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Published on Leave a comment on Finding Ourselves in the Comfort and Assurance of Inner Space

Gort’s hairstyle 

I’ve turned up the volume on heavy metal and I’ve got my earphones on. You may proceed, weirdboob alien. “I come in peace. I am your friend. I mean you no harm. Bakbakbak.” This guy is no “friend” and he’s only here to do us harm. Just another outer space alien. Harm like getting us out of the way so his kind can steal our planet’s valuables. And vaporize its inhabitants with ray gun blasters they bought at Target. Should I be scared?

Outer space boobs are “outer space” because they’re missing something. Yeah. Gort and his death ray. Inner space. Huh? I’m doing fine with outer space. If your inner space is gathering dust and cobwebs in the basement you wouldn’t know. Really? Inner space is where we monitor our performance so we don’t get on stage with a bad act. Where we introspect. Reflect and check in with our conscience. The boundaries between what’s OK and what’s not OK. That equip us with judgment and discipline.

Why would anyone need to do that if they’re already perfect? A serious question if it’s not a joke. Because some of us do think we’re perfect. Silly! No one’s perfect. Imagine saying “Gort, old boy, let’s let our hair down and get better acquainted with ourselves. So we can be nicer and feel just a little bad about evaporating everything with our death ray.” Gort’s visor would start to open. You would see his beady eyes and become incontinent. Yes. He’d have to remove his helmet with the visor to let his hair down. Outer space boobs don’t have hair. He’d be embarrassed. I was wondering why the aliens in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” didn’t have combs. You can’t get a hair brush anywhere on Mars. That’s what disqualified me from going there. 

Gort and Fifi’s webinar on accountability 

The difference between human and animal is the difference between having and not having an inner space. Wild animals do fine without introspecting or reflecting, reasoning or choosing, judging between right and wrong. Instinct takes care of that. Domesticating them doesn’t give them an inner space. Doesn’t humanize them. It just adds more things for them to want or fear. When Fifi seemed out of sorts I took her to a veterinarian. I’ll bet you didn’t know vets aren’t trained in Freudian psychoanalysis. Poor Fifi! She just needs someone to listen to her whimpering.

Gort and Fifi can’t join us for a webinar on accountability without an inner space. Not if all they know is worlds inaccessible to humans. Without an inner space there’s nowhere they can even think about it. Then how can humans without an inner space keep from leveling Manhattan with their death rays? They do what animals do: whatever their herd does. Without an inner space for guidance they rely on herd mentality. A substitute for the inner moral compass, the judgment, they’re missing. What “everyone else does.” They become “good” by becoming agreeable, sociable. Being “likeable” especially since then their herd will think they’re “good.”

And then the trouble starts

How can a human be “human” and not have an inner space? Gort and Fifi don’t need an inner space because of what they are, what their use is. A human’s usefulness requires an inner space because it requires choice. All our faculties of mind are there to enable us to do what we are, to choose. To learn to choose freely once we’ve aware of who we are and what we’re doing here. Because that’s the only way choice can be “free,” and we’re still trying to figure that out. So with or without an inner space we adapt.

Like evolution? Yes. To whatever we need that’s inaccessible. Like an inner space that’s there but inaccessible when a human’s mind can’t find it. What would make it inaccessible? Different things. For example, finding anything requires judgment able to recognize boundaries. Able to navigate because it has coordinates, and not all minds, not all personalities, have judgment. So they adapt. They get in step with their herd’s “judgment.” Seeking the precision of schools of fish moving in unison. And then the trouble starts. Why? 

The solution to self-evaluation: perfection 

If we can’t imagine having a soul-searching conversation with Gort or Fifi, try imagining it with one of the fish. I could with a skillet and the right seasoning. The fish has forfeited any pretense of independent judgment to its school. And when you engage with it, you’ll be engaging with the school. And if you persist in relating to an individual fish you might find your delicate ballet-dancer anchovy is a shark. It’s made itself inaccessible to one-on-one relationship. The only “relationship” possible is if you give up your individuality and join its school. I’m already sick of school, so forget it.

“Herd mentality” is another term for animal instinct or will. Will that doesn’t need reasoning or choosing to act. Your wild Siberian tiger is a compelling ideal: a herd of wild beasts transformed into a single, all-powerful King of Beasts. Exquisitely beautiful and answerable to no one. That’s me! The opposite of “sociable.” Freed from all limits. Infinitely free. Infinitely powerful. Don’t stop! A human missing judgment and boundaries of her own can’t live this ideal and submit to self-evaluation too. So she deflects it by adopting her ideal’s perfection. By being “perfect.” “I’m perfect” says “I can’t be questioned.” “I can’t be criticized. And if I am there’s something wrong with you. It’s your fault.”

Permanently on probation

Another example of how human inner spaces are blocked is when inner space is too full of judgment instead of empty. Too much judging and too many boundaries. The wrong kind of “judgment” that’s judgmental. That mischaracterizes acts as justification for blame instead of guidance for navigation. For blaming the human herself. So that all “inner space” is to her is the “judgment” of self-blame. Not a good feeling.

Not at all. Anyone might feel compelled to project the feeling and guilt along with it onto others. By taking refuge in “perfection” beyond criticism. By shifting accountability for any “imperfection” onto someone else if they dare to question it. The internal pressure of negative judgment makes her “sociability” less protective than the other kind’s. Needing to control the pressure is her first priority, so sociability gives way to unsociability pretty fast. Especially true if you’re an authority figure like a parent, or a child who resists conformity, because they can jack up the pressure. Putting them permanently on probation.

Stuck in outer space

And this is all because of inner space? Whether inner space is blocked by lack of judgment and boundaries or by too much judgment and too many boundaries, the solution to the fixes the individuals wind up in is accessing their inner space. They can’t be “sociable” if what’s driving them is anti-social. They can’t be “friends” if the way they’ve adapted to their conditions is to become not-friends. There is no work-around for inaccessibility if there’s no inner space for your inner space to connect with. If all you or I or the other person have to offer is some version of outer space, we will be giving up any possibility of friendship that’s intimate, trusting, and loving.

So the choice is between inner and outer space. It’s between being a person with both spaces or a one-dimensional cartoon character. Unrelatable and to be avoided because, much as we may love them, they can’t be there with us emotionally or for us either. They’re somewhere else, stuck in outer space.

Nice kitty!

There are other perspectives, other explanations that might work better for you. This one helps me sympathize with others obstructed by conditions they’re not responsible for. Who want to be good just as much as I do. So if they misjudge me maybe they can’t help it. Misjudging them just makes things worse. You love them anyway.

We can love others for who they are even if what they do hurts us. But understanding why a wild Siberian tiger is dangerous doesn’t make it safe to be around. Let it roam free in its imaginary wilderness where it can’t hurt anyone. It doesn’t belong in relationships where it can hurt. I can’t bring my nice kitty into my friendships? You can if having a nice kitty means more to you than having a friend. Your friend will eventually be bitten and that will be the end of that. 

Into an unshared world of not-sharing

Our eyes are good at seeing appearances – what’s on the surface. Another kind of vision helps us see what’s beneath the surface, where the real “action” is. The desires and fears, the satisfactions and frustrations that motivate us. That make us human and determine how things work out. A good reason to access our inner space because that’s where this vision is. The ability to detect with intuition the truth behind assurances that an outer space invader is our “friend.” Or a wild beast is “safe.” The ability to connect with another perspective that is our friend and can see what we can’t.

Outer space has invaded inner space. Inner space is Psyche, guiding us with truth, innocence, and trust. Outer space is the wrong guide: mischaracterization, guilt, and deceit. Luring us with unlimited power and freedom, promises too good to be true. We can’t get rid of it while we’re in this situation but we can manage it. So we can distinguish between what’s OK and not OK, what’s loving kindness and what’s not, without its interference. With the right kind of judgment and boundaries that make sense of things.

The instinct of a wild Siberian tiger is to resist all boundaries. It fears inner space where its wildness will be limited by conscience, empathy, judgment, and discipline. The qualities that make us human, relatable. Wildness is not-human, the opposite of relatable. What needs to be resisted isn’t inner space. It’s bad advice from the invader, outer space. Luring us out of our shared world of sharing into an unshared world of not-sharing. Ruled by herd mentality. Self-centered and selfish.

Can we still be friends?

Inner space is the gyroscope that keeps us oriented when circumstances toss us about. Like stormy seas making us seasick. It’s our navigator that keeps us away from dangerous reefs. Relying on a school of fish for navigation turns thinking and feeling over to what “everyone else does.” To the school or herd that cares about itself but not much about us. Guided by animal instinct to prey on others in competition for survival and dominance. The only way to behave it “knows.” Destined eventually for defeat. For colliding with a reef.

For its members it’s the opposite of wildness. The only “freedom” they have is to change their minds and get the heck out of there. Go back to inner space and being themselves. To connecting with Guidance that does care about them and respects their individuality. That can help them get it right.

If I get it wrong can we still be friends? I’ll always love you. But friendship won’t be possible. Not if I need a person to relate to with both spaces, inner and outer. Not an insensitive, unthinking, self-centered, outer-space animal. Herds are for animals, not persons. If the human with too much “judgment” needs a better way of managing pain than dumping it onto others, the human who seeks “good” in “perfect” needs to be satisfied with good. Then maybe we can all be friends.

Thank you. My kitty and I will take it under advisement. Say goodbye to the nice man, dear.

Published on Leave a comment on The Two Faces of Spontaneity

A conversation with Tony the Tiger’s talented casting agent reminding his fans that he sometimes has people for breakfast. His agent’s contributions are in italics. 

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What’s for dessert? 

“The Two Faces of Wildness” is about the impact your tiger’s role modeling has had on popular culture. Really? Yes. Turning everyone into a maniac. One face is a nice puddy cat who makes everyone comfy. The other is a crazed monster who doesn’t make everyone comfy. By being rude. What? Burping and picking its teeth with toothpicks after it’s dined on its fans.

Wildness is beautiful when it’s an ideal portrayed by a talented artist. Not so beautiful when it’s set free in the neighborhood to do what predators do. Decorate cereal boxes. Eat the cereal, the nice mommies and daddies who buy it, the sweet little darlings who eat it, and the box. What about the grocer? Store management, employees, and shoppers too. What’s for dessert? A big bowl of Alka-Seltzer, Pepto-Bismol, and a stomach pump.

Leo the Lion’s frosted crispy choco-loop puffs

If that doesn’t tame my tiger nothing will. We don’t want to tame . . . What’s its name again? Tony. Don’t you read cereal boxes? Tony belongs here as much as we do. We just want to keep the predator within – the beautiful ideal of wildness – from having us for breakfast. By managing our relationship with it. Chloroform!

“Power” isn’t control. It’s management. They’re not the same? In situations that require conformity rather than thinking for yourself, the difference won’t matter. Like little kids, raw military recruits – people who need training. Otherwise no. Control comes from the animal side of human animal that doesn’t need mind. Management comes from the human side that does need mind.

In a shared world boundaries need to be respected and relationships managed within as well as without, just as wildness needs to be respected and managed. It’s not cool to cage the beast or to let it go free. Or to imagine that we have the power of a predator to make others let us do whatever we want. Even if we’re the King of Beasts? Maybe there’s a cereal box with Leo the Lion. See if that works.

Calvin’s best friend

I get it. It’s OK to admire the ideal of wildness but not to behave like it. Yes. Better to accept that the only world where we can do whatever we want is one we make up. And to keep our fanciful world where it belongs: in our imaginations and not crossing boundaries and messing with our relationships.

You have your own tiger? The difference between nice and not nice, helpful and not helpful, isn’t between those who have and don’t have a tiger. We all do. Are they like Hobbes? Who was that? Calvin’s best friend, a cute stuffed tiger. Were Calvin and Hobbes your clients too? Until I got bored with Hobbes. He was too nice. I like. . . Never mind. I know what you like.

The difference is between respecting and not respecting boundaries while we’re respecting wildness. Between understanding and not understanding why they’re there. To let the ideal of wildness inspire creativity without crossing boundaries. Our own as well as others’.

It can be hard to stay on the right side. A lot of people don’t. In extreme circumstances maybe you and I won’t. I don’t need to wait for extreme circumstances. We need to be aware of the nature of wildness: that it can be both inspiring and deadly, constructive and destructive, humanizing and de-humanizing. We need to be careful.

Nice kitty!

Maybe these thoughts can help you and Tony balance the two sides of wildness. It does sound important. Very. The good side of wildness is playfulness that’s creative. Because wildness is spontaneous, the gift your tiger was meant to give. Not being the “king” of anything. Not being a beast that must be put in a cage.

Then we should all just stop thinking and let stuff happen spontaneously. No. There’s a right kind of spontaneity and a wrong kind. Getting out of the way to let stuff happen on its own is the wrong kind. The wrong guide. It doesn’t lead to freedom and creativity, just the opposite. The right kind is thinking before deciding that welcomes spontaneous insights. And after deciding but before acting, to give spontaneity a voice in every phase: thinking, deciding, and acting.

Spontaneity is a kind of guide that we don’t want to control because we need its perspective. Trying to control it will kill it. Whether we put Tony in a cage or let him out of his cage we’re getting it wrong. Tony just needs to be understood, with thoughtfulness and patience. To be loved and managed for his and our benefit. Nice kitty. Keep luring little kids to their doom and you can have the run of the closet.

Published on Leave a comment on The Two Faces of Wildness

The Beast of Mob Violence Behind the Romantic “Ideal” of Wildness

Who is this “other self”?

When we’re emotionally “out of control,” “not ourselves,” getting what our appetites want with one-sided willful “action” instead of two-sided thoughtful understanding, we’re not a facade taking on another color of paint. Niceness momentarily replaced by not-nice, a different face. We’re the face and voice of another performer taking our place on stage. Reciting lines from a different storyline. Us but definitely not us. Who is this “other self”?_________________________________________________________________________________________

In the Beginning

Tribal deities

Philosophy and theology have long wondered what moved “God” to get up off the sofa. What need can possibly explain it when God has no needs? What gift can you give someone who already has everything?

The myths of ideology are long on fireworks after something happened but short on explaining why and how it happened. Deities invented by tribal mindsets to deify themselves were one-sided, one-dimensional, top-down authorities. Arbitrary laws unto themselves not for loving but for fearing and appeasing. Not by being “good” but by doing whatever “almighty god” wanted. Even if what it wanted was defined by will, mindless and unfeeling, in the image of Olympian family brutality. The behavior of beasts excused by wildness to do as they pleased. “Disciplined” by Machiavellian expedience to do whatever it took to survive and conquer. Authorities beyond questioning.

The mathematics of confidence misplaced

Deists like Einstein surmised that the deity somehow started everything and then was done with it. And, with that, they were done thinking about it. Yet, as it will become clear later, there was a certain logic to Einstein’s thinking. The mathematics of Energy, E=MC2, may have alerted him to a philosophical truth as well. The sense, conscious or subconscious, that it was energy that was done once it did as it was asked. By Mind, to “create” a time-limited universe.

The farthest that Einstein’s logic could take him since inquiry beyond physical appearances would have been beyond his profession. Had his genius not been strait-jacketed by physics, had it followed Logic wherever it led, it would have led him to a realization of far greater consequence than E=MC2: that his time-limited universe can’t be Real. And so his confidence that it could also be reduced to an elegant mathematical equation was misplaced.

Einstein’s misperception

He had been misled by his awesome universe, the centerpiece of his profession and personal fame, to assume that Energy and its Interconnections come in but one version. Obviating the need to distinguish between Real and unreal and avoid a crucial misperception. To go beyond the discovery that the universe “exists” in the “present” that’s not Now to understand its significance. When in fact Energy and its Interconnections come in two versions, one Real-Mind and the other unreal-matter: eternally live Energy connecting in timelessness, temporal energy winding down and disconnecting in time.

Leading Einstein to focus his genius on the wrong version. In a hallucination of impossibilities “seeing” what’s not there is getting it “right.” Trying to prove that it is there is getting it wrong. The cause that occupied the rest of his life, to crown an impossible theory with another E=MC2, was doomed from the start. There would be no victory lap.

The story beyond telling

What can be “real” if its “existence” mysteriously comes and goes, like a magic act? If it’s not existence in Now that can’t be limited to time and doesn’t come and go like a magic act. What else can it be but the opposite of Reality: unreality? A kind of dream or hallucination that must end.

Whether it was to preserve professional integrity or something else history’s greatest minds – Plato and others as well as Einstein – haven’t been able to liberate themselves from rule by body-sensing to make sense of Mind. With the tools given to them to put two and two together, as Parmenides did, because sensory perception could never “prove” that it came out to four.

The inference that Aristotle drew from the unfinished philosophy of his mentor, Plato: that while ethereal Mind is Real, everyday sensory perception is demonstrably “real.” Making of any story beyond matter “unrealistic.” Beyond telling. Or at least beyond telling without being sentenced to hell for trying.

Mind’s gift of insight

An assumption that cries out for correction. The story of matter told so far by science is the Colorado River petering out before it reaches the Pacific. An underwhelming denouement after Einstein’s theories, a century ago, seemed to put the answers to everything within reach.

Why wouldn’t Mind want to be understood if it’s Understanding? If we acknowledge our self-unawareness and seek Guidance from Self-Awareness, its source. If, despite all the obstructions put in its way, Mind can’t be prevented from being our Friend, from helping us, if we acknowledge our need for it, ask for Guidance, shut down the noise, and listen.

With Mind’s gift of sixth sense. The voice of spontaneous insights that no power on earth can control or silence. The power of insight that’s enabled human evolution from animal to sapiens with advances in every field of inquiry. And will do more to liberate us from self-unawareness when we choose to liberate ourselves from its cause: unquestioning obedience to the rule of bodies’ five senses. To the master of Plato’s Cave, self-delusion. The image of absolutes beyond questioning in the narcissist’s mirror.

Mind is Relationship

Mind can’t be the source of anything but self-delusion if it’s a one-sided, one-dimensional, top-down “authority.” Posing as an absolute alone at the top, as ridiculous in shared unreality as it is in shared Reality. A running joke from Vaudeville that always leaves ‘em laughing: the ass-kissing pompous ass. The great fool its Old Howard audience loves to hate.

But Mind can be the Source of Everything if it’s Relationship. And it is. Between its two main functions, Logic and Love, and the Energy of attraction between them. The Force of Relationship that holds together Creation’s interconnected functions with the power of Necessity. The inseparability of Logic’s implications, Love’s connections, and Mind’s Logic and Love functioning as one. Its expression: Reality’s laws of cause and effect. The DNA, operating system, and code of ethics of Mind: the definition of Definition.

To enable the Doing of Being

The only absolute in all of Creation where opposition cannot be by Definition. Cannot be by the certainty that Reality-Creation can only be governed under the laws of cause and effect. Enacted not by the Will of conscious intent but by spontaneity beyond the will of anything to compromise it. By the joining of Logic with Love within Mind but not at the direction of Mind. An act caused solely by the spontaneous attraction between two functions completing one another. With Logic-Thought sharing the discipline of Order with boundaryless Love-Feeling, and Love-Feeling sharing the spontaneity of Relationship and Values with unfeeling Logic.

To enable and empower Mind with its function: the Doing of Being. Given the illumination and direction of Self-Awareness by Relationship. Within the Reality of Mind composed of Relationships and interconnected by sharing among Relationships. Mind’s function of judging, with Definition’s boundaries and values, where every contribution to Creativity and free-spirited originality fits in perfect harmony. The sharing of its Function with every function of Creation, the ideas and values that are of its doing.

The Worth of Creation earned

To bring into Life and Reality the Ideal of Worth that by definition must be earned. The cause that moved Mind beyond the idea of Creation to its expression. Off its butt, onto its feet, and moving with Purpose. Striving for absolutes of purity and perfection put eternally beyond reach.

By their impossibility in a Reality of implicit opposites and unreality of explicit opposites. By the Logic of Circumstance with an upper and under side that is always moving forward. Always changing. Propelled by Logic and Love that must, according to the laws of cause and effect, grow, extend, and expand into infinity. The source of evolution, an eternal work in progress.

The Ideal of Process gotten right

And the raw material for Creation’s Worth. Earned and affirmed through the element of Free Choice that, itself, must be earned and affirmed. Through competence that can only be gained and put to use through experience. That only the function given to Free Choice through Mind’s Relationship, its Parents, Logic-Love, can perform without compromising Reality-Creation with contradiction.

All implying that the Worth of Creation resides not in product but in process. Not in Creation’s absolutes cleansed of opposites but in the discipline of Process that manages opposites. “Virtue” doesn’t “triumph” over “vice” no matter how often it’s portrayed in art and displayed in museums. It figures out how to use vice for its own self-discipline. Process = Product. Means = End. If what’s “right” is done wrong, it’s not getting it right.

Competence earned to choose freely 

Choice that’s Free and functional lies within its competence to manage the boundary between Creation and its implied opposites. Between Reality and unreality. Keeping the boundary functional while contributing to Creation’s Worth: the indispensable Self-Awareness of Free Choice responsible and accountable for its choices. For its performance made credible by the spontaneity of independent judgment. In receipt of the raw material of Creation from its Parents, Logic-Love, but free from theirs or any other influence over how it chooses to contribute to its Worth. To add value.

The competence to choose freely with independent judgment gained through practice, learning, and growth on both sides of the boundary. On the underside where the Self-Awareness required by Free Choice must be earned as only it can, through the loss and regaining of it. Through hands-on experience with impossibilities hidden in unreality on the underside of Definition: opposites required to complete the definition of what is by what isn’t. Through hands-on experience with a second underside within unreality: the animal side of human animal.

Putting the Worth of Creation to its ultimate test: whether its own element of Free Choice thinks it’s worth the effort to choose it. But before Free Choice even gets this far, it must freely choose who it is and what it’s about: its identity and role of Free Choice. It can’t pretend to choose freely when it’s already compromised. By allowing itself to be locked into its role by the genetics and will of its Parents.

When it's already allowed itself to be told what to do. The example set by Mind-Child’s self-delusion and re-enacted by the politics of follow-the-leader authoritarian ass-kissing. Letting an absurdity in the narcissist’s mirror call the shots. Opposite’s perversion of self-unawareness seeking guidance from Self-Awareness: the blind leading the blind. Entertaining us with yet more “thrills” from “action.” Yet more evidence that if Reality is fruitful effort, unreality is wasted effort. Mind-Child deluding itself. Hallucinating.

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How will the story end?

With a labor of Love?

When independent judgment weighs in on our progress, what might it conclude? At a minimum that it’s obstructed by opposition. By minds so invested in cherishing and validating the “gift” of appearances that they deny their minds permission to question it. To use all of Mind’s faculties, including its sixth sense, to look behind appearances with another perspective. To see what’s there instead of what’s not there.

With the perspective of their minds’ source: Free Choice. Whose Parents Logic-Love, the source of circumstances, hold the key to understanding context. Whose Guidance is accessible to every mind through whatever form Free Choice chooses. For Relationship, the source of Energy that turned Mind from Being to Doing. Relationship with loving Friend and Guide that can turn self-unawareness, stuck in the mud, into a Jack Kerouac On the Road adventure that’s actually going somewhere.

Toward Self-Awareness. Toward Free Choice competent to perform its role in Creation if that’s what it chooses to do. By following the example of Mind sharing the earning of Worth. So that the family of Creation can experience the incomparable joy and satisfaction of taking part in a labor of Love.

The what isn’t of “self” that’s many selves

Which side of the divide will prevail: minds on the human side who choose Guidance toward Self-Awareness? Or wills on the animal side opposed to choice, guidance, and Self-Awareness? Captivated by the mystique of “wildness,” the force of nature that rules its domain without opposition. The king of beasts. The herd mentality seated in humans’ animal brain that transforms into an image less alluring. The face of humanity de-humanized. The face of the human beast: an enraged mob. Capable of hideous, terrifying brutality.

The extremity of unreality’s perversion of what is: the what isn’t of Self defined as many selves. The contradiction of the laws of Necessity that underlies every obstruction devised by tribal “realists.” The misconception of “reality” as unending conflict between tribes competing for survival and supremacy. The substitute for meaning and purpose meant to distract minds from their real purpose with “action.” With wars that offer endless opportunities for mob violence, their purpose. To idealize the body’s animal brain by de-humanizing human, its enemy, then killing it.

The ideal of Creation through Relationship

The conscience of Creativity that accompanies Mind’s every thought and idea from Logic, every feeling and value from Love, is rooted in the honesty and integrity, fairness and compassion, of Definition.  With no possibility of contradiction because of its Source: not Mind but the spontaneous DNA beyond its control within it. The absolute where the buck stops. The definition of Definition. Authority beyond any possibility of opposition. Backed by the power of attraction and the Force of Necessity. The laws of cause and effect enacted by the power of attraction. By Relationship: Logic married to Love.

With intent. To bring to Life the Ideal embedded in Mind’s DNA. The cause that motivates Reality-Creation: harmony and joyfulness among Creation’s parts entrusted with responsibility for managing the boundaries of Logic and the Relationships of Love. Not with conformity forced by one-sided, self-centered, arbitrary rule from the top down but with the spontaneity and Free Will of Creativity, served and supported by Governance under the law from the bottom up. By the ideal of Relationships joined in equality and Trust in the image of Guidance washing its seekers’ feet rather than forced into hierarchy and distrust.

The ideal in reverse

The ideal brought to Life and into Reality by Energy in the Now. Ensuring that Creation can be subject to no limits other than its definition by Definition itself, the inviolable DNA of spontaneous Relationship within Mind. Absolute beyond questioning that enables and empowers Creation with the essence of all Creativity in Reality: spontaneity free from outside limits of any kind since nothing can be “outside” or “external” in Reality.

Free, then, from everything imagined by the Child of Logic-Love in a state of self-unawareness. Our state of hallucination bracketed between beginning and ending. Time’s perversion of “life” that necessitates “death.” Of “reality” that necessitates that it and everything within it consist of appearances time-limited. Of no lasting value and therefore of no real value. The appearance of “creativity” brought to “life” by hallucination only to disappear along with mortal bodies sensing it.

Winding down with entropy

The consequence of time-limited energy. The same Energy that enacts Mind’s Ideal of eternal Creation through Connectivity. Through the Ideal of Mind’s Logic eternally inseparable from Love, thought inseparable from feeling, evolution inseparable from ethic. Now “enacting” hallucination under a death sentence. Converted from enacting to dis-enacting. From holding everything together to letting it fall apart. To disconnecting, decaying, and dying toward inertia.

The state of our material universe that science calls “entropy.” Mindless “mind” willing itself and its incoherent “works” to end. Energy winding down. The “deity” imagined by Einstein that threw a switch and then took the rest of the day off. A perversion of Mind expressing itself in Reality through the coherence, and Force of eternal Life.

Idiocy

What perversion of Truth does the wildness so revered by the authoritarian mindset represent? Where does it “fit” within the slapstick routines of opposite’s contradictions? Of the Joker’s mockery of Truth that accounts for the functional unity of Mind and Creation -- Relationship between Logic and Love?

What madness pits unevolved animal brain against human evolution? Against one-sided, self-deluded Mind’s recovery of two-sided Self-Awareness and sanity? Against the Force needed by Self-Awareness for its empowerment and enablement, the definition of Definition, its DNA. What idiocy would take on the one absolute in all of Reality and unreality beyond questioning – Necessity? The laws of cause and effect.

The boundary that connects and divides

The illumination of Self-Awareness, that shares the light of awareness and its Energy, would have needed two metaphorical sticks rubbing together. Two ideas or thoughts complete in their definition of what is on Definition’s upper side but incomplete and useless until defined by their implied opposites on the underside. By what isn’t. Because the spontaneous event that brought function, consequence, and Life to Mind’s original idea of Creation couldn’t be the Force of attraction alone. Between two parts of one function, incomplete without one another, that defined what is.

It had to be the Force of opposition defining what isn’t as well. An expression of the Necessity of Relationship that accommodates not only two compatible parts but two parts that can’t be compatible and Real at the same time. Through the distinction critical to the cause of Reality-Creation, the boundary that divides the functions and products of Creation from their implied opposites and connects them into one function at the same time. The boundary between Real and unreal.

When compatibility overcomes incompatibility

Pairing Logic with Love could only have been done by disparity between the two forces of attraction and their implied opposition, one being stronger than the other. It couldn’t have happened by parity between functions that contradict one another. Not in the Reality of Logic-Love defined by the absence of contradiction.

Yet even with the Force of attraction the attributes of functions incomplete without one another that make them different also make them potentially incompatible. It’s only the work of Creation and the Necessity of all of Mind’s parts functioning as one that could override their differences with integration. Logic that’s Order defined by boundaries, held in place by its unbroken flow of implications, wouldn’t be compelled otherwise by what it is to bond with what it isn’t – Love that’s Freedom unbounded. And neither would free-spirited Love be compelled to put up with Logic’s Order.

Which is stronger: attraction or opposition?

Attraction prevailed over incompatibility when the issue was settled by its controlling consideration: Mind and Creation needing to function as one. And by a second imperative: Definition, the absolute defined by Necessity, the laws of cause and effect, requiring that attributes that produce harmony be defined as stronger than attributes that produce friction. By Logic’s implication, that the boundaries that bring Order to Creation bring Peace.

The Force that overrode opposition was a condition built into the DNA of Mind: that it could only source Reality-Creation composed of interconnecting Relationships if it was, itself, Relationship. Between its two main functions of Logic and Love made compatible by the Necessity of Definition. By the same implication of Logic that combines possibility with impossibility also implying that its opposite, a derivative dependent upon it, is inherently weaker.    That the attributes of what is are by definition stronger than the attributes defined by what isn’t.

Just as Logic-Love could only enable the upper-positive and under-negative sides of Definition to function as one if one was Real and the other unreal, the accommodation of Reality to the Force of opposition could not have been made possible by eliminating it. By denial -- opposition to opposition. It could only have been made possible by Necessity, the unquestioned absolute that defines Definition. By the law of cause and effect that negative-opposite, a derivative of positive, second in sequence behind first, and unreal, be inherently weaker than the positive. That the Force of attraction toward unity be stronger than the Force of opposition toward disunity.

The bigger stick in Reality

If Self is all there is – one sidedness, the usual misperception of “God” -- it can’t be two-sided Relationship. A condition that Mind couldn’t meet by relating to another Mind. It had to be done in-house. Through the spontaneous mating of two distinct ideals – Logic and Love -- needing to complete their definitions as functions of Creation. Spontaneously so that Reality-Creation would be an expression of the laws of cause and effect and not of an arbitrary will above the law. So that the will of Mind defining its function would align with the authority of Necessity rather than replace it.

The Force of attraction that brought opposition into alignment with Necessity was the Force that illuminated Self-Awareness, defined its mission, and initiated the evolution of Creation. That set Mind in motion, Being into Doing. An event essential to all of Reality-Creation within Mind that no derivative Force of opposition could prevent.

The stick that disciplines in unreality

Overpowering the Force of opposition yet leaving it in place. The metaphorical stick that could cause friction if forced by Definition into contact at equal strength with the stick of attraction. An eventuality “possible” only where impossibilities can pretend to be real. Where they can have their way with possibilities without any effect on Reality-Creation.

And that could only be within Mind-Child Free Choice in a state of self-unawareness, hallucinating “life” on the underside. “Experiencing” life on the underside as it must. So that it can learn by trial and error without Free Choice being compromised by an external will “saving” it, telling it what to do. So that it can learn from its mistakes by experiencing their consequences. Not by proxy but first hand. So that Free Choice can grow to maturity with the competence to choose freely, fully aware of what lies on both sides of the boundary and so to manage the boundary. The boundary between Reality and unreality and, within unreality – the hallucination that’s our alternate “reality” – between two-sided one-faced human and one-sided two-faced animal.

Creative sticking

Competence whose measure is enabling both sides of the boundary to do their part for Creation in harmony:

  • by putting friction from opposition to its intended use: completing definition with what isn’t and contradicting its own lies.
  • by not mistaking opposition as Real and a stronger force than attraction.
  • by ensuring that no part of Reality-Creation can succumb to the ultimate offense against Reality-Creation: the mischaracterization and replacement of Mind, its Source; the delusion of absolute power and freedom without limits; the arrogance and impossibility of authority beyond questioning; “infallibility” -- “playing “God.”
  • by upholding the ideal of governing benevolently from the bottom up: Relationship between Logic and Love supporting Creativity with Freedom inseparable from Order, under the law. Rather than betraying the ideal by one-sided “authority” arrogating the “right” to rule arbitrarily, above the law, by forced conformity: the denial of Creativity, Freedom, and Order.

Opposition’s vulnerability and thus the key to managing it in unreality lies in its implication: susceptibility to turning, or being turned, against itself. The objective that best exemplifies the helpfulness of Guidance: turning negatives into positives, disconnections into connections, destruction into construction. Removing obstructions to Self-Awareness with self-discipline, Creativity, and growth. Learning from our mistakes and putting it to good use.

The ”triumph” of a pompous ass

To uphold the ultimate ideal that’s Mind-Being eternally stronger and more compelling than not-mind, not-being. The unthinkable “state” of “opposition” to Mind that lies beyond Reality-Creation’s absolute. The “force” of “opposition” that Mind’s own Logic-Love Relationship recognizes as “completing” Mind’s DNA, the definition of Definition, with what it isn’t: not-thinking, not-Mind. An idea beyond expression.

When any inhabitant of Mind-Choice’s hallucination chooses to “ally” with opposite, let it be clear that it can only happen if it’s overpowered and its identity is stolen by its “ally.” By the other side of itself. That it’s choosing weakness not strength, losing not winning, inferiority not superiority. That its “realism” is choosing unreality. An illusion that can only “exist” in Mind hallucinating. The underside of Definition beneath the boundary between Reality and unreality.

The bad guys in our world made “real” by hallucination can re-enact the triumph of animal will over its self-deluded, defenseless prey by the impossibility of competition and combat between what’s Real and what isn’t. But neither they nor their illusory triumph can be more than flickering appearances and sounds reverberating throughout Plato’s Cave. An apparition. The pretense of authority beyond questioning. An impossibility that’s beyond taking seriously. A pompous ass.

The un-immaculate conception

The Truth is Mind’s Logic and Love brought together spontaneously in Reality to enable and empower Creation, the eternally evolving earning, affirmation, expression, and reciprocation of Worth. The Worth and exquisite Beauty of Life, the Freedom and spontaneity of Creativity ordered in harmony by the Governance of Mind Logic-Love. That serves and supports Creativity with benevolence from the bottom up.

Its perversion, brought to “life” by the pompous ass seated in the human animal brain, isn’t one part of brain joining with another spontaneously. To ignite body-brain with the radiance and energy of Self-Awareness or to “enable” anything creative. It's the slapstick absurdity of the beast’s wildness taken captive by its own will. An un-immaculate conception.

The apotheosis of “herd mentality”

So that wildness can be released into a hallucination of “freedom” without limits. Wilderness without boundaries or judgment capable of detecting them. Into lawless chaos “engineered” not for creativity but to glorify the beast in its own element where anything goes: dehumanized herd mentality dehumanizing its “enemies” with wanton abuse, cruelty, savagery, and depravity.

Wearing the ultimate mask of the pompous ass seated on his throne in the animal brain: one opposite self glowering from the narcissist’s mirror in the guise of many selves. Transformed into the horror of tribal wildness, an enraged mob. The perversion of “humanity” that’s inhumanity. The horror of unreality mistaken for reality. Unthinkable impossibilities made “thinkable” by body-brains’ sensory perception making them “real.”

Parodying with the “wildness” of demonic tribal conquest and captivity – a beast -- the Beauty and Purity of Love’s wildness. The passion and spontaneity, conscience and loving kindness, shared with Logic’s Order. To give birth to Free Choice and to bless their Child with a Life of meaning and purpose. Two distinctly different versions of wildness. One worthy of being taken seriously, the other not.

The passion of Relationship

The thought that Relationship between Logic and Love produced the Force needed to illuminate and activate Mind’s Self-Awareness will impress itself upon the human imagination when it awakens to Relationship’s context. To the example that Mind has set, not of denying spontaneity or willing it, but of respecting the laws of cause and effect. The Definition of what is and the Force of Necessity that make of Creation the work of many functions, many wills, that are Free. Free to make of Creation not an ornament for authoritarian vanity but Worth earned that deserves it.

Worth that’s shared spontaneously among all its parts functioning as one. Not to sew terror and chaos with the brutality of a mob but to serve the cause of Creation with the passion of its Source: Relationship. Logic married to Love.

The abomination of willful thinking

The spontaneous joining of these two distinctly different Forces to enable and empower, serve and support the shared cause of Creation sets the tone and substance of the part that Mind-Child Free Choice was meant to play. Keeping the boundary that enables positive and negative, possibility and impossibility, Real and unreal, to function as one without becoming a barrier.

Defending a fortress of denial from giving up the madness within: the one-sided beast “armed” with unquestioned “authority.” An absolute “playing God.” With neither judgment nor feeling, undisciplined by boundaries. Freed by hallucination to obstruct the earning of Self-Awareness at will. The abomination of willful thinking: the self-centered narcissist taken captive by its opposite in the mirror. The two faces of the authoritarian personality ruling its hierarchical relationships unopposed: ass-kisser and pompous ass.

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Reflections on Valentine’s Day

Help with Relationships

What have you learned? Enough to give buoyancy to a phase of life that’s supposed to lack it. May I share some of the excitement? I’m flattered that you want to. You needn’t be. Our loving friendship has been my inspiration. In fact, imagining that we’re having this conversation brought out some of the insights I’m sharing that might help you with relationships someday. Go for it! 

One-sided vs. two-sided

All for one and none for the other

Valentine’s Day shows us all at our best, putting feeling to its intended use. For Love, the part of feeling that comforts and assures us with understanding: that we’re all one family. Sharing ourselves as we are and competing to build character and do better.

It works well so long as we feel for one another as well as for ourselves. But you may have noticed that actual and make-believe lives tell a different story. Who hasn’t noticed! The trouble caused by feeling that’s all for one side and none for the other. One-sided.

“Substitutes” for Love

If the bad guys in stories like Star Wars could feel the effects of their behavior on others maybe they wouldn’t be bad guys. Maybe they’d be good instead. Could they? They can Love because they feel. That’s the “good” inside his father that Luke could feel. Not active Loving but the potential to Love. But it’s all reserved for themselves. And when it is, it’s not Love anymore. Or human. What is it?

It’s whatever makes predators “happy.” Beasts. The exultation of conquest – “winning.” King Kong atop the Empire State Building. The fear of losing, humiliation, and captivity. The self-satisfaction and security of being the one-and-only in charge. The emotional selfishness of possession. And feelings that animate the will to fight, injure, and kill: rage, hatred, and contempt. Everything symbolized by Darth Vader’s helmet: the “supremacy” of arrogance.

What’s left when “human” is removed?

Feeling that’s one-sided can be all of these things, and that does make things “interesting.” It produces a sense of “action.” But it’s de-humanizing. It can’t deliver the two-sided feeling of Valentine’s Day -- the compassionate human side of the human animal. It delivers the opposite – hurtfulness, pain. Two-sided loving humans don’t inflict intentional harm. It’s inflicted by one-sided unloving, unfeeling beasts. 

What does being dehumanized feel like? Imagine your home being broken into, your identity, reputation, and everything else that’s yours stolen, being taken captive, and your body violated. Then being blamed for doing what’s been done to you by a pose of innocent victimhood. That would make me mad. Adding yet another violation: your world of friendships -- respectful and sensitive, fair and trusting -- invaded by aliens. By thoughts and feelings you don’t want. The dark fury of outrage demanding retaliation. Forcing you to get rid of it without becoming a beast yourself.

A negative that can become positive if the human de-humanized turns its demand for retaliation into an opportunity instead. To strengthen the bond with its Guide. To discover just how helpful Guidance from Logic-Love can be. With its help replacing self-unawareness with Self-Awareness, a life-changing benefit that’s well worth the cost. An opening to the joys of learning and growth. To a taste for creativity beyond anything experienced before. And an appetite for more of the same.

Too good to be true

 “Human animal” means that one-sided and two-sided feeling are part of who we all are. Part of what defines us, so trying to be just one or the other can’t be done. But we can manage the boundary between them. Some people are one-sided because they mis-manage the boundary, How is that? By not being aware of the difference between the human and animal sides of humanity. And so they’re not aware of the boundary. By being drawn to the animal side by a preference for one-sided feeling. Why would they do that if it can de-humanize others?

They’re tempted by what they imagine it offers: “freedom” that allows them to enjoy “order” without the discipline of judgment. To enjoy the “pleasures” of ownership, possession, and power without the boundaries set by conscience and empathy. They’re fooled by things that can only be made “possible” by willful thinking. By imagining that willpower is the only discipline they need to live in a world of their own making. Where they don’t have to take responsibility for whatever goes wrong because it’s always somebody else’s fault. Making up your own world sounds interesting. 

If you value friendship you won’t want to try it. Why? “Winning” that makes friends lose, without empathy that feels their pain, won’t win anything. But it will lose friends. Friendship thrives on more than being “nice.” It needs sincerity and trust that keep us safe. It dies when insensitivity and cruelty take it all away. The will to make up your own heaven sounds too good to be true because it is. It can’t be heaven in a shared world where being one-sided, wrapped up in your exclusive world, makes it hell for others. 

The right and wrong sides of boundaries

Different personalities can be drawn to the animal side by not understanding why the boundary is there. Why is it? To prompt us to be aware that crossing it has consequences. To be aware of the consequences and to choose correctly. With the discipline of judgment and conscience that explains the choice and motivates us to do right instead of wrong.

Which makes the expression of two-sided Love on Valentine’s Day an annual reminder. That loving relationships among friends and family can never be one-sided. That relationship management is boundary management. And it requires discipline. The discipline of judgment that recognizes and respects boundaries and the discipline of conscience that keeps us on the right side of boundaries.

The discipline of Awareness

Anything else? Yes. Valentine’s Day is a reminder that loving others starts with loving ourselves. With understanding that the most important relationship is within us, between the two sides of our nature. And if we mean to Love others we will need the most important discipline of all: awareness. Awareness of the choice that’s ours to make, with independent judgment guided by conscience. Thinking for ourselves and getting it right. 

Wildness Management 

Two faces of the same coin

Valentine’s Day is humanizing. How so? It expresses what makes us human instead if just animal. With a two-sided act of loving friendship expressed inwardly as well as outwardly. Hearts and flowers we give ourselves? Yes. By being aware that there are two sides to human nature, not one. Human and animal. And by being aware that they’re opposites, and there’s an important boundary between them.

Keeping them separate? “Person” will always be human plus animal, just as possibility will always be accompanied by its opposite, impossibility. One definition, inseparable, identifying two parts opposite to one another. Two faces of the same coin. That needs a boundary that connects and separates. Yes. So both parts can do their jobs in the same person without getting in the other’s way. And the tension between them can do its job – the power of opposition, the flip side of the power of attraction. Both essential to Creation.

What is “Creation?” My current thought is it’s the Worth of Love relating to Logic freely reciprocated by their Child. Shared with and expressed through the Creations of their Relationship with their Child. The Parent-Child Relationship which is Love unconditional. Do Initial capital letters mean you’re talking about Creation? Yes. About Reality as distinguished between alternate “reality” or the unreality of hallucination.

Proceed with caution

Properly managed, the boundary performs like a signal: “proceed with caution.” Like a red flag warning of trouble ahead if we aren’t aware that snakes bite if they’re stepped on. Or we are aware but taking chances appeals to us. Why take risks?. Maybe to simulate fearlessness with bravado, a familiar sign of under-developed feeling. Courage doesn’t need to wear a mask but shallowness usually does.

We give ourselves hearts and flowers when we take the red flag seriously. Yes. When we judge with maturity instead of immaturity. And when we go two-sided with ourselves before we go two-sided with others. Exposing others to snake bites from one-sidedness.

One-sidedness

What is one-sidedness? Lack of consideration for others as well as for ourselves. Our animal side. Unawareness. That can’t be aware of anything or understand anything because of what it is: “action.” By instinct, without thinking or feeling. Without the functions we associate with Mind that distinguish sensitive human from insensitive beast.

It’s animal instinct made “aware” of itself not by intelligence or sentiment but by threats to its survival – other acts. The only “self” that it “knows:” action. It’s not aware that this is a shared world? The only world that a threatened “self” can be aware of is a competitive world. A world composed of herds and tribes banded together for self-protection, survival, and dominance.

Two-sidedness

What about individuals? Two-sidedness means consideration of others as well as ourselves, the two-sidedness of validation by mind and heart. It’s what we normally mean by “relationship” or “friendship.” Individuals stuck with one-sidedness might be in addictive co-dependencies, unfeeling co-existence, running battles hiding behind appearances, or all three. But they aren’t in two-sided relationships.

What passes between members of tribes can’t be the independent judgment and spontaneous feeling of individuality. Not if tribal integrity and uniformity require the opposite, conformity. Camaraderie that simulates the playfulness and bonding of individuality is encouraged because it strengthens bonding with tribe.

What passes between tribes isn’t two-sidedness either. It’s accommodations required by one-sidedness for survival or dominance in competition. “Relationship” not held together by commitment to shared values but by expedience -- whatever it takes to avoid defeat or ensure victory. Machiavellian license to fight wildness with wildness.

Wildness on the animal side

The world of the human side is shared as well as divided, cooperative as well as competitive. The idea acted out on Valentine’s Day when individuals acknowledge the idea and express the feeling of sharing and cooperation. The world of the animal side, a predatory beast, expresses the opposite: the idea and feeling of wildness. That refuses to be fenced in. To be tamed, domesticated. Yes. To be obstructed by boundaries. Limits. Laws? The animal in us opposes any limits, even laws necessary to maintain order if they conflict with its willfulness.

Even more astounding, it opposes the functions of Mind. That make sense of things and govern. It yields control over its acts to only one “master,” the instincts and emotions of a wild, predatory beast. In the mistaken belief that wildness is “spontaneity” without limits. An impossibility in a shared world. That would be contradicted if Mind were given a voice. 

Wildness at its extreme 

Then what is possible? What would Mind say? That the irrationality of the animal side doesn’t stop here. Its destination is not-mind. Which puts it beyond all thought and feeling, beyond all functions of Mind. We see evidence in our personal surroundings and in the world around us, every day, of minds captive to the bizarre promises of our animal side. Of failure to be humanized by the boundary instead of dehumanized by its mis-management.

Not-mind sounds like neither two-sided nor one-sided. Right. It’s no-sided. The end of time and timelessness too. The animal side, romanticized by “wildness,” is an impossible ideal. So willful and irrational that it would deny its opposite, human, to make sense of anything. Even to function and ultimately to exist. By denying the relevance and utility of every faculty of Mind. The self-awareness of introspection; intuition-reflection; thinking-reasoning; feeling-evaluating; choosing-deciding; judging-understanding; defining-disciplining – all requiring Logic and Love.

The provocations of wildness

The beast that wills this takes many forms. A bull in a pasture guarding its turf and its herd, who won’t be nice to intruders who ignore the fence. It’s a virus coded to take over its living host, a cell, so that it can replicate itself. It’s an image in a mirror mistaken for an absolute: an ideal, “savior,” “superman,” “wildness.” The viewer’s opposite, a lifeless reflection coded to de-humanize. To make its captive ignore the boundary between human and animal by luring it over to the wrong side.

It must be tempting to meet wildness with wildness. It is. Wars are consequences of minds obstructed by self-unawareness, cut off from Logic and Love, unable to make sense of their circumstances. The consequence of the human side’s under-development. Its continued dependence on animal herd mentality for survival.

Tribal wars and hostility among individuals, that cause physical, emotional, and psychological harm, are failures of judgment capable of managing boundaries. Failures of minds, unaware of Logic and Love, unable to discern what their situation calls for. To get their context right so they can choose correctly how to respond. The human mind continues to meet wildness with wildness, to mis-manage relationships, because it hasn’t evolved far enough to meet the one-sidedness of mindless animal wildness with two-sided understanding.

Choosing sides

Then there’s nothing to be done but to wait on evolution? Certainly not! Evolution, like every attribute of Creation, is the product of Relationship within Mind that entrusts every function that it defines with purpose. The purpose it’s defined for the one Mind’s function that we share is Free Choice. The use of independent judgment to make every act of its Mind choice, with Guidance from Relationship but never control.

Every situation is a test of Free Choice to figure out, with Guidance, how to advance Self-Awareness by removing obstructions put up by self-unawareness. By the animal side of human animal activated by mis-judgment of the boundary. There’s activity on both sides involving individuals like you and me, one side working to advance understanding, the other to prevent it.

Making a sap of sapiens

The side that’s regaining self-awareness can be slowed down but it can’t be stopped. The story of sapiens has been its progress so far with learning and growth, so fast in some fields recently that it’s head-spinning. Slow or non-existent in others, because sapiens can’t or won’t figure out how to remove their obstructions. A consequence of sapiens allowing its animal side to obstruct its access to Guidance.

Is this why you’re writing, to help remove obstructions? Yes. So that the human side won’t be so defenseless against the absurdities, lures, deceptions, cruelties, and outrages of the animal side. So the two-sided viewer – our ancestral Mind duped into one-sidedness by a preposterous image in a mirror – won’t be so easily duped again. So we, its projections, won’t be helping the image make a sap of sapiens.

Relationship Management 

The measure of progress

What obstruction are you writing about now? Unwanted thoughts and feelings. That intrude when a person has been dehumanized by the beast. So the intruders can be removed without resorting to wildness from the animal side that would betray the human side. So the intruders can be transformed from mindless will to condemn and punish into understanding that’s thoughtful and sympathetic.

Are you making progress? My sense of progress is fed by spontaneity and Relationship. By the sense that insights arrive spontaneously, through mind functioning without bias, and they release mind, heart, and soul from darkness into light. And by the sense that their source isn’t self-centered pettiness but the largeness of Logic paired with Love -- the gift of Relationship with my Guide.

Whether we’re making progress is for Relationship to say. And the time to say it is when our different perspectives converge on a finished product. Spontaneously, so I can’t predict it. But our sense of purpose and motivation seem remarkably alike, making this a genuine “labor of Love.” A precious thing to enjoy while it lasts and to be grateful for.

Guidance from conscious to sub-conscious 

What is Guidance like? It depends. Individuals and their situations vary, so I can’t speak for everyone. What it’s been for me is helpfulness. Explanation with analysis that keeps me from being controlled by difficult thoughts and emotions. Good will that finds ways to put situations to good use. Especially those that generate enough intensity to drive learning and growth. Like last year, when it didn’t seem like I could keep going. Every day was a challenge. But Guidance put it all to good use. Instead of giving up I came out better than before.

Guidance needed for Free Choice’s role in Reality-Creation, from Relationship with its Parents, was conscious. Here, it’s subconscious. Because context has been flipped from Reality to its opposite, unreality. The Guide we talk about that was conscious Relationship with Parents has changed to subconscious Relationship with their agent or representative. As though what’s positive on top had been replaced by what’s negative and put on the bottom.

Guidance from the Now 

Why is Guidance needed? The sharing of Logic-Love and the interconnectedness of Mind-Reality is also its expression. A statement affirming Worth that is function, doing as well as perfection-being. That is usefulness helping Child Free Choice with learning and growth in unreality, if it would be welcome. With explanation by Logic-Love that helps to place Child’s circumstances in context. With making use of circumstances that might otherwise be missed opportunities. Always respecting Free Choice by never interfering.

Free Choice that occurs in time, in the not-Now, requires Guidance from the Now. Because here it can’t be spontaneous. Free from interference and obstruction. Because it can never align itself with the laws of cause and effect, that govern the Now with Logic and Love, Order and Freedom, Free Choice and Creativity, so long as it’s “ruled” by the laws of chaos.

Let sleeping dogs lie 

The power of Relationship in Self-Awareness-Reality is Creativity when the boundary is well-managed. Its power is healing when mis-management causes self-unawareness-unreality. Healing begins with awareness that both sides of the boundary have a function in Creation and that Creation depends on their not interfering with one another. Animal-negative’s opposition to human-positive allows this when the boundary is managed and it’s inactive. Animal-negative doesn’t allow it when the boundary is mis-managed and it’s active.

Mis-management begins with mis-judging the boundary’s purpose, to remind its manager of the difference that separates the two sides: human-positive’s ascent to Self-Awareness and back to Reality, animal-negative’s descent into self-unawareness and staying in unreality. Both sides occupying unreality so long as Mind Free Choice remains unconscious. But only one side seeking to be restored to Reality and to resume Free Choice’s role in Creation.

The nature of the Relationship 

What was Child Free Choice’s part in Creation before it lost consciousness? It was functioning in Relationship with its Parents, Logic-Love, but not at their direction. A relationship like the one between human-positive and animal-negative, where their functions belong together but must not interfere with one another. Interference with Free Choice disables it.

Minds involved in their circumstances need context to give them coherence and meaning. So that they can choose among different possibilities how to respond accordingly. The Parents’ function producing circumstances, functions in Creation that they’ve defined, the raw material for Creation. That needed context and a Creative response when Child Free Choice applied independent judgment to both necessities. To the interpretation of context which couldn’t perform its function if it were pre-defined by Logic-Love.

Interference with Free Choice

Meaning and purpose are essentials of Worth, and Worth requires two-sided Free Choice. Independent judgment that’s necessarily aware of the values and other considerations that go into choices – the lives and different perspectives they affect. The possibilities for learning, growth, and Creativity that advance evolution, and especially their costs as well as benefits. None of it possible if it were one-sided: attempted by Logic-Love alone, whose function is not Free Choice, or if it were attempted by choice that isn’t Free.

Choice that’s been tampered or interfered with. Making it unaware of values and other considerations but now aware of their opposites – the wrong values and considerations. The attribute of animal-negative, the flip side of human-positive. Insensitive to any consideration other than its own survival by trickery and dominance. Unaware of any self other than the one it “thinks” it’s stolen. Of any side other than the one it “thinks” it owns, possesses, and controls. A likely source of the interference that cost Child Free Choice its Freedom and Self-Awareness.

Mis-judgment’s critical blunder

The boundary between human-positive and animal-negative enables two sides to function together in Reality only because one side is Real-active and the other is unreal-inactive. Then they can’t contradict one another. When the boundary is crossed it reverses the Relationship. Boundary that enables becomes barrier that disables functioning together.  That disables Relationship so that animal-negative can make it a one-person show defended by the barrier.  One-sided instead of two-sided. Yes. The consequence of mis-judgment that crosses the boundary and activates the animal-negative.

Mis-judgment’s critical blunder, that converts Order into disorder, rationality into irrationality, is converting animal-negative opposition from inactivity to activity. By “seeing” what’s not there, animal-negative obstructing Self-Awareness, instead of seeing what is there, contradiction. An impossibility in Reality that belongs in a dream of impossibilities. The distinction between judgment seeing what’s there and mis-judgment “seeing” what’s not there can’t prevent boundary-crossing when mis-judgment fails to make it.

The critical blunder is making something unreal appear to be Real. Yes. Making unreality seem “real.” Then the barrier must come down. Yes. Judgment must learn to make the distinction. Then its mistake can be corrected.

Relationship and independent judgment

The barrier that obstructs progress toward healing can only be removed when animal-negative is restored to inactivity. By the boundary’s manager not mistaking it for Real and engaging with it.

How can this be done? With awareness of the only source that can help make it happen. So that the human side can surmount the barrier: the Relationship between Logic and Love. The two main functions of Mind, the Source and Force behind all of Reality-Creation. The power to maintain its function, free of obstruction by opposites, and also to restore the power and function of the Relationship it created. The bonding of Order with Freedom that is Free Choice, the Child of Logic-Love.

And the function of independent judgment to manage the boundary and prevent obstruction from opposites. Through the exercise of Free Choice responsible for managing the boundary between Reality and unreality, human-positive and animal-negative, Self-Awareness and self-unawareness. That can restore animal-negative to inactivity and harmlessness by reclaiming the power to choose.

By understanding with judgment that whether choice was surrendered to animal-negative or stolen, in neither case could it have happened. Because animal-negative is not only human-positive’s opposite. It’s the opposite of Reality. It’s not there. 

Cool dudes

Why does it seem to be there? Imagine a friend saying Hi! to empty space while you’re talking, as if she’d just seen someone she knew. And then goes on talking as if nothing happened. What did happen? My friend smoked too many joints. She was “seeing” what’s not there. How about pain killers? Do you have any pain killers? “Dreaming” doesn’t describe what just happened. Right. “Being fried” sounds better. It’s hallucinating. Cool! LSD and all that. The 60s. You know about the 60s? Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix. Sure. Cool dudes. If only. . .

The “cool dude” imagining our world is hallucinating. I knew there was something funny about you. A universe of spacetime-matter that’s hallucinated will seem real because that’s what “hallucinating” means: actually “seeing” what’s not there. There’s no doubt in the mind of the hallucinator that it’s seeing, and that what it’s seeing is real.

And bunny rabbits

Like Harvey? Sure. The difference between Elwood P. Dowd’s big rabbit and the horse that’s sometimes my Guide is that Harvey took the form of life detectable to Elwood by his body’s five senses, whereas Dobbin remains in my subconscious, detectable only by my mind’s sixth sense. For my next birthday you can get me psychedelics and a bunny rabbit. Another reason why our material world seems so real: the human mind wants it to be real. It’s attracted to hallucination. To inventing its own alternate “reality.”

How come? Because self-unawareness “sees” what’s not there with “vision” provided, not by Relationship between Logic and Love – by Mind, – but with the five senses of body. By matter motivated to “see” and satisfy itself. Where did matter come from?  From a relationship that could never have happened in Reality. Between self-unawareness -- unconscious Mind -- and its reverse mirror-image reflection. With its shadow-opposite, the lifeless code thrust into Mind’s hallucination as our lifelike animal-negative. An impossibility. A bogeyman.

The two faces of “harmony”

What makes one-sided hallucination sometimes seem two-sided? Free Choice can be interfered with temporarily but not forever. And its function can’t be fully taken captive anyway since function is both what and who it is. Just like the definition of every function that contributes to Creation. By Logic-Love, the function of Relationship within Mind, the Source of all Relationships and functions. Two-sided Free Choice can be deluded into mistaking itself for a one-sided hallucination, but it never stopped being what it is: Free Choice. Whatever state it’s in must have happened by choice. 

It can free itself from interference when it chooses to? Yes. And so can we, replications of its interfered-with Self in its hallucination. Animal-negative’s attempt to replace human-positive is as impossible in the hallucination as Child Free Choice being replaced by its opposite in Reality. The Mind that hallucinated was split, not replaced. Minds caught up in the hallucination are also split. Two-faced. Giving the impression of awareness that’s two-sided when it’s actually two sides of one coin: one reassuring, pleasant and likeable, the other menacing.

A perversion of Free Choice that senses Reality shared and interconnected, with integrity that can be trusted, perverted into self-centered unawareness and insensitivity. Deluding, dominating, and dis-integrating with insincerity that can’t be trusted. Not reassuring. Yes. The two faces of “harmony:” deception by likeability, pleasantness, and amusements – the appearance of sensitivity -- and menace by intimidation and punishment. – actual insensitivity. Capable of turning from threatening to inflicting cruel abuse.

When two = one and one = two 

One-faced is two-sided Trust and accessible. Two-faced is one-sided distrust and inaccessible. One-faced Trust, seeking to enable two-sided relationship with one-sided distrust, needs help from Guidance. From understanding that can only be explained with help from Logic-Love. Because the difference can’t be explained by circumstances alone --circumstances that to one are fact and to the other fiction.

What separates them is context. The meaning and purpose of circumstances that define their worlds. What needs help from Guidance is explaining opposite contexts. The difference between opposite worlds that obstructs accessibility and communication. That only understanding from Logic and Love can penetrate.

Healing by withdrawal

At their own pace, one step at a time. That can’t be hurried. Why not? Because help from Logic-Love comes through spontaneous insights. Interference of any kind removes spontaneity. And its help can’t be attempted by minds unable to listen without distraction, because it comes from another perspective. Our subconscious and Guidance are here, but the Source of Guidance can’t be here. We are dependent for Guidance on another perspective that’s not of our “reality.” That must be allowed to work free from self-centered willfulness. It requires concentration.

Patience and the quiet of solitude. Impossible without withdrawal from the frustrations of misunderstanding and miscommunication. That can only obstruct it with mischaracterization, seeing it not for what it is but for what it isn’t. A betrayal meant to harm instead of help. Evidence of two-faced untrustworthiness motivated by ill will instead of one-sided good will, indifference instead of one-faced Love.

Relationships matter

Foregoing Guidance won’t placate misunderstanding and avoid mischaracterization, but it will avoid understanding. Doing what the situation calls for can never be going along with two-faced one-sidedness to get along. If it does, what does it call for? Withdrawal. To seek understanding and change with help from Guidance. If the relationship matters, or to dump it and move on if it doesn’t. It matters. Relationships matter. Amen.

When is Now? 

Why can’t Creation include our reality if creativity is here too? Like everything else in our “reality” where everything is time-limited, creativity is appearance. Free Choice’s loss of Self-Awareness took place in Reality where nothing is time-limited. Where it’s always Now. Timelessness. The condition required by Creativity because being in the Now it can be spontaneous. Free of interference just as Free Choice must be free of interference. Where there’s no “past” to allow interference to pre-determine context and response.

Time is an unnatural interference that makes Creativity impossible. Our “reality” is never Now. Time is relativity -- related to space and gravity, so there’s no uniform “Now” to connect parts of the universe. Time tracked at the top of a mountain goes faster than at sea level. It isn’t even a factor in particle physics, the interface between Reality and our “reality.” “Now” is never.

Winged Creativity brought down

Physics calls the space between past and future the “present,” the closest we can get to Now. If present is bracketed by past and future, impossibilities in Reality, how can it allow Creativity that’s Real? Creativity undone by time can produce nothing of lasting value. It’s been deprived of its function, like a bird deprived of its wings. How can it be a “bird” if it can’t fly?

Free Choice must be aware of itself in Reality-Creation that’s shared with all the functions of Creation. When it loses consciousness, it loses Self-Awareness that’s two-sided and becomes self-unawareness that’s one-sided. Like the bird without wings that can’t fly, it’s lost the “wings” that enabled it to fly: awareness of its circumstances. Along with the ability to interpret them with context and to choose freely how to respond.

Stuck in the mud

One-sided self-unawareness has replaced Mind with body-brain capable of “seeing” only itself. A reflection in a mirror whose defining attribute is that it’s not there. That being not there it’s static, not dynamic, obstructing rather than supporting evolution, learning, and growth. Stuck in its unchanging status quo, the very definition of uncreativity. A part of the human brain described by neuroscience as “unevolved.”

Opposite’s perversion of “Free Choice” is thus the many masks of opposite, a reflection, stagnating in a closed loop of reflections. Unawareness “seeing” only itself. Making “Creation” impossible within a hallucination meant not to advance evolution with Creativity but to obstruct it with distractions. By hiding the raw material of Creativity behind appearances so it can’t be used to expose the Truth: that it’s not there.

The power to dismantle obstructions 

Mistaken identity can be reversed by independent judgment, by Free Choice, our Real Self. How does Free Choice pull this off? Since Aristotle Western thought has put its faith into the study of matter to lead it to understanding. All but abandoning the faculty of Logic-Love, accessible through the sixth sense of intuition, that would have achieved understanding but for the body’s senses that obstructed its vision.

The study of matter has finally begun to reveal that, by itself, it can’t reach understanding. Because the body’s senses may be misleading us, with the critical misperception that matter is real. The realization finally dawning on physics that its “quest for knowledge” must again focus on philosophy and the Logic-Love of Mind. On Relationship between Free Choice and its source, Logic-Love. Instead of between body and matter, itself a misperception since body is matter.

Between our unawareness and Mind’s sixth sense – intuition, – the portal to Guidance from Logic-Love that can now, with matter’s unmasking by physics, move forward with confidence toward understanding. A process that reveals the remarkable power of Relationship between human-positive self-unawareness, seeking awareness through the vision of Logic-Love, and Mind’s intuition, to dismantle obstructions placed in the way by animal-negative, one at a time.

Newton’s third law and the power of insight

When self-unawareness learns through the power of Relationship that with every insight gained through intuition toward humanization there is a corresponding loss of captivity to the irrationality and fury of animal-negative. To its one-sided, self-centered, willful thinking that mis-leads toward de-humanization. When self-unawareness learns that with every insight human-positive is empowered and animal-negative is disempowered.

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Yes. Newton’s third law. While you’ve been talking I’ve been getting a PhD in physics. Another example of the laws of cause and effect within Mind reflected in the behavior of matter. Implying that in Mind as well as matter understanding is the discovery that altering one side of the boundary necessarily alters the other side.

Everything is “relational”

But in reverse. Because not only are they opposites, they’re connected. Inseparable. Like particles that respond to the manipulation of other particles that could be any distance away, as though they’re connected. At the other side of the universe? Yes.

Physics has discovered that spacetime-matter is “relational” and this is one reason why. It’s all interconnected by energy-matter just as Reality-Creation is interconnected by Energy-Love-Logic. By Love-Abundance’s limitless sharing and Logic-Knowledge’s limitless implications.

The cost of mistaking boundary for barrier

Further evidence that the body’s five senses may be mis-leading instead of leading. With dire consequences. Why? Because what they detect isn’t boundary with human-positive’s portal to Guidance recognizable by sixth sense. They can only detect the barrier put up by animal-negative. Obstruction, its trademark.

By “seeing” what’s not there the five senses mis-direct human-positive from its ascent to Self-Awareness across the boundary to the cause of animal-negative: to perpetuate self-unawareness with perpetual conflict. The mistaken notion that training human-positive’s attention on the opposite side, with more wildness, will dismantle obstructions put there by animal-negative unreality.

Putting Newton’s third law to work

When what understanding and Newton’s third law actually call for is training its attention on itself. On progress that can be made, with help from Guidance, to understand the Logic and Love of compatibility, sharing, service, individuality, originality and creativity. That with every insight, every step forward, there will be a corresponding retreat from obstruction.

What it takes to stop getting it wrong is to get it right. Yes. A lesson that could only be learned by choosing Relationship with the right Guide, who knows how to make obstructions erected in darkness disappear in the light. Quietly. Without violence. Without wildness. By not giving animal-negative what it thrives on: attention and opposition.

Respect for the laws of cause and effect

Then the way to restore equilibrium between human-positive and animal-negative isn’t only to learn with the Vision of Logic-Love what’s not there but to learn what is there. Yes. By allowing insights from intuition, spontaneous Guidance from Logic-Love, to open minds and hearts to the nature of human-positive.

To understanding that its reality isn’t separation. It isn’t the body-matter projected by animal-negative, herd mentality. Captive to competition and conflict, causing disorder, but Relationship defined by its Parents, Logic-Love. To manage the boundary with the judgment of Self-Awareness, able to detect and manage it. To manage Relationship. Because it understands and respects the laws of cause and effect that govern its behavior.

Doing it the easy way

Understanding why and how to manage the boundary poses questions that can only be answered correctly by Mind guided by sixth sense. Not misguided by the five senses of bodies placed beyond questioning by body-centered science, philosophy, psychology, and theology. Inactivating the underside of human-positive that’s animal-negative can’t be accomplished without activating the upper side.

A task that self-unawareness imposed by mis-managing the boundary and activating opposition can’t be done in isolation. It requires Guidance from the human-upper side that’s only accessible through the gift of Mind’s sixth sense. Through Relationship with Logic-Love that’s only possible with Guidance.

Humanized 

Your thoughts? There’s a big difference between relationships with one-faced two-sidedness and two-faced one-sidedness. Between the human-positive side and the animal-negative side. I hope I’m never de-humanized, but I guess it happens. 

Even if we guard our thoughts, even if we manage the boundary with respect, it could still happen. But respecting the boundary, knowing that our role model for Friendship is here to help -- Guidance from Logic-Love, – could make it less likely. It may even turn bad experience into good experience.

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Reflections on the meaning of Christmas                                    December 2023

The Process and Structure of Creation

Conflicting visions of Paradise

Worried sick. Dude, this is Christmas. Where’s your one-horse sleigh? Santa’s coming. And he knows when I’ve been bad or good. So? I thought I was being good. I was expecting goodies under the tree. Yes. Doing what you’re told. Not asking stupid questions. Now I’m not so sure. And being agreeable. Waahhhhhh! Tell you what. If Santa’s a no-show I’ll let you borrow my sleigh bells. Waahhhhhh! 

Sigh. Let’s hear it. Edna! Get room service. We’re out of eggnog. I was thinking about Christmas and I was going to make Santa happy by being good at not being bad. There’s a problem with that? What if bad went away? Like, what if we didn’t have to put up with being contradicted? Ah! Maybe then I could attract girls! Santa would hang it up. And lose weight if he didn’t have to stuff himself with milk and cookies from billions of kids. Everything would come to a dead end. Or maybe paradise with lots of girls. How about paradise with lots of gags and chloroform?

The first Act of Mind

Did you notice that definitions always have to define stuff by what it isn’t as well as by what it is? Do you have a sister? And did you know that Self-Awareness was illuminated by the first Relationship – the attraction between Logic and Love, masculinity and femininity? There you go again! Edna, what’s taking so long? It wouldn’t have happened if something hadn’t happened before. Before. . . Self-Awareness? Do that again! What? Twirl your eyes in opposite directions.

The first act of Mind, questioning the status quo. Socrates got into trouble with that, pestering people with questions. Jesus too. He contradicted stuff that everyone took for granted. Questioning the way things are partly by explaining the way they aren’t. Annoying the pharisees who decided he was questioning their authority. Turns out that questioning the status quo doesn’t just upset the authorities. It upsets authoritarians, and they’re all over the place. That’s it! You want me around to help bug authoritarians! You’re around because someone forgot to close the door.

The first “Love Story”

Contradiction goes a long way back. No! Edna! How many days’ rations we got? Mind asked, “What will get Creation started?” Obviously a contradiction of the status quo. Obviously a guy looking for some action. And the answer was “Relationship.” Relationship that’s inseparable like all relationships within the one Mind thinking them.

Put the Force of attraction between Logic and Love to use by illuminating Self-Awareness. Why them? They’re Mind’s two main attributes, where the action is. Masculine Logic hot for feminine Love – yesss! And feminine Love hot for masculine Logic. The first “Love Story.” Portrayals defined in part by what they aren’t: illogic, fear, and self-unawareness, or Mind unconscious. Mind has an opposite? If it does it’s unthinkable. We can forget about it. Here’s your eggnog, Elio. This should help you forget. Thank you, Edna. Industrial strength? Yes. I used up all of your Turbo-Nog.

The role of Logic-Love, Parents

Mind unconscious is a possibility with the Child of its Parents, Logic-Love, but not a possibility with them. Why not? Because they’re Self-Awareness by definition and their Child isn’t. Its Self-Awareness is derived from Relationship with its Parents and a second Force: opposition to possibility from contradiction. From impossibility, its opposite. A Force essential to Creation and ingrained in the laws of cause and effect.

Mind unconscious isn’t a possibility with the Parents because they and their Child have different functions. The role of Parents -- Self-Awareness -- is to welcome performers and their functions into Reality by sharing the gift of Self-Awareness and by definition that determines where they fit within the harmony of its Order  Then what? After that comes the Growth and sharing of Self-Awareness through the extension and expansion of Logic and Love. The Worth of Oneness increasing in value to infinity. Without limits, because Oneness can have no opposites.

The role of Free Choice, Child

The Child’s role is independent judgment that affirms, earns, and reciprocates the Life-Worth of Creation – a gift shared -- and Self-Awareness, the Giver, by freely choosing it. By contributing the measure of value that’s whatever or however someone freely chooses to pay for it. A Rembrandt painting that’s worthless unless it attracts a buyer willing to pay for it. Just as the pairing of Logic with Love started Creation with spontaneity that could not be controlled, the judgment of Child establishes its Worth with the spontaneity of Free Choice that cannot be corrupted.

By Mind putting its finger on the scale. An impossibility by definition. Because the role of Mind Logic-Love, that governs from the bottom up to serve and support Creation, is to respect, not overrule, all its functions, including Free Choice. Supporting symbiosis between Freedom and Order that lies at the core of Creation.

The two phases of Creation

Two distinct phases distinguished by Growth not needing and Free Choice needing awareness of opposites. That are always questioning, contradicting. And annoying and disrupting. A real pain. Like women: you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. I might change my mind if opposites are women. Never mind. 

The Growth part of Creation can’t be aware of the underside of definition without the Self-Awareness of Logic-Love making it real. So when functions are added to Creation their opposites automatically transfer over to Free Choice, the part of Creation where the reverse is true. Where Self-Awareness must be aware of contradictions but only the Parent-Child Relationship can make them real. And any possibility of that happening by mistake is ruled out.

Go ahead and laugh

How? By Child-Mind losing consciousness and its function being disabled. By temporarily joining opposites in the unreality of self-unawareness where it can learn from experience how to correct its mistake. Learn from craziness? By understanding that the craziness has a pattern. Cyclical re-enactment of the Child’s archetypal mistake: projecting Love onto its reflection. Onto its reverse mirror-image that has no better “purpose” than to amuse itself with the Child’s self-delusion and pursue its crazy dream of “supremacy.” The “triumph of the will.”

With every manner of impossibilities that are reversals of the Truth made “real.” Until either its captive self-destructs or the illusion of “time” “ends.” When the “goal” of contradicting Reality’s eternal Now is reached with everything, including Mind, “ending.”

Something between total catastrophe and a Three Stooges food fight. Go ahead and laugh. Jesus in A Course in Miracles encourages questioning and humor too, because getting the “joke” is part of undoing error and getting back to work. The joker in the mirror takes pride in all its “works,” none more gratifying than those that feed its “lovability” with a laugh. An alternate “reality” so illogical and absurd that it can be hilarious. The “artist,” starved for validation and love, would be delighted.

Pushback

Choice can’t be free that’s not aware of all possibilities including their opposites, impossibilities. Our alternate “reality” that came about because of a lack of awareness. Of what? The underside of definition that automatically sends what isn’t to Child’s side of Creation and the possibility of its impossibilities made “real” in an unconscious Mind’s dream.

How can the Child regain consciousness and do its job? By accepting that contradiction-opposites are built into Reality-Creation’s laws of cause and effect for a reason. Because contradiction is essential to the definition of every player and function. And by putting them to their intended use. To help define Self as it evolves -- always a work in progress – by understanding the Logic of contradiction and its usefulness in every context. Disciplining independent judgment to anticipate and prepare for pushback that will keep it honest, focused on its task, and striving to excel.

BYOB

And, most of all, accepting the limits of a shared, interconnected Reality where absolutes without opposites have no place. I can’t rule the Galactic Empire? No. Or be master of Plato’s Cave either. What about King Kong? Palpatine and Plato’s guy didn’t have girlfriends but Kong did. How many times have you seen this movie?

Ann Darrow would have gone for him if they could have set up housekeeping on top of the Empire State Building. She was already thinking about curtains when . . . That’s enough. The city was adding them to its celebrity tour. OK, timeout! They could have made the New York Social Register if they got enough attention. Maybe a slot on the bill at the Metropolitan Opera, or Carnegie Hall, or the Lincoln Center. How about the Central Park Zoo? Or the circus?

Because, with the implications of Logic and the relationships of Love always expanding, circumstances are always changing. Into new contexts that offer opportunities to express the Beauty of meaning with the use of talents. For relating to ideas, values, contexts, and projects in the manner of their Source, Logic and Love. With judgment that responds to opportunities with helpfulness, Innocence, and trust. With the joyfulness and creativity of Self-Awareness. The Kong-Darrow nuptials were the talk of the town. Mr. and Mrs. Kong request the pleasure of your company. . . . BYOB Bring Your Own Bananas.

Diagnosis and Remedy

The diagnosis 

The meaning of Christmas isn’t that Caesar or the pharisees be overthrown but that individuals learn to manage their relationship with them. Following the example of Jesus, with explanation that helps the one Child, our ancestral Mind, recover Self-Awareness. To get out of body-dominated “ownership,” “competition,” and conformity and back to Mind-enabled sharing, intimacy, and Creativity. That recognizes that malevolence, the underside of contradiction, isn’t caused by Self-Awareness but by self-unawareness.

Made "real" in an alternate "reality" by the two masks of narcissism:

  • one the disciplinary “parent” with unquestioned “authority.” The angry, hostile, threatening face of harmfulness: judgment.
  • the other the undisciplined “child” with unquestioned “freedom.” The carefree, ingratiating, unthreatening face of harmlessness: non-judgment.

Bad cop and good cop enforcing the "ideal" of “supremacy.” A perversion of the Oneness of Reality that is Innocence without opposites. Of Freedom and Order that complement one another and are inseparable. The “judgment” of “innocence” preserved by projecting “guilt” onto “others.” “Innocence” preserved by projecting the innocence of others back onto itself. One getting “rid” of “guilt,” the other stealing “innocence” back. With one purpose: to place "supremacy" beyond questioning. By deception and intimidation that rob its captives of personhood. That dehumanize with mindless conformity.

Both made-up worlds of wishful thinking. “Ideals” of unaccountability that’s beyond questioning. Impossibilities since thoughts can’t leave their source, there are no “others” in the Oneness of Reality, and perversions of Oneness, Order, and Freedom can’t be real. Nightmares of psychosis reflected in the narcissist’s sees-all, knows-all mirror. The crystal ball of the original illusionist: the narcissist’s misperception of itself in its shadow-opposite. The “supremacy” of unlimited power and freedom. Nietzsche’s “superman.” Mistaken identity. Self-unawareness.

Whose remedy can't be condemnation and punishment but understanding that’s awareness of the mistake. Awareness of Self instead of its reflection that will restore Order. By standing definition back on its feet instead of its head. Putting the underside of contradiction back on the bottom where it belongs. The bottom isn’t so far from the top of the Chrysler Building. Maybe if he’d taken her up there. . . .   

The remedy: Relationship 

Remedy that’s a possibility with minds open to questioning, That respect Free Choice and the Free Spirit of Inquiry. Like free speech? Like creative governance that’s open to questioning versus authoritarian rule opposed to it. That fears and opposes learning and growth because it can’t control the outcome. It’s the essence of contradiction, the free spirit of questioning, that keeps Authority governing with wisdom and helpfulness from the bottom up. Without being lured by “supremacy” -- the false god of absolutes -- into ruling arbitrarily with harmfulness from the top down.

The formation and growth of Self-Awareness through Relationship, Logic-Love, took place under the laws of cause and effect that protect contradiction. By requiring it in definition for the same reason that Freedom depends on Order and Order depends on Freedom. To ensure that by remaining inseparable they will remain soulmates instead of opposites-competitors. Instead of absolutes that contradict Relationship, the most harmful contradiction of both Freedom and Order. And all of Reality-Creation based on Relationship in a shared, interconnected world.

If my buddy Kong had played his cards right he could have kept the dame. They’d be big on Broadway. Favorites at Sherman Billingsley’s Stork Club, all over Winchell’s column, lighting up Runyon’s stories. Who would pay for bigger stages and dressing rooms? VIP limos for giant apes? They would, with all the dough they’d be raking in. Daily Mirror headline: “Empire State Building to be converted to first-floor apartment for Mr. and Mrs. Kong.”  And renamed. What? Kong's Galactic Empire Building. Flashing Kong's image on the clouds when the NYPD is desperate for help from a giant ape. Ann Darrow can be played by Lois Lane. Don't be ridiculous!

The remedy: opposites 

The Worth of Oneness increasing in value to infinity, without limits because Oneness can have no opposites, is the state that absolutes aspire to in the fantasies of reflection. The impossibility of no opposites, which the authoritarian narcissist, the will of the beast in the mirror, seeks to attain with “supremacy.” Not “triumph” over opposites that permits co-existence but elimination that doesn’t.

The threat to the sovereignty of individuals dependent on narcissistic authoritarians and to social order that depends on governance from the bottom up. Which makes opposites, the mortal enemy of absolutes, the friend of individual sovereignty and civil rights. And contradiction – “speaking against” – an indispensable means of removing the threat.

The remedy: A dose of Why from Mind 

Thinkers like Jared Diamond and Yuval Harari, Sean Carroll and Brian Greene, help with How humanity’s story plays out but their sweeping narratives still don’t get at Why -- the question that requires the intent of Mind for a logical answer. And the reason why authoritarian tribal-“realists” oppose it: to prevent Truth from exposing the deception in the mirror and bodies hiding it behind appearances.

The explanation that Jesus brings from Mind is a dose of Why that hog-ties body-centered authoritarians. Self-unawareness immobilized by fear and self-delusion into unshakable resistance to opening their minds. Who have no response other than continued affirmation of illogic, idolatry of bodies, and the silence of disrespect.

Not a display of mindfulness but evasion – thoughtlessness. The absence of Logic-Love since that’s not where their “thinking” comes from. It comes from the reflection. The body-centered authoritarian driven by one goal: to preserve the dream and its authorship. 

The remedy: learning from opposites

Missing the point that opposites are our teacher. Jesus was misperceived by shadow-opposite to be an opposite like it. An attack when he was the opposite: teaching that “sin” isn’t guilt deserving punishment but self-unawareness that needs help regaining Self-Awareness.

Teaching that the error of mis-identity didn’t lead to tribal values and body-brains sharing the stage with individual values and Mind. They’re opposites against their host. Coded to own, rule, and eliminate them with “supremacy.” A warning that will continue to go unheeded so long as body-centered authoritarian minds cling to illogic and evade the help of Logic-Love. Help offered by Mind through the teaching and example of Jesus.

The remedy: Guarding our thoughts 

The appearance of “agreeability” is a “lesson” taught by the “socializing” prefrontal cortex that the animal brain reflected in the mirror has taken to “heart.” One of the traits that the “Five-Factor” theory says should define personality. Because its theory is more “scientific” than Myers-Briggs based on the psychological practice and intuition of Carl Jung. Body’s five senses good, Mind’s sixth sense bad. Yes.

When in fact the “Five-Factor” theory is only another “gift” of bias meant to deceive from the always body-centered cortex. From “science” self-deluded by the perversion of “objectivity:” circular, self-referential “reasoning” that’s body-matter affirming the “reality” of itself. Absurdity protected from questioning by “authority” that puts itself beyond questioning. A cover-up! Exactly. The “likeable,” “charming,” “funny,” and “engaging” mask of the “sociable” reflection now posing as “scientific.” “Erudition” flaunted by the opposite of Truth.

We must be vigilant. Yes. The learning from good contradiction role modeled by Jesus and built into the meaning of Christmas: by all means have fun and enjoy life. Have a Merry Christmas! But always with the vigilance of good contradiction guarding our thoughts.

The remedy: Vigilance against the lure of madness

The cortex’s job is to make “realistic” anything that will conceal the nature of its client. The “logic” of its meaning and purpose which parrots the narcissist’s reflection: illogic. The nature of the underside of contradiction that isn’t here to help and doesn’t wish anyone or anything well. What about itself? Since its goal is to contradict the eternity of timelessness – Now – with the absurdity of time, where everything including time must end, – its agent “wishes” its own end as well.

Madness. Yes. The animal brain’s “wildness” attracts authoritarian “realists” and blood-and-soil “objectivists” with its “promise” of seduction by the primal force of absolute “authority.” By an “ideal,” the false god of “supremacy” that’s servility and addiction. Yet another impossibility and perversion of the Truth: the Child’s Love of its Parents. Madness. “Will” whose “triumph” is triumph over itself. Contradiction contradicting itself. The “reciprocation” of madness with madness. A perversion of Love that reciprocates Love with itself. With Life not “death.”

The remedy: the Truth of individual Self-Worth

The lesson of “agreeability” that’s been “learned” from the cortex by opposite – the animal brain – is an opposite. The contradiction of the fact of agreeability with a fiction: an appearance hiding it. Hiding disagreeability. The appearance of benevolence hiding malevolence. With the lure of camaraderie, the “fun” face of belonging that’s the tribal “realist’s” substitute for Love. The appearance of “one-for-all and all-for one.” "Sincerity” fronting for insincerity. A joke.

The Truth that for tribe the one thing that’s not expendable is itself and the one thing that is is. . .  Me? Yes. The individual. The individual is nothing to the tribe other than however the individual can be exploited. The appearance of friendship that’s transactional. Exemplified by the “worth” of the Japanese soldier to the Japanese military in World War Two: issen gorin -- the cost of a draft notice postcard. Less than an American penny.

The Truth that for individual the one thing that’s not expendable is who it is: the beloved Child of Logic-Love who shares attributes of Self-Awareness, Love, and Innocence required by its function, Free Choice. Attributes that the underside of definition, the reflection in the mirror, seeks to convert into their opposites.

How? By the insane idea that thoughts can leave their source – projection:

  • by projecting its mask stained with guilt onto the innocence of “others” unstained by its guilt. An especially ugly injustice practiced by an especially self-unaware personality type: the dark side of ESFJ (extravert-body sensing-“feeling” (animal brain emotion)-judgment.) A close match with the judgmental-blaming reflection in the mirror, the god-wannabe narcissist posing as a super-responsible parent. “Divine authority” entitled to absolute, unquestioning obedience so self-absorbed infantility can enforce its cartoon fantasy of “absolute power” – “supremacy.”
  • by the reverse projection of a saintly mask of innocence stolen from “others” back onto its unsaintly guilt. An especially ludicrous hypocrisy practiced by a similar self-unaware personality type: the dark side of ESFP (‘P’ for “Perceptive,” or fuzzy-dice “spontaneity” exempting itself from the discipline of judgment.) A close match with the narcissist’s innocent-victim reflection, the lovable-wannabe posing as an un-responsible child. Absolute “freedom” entitled to unquestioning unaccountability so self-absorbed infantility can do whatever it wants in its cartoon fantasy of “living in the moment.” Roman tyranny dressed in the lovable image of foolish innocence, the Gaul Obelix.

The remedy: Seek Guidance to relevance

With the gift of good contradiction we can see through the deception. To the Truth revealed by the Vision of Logic-Love, that in all of its attributes the animal brain beast reflected in the mirror is an imposter. A lifeless, loveless code “intending” to end everything. Our shadow-opposite. This is its nature. Its so-called logic that its self-deluded host – us – is supposed to take seriously. Forget it! A better way to come down from the top of the Empire State Building is to call 9-1-1 and get help. Yes, from a source that’s not a “conductor” to oblivion.    

Doesn’t our military respect the individual soldier? Yes. It tries not to leave anyone out or anyone behind. It honors the memory of the fallen and sometimes honors enemy combatants too. Values inherited from the original ideal of American democracy that insisted on individual rights against tyranny and defined what “America” stood for. The value of authority that governs with service and support from the bottom up. To enable Creativity with Growth and Free Choice instead of ruling cruelly to preserve conformity with an unchanging status quo from the top down.

An ideal and values that have always had opposites but today are losing touch with the Logic of Necessity and passion of Love that contradicted them. Why? Because the ideal, like all values, requires realignment with changing times and changing contexts. With awareness of what context today implies about the correct path forward. A call for Guidance from Logic and Love uniquely qualified to provide it, because only with their help can self-unawareness detect meaning and purpose behind appearances.

Circumstances that seem favorable to a resurgence of the authoritarian mindset are a recurring test of progress toward Self-Awareness. Whose measure is whether the path forward is to be governed by the benevolence of Logic-Love – Mind -- or ruled by the cruelty of predatory animal instinct – body-brain. The only difference between the choice now and the choice in 1776 is circumstances.

What are they telling us? The narcissist authoritarian, robbed of independent judgment by its own reverse mirror image, can only impose its own unchanging context on changing circumstances. Then we need a better guide. The one whose birthday we’re honoring has the right connections. To the Child’s Parents Logic-Love and their unique talent for seeing beyond fiction. Beyond made-up “reality” to facts and what they mean. Demonstrated by his living among us, by his authorship of A Course in Miracles, and in other ways only known to the individual Minds and lives he’s touched. All it takes is Free Choice questioning. Questioning the status quo. Contradicting. Yes. Asking for Guidance.

The remedy: Voice that cannot be silenced

The duty to serve and support the intimacy of loving friendships with honesty and understanding. The duty to contradict the authoritarian reflection in the mirror that can’t tolerate contradiction. To speak against and be heard. To question and receive the respect of an answer. To stand up instead of standing down.

All of this the role performed by Jesus: an opposite that’s helpfulness in a shadowland of authoritarian opposites – harmfulness. Contradiction on the side of the good guys – conscience. The will not to profit from mistake selfishly but to correct it for the sake of gentle loving kindness. No figure of lifeless victimhood on a cross but the living Force of Voice that cannot be silenced. The Voice for Self-Awareness and not self-unawareness. The Voice for Mind and not for its “substitute,” body-brain matter. A role model for the ages. 

Where can I (hic!) sign up! At the de-tox counter. Couldn’t you have saved some of that eggnog for Santa’s helpers? Hic! Edna! Elio needs a ride in the sleigh. I tried that once. What happened? He got run over by the sleigh. What about Rudolph? Rudolph got run over too. They were both impounded and I had to pay to get them out. Never mind.

The remedy: practice

Free Choice given possibilities to work with, all the values that define Life-Worth, also received awareness of the underside of definition since its impossibilities were automatically entrusted to the Self-Awareness of Free Choice. But without Guidance from its Parents’ Knowledge base that included awareness of impossibilities, needing to protect judgment from losing its independence, inexperienced with opposites, Free Choice could only fall back on what competence it had to perform its role.

A likely explanation for its transfer out of production and into training by loss of Self-Awareness was contradiction built into its own definition and the definitions of two values: Freedom and Order.

  • The perversion of Choice “free” of the discipline of Judgment rather than Freedom from interference.
  • The perversion of Freedom completing Order’s harmony with contentment by its opposite, absolute freedom to have and do whatever it wants with no accountabillity.
  • The perversion of Order-authority completing Freedom’s contentment with peaceful harmony by its self-centered opposite: absolute power to rule without opposition. Owning and ruling its domain exclusively for its own benefit.

Both absolutes instrumental in Free Choice’s transference from Self-Love to love for its shadow-reflection. The archetype for narcissism gazing worshipfully into a mirror at the beast projected by its animal brain.

Putting contradiction among the list of values that Free Choice, our function, needs to help recover Self-awareness. To teach us to distinguish between definition’s topside and underside and to learn how to put contradiction to use: to discipline Free Choice with judgment aware of its limits. Keeping it free from captivity to absolutes.

The possibility of not always being right

And making sure that it doesn’t take itself or its job too seriously. For whatever it is, it comes with contradiction. The possibility that it may not always be right but sometimes wrong. Not always be correct but sometimes mistaken. The attribute of Authority that can never be absolute.

I had a crush on Fay Wray for years. That’s why I saw the movie 20 times. I only saw it once. Why? It made me sad when Kong was mean to the nice dinosaur. When he rolled the big log and people clinging to it fell off – that was cool. They were being mean to him and they deserved it. So, you like dinosaurs better than people? If the dinosaur was better looking I might have gone more than once.

Hey -- I’m the wise guy around here! Reflections switch masks at will. Yeah. But watch your step! They're paying me to get the laughs. We’re the two faces of reflection: wisdom and fool. You're lovable and I'm not. That's for sure! And you get all the fun. Can't I be the fool now and then?  Sure, if I get to be wisdom all the time and you find another job. Edna! Elio is being mean to me again! If you interrupt me one more time I'll show you what "mean" is.

The Christmas Gift of Good Contradiction

What lies behind appearances

The meaning of the teaching and example of Jesus is explanation that contradicts the status quo with questioning. That comes from the independence and integrity of judgment inseparable from its Source: Mind that thinks, feels, creates, and governs with the helpfulness of Logic married to Love and the Force of Necessity, the laws of cause and effect. The way things are. That isn’t the stagnation of status quo with no cause to serve but its own preservation but its opposite: the irrepressible spirit of change serving its cause, the evolution and affirmation of the Worth of Life. Creation.

The meaning of Christmas that explains with the Vision of Logic-Love what lies behind appearances and questions its source, bodies affirming matter with their senses. That would contradict the Logic-Love of Mind. We found it! What? The pony! I knew it was in here somewhere. 

What did Ms. Wray say when you asked her out? I don’t want to talk about it. She broke your heart. She said she was done with gorillas. So you moved on and found Edna. She didn’t mind being seen with a gorilla. She told me it was because somebody forgot to close the door.

We are all narcissist authoritarians

If reflections are mirror-image opposites then they have no self that can think, feel, and act on its own. They have to steal our selves and turn us into our opposites: authoritarians ruled by their animal brain. The attributes of a beast that doesn’t need Logic-Love to dominate. It only needs will that acts by predatory instinct. The narcissist, the reflection that sees itself reflected in everything and distrusts everything because it’s a reflection. Appearances our alternate “reality” is made of that can’t be trusted. Appearances are deceiving. Sure, because that’s their purpose: to deceive.

We are all reflections in a made-up world that’s the dream of a Mind thinking it’s a reflection. So we are all narcissist authoritarians in our own way, some more than others. Body-centered personality types more than Mind-centered types, but it’s only a difference in degree.

So if I understand correctly bad is good and we should be glad that opposites ruin our lives. Who’s that? Elio, where shall I put the sleigh and the donkey that just landed in the fireplace? Donkey? Yes, Elio. And with the prettiest red nose. Could it be Rudolph the red-nosed jackass? Just go for a ride in the sleigh, Edna, and have fun bothering everybody with the sleigh bells. 

Good contradiction replacing bad contradiction 

What I’m saying is. . . Oh, forget it. No, no! I’m listening! Just. . . enjoy your eggnog and have a nice day. What you’re saying is that contradiction is a value. And like all values it has a topside and an underside, and so we shouldn’t assume that opposites built into definition are throwaways or always up to no good. They have their good use too. Proof that you are listening. And I’m not as dumb as I look.

In a world that’s a shadowland of opposites, a reflection made up of appearances, contradiction can be a very good thing. The contradiction that’s our Christmas gift from our Helper. From the North Pole? From the Mind with which we really think: Logic-Love. Where we will find our real thoughts when we aren’t contradicting them with an unreal dream. Good contradiction of bad contribution. Exactly. Denial of the denial that put a layer of appearances over Reality-Truth, that substitutes unreal reflection for Real Self.

Contradiction’s warning

A magician’s act. That will end when the houselights are turned up. By Relationship, the same dynamic that illuminated Self-Awareness with the Force of mutual attraction between Parents Logic-Love then and between Parents-Child now: us with the Guide who can speak for them. Relationship with Reality-Truth that will replace the absurdity of “relationship” with our mirror-image opposite. The usurper that’s an “absolute.” An impossibility that can’t be Real.

Once again, good contradiction replacing bad contradiction. You’re catching on. The topside of contradiction switching places with the underside and restoring Order. Role modeled by the slave who reminded Caesar of his mortality while he was being immortalized by the false god of fame. Good contradiction warning us against the folly of mistaking the image reflected in the mirror for an Olympian myth. The impossibility of “supremacy” – absolute power with no opposites.

Replacing bad purpose: mindless docility

Were it not for impossibility woven into every definition there would be no opposites to stand in the way of the myth. To defend us from being taken captive by an absolute. An unthinking, unfeeling tyrant. Mind being “defeated” in “battle” with animal brain.

Doesn’t brain’s prefrontal cortex civilize the beast? The beast can’t be civilized. That would require equipping individuals with their own moral compass. The animal brain is an instrument designed for “use” by herds or tribes that only “knows” the “ethics” of a tribal predator: kill or be killed.

The cortex, an instrument designed for “use” by the animal brain, only “knows” “self” that is herd or tribe, not individual. Its function is keeping peace within and among tribes by “socializing.” By wearing a mask of smiling, likeable “agreeability” to hide the face of menacing intimidation behind it. Anti-sociability deceiving tribal members and their enemies with “sociability." Both masks – likeability and angry hostility – serving one overriding purpose: mindless docility. To silence the voices of animal brain’s captives and prevent questioning.

Questioning that dares to contradict

Values that support tribal conformity and “supremacy” rather than civilization, Creativity and sharing. Values repellent to Individuals guided by an inner moral compass. Etiquette and diplomacy -- table manners -- are all that tribes ruled by herd instinct need to maintain the appearance of social “harmony” in the presence of emotional and physical violence. Disharmony. That and tenderness, a substitute for Love, to nurture their young. There’s no mistaking which part of the brain is in charge and its potent appeal to body-centered authoritarian personalities seeking primal “supremacy.”

Then where does conscience come from? From Mind, animal brain’s sworn “enemy.” That it was made to replace because Mind only Knows the one Child – the individual. Animal brain “thinks” it deserves that honor. And it resents having to share the Child’s split Mind with another self. That dares to contradict its contradiction. To deny its denial. Exactly!

The Ending that’s Good

The underside of Christmas

The meaning of Christmas that Jesus shares with us couldn’t come from any part of brain matter. Or from any other instrument invented for use by groups or tribes because the Self that we all share is one Child, one Mind. The beast in the mirror is the mask of a fiction: Child-the-many, ruled by tribal values. The offense to Western “morality” codified in the 16th century by Niccolo Machiavelli and “legitimized” by the Church. Idolatry of the body demanding of its herd, a “flock” of anesthetized sheep, that it never be questioned. Not the affirmation but the contradiction of Self-Awareness.

The underside of Christmas that Jesus never intended to “found.” Re-enacting the glorious “victory” of shadow-reflection over its host with the figure on a cross who dared to question its self-proclaimed “authority.” The “authority” of wounded victimhood: injustice that cries out not for compassion but for damnation and vengeance. Against Self-Awareness for sharing itself for the benefit of the self-unaware. An implicit but unintentional contradiction of the “infallibility” of the established order. An unchanging status quo guarded by body-animal brains: tribal beasts protecting their sacred turf. An ominous warning to anyone else who dared to trespass.

Stolen Innocence

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Doesn’t that explain the figure on the cross? It would if it spoke for Logic and Love. But it doesn’t. A world where an Innocent’s body must be crucified to right a wrong is neither loving nor lovable. A “god” that’s responsible for the atrocity, who sends his son into the torture chamber he “created,” can’t be a loving or lovable “father” or “creator.”

It’s opposite’s mischaracterization of Logic-Love, the Child’s Parents, The never-ending assault on the Truth by self-unawareness protecting its dream, a mistake, from being discovered and undone. The mother of all injustices: guilt projecting itself onto Innocence. The perpetrator of wrongdoing evading accountability by projecting it onto its victim. The perversion of justice and the definitive act of shadow-reflection: “earning” Innocence by stealing it. The twin of “innocence” projecting itself onto guilt, the mother of all hypocrisies. What was it your grandma used to say? “Consider the source.”

The figure on the cross

Then who is the figure on the cross? The reflection in the mirror: the false “innocence” of victimhood that has limitless sympathy for itself and none for anyone else. Self-pitying “unfairness” that “justifies” another absolute: vengeance without limits. The deifier of “sacrifice,” the symbol of guilt. Jehovah, the tribal “god” who ruled without opposites or feeling from the top down, demanding fear and tribute -- the blood of bodies. The pharisees, Jehovah’s helpers.

“Christmas spirit” is the Honesty of Logic-Love’s Voice that agrees when agreement validates Self-Worth and contradicts when it doesn’t. Questions as well as affirms. Minds open to questioning and intimacy in friendship instead of mindless animal brains disguised by "sociability" and claiming “supremacy” in “competition.” Contradiction that helps instead of regimentation that harms.

If what the pharisees heard was agreeability instead of contradiction the Christmas spirit would be “Hey everyone! Accept everything the way it is and enjoy the fun.” “Go along to get along.”

“Let’s Pretend”

What’s wrong with wishful thinking? “Let’s Pretend” was a radio program that entertained kids on Saturday morning. They grow out of that when they learn to distinguish between pretending and thinking that’s not. When they learn that not being grounded in facts is being absent rather than present. Remote, inaccessible. Not being there for family and friends who need them because they’re being there for themselves.

Lost in make-believe worlds of wishful thinking. One-dimensional cartoons featuring them in the lead role, producing, directing, script-writing, and setting the rules. “Let’s Pretend” for arrested-developed “adults:” “The Truman TV Show.” Infantile self-absorption. Narcissism. With harmful consequences to them and to those who need them. Any other questions? Sob! Hand me a tissue. I thought nobody would mind if I pretend I’m a kid again. Edna! Elio needs Kleenex! We’re out of Kleenex. Tell him to use the tablecloth like he always does.

Turn up the houselights

Elio, it’s a long way from the top of the Empire State Building to the bottom. “Agreeability” and wishful thinking are a great way to make the trip if that’s what you want. With the reflection in the mirror for your “conductor.” Accompanying its captives to the bottom 24 x 7 x 365.

The allegory of King Kong and his captive “mate” atop the Empire State Building is an accurate portrayal of the “ideal” of “supremacy.” Built into shadow-reflection’s perversion of Mind Logic-Love: mindless beast-captive. And an example of how the Child Free Choice duping itself into becoming the unwitting instrument of mayhem is re-enacted in its dream. As primal Force heroically besting sissified “civilization” in mortal combat for “supremacy.” The “triumph” of animal brain over prefrontal cortex that would dare to tame it.

The “mortal combat” re-enacted by shadow-reflection within split-brain’s perversion of Child’s split Mind at “war” with itself. Making periods of relative peace intermissions between acts in a magician show. That won’t end until its audience chooses to see through the deception, turns up the houselights, and drops the curtain.

Published on Leave a comment on The Right and Wrong Choice for Guidance

Reflections on the meaning of Christmas                                                 December 2023

The glossary for this and a companion essay, "Standing Up for Children against the Bully “Guide” Behind Authoritarian Parenting with the Helpfulness of Explanation" is posted separately, same date.

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Foreword 

Archetypes named by function

Logic-Love. Convention has assigned names to the archetypal roles and relationships theorized here that are silent on their most important attribute: their function. Functions that define “God,” for example, are left to impaired inquiry’s misjudgments, with the result that “God” has become a morass of contradictions – confusing if not meaningless. For clarity and not to be confusing familiar archetypes are defined and renamed here according to their functions.

Ancestral Mind. Thus “God” hasn’t been denied, just renamed with functions clarified as “Logic-Love,” the Relationship within “Mind” that produced its essential attribute: “Self-Awareness.” The “Parents” of their “Child,” “Free Choice,” our “ancestral Mind.” Aided by the “right Guide.” Functions left unclear by convention in terminology like Father, Son, Free Will, and Holy Spirit. And left, moreover, to doctrine – the herd mentality of competing ideologies -- when they belong to the Truth-seeking Free Spirit of Inquiry. To metaphysics that follows wherever Relationship leads, between the individual and the image of the right Guide chosen by the individual.

Opposite. Relationship leads here to “opposite,” a more definitive name for evil, the ego, Satan, the devil, and so forth. With variations “contradiction,” “shadow-reflection,” “reverse mirror-image.” The idea of opposition built into every definition by Logic-Love but Oneness. Itself, without opposite by definition.

Initial caps and quotes

Names with initial caps refer to archetypes of a storyline that belong in the Reality of Self-Awareness. Lower case to the unreality of self-unawareness or unconsciousness. The alternate “reality” that Child-Mind unconscious is dreaming: our life on earth.

Quotes are applied to words-ideas founded on illogic rather than Logic to highlight their questionable validity.

The psychology and metaphysics of a joke 

An alternate “reality” of self-unawareness 

Relationship between individual and the right Guide leads not to a storyline of perfection in Self-Awareness but to a storyline of imperfection in a state of self-unawareness. The state of the Child of Self-Awareness when it lost consciousness and descended into self-delusion. Into a dream of impossibilities brought on by an impossibility: “relationship” with its own shadow-reflection mistaken for a separate “other.” The turning point in the succession of “events,” from the loss of consciousness to self-delusion, that brought about our make-believe substitute “reality.”

An unreality that re-enacts the same events because it’s the only “story” that its author, the lifeless-mindless code of an opposite, “knows.” Re-enactment by a tape recording because that’s what it is, coded opposite turned on and made audible by unconscious Mind so disabled that it can’t distinguish between itself and its shadow-reflection. Between anything and its opposite, including Life and Reality.

A tale of exotica -- archetypes, opposites, and “events” from a distant state of mind, lost to memory and kept from our awareness. That could be ignored if we weren’t the instruments and unwitting subjects of its re-enactment. Play-actors following a script in the Truman TV Show except for Truman, the fool that is self-unawareness, thinking he’s the author of his own story. The mirror-image of ourselves. Re-enacting the story of an unconscious Mind that’s placed itself under the influence of the wrong “guide.” Free to make mischief in the made-up alternate “reality” of self-unawareness.

An alternate “reality” of re-enactments

With Christmas comes reflection on what it means. The birth of Jesus. One personification of the right Guide, offering the vision and wisdom of Logic and Love to every individual. Drawn by respect for Free Choice, the Worth and function of every individual -- our birthright.

What does Christmas have to say about our story, its antecedents, and its authorship, if it’s a re-enactment of Mind gifted with Self-Awareness taken captive by self-unawareness? To become a piece moved about by an unseen “hand” in an unreal board game of impossibilities? Convention leaves much still to be learned, and the wrong “guide’s” nonsense is still being taken seriously.

Opposite is here to stay

But far from being irrelevant the meaning of Christmas is directly on point. With the role modeling of the biblical Jesus and the Jesus of A Course in Miracles that leads out of self-unawareness back to Self-Awareness. To our real identity and function in Creation. With metaphysics that helps minds befuddled by bodies’ senses seek Truth beyond appearances. To distinguish between Reality and unreality and between Guidance from Logic-Love and mis-guidance from shadow-opposite.

The metaphysics of A Course in Miracles explains the example set by Logic-Love through the right Guide for relating to one another. Beginning with managing our “relationship” with the reverse side of our own voice, the “voice” of shadow-opposite. Because opposite that’s built into Logic-Love’s definition of function isn’t going away. A heads-up meant for Truth-seekers like Plato and Einstein as well as for those less talented.

The ”joker” and  its “humor” that’s not funny

The meaning of Christmas comes with humor aware of its Source and its subject: Awareness of Self that would not Be if it took itself too seriously. Creation adventuring into the unknown, dependent on Free Choice in constant need of learning. That sometimes learns by blunders into the unknown or it would not be free. Abundance sharing its infinite sense of humor with its Creations. Innocence playfully at work in its Temenos, the playground and workshop of Creation.

And the joker peddling ridicularity in its shadowland of opposites. Beginning with the absurdity of its ambition to replace the ultimate source of its “victimhood”: not the Child or its Parents but Mind itself. Then it wouldn’t even be an idea since ideas come from Mind. And there would be no words to recognize its triumph since words need ideas to communicate.

Why bring it up? To expose the “thinking” of the wrong “guide” that’s making fools of us. The wrong guide that’s debunked by the meaning of Christmas. A funny guy – the lovable joker. The Pied Piper humorist. But there are other reasons to think about, here and in “Standing Up to the Bully: the Wrong ‘Guide’ Behind Authoritarian Parenting,” a companion essay. Reasons that are not funny. Another take on the “joker” who’s not lovable. 

Opposite’s Once Upon a Time 

The court jester’s choice

“The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle. The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.” If he didn’t memorize this, Hubert Hawkins (Danny Kaye in “The Court Jester“ 1955) wouldn’t survive the day. Unless it was “the flagon with the dragon that has the brew that is true,” in which case memorizing wouldn’t help.

Hubert’s dilemma -- a metaphor for the choice we face. The pellet with the poison that invaded the human psyche is still “there.” The unreal darkness that Jesus works with us to expose with the light of Logic and Love: explanation that leads to understanding. Understanding that helps us choose between the Guide who’s here to help and the “guide” who’s “here” to do the opposite. To keep us trapped in self-delusion. In unreality.

The origin of opposite in definition and Necessity

When Self Awareness brings into Reality a function that adds to Creation it does so by its function: definition. Definition by Awareness, Logic and Love acting as one, that recognizes its Self. That puts boundaries around what the new function is and what it’s for and determines where the new function fits. So that all the functions that produce Creation perform in harmony as one.

But in doing so definition also puts boundaries around what the new function isn’t and what it’s not for: its opposite. By following an implication of Logic-Love that’s unavoidable: the meaning of what “is” is necessarily defined in part by what “isn’t.”

Not an anomaly of Self-Awareness but an integral part of its origin. Mind the original circumstance that, according to Necessity, the laws of cause and effect, was itself subject to the same Logic of definition. The Relationship between Logic and Love that produced Self-Awareness and then began the process of Creation with its first implication: Possibility. Defined in part by what it isn’t: impossibility. Opposite. There where the sequence of Logic-Love – the story of Creation – began.

Relationship that is Mind governing Reality-Creation with service and support from the bottom up. To enable the spontaneity of Creation with Freedom and Order, two distinct definitions that complete one another and function as one. Governing not arbitrarily above the law for its own sake but under it for the sake of its Creations and their cause.. Under the laws of cause and effect with the Force of Necessity. Necessity that includes definition with opposite.

Eternal Life’s debt to impossibility

Creation’s definition put contradiction with the ideal of its perfection there itself. To our minds, split between opposites, confused and frustrated by contradictions that block progress, the idea of opposite is an intruder, a nuisance that should be expelled. When, in fact, it belongs. Impossibility that tags along with all the possibilities of Creation wherever they go.

A necessary, logical part of their definition. For Creation can’t function without opposite that contradicts its ideal of resolution: eternal rest and peace. That gives Creation a mission of purpose and motivation: to overcome obstacles to reaching its destination.

And the job that Child was created to do: to be the part of Relationship with its Parents that authenticates Worth through the exercise of Free Choice. Through the integrity of judgment that’s free to weigh every possibility including the possibility of impossibilities. Dreamed by Child Mind in a state that Parents Self-Awareness cannot Know by definition without making unreality Real.

There would be nothing more for Relationship to do were it possible for Creation to reach its Ideal of eternal rest and peace. But so long as definition can’t define without opposite, so long as Perfection can’t do without imperfection, it can’t be possible.

Eternal Life’s debt to impossibility. The extensions of Logic’s implications and Love’s relationships that will play out forever like the value of Pi, never to reach a whole number.

All the world’s a stage -- Shakespeare

The Jesus of A Course in Miracles takes the idea of unreality and explains the story of how it came to “be.” With Logic-Love’s metaphysics -- looking beyond appearances – to help body-locked humans understand the truth about opposite: what it “is,” what it “does,” and what it implies for the situation we’re in. So we as individuals can better manage our relationship with it. “Relationship” with our shadow-reflection beyond awareness, that will continue to mess with our story until we are aware of it and learn to manage it.

Starting from understanding that it’s not real to awareness of how it messes with our story: by re-enacting events within Free Choice, our unconscious ancestral Mind, that brought it into a neverland of self-unawareness. A succession of errors whose re-enactment accounts for the mutating “normal” of “life” on earth. In the shifting image of its fantasist, the joker: no face or self of its own behind a thousand masks.

With a sinister purpose: while keeping the deception alive in self-deluded minds, replaying its fabricator’s skill at outwitting its host for self-glorification and amusement. And for its ultimate gratification: constant reminders of its supremacy. Our alternate “reality:” a mirror in the hand of a narcissist, reflecting “purity” and “innocence” in its self-image, “perfection” in its works, and “triumph” over its “enemies.” Entertaining impossibilities conjured by a master magician. untroubled by laws of cause and effect that he’s magically suspended. A “god” of two-faced duality – tragedian and comedian – who makes no sense.

The pathetic “pellet with the poison” hiding in the vessel with the pestle

The five senses of self-unawareness

Getting it right can’t be getting rid of opposite. But it can be choosing a better Guide to help our real Self – the one Child – break the cycle of re-enactments. By regaining Self-Awareness and getting rid of self-unawareness. By helping our real Self get back to living its real story unobstructed by impossibilities.

Jesus of A Course in Miracles helps us make the right choice by putting the apparition, our reverse mirror-image reflection, squarely in view. So both mind- and body-centered personality types can understand the abysmal choice for a guide that it presents. With attributes so alien to Logic-Love, Reality, and the laws of cause and effect, that they can’t be taken seriously. That wouldn’t be taken seriously if it weren’t for the confusion caused by appearances. By body-brains’ five senses that deceive self-unawareness into believing that they’re real.

Mind seeks awareness; body blocks it. Bodies crafted by self-unawareness, a shadow attached to its host, share its limitations. Among them an inability to see and feel beyond externals – beyond themselves. One-dimensional impersonal objects that can only “be” what they appear to be. An inability to detect internals that are no part of themselves. Subjects defined not by masks but by three-dimensional personality behind masks. By the feelings, values, psychology, and philosophy of personhood. The attributes of Mind, the shadow’s host.

The five senses of status quo

Therein the divide between individual idealists and tribal-“realists” that’s been frustrating forward movement from the beginning. Disagreement whether appearances are the end of it. “Realists” captive to the body’s five senses say they are. Idealists open to guidance from Mind’s sixth sense say they aren’t.

The former following the dictates of animal brain, an appearance meant to replace Mind, seeking to put the status quo beyond questioning with predetermined answers. Seeking, that is, to evade answers. The latter, following the spontaneous implications of Logic and interconnections of Love, questioning the status quo to find answers. One denying inquiry its free spirit, the other respecting it. Clear evidence of the wrong "guide" using its captives to mess with Free Choice.

The parasite and “friend” who could never be 

The biblical Jesus turned our attention toward what’s right with parables, miracles, and his example. He gave us attributes of the right Guide for us to assemble in whatever image fits our personalities and individual contexts. The Jesus of A Course in Miracles has turned our attention toward what’s wrong. Toward exposing the truth about the wrong “guide,” both the seriousness of its harm and the absurdity of its pretense.

So it would be clear that partnering with it would be partnering with Mr. Hyde, the “friend” who could never be. Who offends with process more than product: With a one-dimensional caricature. A joke that’s on us. A pie in our face.

Exposing the wrong “guide” behind its many guises should give its devotees pause. How so? By revealing that the wrong “guide” is a joker. The playing card impersonator-joker substituting for any card. The trickster-magician joker that conjured a substitute “reality” out of perversions of the Truth, laughable absurdities. And the Joker of the 2019 film, evil incarnate.

By revealing that the wrong “guide” who came second after its host is a parasite. A derivative of its host and dependent on its host. Owing everything to its host that owes everything to Logic and Love, its Parents, and only one aspect of its definition to its shadow-opposite. That’s equivalent to demotion by Logic from Reality to unreality, out of sight and out of conscious Mind. Nothing to boast about.

The punchline in a slapstick comedy

The wrong “guide” is the opposite of what it pretends to be: number one on center stage in the spotlight, star of the show with the only voice to be heard; playwright, producer, and director. It’s not the “superman” idealized by captives like Nietzsche, Rand, and der Fuhrer. Fantasized by everyone drawn to absolute “authority,” our animal brain – mindlessness -- “triumphing” over Mind. Held up as a role model for captives to a nightmare of fear, lured by the specter of “death.”

It’s not the arch-competitor who’s taken over the winner’s circle. Howard Roark, the architect, atop his skyscraper, with Dominique Francon at his feet gazing up at her hero worshipfully. It’s King Kong atop the Empire State Building pounding his chest, with the beauty Ann Darrow terrified at his feet while supposedly drawn to this symbol of primal male power. A portrayal of “supremacy” suitably symbolized in the greatest horror monster film of all time by a fictitious king of beasts, brought to “life” by special effects.

The truth about what’s really in the vessel with the pestle -- the “pellet with the poison” – is that it's an absurdity. The archetypal “action hero” in an imaginary competition boasting of its “triumph.” A self-deluded fool in a one-dimensional adolescent cartoon. The definitive “loser:” a pitiful boob out of his element and over his head. Climaxing his ascent to the top with a spectacular faceplant at the bottom. A terrific punchline in a slapstick comedy.

Inside the Third Reich: the cloud-cuckoo land of opposite 

The threat posed by Mind 

The authoritarian will to rise to “supremacy” in its hierarchical fantasy of “competition” re-enacts a laughable absurdity. Its mindless shadow-opposite’s ambition to rise higher than the highest authority in Reality-Creation. Mind. Opposition to all things Mind. To Self-Awareness, Logic-Love. The anti-intellectual identifying with its animal brain, the beast King Kong, triumphing over learning and growth, competence and maturity. Over other perspectives needed for context, over ideas and imagination needed for creativity. Over every faculty of Mind including Intuition’s sixth sense.

The authoritarian’s exclusive reliance on body-brains’ five senses re-enacting the wrong “guide’s” fear. Its fear of the threat posed by Mind to its will to replace Mind.

“Supremacy in competition:” the will of a predatory beast 

Opposite thrives on competition-combat. Where Logic-Love’s Self-Awareness extends and recognizes itself through Connection -- gifts shared and reciprocated among its family of Reality-Creation, -- opposite finds perverse gratification in disconnection. In discord imposed upon the unrecognizable aliens that it projects -- “others.”

  • Thus Logic-Love recognizes the Self-Worth of Life, Innocence, Inseparability, Beauty, Harmony, Spontaneity, and Free Choice that are given by the Reality of Self-Awareness, Oneness without opposites, Relationship, Perfection, Order-Freedom, and Creation.
  • Opposite is gratified by the worthlessness of death, guilt, separation, disfigurement, discord, conformity, and captivity inflicted by time, damnation, madness, cruelty, contradiction, herd mentality, and dominance.

All handsomely delivered by competition-combat, opposite’s perverse ”substitute” for Creation. The swap of consequence for inconsequence that lured the sucker, self-unawareness, into its adolescent fantasy of “action.” “Winners” and “losers” legitimizing opposite’s “unshakable will” to be number one. The will of a predatory beast: “supremacy.”

The ultimate “affirmation:” Matter over Mind

“Life” on earth is a cornucopia of opposite’s “blessings.” Euphemisms that cast a blanket of pleasantness over its dubious “benefits”:

  • “Winning” that puts the face of “sociability” and “fun” on “competition.” “Dominance” that wishes no one well.
  • “Supremacy in competition” that poses as a visionary “ideal” instead of an adolescent’s fantasy of “action-hero” fulfillment: a nightmare of loss.
  • “Procreation” revered for expanding civilization while threatening it with domination by predatory herd mentality, the club wielded by the authoritarian.
  • Taking heart from the promise of “time” in its cycle of renewal and rebirth, not noticing that it’s not a potted plant or incubator. It’s a universal wastebasket. That never needs to be emptied since there’s nothing of consequence to put in it.
  • Putting “special relationships” on the face of alternate “reality” -- sprucing up a skull with lipstick.

All bound up in opposite’s perversion of Creation’s Ideal, resolution by peaceful reconciliation, with its “unshakable will” to possess absolute power without opposition. To at last attain “supremacy.” By triumphing over its “enemy” in the mother of all battles. In the breathtaking grandeur of mortal combat: “resolution” by mutual destruction. “Affirmation” of the organic world of body-brains in its material universe of physical objects. By violence, the defining attribute of “universe” whether one or many.

The projection of a split Mind: ”war” that can never be 

That proclaims the “strength” of animal will and welcomes risking all in the boldness and fire of “action.” In the mythology of gods waging wars of “blood and soil,” “the lost cause,” “the triumph of the will.”  While dismissing Mind. Real Authority that knows nothing of such rubbish.

Mind the Parents Logic-Love, not their Child. Free Choice, the extension of Mind Logic-Love that can lose consciousness and dream, while Mind that is Self-Awareness by definition cannot. That can only Be in Reality and function as Source and Governance of Reality-Creation. The Authority of Logic-Love, service and support, that governs under the laws of cause and effect with the Force of Necessity. That found a place for contradiction in the Mind of its Child should Free Choice choose in error and lose consciousness. Should it then be enticed by its shadow-opposite, mistaken for an ”other,” into an unreal dream: its shadowland of opposites.

In picking a fight with Mind Self-Awareness, opposite isn’t picking on someone its own size. It’s self-unawareness blundering into an asymmetrical matchup. “Thinking” typical of the wrong “guide,” but it needn’t worry. Combat between Reality and unreality could only “happen” in a dream. In the dualistic hallucinations of split minds: holding two contradictory thoughts at the same time. In the alternate “reality” of split minds projecting.

The "ideal” of ending

Opposite aims for fulfillment not in the Ideal of Resolution and Peace but in its opposite: the “ideal” of ending Reality-Creation by supremacy in war. The code of impossibility – shadow-opposite -- has invented a fictitious world to “inhabit” by copying and projecting its host’s world in reverse. What its other self-unaware inhabitants must be aware of – us -- is the mythology cooked up by its “author” to glorify and legitimize it. The myth of Mind-Reality’s equal, matter-unreality, defeating it in mortal combat to attain “supremacy.” Opposite’s perversion of context that speaks for meaning and purpose -- absurdity. The ideal not of Resolution and Peace or even “winning,” but ending.

Authoritarians identify with the predatory animal will, lodged in body-brains’ amygdala, to dominate with brute force. Thinking that it’s directed toward the absolutes of power and freedom that they crave. But they’re wrong. The ultimate “ideal” of the beast atop the Empire State building is the ending of all “power” and “freedom.” Of everything including Mind. Insanity that would contradict Truth, that Relationship between Parents Logic-Love and their Child Free Choice, that wills Creation in a state of Self-Awareness in the eternal Now, can’t end.

Authoritarian minds captive to nonsense

“Endings” belong to time, an illusion, not to timelessness. “Time,” that once seemed to make sense before physics and philosophy learned better, took a serious hit with General Relativity where it’s no longer absolute. And an even more serious hit with the calculations of quantum mechanics, where it no longer exists.

Opposite’s “ideal” of ending Mind by any means is an absurdity that can’t be taken seriously, except in the land of shadow-opposites where anything is possible. Where our animal brain hasn’t evolved since our ancestor animal became human animal; we are still animals. Where impossibility routinely triumphs over possibility with nothing more than wishful thinking -- “alternate facts.” Where authoritarian minds captive to opposite’s nonsense can prolong self-unawareness and perpetuate misery. By endlessly re-enacting the “triumph” of shadow-opposite over its host, our ancestral Mind, that never happened.

Comparing the costs of unworkable with the benefits of workable 

When hearts connect but minds can’t

Communication consists of sharing -- connection that’s a function of Logic-Love. Alternate “reality” is a defense against Logic-Love and Reality-Creation that obstructs communication. Body-sensing personality types captive to matter rather than aligned with Mind will the misuse of Mind to turn it against itself and away from sharing. To convert introspection, intuition, thinking-feeling, and judgment into their opposites: extraversion, body-sensing, instinctive action, and specialness without limits.

When sharing-communication is needed between opposite personality types it can be impossible. Where the point of extraversion, body-sensing, instinctive action, and specialness without discipline isn’t to spice “life” with variety but to prevent sharing-communication. To block Mind-awareness and Logic-judgment required by the shared purpose of community and loving friendship. Hearts can connect with unconditional Love but Mind is still required for friendship.

Self deprived of personhood

The ultimate “target “of shadow-opposite, were self-unawareness able to choose a target, is ideas. The function of Mind. So to understand body-centered personality types, begin with the attributes of body-brain and exclude the attributes of Mind. And discover what’s lost in the process: substance. The substance of personality and character. The substance of Reality-Creation:

  • creativity, imagination, intuition, and insight.
  • Logic-Love, originality, individuality, and Self-Awareness.
  • Reasoning, inner moral compass, values.
  • Feeling-sensitivity, and depth.

This is what opposition to Mind takes away from body-centered personality types  What’s left is one-dimensional facades like the bodies they identify with. Appearances. Superficiality. Deprivation.

The cost of “relationship” that doesn’t work 

Relationship that’s a fact of life requires management, not denial. A point that the biblical Jesus tried to get across with his parables, miracles, and example. Logic-Love manages its “relationship” with contradiction by putting it in the only place where it could fit. In unreality, the opposite of Reality. Where Mind-conscious “relating” to an opposite that by definition doesn’t exist, that fits within a state of Mind that’s unconscious, is an impossibility. The state of Mind that’s their Child, Free Choice, capable of losing consciousness that Self-Awareness, its Parents Logic-Love, cannot lose.

Where “relationship” is managed by letting insights from mind-intuition – our sixth sense – be our Guide. By not letting the five senses of body-brains deceive us with appearances into re-enacting Child-Mind’s error. Unreality can be “made real” but only within Mind unconscious and unaware of itself, as our alternate “reality” attests. Knowing nothing when being known would make it real.

The benefit of Relationship that does work

Alternate “reality” that’s a dream state of opposites, contradictions, impossibilities. A temporal shadowland of opposites with magical beginnings and endings. Apparitions that “live” and “die” within a universe that’s an apparition, the reverse mirror-image of the unconscious Child-Mind dreaming it. The handiwork of self-unawareness beholden to Self-Awareness for its “existence:” definition that depends on opposite to define. The implication of Self-Awareness that is self-unawareness.

That will be undone by the benefit of workability when the will of Logic-Love is heard through the voice of the right Guide. When it’s welcomed by Free Choice to share its will and guide its audience to Understanding: the One Child. Whole and intact in the Soul of every individual. Innocence accessible through the sixth sense of Mind. Love inseparable from Logic, responding to the Call for Love. 

Choosing the Guide who makes sense

Two Minds thinking and feeling as one 

The biblical Jesus disappeared into the wilderness for 40 days and nights before beginning his ministry.  A metaphor for the change of mind caricatured by opposite’s fantasy of “supremacy,” the victory of body-brain matter over Mind in mortal combat. A metaphor of detachment, where mind could think in the stillness of solitude, freed from everyday distractions. Where the Mind of Jesus accomplished in fact what opposite could only make up in fiction: the ability to think Real thoughts. And thus the ability to perform the supernatural acts in our world that opposite could only make up in its cartoon world.

Miracles unbound by the “laws” of physics, biology, and all the other disciplines still at work, trying to define spacetime-matter. Not leaping over tall buildings -- acrobatic body-feats to gratify adolescent “supremacy.” But the miracle of thinking Real thoughts in an unreal world. Attained not by rampant harmfulness -- conquest in mortal combat -- but by the gentle loving kindness of helpfulness. Mind entrusted to the Guide, the Helper, being welcomed into the mind of. Free Choice, seeking help of its own accord, without reservation from the seeker’s shadow-opposite.

Harmfulness replaced by Helpfulness

Because with two minds thinking and feeling as one, joined by Logic and Love in one purpose, there can be no sign of contradiction. Body-brain functioning as “one” with its shadow-opposite, a perversion of Parent-Child functioning as one, has been replaced. Fear and guilt replaced by Love and Innocence. Darkness replaced by the light of Self-Awareness. Contradiction’s harmfulness replaced by the helpfulness of Free Choice in Creation. Its opposite left behind in its shadowland of opposites, self-unawareness.

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Appendix 1 

Reflections on the denial of sixth sense 

Five body-senses aren’t enough 

The difference between your state of mind and our Source’s is a difference in awareness. Our Source’s is the Relationship between Logic and Love that enabled and empowered Self-Awareness. Mind that implies the idea of opposites but can’t be aware of it without making it real. Yours is self-unawareness that can’t tell the difference. Not while you occupy a shadowland of opposites, of impossibilities where anything goes. Where delusional occupants imagine that they can ignore the laws of cause and effect and decide for themselves what’s real. 

In the state of confusion you describe, mind-centered personality types are drawn to you for Guidance while body-centered types are drawn to your opposite. You respect Free Choice and help with awareness when you’re asked. Your opposite turns two-sided relationship into one-sided addiction. Into blind submission to the will of a predator to own, possess, control, dominate, and eventually eliminate competitors. Tribal-“realists” dependent on their bodies’ five senses dismiss the notion of a sixth sense that they can’t detect. And so they block awareness of me. 

The north-going Zax meets the south-going Zax

The wrong choice they affirm is troublesome for a second reason. Affirmation was part of the function that defined Free Choice in Reality – affirmation and reciprocation of Life-Worth, the cause of Creation. Whether personality types split into mind- or body-centered or choose one or another guide, their function is still part of their core identity, and it’s still to affirm. Both sides affirming means both sides equally certain that they’re right.

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Appendix 2 

Illumination by the spirit of Christmas 

Not a creature was stirring 

Edna, can’t this nitwit just wave hello and let us be? Now Elio, don’t be mean. I’m sure he means well. And he’s right. There’s more to the holidays than waving hello. Any more of this and I’m getting a restraining order. Can’t we at least wave back? No! He’ll think we want more! Well, I’m sending a card anyway. ‘Tis the season to be jolly and you’re not being jolly. Santa doesn’t reward old grouches with bags of toys.

Have it your way. But don’t be surprised if I don’t leave out milk and cookies. And don’t you be surprised if you don’t find any toys in your stocking. Edna! You wouldn’t! 

‘Tis the season for a refund 

And don’t be surprised if you don’t get your birthday treat. What treat? A day at Dave and Buster’s where you can show off your amazing skills. Yes! Watch me toss a ball. And spin a big roulette wheel -- I’m really good at that. And make cute thingies out of Play-Doh. Nobody does it better. I can’t wait to win a suitcase full of little yellow tickets. Why? So I can exchange them for a tiny piece of colored plastic that has no use and will break before I get home.

You’re right, Edna. ‘Tis the season to be jolly. Waving hello isn’t enough. Hand me the nitwit’s letter. Happy Holidays, Elio! Happy Holidays, Edna!

Published on Leave a comment on Glossary

Arrested development

The result of parenting with the opposite of understanding, kindness, and justice: the injustice of misunderstanding and cruelty. The wrong “guide,” shadow-opposite, obstructing Logic’s sequence of Order, the interconnectedness of its implications. Disorder produced in alternate “reality” by entropy – temporal, dying energy -- that reverses connection.

The wrong “guide” obstructing the expansion and reciprocation of Love’s relationships. Both together, misunderstanding and cruelty, implements of “separation,” responsible for arrested development. Paralysis exemplified by the condition of Nietzsche’s body and brain at his death. Like the brain of Sylvia Plath, captive to the wrong “guide.” Captive to the lethal impossibility of separation.

Explanation-Understanding 

The response of Logic-Love to the injustice of its mischaracterization, condemnation, and punishment, with Understanding that helps the perpetrator, self-unawareness, remove its cause by regaining Self-Awareness. By shining away the darkness of self-delusion, illogic, fear, and “guilt,” with the light of Truth, Innocence, Logic, and Love.

The response role modeled by the teaching, life, and example of Jesus. Explanation that’s Helpfulness instead of retaliation in kind that’s harmfulness.

Getting it right based on explanation by Logic-Love making sense of evolving circumstances to produce context, the source of meaning and purpose. The source of Guidance by conscience centered on character defined by the moral values of the Good. Enabling the Child of Self-Awareness to apply its unique talent for Free Choice in Relationship’s response to context that expands the Life-Worth of Creation. The talent of Mind Free Choice that is reflection, reasoning, evaluation, and judging.

Free Choice 

Judgment that must be independent because dependence would contradict freedom of choice.

Judgment informed by the function of Child Free Choice’s Parents, to serve and support its function with the process and structure of Reality: the Energy of Mind, the Free Spirit of Inquiry, the Spontaneity of Love, the Relationship of Self-Awareness, and context that supplies meaning and purpose to evolving circumstances. Essentials for reasoning, evaluation, and independent judgment required by Choice among possibilities that’s capable of affirming, earning, and reciprocating Life-Worth. That’s Free.

Judgment that implies the possibility of errors in judgment and the responsibility of Free Choice to gain competence through experience to avoid them. Errors based on the inadequacy of what’s already Known to foretell the consequences of Creation advancing into the unknown. Being based on flaws of character inherited from its Parents, Logic-Love, is an impossibility. The Truth of Child Free Choice, whether its judgment is mistaken or not, is its birthright: the Soul of Innocence, inviolable in Reality and recoverable by Free Choice in unreality. 

Freedom-Order 

The inseparability of Order and Freedom. Functions that enable one another through the harmony of Order defined with Free Choice and the protection of Free Choice by the boundaries of Order. The origin of Order that is the before-after sequence of Logic aligned with the laws of cause and effect. Whose opposite, disorder, begins with disconnection of the sequence of Logic. 

The freedom to extend the ideas-functions of Mind forward through the interconnecting implications of Logic that require the before-after sequence of Order. The freedom to expand the feelings of Mind through the interconnecting relationships of Love that require spontaneity within the boundaries of Order.

Jesus-right guidance 

A spectacular contradiction of shadow-opposite’s contradiction. A phenomenon as well as a personification of the right Guide, gifted with Self-Awareness. With understanding of the metaphysics and psychology of Child Free Choice’s self-delusion: its identification with its shadow-reflection mistaken for an “other.” Understanding which Jesus shares with its projections, self-unaware individuals in their immediate contexts, in a variety of ways contradicted by the idea of “bible.” All pointing toward the Necessity of reversing projection, the logical impossibility that made the unreality of opposite “real.”

Not to relieve individuals of responsibility for earning Self-Awareness with their own thoughts-feelings but to help them recover their own thoughts-feelings. Through spontaneous insights from Intuition – their sixth sense – and lessons the biblical Jesus and the Jesus of A Course in Miracles brought to individuals in forms recognizable by their five senses. That demonstrate the Reality of Mind’s laws of cause and effect unaffected by unreal matter’s “laws” of chaos.

A personification of injustice that draws a helpful response of role modeling by explanation and understanding rather than variations of harmfulness by aggrieved victimhood. Injustice perpetrated by projection of guilt onto Innocence by minds captive to the self-unawareness of shadow-opposite. Whose precedent was the execution of another Innocent, Socrates, the father of Western ethical philosophy, by another projection of guilt. Shadow-opposite’s mischaracterization of Innocence and perversion of justice. A contradiction of Logic-Love and a lethal flaw in human “thinking” that Plato sought to understand and explain through his Allegory of the Cave.

The teacher of one-Child individual minds and not the fiction of many child body-brains. And thus not the “founder” of any “religion” or “church.” Or a “savior” who would do the work of the wrong “guide” by contradicting the Freedom of Choice.

A personification of the brother and friend of one Child-Mind in its self-unaware state. Accessible in forms adapted to the needs of its individual projections and thus a part of the dream of unreality that will no longer be needed when self-unawareness gives way to Self-Awareness. When Free Choice is again offered a role in Creation.

The judgment of Parental Love, Forgiveness, and Innocence. Of Reality-Truth that contradicts the unreality-untruth of fear, condemnation, and guilt. Fit together in logical Order-Freedom by explanation from Child’s Parents, Logic-Love, that leads to Understanding. Self-Awareness.

Life-Worth 

The light of Self-Awareness illuminated in the eternal Now by Relationship. By the attraction between Logic and Love, ideas within Mind sharing its Energy to consummate inseparability and set the sharing of Life-Worth in motion. The motivating Force of Reality-Creation whose expression extends and expands the Logic-Love Relationship of Mind into infinity. The Worth of eternal discovery, growth, and Creation affirmed, earned, and reciprocated by Free Choice. 

Logic-Love / Parents 

Relationship that ignited the illumination of Self-Awareness and began the orderly sequence of Logic-Love forward in the evolution of Creation. The prototype and founding role model for every Relationship in Creation to follow. Logic is implications connecting to make sense. Love is abundance-sharing through Relationships that give sense the meaning and purpose of value – the moral value that is Socrates’ and Plato’s idea of “Good.” Logic and Love are ideas-functions of Mind that complete one another and, like Freedom and Order, are inseparable. That provide service and support for their Child’s role in Creation with the unconditional love of Parents who respect the sovereignty and integrity of Free Choice.

Narcissist – reflection 

A replication of Mind, captive to its shadow-reflection self-unawareness, that’s projected itself, Love, onto its reflection misperceived as an object, separate from itself and objectified as an “other.” The impossibility that’s an “external:” an objectified “self” “loving” separated other objects the only way it can, by loving its separated, objectified “self.”

A perversion of Mind-Relationship, Logic-Love united in Self-Awareness: subject extending and expanding itself through the Oneness of Reality-Creation, Loving its Creations and their cause by affirming Self-Worth. Subject loving subjects – not reflections but extensions of itself. An ”internal,” the only possibility.

A re-enactment of the “event” that led to the dream of an “alternate reality” by Child-Mind unconscious: the mistake of making unreality “real.” With the projection of Love, itself, onto its shadow-opposite. An unreality mistaken for an “other,” a reflection, when narcissists -- body-brain occupants of its dream -- affirm the “reality” of unreality in opposite’s reflection in a mirror. With love for a reflection -- reverse mirror-images of themselves.  For “objects” that are their shadow-opposites, transferring Awareness of Self-subject onto self-“object.” That can only “recognize” the event not as a gift from Love but as its surrender. Affirmation of shadow-opposite’s “supremacy” in competition with its host, Mind. “Winning.” Completing the transformation of Self-Awareness into the self-unawareness of narcissism. The consequence not of affirmation of Self-Worth but its denial.

With “love” that the narcissist consummates by “owning” its reflection. Made “real” by the possibility of possession, control, and dominance in a “reality” of material objects that includes objectified “others.” Competitors who would steal possession and control if it were not “owned.” “Justifying” opposite’s perversion of Relationship Self-Love into its opposite: alienation of Love. With fear, paranoia, judgment of guilt rather than Innocence, jealousy, and rage. Animal emotions of a predator protecting its “turf.” And a narcissistic authoritarian parent "owning" its children.

Opposite / shadow-opposite / shadow-reflection – wrong guidance

Definition by Logic-Love that defines what a function is and does do, that belongs in Reality-Creation, in part by what it isn’t and what it doesn’t do. The incorporation of impossibility or contradiction into the definition of possibility, premise, or assertion. Including the definition of who we are and our function in part by who we aren’t – our shadow-reflection. Therefore, a part of Reality-Creation assigned to unreality, a state of Mind only possible in the Mind of the Child Free Choice that can lose Self-Awareness.

The “dark side” of all the elements of Creation associated with Child Free Choice’s role in Creation except the elements that preceded and gave birth to it. Archetypes and Relationships identified as the Child’s Parents and Mind Self-Awareness, the interconnected Oneness of Reality-Creation that is Innocence without opposite by definition.

The shadow-opposite of Self-Awareness in the dream: self-unawareness. Shadow-opposite made “real” in the dream by “illumination” from self-unawareness, the dreamer Child Mind unconscious. An impossibility in Reality and perversion of Self-Awareness defined by its function, Illumination.

The shadow-opposite of Child Free Choice. Its reverse mirror-image reflection. A quasi-genetic code derived from its host that assigns attributes to the illusory occupants of a dream and scripts its “story.” The story of an “alternate reality” composed of appearances and contradictions in “time” destined to end. A re-enactment of the Child’s mis-identification of its opposite as an “other” and its “other’s” taking its host captive, to animate its code with energy and other attributes “borrowed” from its host. The story dramatized by competition and conflict, striving for absolute authority and freedom, and other impossibilities intended to prevent or delay the Child’s recovery of Self-Awareness.

Violations of Logic and Love that are all attributable to the influence of opposite on the Child’s self-deluded Mind. To the “author” of our world and universe of spacetime-matter: a dream by the Child captive to its shadow-opposite. Unreality. 

Perfection-imperfection 

Perfection defines the state of Reality that precedes Child Free Choice in the sequence of Logic-Love. Beginning with the Purity of Relationship between Logic and Love that illuminated the Purity of Self-Awareness. That cannot be contaminated or it would replicate itself throughout Creation. Where the detection and animation of contradiction -- opposite-unreality – is excluded by definition. Where it cannot “exist” in any state except in the Mind of Child Free Choice functioning on its own plane of Creation with sovereignty and integrity that cannot be compromised.

Imperfection resides in definition that necessarily implies its opposite. Since Logic-Love function under the laws of cause and effect to define every element of Reality-Creation, and definition that implies its opposite is built into the laws, “Perfection” is limited to the cause of Creation but not its effect. To cause that cannot be corrupted without corrupting its effect, but not its effect that must be subject to the possibility of imperfection implied by the definition of Free Choice.

Imperfection also resides in Creation’s “Ideal” destination: a state of resolution and eternal Peace made unattainable by definition dependent on contradiction. Should the cause of Creation be abandoned Mind’s function might also be abandoned. Turning out the light of Self-Awareness that would then attain contradiction’s “ideal” of ending. The ultimate “purpose” implied by self-unawareness: Minds self-deluded into an alternate “reality” of self-unawareness that, at least here on this planet, appears headed toward self-ending.

If the “imperfection” of Creation’s ideal destination prevents self-ending, then what our situation may call for is re-thinking our approach to contradiction. Re-defining “Perfection” and the Ideal of “Creation” that is attainable. Starting with the competence of Free Choice to re-enact its mistake and, this time, get it right. To reverse the projection of self-unawareness and regain Self-Awareness. 

Reality-Creation and unreality 

Reality-Creation is the state of Mind Self-Awareness signified by its function: to bring into Being cause – meaning and purpose – that is Worth. The Worth of Life, and to give it effects. Effects expressed in the Beauty of relationships with functions in Creation extended and shared by their Source, the Parents Logic-Love in inseparable Relationship with Free Choice, their Child.

The Beauty of the gifts of Worth, values given to Child at birth, transformed by Growth, the function of Parents, united with Free Choice, the function of Child, into compositions drawn from the circumstances of evolving contexts that affirm, earn, and reciprocate Life-Worth. All of it existing within Soul, the Oneness of Innocence. The function of Mind Logic-Love that interconnects all of Reality-Creation including contradiction – unreality – that’s part of every definition with the exception of Soul, the Oneness of Innocence.

Unreality is an impossibility: separation of the inseparable. The Relationship between Parents and Child. But because unreality is a derivative of Reality, definable by the attributes of Reality in reverse, unreality and impossibility have a place within Mind. Within Self-Awareness Child Free Choice but not within Self-Awareness Parents Logic-Love.

Relationship / Parents-Child 

The essence, beauty, and Force of the attraction between functions paired in every act of Creation and the cause of every effect. One of many Forces associated with Reality-Creation, the Interconnectedness of Mind held together by Energy in the Oneness of Innocence without opposites and in Necessity, the laws of cause and effect. The sine qua non of the Worth and Life of Reality-Creation.

The basis for the unreality and logical impossibility of “separation” and the basis for physics’ finding that our alternate “reality” of spacetime-matter is “relational.” That even in the reverse mirror-image of Reality “separation” is an impossibility -- an appearance.

Beginning with the first of two foundational Relationships in Reality-Creation:

  • Relationship between Logic and Love that produced illumination: the light and energy of Self-Awareness. The Being and Doing of Mind, its function that is the Source of Life and the expression of its Worth.
  • The Source of consequence, affirmed, earned, and reciprocated by the Child of Logic-Love. Free Choice, an extension of Mind given its distinct function on its own plane of Creation. In Relationship with its Parents and under their protection from the possibility of interference that would compromise and disable its indispensable role in Creation. Protection reflected in our alternate “reality” by the right Guide’s respect for the sovereignty and inviolability of individual Free Will.

Self-Awareness-Child

The marriage of Logic to Love illuminated Self-Awareness and gave birth to their Child and its function in Creation: Free Choice. The essential attribute of Reality-Creation that makes Self-Awareness and Child inseparable: the relationship between Freedom and Order that is Free Choice.

The psycho-dynamic of Creation: the extension of Love of Self – Self-Awareness – rather than the psycho-dynamic of self-unawareness: narcissism’s projection of “love” onto its reflection. Its opposite. The extension of Understanding rather than the projection of misunderstanding.

Sixth sense-Intuition

The faculty of Child Mind Free Choice, in a dreaming state of self-unawareness or unconsciousness, that enables spontaneous connection with Guidance. From the Logic-Love of its Parents through the voice of an agent of Soul, the Interconnectedness of Reality-Creation. That is the extension-sharing of Mind Logic-Love and Oneness, Innocence without opposites, that knows no boundaries.

Connection also made possible by Energy, the attribute of Mind that gives causes
their effects, ideas their consequences, Love its Relationships, and the laws of cause and effect the Force of Necessity. Including the idea of an "alternate reality." A dream of impossibility: the unreality of shadow-reflection made "real" by Child Mind, captive to its shadow-reflection, with its attribute of Energy producing and storing itself in matter. Including brain whose neurons interconnect with electrical impulses, part of the Interconnectedness of Reality-Creation and opposite unreality-dream by the boundaryless Energy of Mind.

Special relationships-specialness 

Shadow-opposites, the hollowness of reflections with no Self of their own to Love. Narcissists “bonding” to steal one another’s selves so they’ll have reflections they can make “real” with “love.” A perversion of Self-Awareness bringing its Creations to Life-Worth by extending itself. By sharing the abundance of Logic-Love rather the scarcity of hollowness stealing it.

The abandonment of Self-Awareness to self-unawareness. To self-delusion that is opposite’s “promise” of absolute “authority” without opposition and absolute “freedom” without limits. Logical impossibilities in the shared worlds of Reality and unreality, mistaken by self-deluded minds for prerequisites to “supremacy:” the “triumph” in “competition” of unreality over Reality, of body-brain matter over Mind, of shadow-opposite over its host. The “triumph” of “time” over the eternal Now: ending. The self-glorification of wiping the slate clean and throwing away the slate. 

Unconsciousness-death 

The impossibility of “separation” of Logic from Love. The inseparable Relationship between two archetypal functions that completed one another and produced Self-Awareness. That, like everything Real, must be Relationship enabled and empowered by Love to take part in Creation.

Child-Mind in a state of self-unawareness, either dreaming an alternate “reality” “offered” by its own shadow-opposite mistaken for an “other,” or not dreaming. “Life” in the dreaming Child’s alternate “reality,” a fantasy of transience, is a contradiction of timeless Reality-Creation. A logical impossibility. Part of a dream that’s a self-delusion and therefore unreal.

“Death” is a re-enactment of the Child-Mind’s loss of Consciousness and descent into the interval between unconsciousness not dreaming and dreaming. It, too, is part of the self-delusion and unreal. “Reincarnation,” like incarnation, would be a re-enactment of Child-Mind’s captivity by its reverse mirror image, an apparition.

Unreality and non-reality / madness

“Opposite” that’s unreality is an idea or state that’s thinkable because it’s of Mind. Describable by terms like “void” and “nothingness” that are ideas of Mind. But not the language of Mind that doesn’t need words to communicate -- inventions of the Child’s shadow-opposite. Put to use by the right Guide for communication with the projections of Child self-unawareness to help with understanding and awareness.

Non-reality that’s non-Mind. Unthinkable because non-reality can’t be an idea if there’s no Mind to think it. And no words to describe it since Mind has no need of words to communicate. Words with which to “glorify” shadow-opposite instead, duplicating its “triumph” over unconscious Child-Mind by triumphing over Conscious Parents-Mind in competition.

The ultimate in wishful thinking when “competition” between Reality and unreality can’t make sense. And even if it did, unreality / self-unawareness in competition with Reality / Self-Awareness on equal terms is an impossibility.

Non-reality that’s shadow-opposite’s ultimate “vision” of the “worth” of its “cause,“ “alternate reality:” ending. Everything coming to an end that’s beyond Mind and beyond definition. Beyond “ending.” Beyond utter nonsense -- madness.

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 On the Threshold to High School: May Which Force Be With You?

August 17, 2022: a date which will be long remembered. . . .

High school marks a new phase in individuals’ maturation in many ways. One is progress toward development and expansion of gifts and talents. Because that’s the business end of lives, our being, our selves: what we are to do with who we are. How we are to make ourselves useful. Because ours and others’ happiness and wellbeing rely on us to make use of ourselves through the expression and application of our talents. Through performance.

There will be many distractions, but this is our true course toward living lives of accomplishment, meaning, fulfillment, and happiness: making use of ourselves through our talents. There may also be a good deal of waste, because we typically have too many potential talents and uses to develop in one life. We must make a choice.

August 17, our debut at high school, will mark the first serious phase in choosing which of our talents to work and play with. To learn and grow with. For an adolescent girl of character, ambition, and conscience, what will it be? Creativity through artistry and the performing arts? Excellence through competitive sports? Character development through leadership?  Healing and intimacy through relationships? Innovation through discovery?

How do we engage with an expanding world that’s engaging with us?

Relationships with others continue in high school as before, but with a subtle difference. High school is adolescence that breaks with childhood, a period when individuals shed a skin that kept them insulated within a protective enclosure. A bubble of unawareness that served as an extension of the mother’s womb. To shield vulnerable and unformed selves from potentially hostile and harmful influences outside the womb.

Adolescence exposes individuals to some of these influences. Releases them from their sheltered world and expands it. Makes them aware for the first time that they share something larger: an expanding world composed of many worlds. Not just a place but a Force. Way larger than themselves and their immediate environment, the only environment that a child knows. They must now choose how to adapt to it. How to relate to it, engage with it. How to replace the protection afforded by the womb, to protect their vulnerability in new ways. Because their parents’ protection, for better or worse, is giving way to this Force. And we’re not just engaging with it. It’s engaging with us.

The most important choice is choice

High-schoolers must confront the need to make choices for themselves. And the very first and most important choice is choice itself: whether they prefer to choose freely, with independent judgment, or avoid it. Duck the responsibility -- pass it off to someone or something else. The most important choice is whether to run toward the functions of mind that enable Free Will or to run away from them.

With the onset of adolescence, humanity in high school begins to divide itself into two basic personality types: those who embrace the independent judgment of Free Will and those who reject it in favor of something else. Something with a seductive yet sinister appeal: will that isn’t free. Judgment that’s made for them, ready-made and easy.

The Way of the Master: Vince Lombardi

The Force of nature that accounts for humanity and its environment also accounts for its division into two opposing interpretations of where it originates. One interpretation assumes that it originates with a source that’s benevolent. That’s conscious, self-aware, and alive with thoughts, feelings, soulfulness, and creativity. That wills humanity to choose its way forward freely and happily, with guidance and support from this Force but not its intrusion or dominance.

The other interpretation assumes that this Force originates from a source that exhibits none of these attributes. It’s mindless, loveless, and soulless. It has no “self” to be aware of. It’s simply a will, or “fate,” that one either sides with and survives or doesn’t side with and gets run over. That one can either join and benefit from its derived power or oppose and wind up powerless, with no resources and no prospects.

If the supremacy of “fate” so decrees, one can be a “winner.” If it doesn’t, one becomes a “loser.” The stark choice offered by the second interpretation is dominate or be dominated. Not just in sports but in every relationship: see only a contest of wills and win the contest. At any cost, especially understanding, reality, and truth. Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.

The fans of George III never left us

But regression to savagery, whether the noble savage of Rousseau or the ignoble savage of Hobbes, can’t be obvious in civilized society. Aside from politics where anything goes, the appearance of civility must be maintained. The cult of animal instinct must be clothed in “sociability” without compromising its not-so sociable reality.

Our shared environment – “civilization” --requires getting along in peace and harmony, with some semblance of mindfulness and thoughtfulness, affect and empathy, and independent judgment. Beyond semblance, the second interpretation’s lust for dominance wants nothing to do with a shared environment. Its will is to dispense with it altogether.

Understanding personality types is critical to self-awareness

These are radically different interpretations, and the adolescents who commit to one or the other do well to understand their consequences. Do well to understand that personality types that identify with mind and its intuition and those that identify with body and its senses account for the difference.

Self-awareness is essential. And it begins with the first indications in adolescence which of these directions personalities are taking. Mind that feels through Intuition a Force within that’s Mind – will that’s relatable, conscious, and benevolent? Or body that detects through senses an external Force of nature – will or “fate” that’s neither relatable, conscious, nor benevolent? One a sentient Being, subject, the other an insentient object. One with the attributes of Being, the other a senseless beast.

The difference in the psychology of personality is between individuals who prefer to rely on mind-intuition to interpret their reality – the way things are, the way the Will of Force has made them, wants them – and those drawn to the body for interpretation. One “sees” (understands) its environment as originating from Force that’s subject-self, like itself. The other “sees” (understands) its environment as originating from Force that’s object-self, like itself. The difference is critical for the individual, critical for everyone.

Mindless “action:” the will that sets the rules through animal instinct

What would account for these two possibilities? A source of Force with attributes of consciousness – creativity that’s alive with purpose -- and source with attributes of unconsciousness – creativity that’s random happenstance, undirected “fate.”

The answer is Mind that can exist in two states: one conscious, the other unconscious. The second state asleep and possibly dreaming.

If the Force of nature that manifests our world could be an instrument of Mind, of Will that’s either awake or asleep, it could manifest the attributes of one or the other. Mind-centered personalities, guided by the vision of Logic, intuit source-Mind that’s awake, alive and benevolent.

Body-centered personalities, dependent on physical senses for interpretation, are grafted onto the only environment they can detect: our physical environment. Their preference for sensing over intuition leaves them with no awareness of the existence of Being or anything else beyond their physical environment. With no awareness of Mind or Will in another Reality, awake or asleep. Without the vision of Logic, they don’t “see” the source that mind-centered interpretations see because they can’t. 

What they “feel” with their senses is only its Force exerted on their immediate environment, the effect of sensed experience with no sense of cause or the attributes of cause. What they infer from its effect is their own entrapment in unconsciousness: dumb will that makes the rules, that sets the terms of engagement not through conscious choice or Free Will, not through affect or values that distinguish between right and wrong, but through dumb animal instinct.

Through mindless action defined as the dominance of Force. Through behavior that bypasses reflection, deliberation, sensitivity, loving kindness, judgment, and discipline. That finesses conscience and frees its subjects to engage with their world without moral responsibility or accountability. With only the cloak of “civility,” the cover of “sociability,” the blanket of “pleasantness” to keep them in line. Substitutes for an inner moral compass. The proverbial wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing.

Context: the Force of unconscious Mind, capable of dreaming

Both interpretations are correct within their separate contexts. The question isn’t which interpretation is correct, but which context is correct. A question that only Logic, accessible through Intuition, can answer. Because objectivity requires another perspective, and bodies’ senses grafted onto our material world cannot provide it. Another Reality can only be “seen” and understood through the vision of Logic.

If it’s assumed that our material world is the only possible reality, then Force that originates with unthinking-unfeeling object, rather than thinking-feeling subject, is exactly how the body-centered interpretation “sees” it: mindless, loveless, and soulless. A Force-will and nothing more. That we either ally with to survive or not ally with and take our chances.

If we assume that our material world  is not the only possible reality, that another Reality preceded it, somehow caused it, and parallels it, then Force must originate not with the effect of this other Reality – our world – but with its cause. “Cause” not necessarily “create,” “design,” or “intend,” if the dream of an unconscious mind can't be Real. Only cause, for now, that belongs to another dimension, another Reality.

If this other Reality is cause, then it cannot share the attributes of a temporal, material universe. And if it has the capacity to express itself in effects – to Create in the Now – it must do so through the Logic of Mind in combination with Love. It must do so through the agency of Force in service to Logic and the Laws of Cause and Effect. In service to Necessity -- conditions beyond the capacity of anything temporal and physical. Mind Conscious or unconscious, but, either way, capable of self-awareness, thought, feeling, judgment, and creative imagination in its Conscious state. Capable also of dreaming an illusion in its unconscious state. Dreaming an imagined unreality within the broader context of Reality. Within this context, mind-centered personality’s interpretation of Force with a benevolent source must be correct.

It all depends on psychology expressed through the individual’s personality type: whether the individual’s Psyche, or Soul, connects with the Memory of Mind conscious in Reality, accessible through Intuition, or remains captive to an imagined “fate” through mind unconscious and its dream of bodies and unreality. It all depends on how the individual summons awareness of one or another source of Force-will and attempts to engage with it: through intuition's vision of Logic or the unconsciousness of body.

Will change of mind come in time?

Is personality type a given or a preference? Preordained or not? Can an individual choose?

What must certainly correct choice of the wrong context is its consequences, and nothing is more certain than that the choice between these opposing interpretations will have consequences. Immediate and concrete. And these are already evident in the world and in lives that share it.

Only one of their opposing contexts can be correct, and Logic says the one that insists on the “reality” of unreality, a dream, on opposing “realities,” on a logical impossibility, cannot be correct. Then personality types who witness and personally experience the impacts of contradiction, of insanity, might realize their mistake. Might engineer a mind-change, a course correction, that cuts our losses.

If it’s not too late. The incorrect interpretation – our alliance with blind animal dominance, “the dark side of the Force” -- is already condemning every species on the planet to extinction. The stakes couldn’t be higher. The atrocity of warfare perpetrated by humanity in the twentieth century would have killed us off if nature had lent a hand. If we want to kill ourselves off, the twenty-first century is our chance, because nature is lending us a hand. Through climate change that may already be beyond reversal.

To Reality with Mind and Love. To hell with dominance!

What is the ultimate source of the “Force of Nature” and how should adolescents adapt to it? How should we all adapt to it? We can align with benevolent Logic within to Create in lawful Order, disciplined Freedom, Sensitivity, Peace, and Harmony. Or we can feed off a beast without to satiate lust for power. To indulge savage impulses to destroy in lawless disorder, undisciplined license, cruelty, conflict, and dominance.

Is the choice not clear?