyone else, manipulation behind its mask of sociability needs to be checked out. On its own captive Person’s initiative, to look in the mirror. And the duty of self-questioning is to make sure it knows it. Come what may, even if it means that goodwill will be reversed into more fuel for blame and guilt by the know-it-all ‘God’ of make-believe. The bullshit artist. The ‘creator’ of the big lie.
The pose that never can be
When Persons we Love project themselves as pose we’re obliged to withhold our support. To demonstrate our Love for who they are rather than for who they aren’t in whatever ways our situations call for. And by doing whatever we can to help Family approach change in a different state of mind. Not with the mindsets of predatory animals – manipulators from the magic kingdom of make-believe – but with the Honesty and Integrity of loving friends.
I’ve differentiated between Person and manipulator, felt and expressed unconditional Love for Family members over time. In the spirit of Isabel Myers’ Gifts Differing and Jung’s intuitive psychology, Jesus’ Course in Miracles and the Tao’s Book of Changes, I’ve attempted collaborative efforts toward personal growth, welcomed different perspectives free of the judgments of willfulness, and sought to release Family from the psychological cages of arrogance. Through the choice of Guidance that’s not captivity to our reverse. To bullying arrogance whose ‘guidance’ is a pose. The stuff of make-believe. A pack of lies.
My purpose throughout being to support Families in all their endeavors so long as they originate with the Persons that they are. Character self-questioning, and not with a pose that they never were and never can be.
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Impossibility
The twin prizes of victory
I cast stones because I am without my own manipulator and its manipulations. And pigs will fly. It’s obvious that the human animal is manipulated by its body; the procreative urge makes spectacles of us. Less obvious that it’s manipulated by personality types, but that may only be because not everyone introspects and those who do seldom get appreciably below the surface. Self-recognition being more than a sideshow; it’s absence put us ‘here’ and its presence would put us where there really is a ‘here’.
Replacing ‘here’ that blocks self-recognition with who we are: not embodiments and personifications of ideas whipsawed by manipulation but the ideas themselves. Functions, sovereign and independent, essential to the Character of Self-Awareness and the Integrity of all its works. The function of Choice freely chosen. Whose disablement and disempowerment manipulation had to pull off with its bag of tricks to put us here and must continue to pull off if itself and its tricks have any hope of lasting. Of ‘winning’ its made-up competition between Good and evil, Real and unreal, where loss would be end-of-game and itself with it.
Self-recognition and Free Choice – the twin prizes of victory for the good guys because this is what it will take to succeed. Choosing freely. So we will recognize that this is who we are. Free Choice.
Susceptible to mischaracterization
My getting beneath the surface with introspection has been accompanied by the everyday manipulations of the body and personality type, both being subject to evolution and therefore susceptible to change. Whatever claim I can make to standing up to the manipulator-bully comes with a disclaimer: there’s a manipulator-bully with my name on it, and if I’m not aware of it that doesn’t mean it won’t make an appearance or that others won’t be aware of it. Because they will if they haven’t already.
While self-identifying as Person I’m regularly upended by habits of tribe, conscious and unconscious. Not very helpful if the work that I’m about is Family. Especially when manipulation blurs the distinction between Family and tribe and the floodgates open to other perspectives. Thinking themselves entitled to get in on the act by defining me and my function however they want. Which in the case of Jesus was pretender to the throne of Israel once his teaching attracted crowds. Which in my case is pretender to influence once I sought to share insights from Guidance with other Persons through a website. Manifestly uninterested as I am in klieg lights and riches, swagger and puffery, but nevertheless highly suspect and susceptible to mischaracterization by manipulation.
Neither ‘kingdom’ nor ‘God’
The story of how I got there readily feeds into the mischaracterization when told from the perspective of the manipulator. Because to it the involvement of Guidance smacks of manipulation. I ventured into metaphysics unawares when helped by Guidance, an integral part of my Mind and Psyche. Misconstrued by manipulation as a hand tipping the scales. Turning me away from Family in the here and now and in the abstract, when in fact it was bringing me closer. By helping to expand the scope of my questioning to where it might get closer to correction.
With answers that put my situation in perspective. Closer to Understanding that brushes with unrelatability in the Families of my experience is part of a story that traces back to the situation at the beginning. To the structure of Creation founded not on one big perfect answer but on Character self-questioning. The very same ‘kingdom of god’ attributed to the teaching of Jesus that Guidance assures me is neither the teaching of Jesus, ‘kingdom’, nor ‘god’, but Family being there for one another.
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Maturation
The gift of insight
Wherefore hope that this bastion of absurdity, the tribal beast, will yield?
If insights from the work that Guidance and I have been about seem an improvement on what’s gone before, that would be one answer. Believing that we got something in our moment that Kant and Einstein, Parmenides and Plato, Jesus and the Tao, Jung, Newton, and all the other greats of history didn’t get in theirs. An absurdity on the face of it when it shouldn’t be. The way things are is Movement forward. Evolution, so why shouldn’t Understanding in this moment forward be farther along?
Why should insights from any source require the imprimatur of history? Academic legitimacy and herd mentality supremacy, when insights by their nature care nothing for any of this? When they come of their own accord from another perspective, out of the blue, and unattached. Helpful because they and their source aren’t subject to our limits, and it’s when our ‘quests for knowledge’ seek to tie them to our limits that we aren’t being helpful. We’re getting it wrong.
Insights from another perspective are gifts, and gifts to be received are to be shared. Ironic that in the sharing of gifts Guidance and I are perceived to be taking instead of giving. Taking attention that’s the exclusive preserve of royalty. Appropriating rights that belong to the manipulator-god, the ultimate giver: ‘creator’, owner, and possessor of everything. The big-picture know-it-all who knows nothing of insights and takes offense at the use of them.
Grow up!
Who are we then?
The last word on the definition of ‘human’ isn’t zoology. It’s metaphysics. That says human is Person that belongs to Family. The bridge between zoology’s ‘animal’ that belongs to tribe and the Reality that’s neither ‘human’ nor animal. That’s an extension of Self-Awareness. Of Relationship between Love and Logic, our Parents. A Child who in a state of self-unawareness – in a situation required by the nature of Free Choice, its function in Creation – chose in error. Made a mistake from which Choice can recover when it learns to choose freely. When it learns the meaning of Character and Integrity, attributes of Self-Awareness its Parents and Life Creation their Family. The Character of Family’s Life-sharing source and the Integrity of its Life-affirming Creation.
Attributes without which Source and Creation would be meaningless. Lacking Definition. So if who we are is the Child of Self-Awareness then what we’re to do is to mature. To learn and grow into the capacity to perform our function if we choose freely to do so. To complete the Definition of Reality. Of what isn’t a training ground of self-dividing disconnections and corruption, reversals and per-versals, provocations and injustices. The gift of virtual reality where Choice is given the golden opportunity of discovery. Of awareness, that being the Child of Self-Awareness we never stopped being Self-Aware. Were never separated from our function Choice but only began our maturation in a condition that made it possible to choose it. To grow up.
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Possibility
Cue Sister Sledge!
A goal that the wrongness of virtual reality’s manipulator will claim is impossible since minds unaware cannot change. Since what isn’t is locked into place, immovable and inaccessible, perfectly unrelatable.
- The Cave imagined by Plato and its occupants, slaves to appearances. Animals unreceptive to Persons who would presume to disturb the darkness of tribe with the light of Family.
- Israel of the New Testament, where the Person who brought the light of Family stirred such an awakening that it got him killed. The message of the gruesome figure on the cross: this is what happens to slaves who question their masters. To Persons who dare to serve Family instead of tribe.
The goal can’t be impossible if manipulation is limited by time, destined to end one way or the other. Subject to its re-reversal before then whenever its imaginary captive chooses to free itself. To discover the Reality behind appearances, that its ‘captivity’ is meant to end. To yield to the Reality of evolution. Movement forward propelled by Learning and Growth, the twin forces of Logic and Love. Differentiation and Empathy, the twin faculties of Mind and Character that distinguish ‘human’-ape from ape. Movement toward the Reality of Family bred of Relationship, composed of Relationships, and held together by Relatability.
All of it consummated by the ineffable instant: Spontaneity inseparable from Order. A condition beyond the capacity of any herd-mentality invention to penetrate it. Beyond the reach of will’s ass-kissing hierarchy to corrupt it. For Mind is not will. Relationship is not hierarchy. And Creation is not tribe. Cue Sister Sledge: We are Family.
No difference between ‘actor’ and ‘act’?
Our manipulator, the tribal beast, would have us believe that it’s safe from its outing and its manipulations from their reversal so long as the body-centered personality type, authoritarian and mindless, has committed to self-dividing. So long as it’s disabled self-questioning and therefore won’t allow it. Unaware that both the welcome extended to its divider and its reversal into a hostile takeover were matters of choice. Unawareness that itself was a matter of choice. The pose of disdain for reasoning and Choice that couldn’t have been struck were it not brought about by choice. That can be undone. No matter how foolish its judgment and flawed its ‘reasoning’. No matter the lengths to which manipulation will go to appear to be what it isn’t.
Our metaphysical Self welcomed the intruder into its thinking and feeling. Into his Psyche, the image of who he thought it best to be. A force of will. Of ‘action’ that needn’t slow itself down with choices and reasoning necessary to make them. A hallucination of strength. Immovable for being unmoved and unmoving. Without sensitivity or conscience, empathy or differentiation – why? Because they’re perceived as weakness and will is perceived as strong. Because Machiavellian expedience cuts a swath through a world of tribal preening and warlords.
But more fundamentally because these are faculties of Mind beyond the reach of a personality type configured against them. The type familiar with the five senses. The wart hog rooting around in the underbrush that’s bereft of the sixth. Of introspection and reflection enabled by intuition, reveling in the spontaneity and discovery, the originality and creativity, of insights.
The difference between human-animal and animal-human. Between type that’s mindful in Loving Friendship with sixth-sense Guidance, respectful and helpful, and type that’s allied with the body and its ‘creator-god’: monolithic and inaccessible, toxic and unrelatable. The know-it-all king of beasts, a tree-dwelling, chest-thumping ape. Big bully and big baby all in one, disrespectful and unhelpful. Body-idolatry wishing its audience to believe that between the image and the person, the actor and the act, there is no difference. That the transformation is complete, permanent and irretrievable. The imperfection and weakness of human forever replaced by invincibility. By the ‘God’ of ass-kissing herd mentality. Hierarchical and corrupt.
We can choose again
I’m not persuaded.
While refusals to do honest self-assessments cause problems they’re not our refusals. They’re our manipulators’ refusals acting and speaking for us. Given free rein to act on our metaphysical Self’s behalf, the Mind dreaming us, and therefore free to prevent its host from questioning it. Which its host surely would have done had it looked into the mirror and recognized its ‘guest’ for what it is: its own reverse-reflection. The ‘self’ that it isn’t. Not a friend or a ‘savior’ but itself in reverse. A falsehood that can only cause problems if it’s believed. If itself and its falsehoods are taken for real instead of the non sequiturs that they are. Ridiculous and absurd.
Thinking that a reverse-reflection could be amenable to change is but one more absurdity. An impossibility, when amenability to change is for Person to show. When the Persons that we are revisit the thinking that put a manipulator at the controls and gave it free rein. When we take courage by the horns, defy its captor, and question its decision. Recognize that for all its supposed benefits they’re outweighed by the costs. Disconnects with Family. With anyone with whom loving friendship is the object instead of substitutes. Triumphs of the will and more magic from life inside an adolescent cartoon.
When we grow up. Recognize that the ‘triumphs’ of a tribal beast are a cartoon and reclaim ourselves. To be the Persons that we are instead of stage props. Make-believe, make-believing manipulations.
Family has the memory of an emotional connection. With personal authenticity uncompromised by artifice and knows an act when it sees one. I have empathy. I can differentiate, and I can’t be manipulated. The extreme makeover of Families is done for effect, and if this is so then Persons can go back to their thinking and remove the cause. It was done by choice. It was deliberate, and if Choice chooses it can be undone by choice. We can choose again.
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