Hierarchy and Disrespect
Questionable and questioning
The reflections that follow invite questioning. Challenged to make sense when hallucination is performance art drawn from reversals of Reality and their re-reversals. An inchoate mess. One part of the same split Mind striving toward integration and Self-Awareness, the other part mimicking the first part in reverse. Mistaken for an “other” getting in the way.
There being no “other” to shake a fist at, just the split Mind. A house divided and thus corrupted. Occupied by ghosts and haunted. By us, a riot of personality types. Isolated and independent, self-directed and contrary, yet instinctively coordinated like herds of cattle and schools of fish. Interconnected by the same root system like a forest of aspen. As though the “self” of hallucination were one instead of many, which in fact it is.
Human-apes entangled with one another like so many particles defying the laws of physics. Compelled thus to perform roles in a play, like it or not. A morality play of characters and their reverse mirror-images, rewinding and replaying its Groundhog Day moral. Until at least one performer gets it and lets go of reflections. Of willing “others,” reflections of the same one Self, to be like itself. And when they refuse, to make them pay for it.
Learning finally the point of the script. That what we see in our mirrors is a matter of choice. And if the choice we’ve made is wrong, anyone can choose to make it right.
Eyes wide shut
I seem to be “visual in the back,” as Dawna Markova would put it. In her book The Art of the Possible (1991), which I wouldn’t have read if it weren’t for a person in a personal relationship. Who led me to it as I’ve been led by others to other sources. “Visual in the back” is a handicap if you’re looking for a particular brand of eye drops at the supermarket. When it would help to recognize what’s right there in front of your face. Or to visualize the choreographed imagery of a Caltech orientation, when incoming students and their parents are agape with the exuberance of here and now. Electrified by every word and I’m not, my Mind off somewhere else. Its Mind’s-eye wide open “there,” shut tight “here.”
Birding anyone?
But visual in the back isn’t a handicap if somewhere else is where the action is. Not in a hallucination where there’s neither here nor now, but where it’s always Now and there’s actually something happening. Here to be seen and heard. According to Newton’s law: for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. As true for metaphysics as it is for physics, when nothing happens without its being accompanied by its implied opposite. To one extent that physical objects defy my detection, metaphysical subjects welcome it to the opposite extent.
The farther motion goes somewhere the farther commotion goes nowhere. The difference being:
- Headed toward Self-Awareness, Reality, and Creation or retreating to a mythical status quo of self-unawareness, unreality, and stagnation.
- Forward with mobility or backward toward immobility. Change or paralysis.
- Development with Guidance from eternal growth or arrested by fear of growth and Guidance both.
- Free to go birding under the sun in Loving Friendship or to remain imprisoned in the darkness of unrelatability, with Plato’s troglodytes.
Ape-inhuman
The implication of either-or binary thinking in a hierarchical kingdom of predatory beasts is the division of one of two possibilities into two. Not for choice to decide but for instinct to act when the point is to exclude choice. Leaving the second possibility in place, unrecognized and untouched. That the first possibility is impossible, an attribute of one Mind-Self mischaracterized as animal-herd or tribe.
Leaving for hallucination the very definition of insanity: not either this or that but this and that. As in relationships pregnant with the promise of new life, creativity, and spontaneity, contending with the willfulness of expectations in fear of the unknown. Insensitive to the potential and vulnerability of life unborn while more concerned with protection of life unlived.
As in parenting responsible for the growth and protection of children, contending with fear and suspicion of threats to its authority. Insensitive to the potential and vulnerability of new life while more concerned with preserving no life. Reverse-reflections stuck in an undead status quo.
This and that. At times funny, charming, and validating. Human-ape. Underneath its veneer, disturbing and invalidating. Excruciating to be caught between opposites, crushed and dehumanized by visceral hatred. Madness. Ape-inhuman.
The comeback kid
All of it the banality of opposing thoughts entertained by the same split mind. The duality of Good and evil, Reality and illusion, co-existing side-by-side. As though their presence in the same ring foretells a Rumble in the Jungle. At Armageddon, the ultimate Thrilla in Manila. Where Revelation’s as-it-was-written-so-it-shall-be-done farce is staged before a global herd of fedoras. Staging their own end-of days slugfest between oxygen and cigar smoke.
Climaxed with theatrical flair when one of two muscle-bound gladiators in Everlast trunks delivers a Kid Gavilan bolo punch to the other’s jaw. With Ingemar Johansson toonder-and-lightning finality, ending “Two-Ton” Tony Galento’s days right before the gong in the fifteenth round.
To the sight of blood and sweat splattering. To the sounds of Tweety Bird chirping and fedoras gasping. Topped off by the voice of Don Dunphy making it all sound as if something is actually happening. His only peers the legendary Johnny Most, coming to you from high above ringside at Boston Garden. Another hellscape thick with fedoras and cigar smoke, salivating for victory and death. And Walter Winchell, his trademark urgency contrived by an overfilled bladder, bringing to every broadcast the angst of not making it to a urinal in time.
There being no more hopeful notes for Armageddon’s loser but one: the commercial’s signature gong. A safety-razor manufacturer promising human-apes an eternity of winning when they scrape the evidence of their common ancestor from face and limbs with its product. Then to look, feel, and be sharp. Setting off three more gongs, until twenty-four hours later, when the comeback kid reappears in the mirror. The undisputed champion of the world: a gorilla.
Hopefully
Supreme insanity harbored by the mind of human-animal. Competing for supremacy in make-believe hierarchy, the reverse-reflection of Reality and Truth. The binary “thinking” of corruption: not you and me but you or me. And so as long as you’re the bigger ape yours will be the ass to be kissed.
A plotline derived from the original one-and-zero of Reality: the thing and its implied opposite. Not only harmless but essential to evolution moving, Mind-relating, Self-Awareness sharing, Life growing, Inquiry learning, and Energy in the Now interconnecting. Until tossed into the half-light of Mind-Child’s self-unawareness. Thus into human-ape hallucination, where it’s conspiracy-theorized into an entertainment industry for apes. “Realists” who’d rather not be human, thrust into an alternate reality with its own economy and destiny. Backward to a “paradise” of victimhood: vengeance that never was.
A per-version of paradise. Corruption. Unchanging, useless, worthless, and hopeless. Except for the use it’s put to: to enable Choice to attain its Freedom by choosing character with integrity. Rather than to remain here in a magic kingdom of reverse mirror-image reflections. Of apes ascendant in their hierarchy of ass-kissing corruption. Disrespect.
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Person and Respect
Spring cleaning
A long shot if the evidence of Mind hallucinating is to be believed:
- The implication of “seeing things” that not only is the thing “seen” a hallucination but the seer as well. ‘Others’ unreal for being agents of Reality’s reverse-reflection, conjuring hallucinations within hallucination. Yet all of us unreal for inhabiting La Grande Illusion in the first place. The only difference being personality types’ role-playing: chump self-deluding like mine, or chump-deluders like some ‘others,’ magician-sorcerers. The only Real “person” self-unaware Mind-Child. Hallucinating embodiments of Impersonators.
- The reason why hallucination’s duality of opposing thoughts is a mess: the absence of differentiation. The faculty of Mind that, along with empathy – Logic plus Love – introduced a new sub-species of animal to our planet of the apes. Whether by chance or by intention who can say? But if our kingdom of beasts is ruled by willfulness – predatory instinct opposed to Mind and Creativity, bent on self-reversal in unreality – it couldn’t “introduce” anything.
Its “reality” is an undifferentiated mess that’s there for the new and improved version of ape to clean up. Character with integrity, differentiation, and empathy. Choice striving heroically to be Free or sloth not wanting to be bothered. Either way, time for spring cleaning.
The call for persons
Obvious by now that my style of interpretation and expression owes less to Andre Previn and the Pittsburgh than to Margot Austin and Peter Churchmouse. Published in January 1941, days after my third birthday, and so the earliest children’s storybook that I can remember. About an unlikely friendship between a hungry hymnal-eating mouse and the kitten brought in to get rid of it.
My introduction to a lifelong ideal: friendship that’s loving not in spite of differences but because of them. That transcends the limits of flesh to connect with Understanding: that it’s the thought that counts. With Love itself. My progress not much to write home about until a woman gave me a push. She a body-sensing sorceress and I a trainee of the Course, taught to suspend belief in bodies and not to be tricked by magic. Opposites.
So if a remembrance of “sharing” and “caring” tenderness is what’s expected we can forget about it. This pair took the road less traveled. And if my take on it seems at times gratuitously nettlesome, the imp in me wouldn’t deny it. Why should I, when the object of my affections was nettlesome? Unapologetically if not gratuitously. Irresistibly and admirably in fact.
Guidance is the equalizer, not a six-shooter. The source of insights doesn’t discriminate between bigger and smaller apes. It stuck Michael Faraday’s intuition in between Isaac Newton’s laws and John Clerk Maxwell’s calculations so that telecommunications would have spacetime-matter’s electromagnetic force to travel on.
I’m no Michael Faraday either. But if Jesus, the author of the Course, has put out a call for help then it helps to understand that its cause is our cause. And the help it needs in a hallucination of personifications is persons. Embodiments in a hallucination of spacetime-matter and bodies. Jesus’ previous effort limited to one-person one-body sharing the metaphysics of Self-Awareness. Through parables, miracles, and role-modeling, now able to articulate the basics in a publication with a global reach, aided by advances in learning and communications.
No need to ‘forgive’ and no need to ‘heal’
But still needing persons to do as he did: to share Loving Friendship not with tribes, one-the-many, but with individuals in their own circumstances and in ours. Personally. Relatably.
- Because tribes have no use for Guidance from metaphysical Conscience if one-the-many is illogical and its business is unrelatability. “Machiavellian expedience” makes a good fit with what goes on in a hallucination where if you want a friend, get a dog. Where the word to the wise is “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” Meaning let sleeping dogs lie because getting swept up in the antics of dog packs is a waste of time.
- Because it can’t be a waste of time to focus on individuals when they’re grown from the same root system. Like a forest of Aspens, one organism. Like the particles of particle physics, fish swimming in unison, beasts moving in herds: obedient to the immutable rule of physics and metaphysics: that nothing is separate. That the universe is “relational,” as physics’ quest for quantum gravity has found.
Thus it only takes one individual getting it right to restore Peace, Truth, and Sanity. An act of Choice but also of Spontaneity. Crucially performed in the context of Relationship. “Truly forgiving” in the words of the Course that, when we get it right, means not ‘forgiving’ at all. When ‘truly’ means there’s nothing to forgive. So let’s dump ‘forgiveness.’ It implies guilt. And if ‘guilt’ was a lie cooked up by mirror at the beginning, spinning conspiracy theories to make trouble, we’re better off not even thinking about it. What am I saying? Don’t ‘forgive!’
Fly this baby!
No need for ‘healing the separation’ either when Logic’s interconnections and Love’s interrelationships are inseparable and unbreakable. One Mind-system in Reality, held together by Spontaneous Energy in the Now. But like the idea of ‘forgiveness,’ it can take on the hallucination on its own terms. Restore awareness of the connection when character with integrity puts an end to hallucination’s hierarchy of Machiavellian beasts. One manipulator-system in unreality, taking itself apart by entropy. By energy dying in time, directed by Mind that’s split in two. Directing self-unawareness, its corrupted psyche, to reflect a show of appearances. A panoply of provocations, frightful, cruel, and disgusting, until Guidance from Definition restores Order with acts of kindness. Until Choice gains its Freedom by earning and learning Self-Awareness.
‘Forgiveness’ and ‘healing’ make sense in unreality where self-unawareness and nonsense get it wrong. They make no sense in Reality where Self-Awareness and Relatability get it right. If we’re getting it right in unreality we’re not ‘forgiving’ or ‘healing’ anything. Are we contradicting Jesus and the lesson of the Course? Not really. Not when it’s addressed to victimhood lost in a wilderness of lies, brought to paralysis by guilt, separation, and fear. Uncomprehending. Not when to help with comprehension it must relate. Must speak their language to lift the weight of guilt and alleviate fear. To comfort as well as explain.
When the language that Truth speaks knows nothing of either and needs no comforting. When it all it needs is to get on with it. Like Frank Capra’s Why We Fight, that puts a young guy in the cockpit of a P-51 and asks how would you like to fly this baby? Let’s take it to the bully!
Guidance respectful of character and choice
Wisdom from the Course and affirmation of the worth of the individual from Jesus. No less needed now than it was twenty-one centuries ago, when, once again, human-apedom is succumbing to tribal madness. Heeding the call for Love when it thinks it’s heeding the call of the wild. Trampling on the enemy of the beast: person and its individual rights. When the ‘enemy’ it’s trampling on is itself.
If the idea behind the Course works my thinking is no less mine than it ever was. Always subject to choice but also helped by Guidance when I’ve welcomed it and it’s responded. Which this moment cannot be one speaking for another since that would be an act of willfulness. A violation of Choice that must be free, judgment independent, and character whole with integrity. It’s to that cause that these insights speak, with the one voice of integrity or not at all. Choice striving to be Free, character striving for integrity, self-unawareness dependent on Guidance respectful of both.
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A Tale of Two Mirrors
Mirror at the beginning
It was in the nature of the mirror at the beginning to tell anyone who looked into it who they weren’t. The mirror occasioned by Movement in the absence of a big picture presided over by a know-it-all, when anything goes. When the door is open for any force capable of it to ignite change and to define itself without a know-it-all butting in. Allowing Love and Logic to stage the first Broadway act: “Loving Friendship.” The idea of ‘friend’ that makes no sense unless accompanied by friend. ‘Relationship’ that makes no sense unless relating, which requires Movement to extend the original thought to its partner in an expression of ‘partnership.’ The core and engine of Creation, the expression of Mind whose core and engine is Relationship. Movement with meaning and purpose. Love with Logic, the ignition of Self-Awareness.
Anything goes but an implication in Reality, writ large here in unreality. Now allowing Cole Porter to provide a suitable soundtrack for its reversal in life on Earth with “Anything Goes.” Mind-Relationship’s reverse-opposite at the beginning, trailing motion forward like an empty tin can silenced by its absurdity. Amplified by life on Earth into ear-splitting racket, demanding reverence for its triumph over motion, leading it back. For nihilism, the creed of anything goes. The face looming out of the mirror at the beginning of who we are in reverse. Who we aren’t, but fooled ourselves into thinking we are.
How can our heads be turned?
The hallucination that’s life on Earth is the reverse-opposite of all that made sense at the beginning. And so it too has a mirror. The re-reversal of the original mirror, and it’s in the nature of this one not to tell its beholders anything. Not to thrust its beholders into hierarchical kingdoms of demon-beasts to be ruled by a know-it-all nihilist “God” should they fall for its nonsense. But to question instead. Who are we? Why do we wear masks? To figure out with help from Guidance that who we are is Relationship. Free Choice trainees. Given the opportunity to earn and learn our function so that Mind-Relationship’s Child can perform it in Creation.
That can only be performed with character and integrity. When it’s done with ass-kissing tribal conformity and make-believe asininity on Earth, being told who it is and how it should behave. When it’s told the bully to fuck off and come into its own. In loving friendship with the spirit of the mirror. Not the creature from the black lagoon, the specter of nihilism from anything goes. But a lake sprite, the spirit of Guidance from Definition. Where something goes and it’s Spontaneity, the power of attraction between opposites Love and Logic. Who complement one another. Not the power of friction between opposites on Earth who destroy one another.
Who would we be in such a place if we have a choice? The lake sprite doesn’t tell us who we aren’t but she does come from where we are. From freedom from entrapment in time and matter. Try telling yourself that loving friendship with your lake sprite frees you in the Now from entrapment. You’ll get a response, but not in a way that validates time and matter. In a way that respects your role as an essential building block of Relationship. Your sovereignty and wholeness as a person. An individual who can’t exist, who can’t be and do without being and doing Relationship. In Loving Friendship with the lake sprite no matter what form she takes, because she’s from Definition and Definition is Guidance. Without which no part of Creation can function including Mind-Relationship itself.
A lake sprite. Playful and harmless. Respectful of our sovereignty. Sensitive to our feelings. There when we need her, out of our way when we imagine that we don’t. And yet the most powerful force in all of Creation. Whose only need from us is that our masks get out of the way so that she can share all that she is and has with who we are behind our masks. How can we not love her? How can our heads be turned by a know-it-all from anything goes? By a bully who’s neither playful, harmless, nor respectful of anything. Who’s insensitive and always in our way. A manipulator. A beast known to madness as a demon. Who makes fools of us and laughs at our buffoonery while scaring the shit out of us. While we tear ourselves to pieces.
On the way to graduation in a P-51
For us to answer as it occurs to us, each in our own way. The answer that occurs to me is in the nature of personal relationship as it’s occurred to me. Intimacy that has no need of euphemism. A rock that no wave can erode. The so-called demon is our own ass. Our back sides that talk nonsense that apes without differentiation and empathy can’t distinguish from their front sides. The bully is an ass – ourselves being fooled by our butts. How is this a thing to fear? How is this a thing not to laugh at? Ourselves making fools of ourselves.
The so-called demon is Mind-Relationship’s ass. Only Mind-Relationship that’s Self-Aware knows the difference and isn’t fooled by it. Knows that the implication of impossibility has to tag along with possibility when Definition by Logic requires it. Knows that Movement must be accompanied by another implication: an equal and opposite movement. When the ‘big picture’ is anything goes – no ‘big picture’ and no know-it-all either. But an echo or a shadow. A ghost or an apparition. A reflection in reverse. The image from our everyday lives looking back at us from a mirror. Our personal doppelganger. Us in reverse.
What ‘face’ do we see in the wrong mirror? The big bogeyman of countless horror stories. Our own ass. What face do we see in the right mirror? Relationship. Free Choice trainee. On the way to graduation and Self-Awareness in a P-51.