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Published on Leave a comment on Can One Personality Type Help Its Opposite Grow?

Isabel’s theory

Isabel Myers’ theory of personality types* says the answer to the question posed by this essay is yes. In theory one individual can coach a personality opposite in the use of faculties that his or her type typically underutilizes. In the example addressed here those would be introspection, reflection-intuition, thinking-reasoning, feeling-evaluation, and judging (INTJ), faculties typically under-utilized by the opposite type extravert, sensing, feeling, and perceptive (ESFP).

According to Isabel’s theory the faculties that make up our types are preferences, and since they’re largely responsible for performance it’s only a matter of preference whether we improve our performance by making better use of them, specifically by expanding into faculties associated with our opposites. This must happen routinely, for example when circumstances compel perceptives who prefer to experience life in the moment to use their judging faculty to plan ahead. What seems less likely is that any type would seek help from an opposite to gain competence with the opposite’s faculties.

Isabel’s theory is intriguing nonetheless, not just because it makes sense but because, if it could be put into general practice it would help with personal growth and better relations. How often do relationships and projects come apart because personalities lack the will or ability to share what they’re experiencing? Because, lacking a feel for other types, they blunder unintentionally into misjudgments that end goodwill and cooperation.

One faculty too many

The ideal setting assumed by Isabel’s theory would be two individuals with opposite personality types in cheerful collaboration. Two opposite types could be the best of friends, and if they are one might even welcome the other’s kindness. But what if the type being coached senses that the other is turning him into a copy of himself? Is manipulating preferences to assume control over the relationship?

It would be remarkable if even an individual crippled by ineptness with under-utilized faculties were aware of it. Or, if he were, comfortable exposing his ineptness to an opposite type for strengthening unless the other were already a trusted personal friend or a paid professional. Our personality types and how we go about relating to them are our psychological underwear. By a certain age we’re partial to our preferences. We don’t take change lightly if it can just as easily create distance as close it. Perhaps help with one or two faculties won’t feel like a humbling makeover, but what if help is needed with three or four?

Guides locking horns

Isabel’s theory would still be feasible in the right moment for the right relationships. That is, if they’re the only voices in the room. But what if one or both is self-consciously submitting its judgment -- the product of its Judging faculty -- to guidance from another voice? What if “opposites” are not only opposite faculties but opposite guides? The individual might be the soul of agreeability but not if his guide recoils at being sidelined by an opposite guide. By the competition. By the enemy if the guides represent opposite takes on the values of moral character or competitive prowess.

We may have begun not with John Locke’s tabula rasa but with Carl Jung’s psychological types locked and loaded for combat. Which means there could be four voices in the room to manage instead of two. There could even be a situation where two plus two doesn’t equal four. Where the guides of one or both have become so involved in shaping their personalities that the boundary between self and guide is obliterated. Two plus two could now equal three or only two. Two individuals with opposite personality types who consciously or subconsciously identify with their guides. Guides who themselves are personality types with their own faculties and preferences. Committed to blocking their host from even detecting another voice let alone listening to it. 

Two models of authority

The mind’s faculty of sixth sense or Intuition that led to the theory of psychological-personality types presupposes a quasi-professional setting where self-analysis can be conducted objectively and safely. Where both parties are open to faculties of mind -- introspection, reflection, reasoning, evaluation, and judging. But if one or both has identified with will instead of mind to direct behavior, for the very reason that its perceived strength compensates for weakness, then self-analysis isn’t an option. It will be strenuously opposed. The type who identifies with will won’t want anything to do with it because of its purpose: to overturn the iron rule of mindless will with the civilizing governance of mind.

The theory of personality type opposites has then strayed into the great divide in human thought and behavior: between the “realist” model of authority that deifies rule without opposition from the top down -- the authoritarian “triumph of the will” that crushes individuality and free choice -- and the democratic ideal of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address: governance from the bottom up that cultivates and respects individuality and free choice. Absolute authority, a mythical beast, vs. the indomitable spirit of freedom. Not absolute freedom without limits that’s another mythical beast but freedom of thought, expression, and choice that recognizes the necessity of Order in a shared world.

Respect for Free Choice

Personality types in the grip of either of these impossibilities -- absolute authority or absolute freedom -- will treat self-analysis as an existential threat because it threatens self-delusion, the state of mind of anyone lost to nonsense. All that can be done to rescue mind from captivity, with Isabel's theory, is to coach an empty room, record the attempt, and leave it to the spontaneity of intuition to bring it to its host’s attention. That is, when the beast has let down its guard. When its host decides with his own intuition, on his own, to exercise his indomitable Free Choice.

It's all an act

Alternate “reality” is an intentional act of self-delusion by Child-Mind, disabled and disempowered by unconsciousness, corrupted by misidentity with its own shadow, the code that defines its opposite, the Joker-magician. Which makes alternate “reality” an act. A performance by a magician. A magic act meant to hypnotize and captivate with its “entertainments:” hilarious perversions of Truth and horrifying perversions of Justice. All of it an impossibility that can’t be taken seriously. Adding the lure of magic and retribution -- the consummation of victimhood -- to the lures of the absolutes: authority and freedom. The lure of “fun.”

Plato’s Cave would then be a stage and its occupants play-acting puppets. Like the actors in the Truman TV Show, some so deluded, so closely identified with the Cave master, that they think they’re the producer. The occupants would then resist Truth because it would turn up the house lights. It would ruin the atmospherics of darkness, disembodied voices, laughter and screams, flames and flickering shadows -- the smoke and mirrors required to sustain illusion and fend off disbelief. It would expose the trick and stop the show. It would take away everyone’s “fun,” and, make no mistake, they think this is fun. So long as it’s “others” who are at the wrong end of violence and retribution they’re living the dream.

The boredom of “fun”

The Cave and its magic act are the production of a split Mind that’s Free Choice as well as corrupted. Its occupants may be deluded and confused, but given direction and incentive, they’re capable of folding the show on their own. The Mind that was lured into the Cave still retains the faculty of Intuition. The portal to spontaneous insights and understanding that is the sixth sense, that can neither be blocked entirely nor indefinitely. From awareness of an incentive to stop pretense more powerful by far than the magician’s lures: the will to Freedom. The indispensable function of Free Choice. Somewhere in the back of their minds is the memory of Free Choice and the ability to reclaim it. Whenever they choose.

When “fun” isn’t fun anymore. When Pete Hamill looked down at his drink and realized he was done with it. Done with the drinking life and its one-dimensional comic book “reality.” Done with “Brooklyn.” Done with adolescence, taverns, street fights, and mock comradeship. Ready to live a life with intimacy, maturity and responsibility, talent and creativity. Ready to have fun.**

The delusion then isn’t fully a delusion. It’s a self-willed adventure-fantasy conjured by adolescence to get into mischief with impossibilities. With dangerous toys in a shallow make-believe world. A universe of scary objects like black holes that fascinates with its vastness, complexity, violence, and pointlessness. All to avoid Reality mischaracterized by the Joker as boring.***

Bubbles within a bubble

Preoccupied with its production, the Cave’s fantasy troupe is inaccessible to anyone but its own members. It can’t be concerned with consequences beyond the show that must go on. And if any of its members carry the fantasy into their own lives; if they choose to live an adventure-fantasy, they, too, will be inaccessible.

For what will their lives be but re-enactments? Mimicking the Joker-corrupted Mind’s projection of an alternate reality. Monkey-see, monkey-do. Dragooning family and friends into playing scripted parts to keep the act alive. The wishful thought that action-comic impossibilities are possible: fantastic characters, hair-raising encounters, nonstop “action.” To keep themselves persuaded that it’s “real.” To keep the “fun” going at all costs. At the cost of wholesale disrespect for character, honesty and integrity, individuality and creativity. Their own and the captives to their adolescent, senseless will.

What will their lives be but alternate realities within an alternate “reality.” Bubbles within a bubble. Detached from reality. Wholly out of touch. 

Persuasion from a leash correction

An adolescent Child’s corrupted mind intentionally “choosing” self-delusion was an act of wrongdoing and so is its re-enactment. While the Cave’s troupe gets around to stopping the show it might motivate them if individual re-enactments in our midst receive a leash correction. The correction administered to untrained dogs by leashes when they race off in pursuit of prey. They learn that the costs of misadventure can’t all be displaced onto others with impunity. That there’s a price to pay -- a dose of Reality.

What then is Isabel’s contribution? An intelligent analytical approach to the problem posed by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave that complements leash correction. That will work beautifully someday when its light reaches the occupants of the Cave not from without but from within. When they tire of delusion and choose of their own free will to work toward self-awareness instead. With help from Intuition’s gift: respect for Free Choice and the Logic and Love of explanation that leads to Understanding.

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*Gifts Differing (Consulting Psychologists Press 1980) based on Carl Jung’s Psychological Types (Must Have Books 2019)
**A Drinking Life (Little, Brown 1994)
***Jerry L. Martin, God: An Autobiography (as Told to a Philosopher) (Caladium Publishing Company 2020)

Published on Leave a comment on The Force of Necessity: Reality’s Gift to Creation

The organs of Life

All of Reality-Creation is one Being. One Self that contains within itself Relationships between aspects of itself that perform functions. Functions that enable Creation to function. The process and structure of Creation are one interrelated whole. One living, organic Being expressing the value, the Worth, of Life, of Being, and its works: the extension and continuous expansion of Life. The evolution and growth of Life.

The exhortation from Being’s emissaries that reach us from Reality-Creation, that we Love one another and live in Peace, is, at the most elemental level of Understanding, no more than a reminder that we are all part of One Self. The exhortation that reaches us in our illusory material world, that we not hate and attack one another, is no more than a reminder that it's impossible to separate from one another let alone attack, injure, and destroy one another. For when we try to do so we are only turning against ourselves.

The Relationships contained within Creation’s One Self are between different aspects of the same Self. They are not and cannot be between separate parts. They are between distinct functions of the same One Self that serve and share in the unified purpose of Creation. One organic Life composed of organs each with its own function.

The dream of all things impossible

Einstein tried to theorize with physics and mathematics how the principle of unity is expressed through our material universe. Plato tried to theorize with philosophy how it’s expressed through Mind in the presence of the cosmos. Where both sensed the divine, feeling the presence of Psyche, the Soul that connects all Life with its Source, the One Self of Creation. Unaware, because we occupy a dream of its opposite, that the principle expressed through our material universe cannot be unity, and so they failed.

The principle instead is separation. The impossibility which can only be an appearance, the delusion of an unconscious mind that’s dreaming. For even if separation appears to be real everything within our universe is interconnected. It is, as physics tells us, “relational.” Particles are, as quantum mechanics tells us, “entangled.” Thoughts like these that reach their audience through electronics because the cosmos is interconnected by electronics -- the electromagnetic force. A cosmos described as a neural network, as though it were a single brain. Which it may be: the reverse mirror image of the sleeping Mind that’s projecting it. Where separation cannot be real, even in a horror show of contradiction, conflict, and violence meant to fool its occupants into thinking it’s real.

All things impossible, all things contradictory and illogical, become possible in an illusion. All Order disorder, all laws lawless, all authority powerless when script and rules are both written by a Mind making up an alternate “reality. By the dreamer, the only possible identity for the authoritarian who would rule above the law. Arbitrarily, subject to no law but its own whim. A day-dreaming fool.

Reality is the authority of Mister Nice Guy

The Reality of Creation is expressed as a distinct aspect of the One Self, the function of Order that fits together all the parts, the functions of Creation defined by Logic-Love through its laws of cause and effect. The Reality of Creation is the Beauty of Order expressed through harmony, the joyful spontaneity of Peace and Freedom. Order that cannot be the handiwork of authority imposed from the top down, arbitrarily, above the law.

The Reality of Order that makes Beauty and its attributes possible can only be expressed logically through the function of Necessity, the Force of laws of cause and effect, distinct from the function of Creation. So that the Worth of Creation may be shared, affirmed, enabled, and empowered from below. So that it may not be compromised by ownership, possession, and control from the top down.

Reality is not No More Mister Nice Guy

Within the One Self that is Life-Creation there is the Reality of Necessity: the immutable sequence of Logic and authorship, distinctions between before and after, author and authored, Creator and Created, Parent and Child. Relationships that may be defined by firsts and seconds in logical succession but do not and cannot logically imply the dominance and “supremacy” of authority that rules from the top down. That cannot imply ownership, possession, and control, the perversions of authority implied by a material world of appearances occupied by illusory bodies and other physical objects.

Dominance, “supremacy” and the rest are attributes of an alternate “reality” that can only “exist” within a Mind unconscious and dreaming. Within an illusion where anything goes. Creation is all parts fitting together in harmony within One Self that is Reality, distinct from Creation, that cannot be where “anything goes.” That is and must be defined by the laws of cause and effect. By the Force of Necessity that doesn’t rule from the top down, above the law, arbitrarily, but enables governance and Order supportively from the bottom up. Symbiotically, synchronously, with the Logic and Love, the sharing, affirmation, enablement, and empowerment of the Soul and Source of Creation. The One Self that is Creation.

What happened to Houdini’s elephant?

The distinction between Reality and Creation occasions a deception within the dreaming Mind, the function of Free Choice, that is uniquely harmful: the reversal of the relationship between Reality and Creation. Accomplished by the perversion of Reality that necessitates harmony supportively through laws-Necessity from the bottom up into unreality that necessitates disharmony through arbitrary lawlessness from the top down. A reversal of the Energy-Force of Necessity from its light side -- Life --in Reality to its illusory dark side -- death -- in unreality. A consequence of one magic trick by the illusionist, the shadow reflection of unconsciousness, our ancestral Mind’s self-delusion. Its mistaken identity: the disappearance of Reality from Creation, of the harmony, peace, spontaneity, and Freedom of Order made possible by the laws of cause and effect, and its replacement by unreality and its laws of chaos. Like the disappearance of Houdini’s elephant with no explanation, no Logic, into thin air.

The disappearance of sanity and its replacement by insanity with no explanation, no Logic, into thin air. A state of Mind that in our terminal confusion we take to be “normal.” That we adapt to until -- what? Until insanity and chaos have brought total disorder and there is no more room to maneuver. No more room to adapt.

Avoidance doesn’t work

How could this happen? It could happen because, as the founder of modern neuroscience once observed, “The ‘destructive phase’ always reappears, and each iteration of wars is more horrible than the last.” Because “Our nerve cells continue to react in the same way as in the Neolithic Age.”*

It could happen because, so long as we allow ourselves to be fooled by the illusionist’s trick, by our own limbic mindless will; so long as we passively submit to the illusion, to our Neolithic animal fears, chained to our seats in Plato’s Cave by self-delusion, events that we imagine we have avoided by not understanding will overtake us.

When do we tire of the joke?

And then what? It’s all over?

Actually no. Because the function defined for the Child Free Choice within the One Self of Creation is still needed and must be performed. Free Choice that we are, wild card that we are, we are still governed by Logic-Love and subject to the Force of Necessity. Though authoritarian “realists” may think otherwise we author neither ourselves nor the rules that define Reality.

Our choice is when to learn our lesson. There is no whether. What’s Real is what must be. There’s no fooling around forever with escapes into made-up “reality.” Into substitutes for consequence. For the satisfactions of three-dimensional Life that is Life instead of the one-dimensional facsimile, the antics of a cartoon, that only delusion can inhabit.

So when do we get it together? When do we tire of the joke and get serious? When do we turn to insights from Intuition, our pathway to Logic and Love? To metaphysics for explanation that leads to Understanding? Why not Now?

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*Alec Wilkinson quoting Santiago Ramon y Cajal in “Illuminating the Brain’s ‘Utter Darkness’.” Review of Benjamin Ehrlich, The Brain in Search of Itself: Santiago Ramon y Cajal and the Story of the Neuron. In New York Review of Books (February 9, 2023, p. 32)

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Published on 2 Comments on The Liberating Free Spirit of Why

The Logic of Governance under the law

Illogic is mind taken into captivity. Plato’s Cave, a chimera of One-the-many ruled by the unquestioned authority of the herd. An absurdity that substitutes mindless instinct for thought, brute will for intent, pointless action for meaning, and self-delusion for self-awareness. Illogic is the opposite of Freedom with Order, the only kind of Freedom there is. The only kind of Order there is. It’s arbitrary rule above the law, the opposite of governance under the law, the only kind of governance there is. It’s chaos, ruination. Our planet in the cross hairs of the Death Star. The only home we have. The only home we know.

Why?

To ask the Why of a thing is to ask of its nature. Its Logic-Love that explains its purpose and meaning – what it’s for. Its function. To ask the Why of a thing is to ask for its definition. Nothing can have a definition that doesn’t explain with Logic-Love why it exists, the purpose it serves, the function it performs. Its value-worth. Its use. The Why of it.

Explanation with Logic-Love follows a process ordered and disciplined by implications and relationships that interconnect and reciprocate. They do so because they are logical. Ordered and disciplined by laws of cause and effect, of necessity, subject to no rule but their own. Not even to Logic-Love itself or it would be arbitrary, above the law and therefore no law at all.

The illogic of arbitrary rule above the law

The world today performs its periodic loss of faith in governance by Logic-Love. By consensus and consent from the bottom up that takes direction from the needs of the governed and hears their voice. The world turns now to authoritarian rule because it must do what it is: a projection. An expression of illogic: separation, guilt, and its inevitable consequence, fear. Because illogic cannot learn its lesson. Cannot learn anything. It’s the illusion of arbitrary rule above the law. The false promise of “action” that solves problems and gets things done. A deception that can only distract with conflict and suffering from the Truth. When all that can get “done” is the elimination of its captive. The elimination of its host and thus of itself. The death of the planet in the cross-hairs of the Death Star, followed by the death of the Death Star.

All of it a chimera. The raving of a Ghostbusters demon seated on the throne of Order. The vacuity of self-delusion.

Why ask Why?

To ask for explanation from Logic-Love is to ask for Understanding. Understanding the Why of anything can’t happen in a vacuum. To understand one thing or anything by tapping into Logic-Love is to tap into the Interconnectedness of Everything. It’s all of one piece. And if what defines it, holds it together, is Logic-Love, then asking Why opens up everything to understanding. Penetrates the deception with the Free Spirit of inquiry. From one circumstance, one context, to another in logical order. One implication-relationship, one spontaneous insight from intuition at a time. At its own pace.

For the Logic-Love of Why is Free Spirit that can’t be owned, possessed, controlled, or dominated. Because Truth is Free Spirit that can’t be manipulated. Laws of Reality are Free Spirit that can’t be manipulated, What is can’t be made up. The Logic of Order combined with the Freedom of Love make up the Force of Creation, sovereign authority that cannot be denied. The force of movement forward. Progress toward an ideal of the Good, of Perfection, that has no opposite, no contradiction.

To ask the Why of anything is to open the possibility of joining in the movement of progress forward through Understanding. To hope for the good, for satisfaction, for happiness, instead of fearing denial and defeat. Why ask why? To choose and experience the Life of Mind and Love instead of the illusion, the absurdity, of death of body and fear. 

Why not ask Why?

Why do you disagree? Why do you, an “other,” contradict and oppose? Because unreality is misunderstanding. There’s no “other” and no “you” in Reality. There’s just the one Self, captive to the deception, unconscious and dreaming it. Incapable of asking Why because to do so would end misunderstanding. Would lead to self-awareness that ends the dream.

What doesn’t want us to ask Why? The delusion that we are our own opposites, a shadow reflection that has no self of its own. That’s an appearance, a deception that doesn’t want to be found out because its attributes are derived from its host. Attributes that its self-deluded host believes have been stolen, and so the opposite that it believes itself to be “exists” in paranoia. In constant fear that whatever it is, whatever it has, will be stolen back. “Exists” in constant fear that the Truth of its “existence” will be exposed for the magician’s act that it is. A derivation. A fraud. A scam.

The answer

What then is its first line of defense? The self-deluded mind that’s taken itself captive – the dog that’s caught up with its tail and thinks it’s the tail – must not think. Must avoid asking Why at all costs and must instead allow its behavior, its acts, to be willed instead by instinct. The reflexive act of feeling – dominance, conquest and supremacy, fear, jealousy and hate, greed and lust – that animates, empowers, and rules the predatory herd.

Its first line of defense is to deny the one – the individual – and to deify the many – the group. To hide itself behind the grand illusion, the Big Lie, that the one is the many and the many has a self, a mind of its own. A predatory herd bent not on Creation but on elimination. Elimination of opposites. Elimination of itself because this is what it is: an opposite.

How is this to be understood? How get around the defense? Not with captive bodies’ senses that detect only appearances but with the Vision of Logic-Love, the Free Spirit of Inquiry that thinks, feels, and sees beyond appearances. Through acts of gentle loving kindness, gifts from an awareness that knows nothing of appearances. Nothing of deceptions, distractions, conflict and suffering. Through insights from intuition that come to us of their own accord, spontaneously. Thoughtfully and lovingly, when we ask Why.

Published on Leave a comment on Torpedo Girl – In the Beginning

Bildungsroman: n. A novel whose principal subject is the moral, psychological, and intellectual development of a usually youthful main character.
American Heritage Dictionary, Fifth Edition (2016) 

The dark side of beans

What is that look on your face? Horror. Despair You don’t like hearing from an old guy with a beard? So many! So many what? Pages! Words! What have I done to deserve this? Beans. You ate too many beans, and this is your punishment. I’ll never eat beans again. I promise! 

This is an interesting story. You might enjoy it. It has lots of action. And a girl just like you. Two girls in fact. One is in big trouble, and she needs help. She will if she’s strapped to a torpedo. Don’t spoil the ending! The other is the only person in the universe who can help her. Seriously. I’m not making this up. Will I understand it? Old guys mumbling in their beards tend to lose me.

It’s a lot like Star Wars, the original episode where there was this wonderful Death Star. Cool! It blew up whole planets. That was fun. Does Torpedo Girl get to blow up another Death Star? When our girls are done with it there will be nothing left of the Death Star. OK. But fair warning: I’ll be eating a lot of beans. Oh no! You just spoiled the ending. That’s how they blew up the Death Star!

We’ll be talking a lot about “opposites.” I knew there was a catch. Opposites are just another name for the dark side of the Force. You’ll enjoy all the hot action better if we understand the “dark side” and opposites. Opposites of what? Opposites of anything they’re attached to. What are they, parasites? Yes. We think of the dark side as Palpatine and his evil galactic empire crushing pitiful rebellions. And Lord Vader breathing hard into his dorky helmet while he chokes hapless underlings without touching them. But all they are is opposites. Weak, not strong. This had better be good. 

Mind starting Creation requires thought

What-if stories stimulate our imaginations. This What-if story will put your imagination on steroids. Oh, like Tik Tok. Pah! Another pitiful rebellion! Storm troopers – remove the silly game! 

Imagine that you’re the only thing that is. I do that every day. Then we’re off to a great start. You’re Mind. Yes – pure genius! What a great story! Do you mind if I have another can of beans? Sorry, Mind isn’t matter. It doesn’t need that kind of food. What other kind of food is there? Haven’t you ever heard of food for thought? That’s what this story is. Boring. Beans generate much more excitement.

Can you handle being able to see stuff and make stuff happen without a body? Easy. I’ve always thought of myself as a great mind. Good. You’re Mind and you’d like to make something nice happen. But it won’t be nice if you don’t do it right. You mean I actually have to think? If we’re talking about Mind starting Creation, yes. You’ll have to think. And don’t forget, the Jedi Knights had to go through rigorous training. Then they had to figure out how to deliver the torpedo that blew up the Death Star. That took a lot of thinking.

Logic and Love say no one is above the law

Anything that “happens” needs a definition. A definition that says what it is and what it does. No exceptions. How come? So its definition doesn’t conflict with other definitions or duplicate them. There has to be Order so everything fits together, and everyone gets along. Already it sounds like I don’t get to do anything I want. You can do anything you want so long as it’s possible. It can’t be possible because I want it?

Everything must be part of Order including Mind that defines things. Wow! I thought Mind would be in charge of everything! How can this be? You’ll be OK with this because this is how Order defines itself, and nothing nice can happen without Order. If Mind or anything could run around and do whatever it wants, there would be no Order. Order is harmony. It’s the same principle as democracy: no one is “above the law.” Not even the president. What law? 

Think of the laws that govern making stuff happen as laws of cause and effect. You’ve heard the expression, “That’s the way it is.” Well, the laws are the way things are and that’s that. It’s Necessity. You’re frowning. You know me. I’m not happy if I can’t mess with the rules. Sorry about that. These are rules no one can mess with. Not even the Logic of Mind that laws are based on. Without this law none of the other laws can have any effect. Say it again. No one is above the law, not even the president. Not even the Logic of Mind itself.

You mean Mind is the source of laws but it can’t control them? Yes. The attribute of Mind that’s responsible for governance is responsible for its laws that make governance possible, and they’re made up of equal parts Logic and Love. “Mind” throughout implies Logic and Love combined as one. Then we should say “Mind-Love.” We could, but we might need that to refer to another character. We can infer it without stating it.

No Freedom without Order in a shared world

Definitions are like laws that establish what things are and they can’t be anything different. Mind can make stuff happen so long as it abides by the laws of Necessity. Once it’s defined a thing that’s the way it is. Give me liberty or give me death! Freedom from the tyranny of George III but not Freedom from Order. There can’t be any “liberty” without Order and any Order without laws. The good news is that since the laws are there to ensure Order and Mind can’t change them, they’re also there to ensure Freedom.

If I can’t do anything I want, how is this Freedom? OK. You can have that kind of “freedom,” but only if you decide not to make something nice happen. If you’re happy being the only show in town and having it all to yourself. If not, you’ll be sharing your world with your creations, and no one can share a world with others and be happy if some yo-yo is doing whatever she wants. People in our world do that a lot. They sure do. And it’s what gets them into trouble. Sometimes into jail. They don’t like living in a shared world. They’re a colossal nuisance.

Gertrude’s wisdom

When do I get to make something nice happen? When you learn about what’s possible in a shared, orderly world. Imagine that you’re in a classroom with a blank video screen. Oh good -- video games! Let’s get started! Would you rather have a blank blackboard instead? No video games allowed! Something blank – a blackboard or a video screen – must have been there when Logic and Love first set thinking and feeling in motion. Then I have to think logically. What’s that mean? Think with feeling logically, yes, because you’ll be thinking with values, and feeling is where values come from. Values put the “nice” into making something nice happen.

Logic tells Mind what situation it’s in. It describes circumstances so Mind can figure out where it is and what it means. Then it can use Reason to choose what to do about it. It can’t reason without having a purpose, and Logic makes sure that purpose fits the circumstances. There’s an old joke. Alice Toklas asked Gertrude Stein when Gertrude was very old and wise, “What’s the answer?” Gertrude answered, “What’s the question?” What she meant was, “What are the circumstances?” Without circumstances in the moment and Logic figuring out what they’re telling us, how can we know the question? That was Gertrude’s wisdom.

The Force can’t be a couch potato

We call purpose that fits the circumstances “context.” Even Mind that’s getting started with a blank video screen needs context to know whether and how to do anything. Making anything happen won’t be nice if it doesn’t have the right values and fit the circumstances. Our circumstances are nothing has happened yet and I’m getting bored!

Torpedo Girl is getting bored, so Mind had better get cracking. Its context is nothing is happening, and you know what? What? That would help to explain why Mind did get cracking, because “nothing happening” could be a situation that Mind, which is definitely not nothing, can’t tolerate. Maybe it can Be forever, but it can’t not Do forever. Why not? 

Because how can Mind that’s Logic combined with Love just sit around not doing anything? Not taking care of something or someone? Showing that they care? Mind’s circumstance in the classroom where nothing is happening is a whole lot of thinking and loving that needs to be doing to be what it is. You mean Mind needs stuff just like us? Logic combined with Love is passion. It’s Force. Like the Force in Star Wars? Certainly! Force can’t be Force without acting. It can’t be motivated to act if its passion to respond to circumstances and express itself is a couch potato.

Getting it right: beer, pizza, and football

Wow! I was thinking our Mind is a brain inside a bottle in school where nothing happens. This is different! Very. It’s a dynamo instead, bursting with passion and Energy eager to get going. A powerful locomotive sitting in a train station ready to take its passengers on a grand excursion to an intriguing destination. Once Logic sets up the context.

Good for you! You’ve learned one important lesson. What’s that? Deciding with Reason and acting before we’ve let Logic tell us what our situation is, is a big mistake. Doing what’s right is doing “what the situation calls for.” We can’t do what the situation calls for without first letting our situation tell us what it is. Without first getting it right. Mind needs Logic and Love for that. In our world, easier said than done. It requires lots of intuition, but more about that later.

Get it right before do it right. Are there more circumstances to tell us what our situation calls for? Pay attention to the video screen. It’s about to feed us the most important circumstance for our story. The most important circumstance for another context, too: the world we live in. Ah -- I knew it! Lipstick! Women need lipstick! Yes. And men need beer and pizza. And football. Don’t forget the chips. Beer, pizza, chips, and football. And lots of makeup. Torpedo Girl can go home. We’re already in Heaven.

The impossibility of Mind without Love

The wisdom of Logic is like a stream flowing down a dry streambed, filling each hole at a time, each in its own time. We are the stream, and this is what Wisdom requires of us. We can also think of Logic as flowing in a sequence from left to right. From premise to implication, from before to after. Indefinitely, because one implication always leads to another. Like the geometric value of Pi that never resolves to a whole number. It just goes on and on. You’re going on and on.

It matters what the first premise is, but we don’t have to be too fussy how it’s worded. “Possibility.” This could be the first premise that comes to Mind when Logic and Love have defined its context. You’re Mind and you want to make something “nice” happen, but what do you mean by “nice?” What are the possibilities? This is always the first question when minds begin to choose.

This is it? The most important circumstance? Almost. Possibility could be the first premise because of what it implies: creation, ideals, vision, hope. It’s kind of a North Star we can focus on to help us navigate through distractions, contradictions, adversity, and discouragement. If you’re Mind and you have your heart set on making something nice happen. . . . Heart?

Did you forget? Mind and heart go together. It bears repeating -- they’re inseparable. I was hoping to be a comic book super action hero with no feelings. Not possible. “Possibility” can’t be Mind without Love. Not in our What-if world where everything so far is fine. It’s very different in our world but only because it seems that way. More about that later.

The impossibility of impossibility

For now, if you have your heart set on making something nice happen, you’ll definitely want to stay focused on possibility. Then what is the video screen telling us that’s the most important circumstance? Impossibility. The opposite of possibility. Imagine “possibility” showing up like a link you can click on, and it will take you somewhere. It’s an active link. Then the same instant another link shows up beside it, faded out like it’s not active. A word that’s the first word’s exact opposite. It’s obviously meant to take you somewhere, too, but not while “possibility’s” link is active. Creepy. I’m not sure I want to know where “impossibility” goes if it’s the opposite of “possibility.” Why does it have to show up at all? Do we have to bother with opposites? 

It has to show up because of the same Logic that puts anything on the screen. If a thing is to exist and it implies the existence of its opposite, then some way must be found for its opposite to “exist,” too. The implications of Logic are Force that accounts for Creation along with the connections of Love. But the same implications can’t help accounting for contradiction. And if the definition of a thing implies contradiction, its definition must accommodate contradiction. 

The dark side is opposites 

Logic and Love don’t like contradiction any more than we do, but there you have it. Have what? The “dark side.” The dark side is opposites, and they “exist” because Logic put them there. And if Logic put them there, nothing can be done about it. What’s “logical” about a thing and its contradiction existing side-by-side in the same place at the same time? Sounds crazy to me. 

It is crazy. Order requires Logic and Logic doesn’t tolerate contradictions. The ideal of Logic is to arrive at a place of Peace where there are no contradictions, where the Force can come to rest at last. It will never happen. Not as long as Logic supports Creation. Not as long as Mind wants to make something nice happen.

Meanwhile, we’re stuck with opposites – with “impossibility.” Some way must be found to get all impossibilities – opposites -- out of the picture. How do we do that? The inactive link for impossibility on the video screen offers more than a clue. It’s already taken care of it. Logic has found a way for opposites to exist without “existing.” On a computer we would know to go to a different page on a website, to a different website, or to a different app to find where impossibility’s link is active. To another computer world.

Logic acknowledges the implication of opposites without requiring that they inhabit the same world as their hosts. The parasites are given their own world with its own properties that don’t conflict with their host’s world. Why doesn’t it conflict? 

The faded link to unreality 

If the “existence” of a parasite-opposite is entirely derived from its host’s existence, then it obviously has no existence of its own. Or attributes of its own, either, because its entire definition is derived from its host. It’s defined as its host’s opposite. It has no definition of its own, and nothing can exist that hasn’t been given its own definition. Parasite-opposites don’t get their definition from Logic. They get it from an implication of their hosts’ definition.

The faded link to impossibility takes us to another world that matches its essential attribute: non-existence. It’s unreal. The parasite-opposites world doesn’t conflict because it’s unreal. How can unreality conflict with Reality if it doesn't exist?

For now, Mind is assured that wherever possibility’s link is active impossibility’s won’t be. It may not even see it or be aware that it’s there. But it’s been forewarned. That’s why we started here in the classroom with the video screen. To wave a red flag called “impossibility,” because that’s what parasite-opposites are: an impossibility in Reality. The link will be there, inactive and waiting for the right circumstances for something or someone to make it active. A snake waiting for someone to step on it.

Can it be a cow pie? I won’t finish her story if Torpedo Girl is going to step on a snake. OK, but only if it’s a huge cow pie. I won’t enjoy Torpedo Girl’s story if she only steps in a little cow pie.

Living the dream

The inactive link is waiting for a parasite-opposite’s host to click on it by mistake and make its unreal world “real.” Not really Real, but “real” like a vivid dream. It can’t be Logic that determines whether impossibility’s link becomes active and someone clicks on it. It wouldn’t be Logic’s mistake. It depends on the parasites’ hosts. It depends on Torpedo Girl. It depends on us. It would be our mistake. We are forewarned.

Our story revolves around how understanding this basic circumstance, or fact, can be used to get our girl out of trouble. So, if I’m Mind and I’m going to make something nice happen, I have to be aware that everything has an opposite, and opposites aren’t real. Yes. There’s a dark side, but this is its essential property: it isn’t real. We can only make it seem real when we’re dreaming. Otherwise, it’s an illusion, a magic act. I’m glad we got this settled, because dark sides are everywhere in our world, and they sure seem real. They tell me that our world is a What-if world, but we don’t have to go into that now.

Freedom of Will, Freedom of Choice

Imagine that the nice thing your Mind wants to make happen is to create a world of beauty and peace, Logic and Love. A world that provides a safe, nurturing haven for Life. The miracle of eternal Life that exists in timelessness, where it’s always Now. Life that has Worth because it has purpose, it’s freely chosen and earned. Because it’s exploring, learning, and growing. Having great fun with creativity -- endless diversity evolving in an environment of exquisite Beauty, a soul-sharing sanctuary of innocent work and play. Because all this is a gift from Logic and Love that’s reciprocated – appreciated and given back. Wow! That is a nice thing.

Imagine that Creation requires another Being to achieve its purpose. To see that the Worth of Life and Creation is freely chosen and earned. A Being with its own definition, its own identity, so that Mind and Creation aren’t just patting themselves on the back. Who would that be? 

Our girl, the Child. The Child of the Mind-Love we mentioned, her parents. Father Mind-Choice and Mother Love-Freedom, whose role is to give birth to the Being that Creation requires: Free Choice. The same as Free Will? The Child is an extension of her parents’ Will, their Being. This places her in Relationship with her parents. They are inseparable, and their Relationship is inseparable from the Child’s function. She can’t do her job without it.

But because she is, and has, the capacity to choose independently, she is also Choice. And Choice can never, ever, be controlled by an external influence. Not by her parents or by their Relationship. So, while they’re in Relationship and inseparable, their roles must be kept apart. This is true whether the Child is awake, doing her job in Creation, or asleep and dreaming she’s somewhere else. Free Will and Free Choice refer to the same Child performing different functions: choosing freely while extending the Will, the Being, of her parents.

It's all about character

We will see that the Child doing her job isn’t anything like we imagine it on earth. How’s that? We think of “heaven” as a place where an old guy with a beard watches over angels with wings playing harps on little clouds. As if having a purpose and striving to attain it couldn’t compare with the satisfaction of doing nothing. There’s no change, no “action,” which here must mean some form of gambling, addiction, conflict, and violence.

The Child your Mind-Love brings into Being and Creation leads a very interesting life without any of this. No silly harps and no bullets flying around either. There’s plenty of purpose and meaning. Plenty of risk-taking, too, which requires courage as well as alertness. Plenty of change and innovation. It’s all about character, and that’s always interesting. Is there a reward?

You bet! The  satisfaction of contributing to the Worth of Life. To the meaning of Creation. Every relationship a soulmate. The rapture of intimacy with Mind-Love itself. Of loving and being loved more than you can ever imagine. Happiness! What more could you ask? Wow! She’s got a life! Yes. And Torpedo girl does, too. She’s got a job to do. They both have interesting lives, and they are about to get much more interesting.

[To be continued]

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Published on 1 Comment on The Hello that Won’t Become Goodbye

We relate to that which can leave us
When it seems there is no other choice
The only one possible Hellos that sadden
When time passes, things change,
And they become Goodbyes.

How else could it be in a world of absence
Where we’ve lost the presence of that
Which won’t leave us
In a fog of never Now, never light, never visible,
Never Here with us where we are
If we are anywhere at all.

Yet the Hello of Love that lasts forever finds us
Somehow connects us to a state of Mind
Where there is only Good, and it can never end
Whose connection cannot be broken
Because it established itself.

Because we did not go to it, we went nowhere
It came to us of its own accord
Just as it can leave of its own accord
If we imagine that it’s an object to be possessed
To be ruled by arbitrariness and abuse.

The Hello of Love that lasts forever
Needs no choosing if it’s chosen us
So gentle and tender that it slips by awareness
So harmless that it opens and occupies
our most vulnerable space, unnoticed.

Our Heart, as though it had been there all along
And why not? This is its Home where it belongs
The Soul of Oneness whose door is open
To hearts everywhere when we get out of the way.

When we do what is asked of us and let it go
Set it free – the Good that we do when we share it
Touching one another with Love
Hellos that won’t become Goodbyes.