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Published on Leave a comment on Choice: The Difference Between One-Sided Animal and Two-Sided Human

The passing of the baton

The elders who set the rules for civilized behavior -- church and state -- were rock solid through 19th century agrarian hard times and 20th century industrial hard times. Until, around the time that Berlin’s Wall went up, theirs and civilized behavior’s supremacy began to come down. Post-war “peace and prosperity” turned habitat-friendly conservation imposed by hard times to the habitat-unfriendly greed and excess of good times. From trusting others’ judgment and goodwill to set the rules to each individual trusting their own.

The passing of the baton from community- to self-rule that occurred in the1960s and 1970s, the period when Jesus channeled A Course in Miracles. From its first page in the mid-60s to the last in the mid-70s, when the book was published. Times that encouraged adolescents in particular to question Why. The question that brings the authoritarian mindset to full alert with the terrifying sound of cracks in its foundation.

Jesus in his own words

The significance of those times for changing human perception pales in comparison with the significance of the Course. Marking a great leap forward in Mind-Child’s progress toward Self-Awareness through its projections. The Tao’s wisdom in The Chinese Book of Changes, classical sixth-sense Greek philosophy, Jungian intuitive archetypal psychology, and Jungian / Myers-Briggs personality type theory, brought progress forward by getting right some of the What of explanation. What they were unable to intuit was the Why and the How.

Until Jesus could put his message into his own words through the Course. Until then jammed by “Christianity’s” authoritarian mischaracterizations, delivered to harmful effect through rigid, one-sided Church doctrine, its “Bible,” and its gruesome symbol, the crucifix. Jesus’ message now communicated in the clear, through the metaphysics of Reality and unreality and the psychology of Mind-Child’s unreal “separation” from Reality. Through the mental and emotional mechanics of self-delusion. Delusion by its own opposite, a reflection detected in a mirror by Mind disabled and disempowered, stripped of judgment, boundaryless and defenseless.

Baseline: the “here” for where to go from 

A reflection about to give Mind-Child a lesson in how to stay true to who it is by becoming painfully aware of who it isn’t. Whereas Mind-Parent Self-Awareness, on the growth end of Creation, could define itself through spontaneous Relationship between two functions of what is – Logic and Love, -- Child Free Choice’s version of Self-Awareness, at its end of Creation, had to define itself through a temporal-illusory encounter between who it is and who it isn’t.

A metaphysical-psychological paradigm that advances explanation from What’s happening to Why and How it’s happening. On a level of significance with the transition of cosmology’s paradigms from Newton’s to Einstein’s. Fitting into place, in this case, the dimension missing from explanation that had gone before and providing the metaphysical and psychological baseline for further progress. By intuiting from insights shared by Guidance an essential for analysis: awareness of where we’re at – the baseline condition – that enables the measurement and evaluation of change. By combining the What with the Why and How.

Finding motivation to choose again

In an essential for motivation beyond doing what we’re told to do or think we “should” do. In a context where self-unawareness is recovering independent judgment and asking questions, when service to “Me," the self-centered demands of a one-dimensional impersonator, become more insistent, motivation can’t rely any longer on satisfying someone else’s idea of being “right” or “righteous,” “innocent” or “guilty,” “good” or “bad,” “nice” or “mean,” “proper” or “correct.” It must be satisfied internally, within itself. It must become what conscience was always meant to be, not an angel speaking softly in one ear while the “devil” bellows into the other, but its own motivator.  With a case to make for listening that the voice in the other ear can’t make, Explanation. Why and How to listen.

Why, so that the peace, truth, and sanity of Self-Awareness can be recovered and Mind-Child Free Choice can get back to its real function. To the work and play of Creation – where the real fun is. How, by being aware of the choice between guides, one a misperception in a mirror -- tribe teaching us who we aren’t, tribes -- the other helping us as individuals to correct our misperceptions, get context right, and make the right choice. 

Disorder founded on misunderstanding 

If the old ideas of “authority” tremble at the sound of their foundation cracking it would be because they forbade questioning Why. Why should voices of “authority” be heard and not the voices of their “inferiors” – their docile subjects? Why is theirs the only perspective, the only version of the Big Picture, allowed?

Think the author of The Gospel of Wealth, Andrew Carnegie, paragon of business acumen, philanthropy, and statecraft, pilfering from his employees’ paychecks by misrepresenting his companies’ capacity to pay. Rationalizing that he “knew better how to spend their money than they did.” A brazen confession of theft from arrogance proud of its Machiavellian “morality.” Evidence that only one version of the Big Picture is allowed because the old one-sided ideas of “authority” are still around. Incapable of logical explanation or making a persuasive case because they can’t. 

“Authority” continues not explaining itself with the result that “order” founded on avoidance of explanation becomes disorder founded on misunderstanding. The whirlwind reaped from misidentification with a dummy in a mirror programmed by a code. Not to be the absolute best and brightest but to be the absolute worst and dumbest. A mindless beast. Willful “action.” That can’t stand questions because it has no answers.

Echoes from a past that’s still here

Asking Why requires explanation from Guidance connected to Logic-Love. With Mind-Child’s loss of Self-Awareness came loss of awareness of its Relationship with Mind-Parents. With Logic-Love. Leaving it to function as its Self – Choice – without its other half. Without functions essential to Choice that’s Free: reasoning, evaluating, and judging from context that can’t make sense without Logic-Love. Thus, when the impersonator in the mirror is asked Why, it responds with silence demanding silence. Or like an escape artist, a magician, disappearing behind change of context in a sudden puff of smoke, a cloud of obfuscation. Or predatory menace baring its teeth in a snarl, replying to “threat” with threat. An ostrich making the question go away by making its hearing go away -- burying its head in the sand.

In the comforting protection of self-delusion. An act of psychotic denial by the Joker in the mirror, revealing that the code of opposite corrupting its captive’s mind has the “mind” of an animal. That it’s not human. And lacks the distinctly human faculties of thinking meant to enable Choice, Mind-Child’s function. It’s the animal side of human-animal, transformed by herd mentality into the unshakable will of a one-sided beast. Ein volk. Eine Deutschland. Ein Fuhrer!

Intrusion’s nemesis: Choice

In Reality, Mind on Definition’s upper side is protected from intrusion by its opposite on its underside by the boundary between Reality and unreality, possibility and impossibility, activity and inactivity. In unreality, the boundary has been compromised by intrusion, allowing human-animal to reverse itself into animal-human. Allowing underside to intrude into upper side, a consequence of Mind-Child’s misidentification with its reflection, the code defining its implied opposite on its underside. The hallucinated state we’re in: “seeing” “reality” that’s not there.

The intrusion of Mind-Child’s reflection, its underside, compromised Mind but could not deprive it of its function: Choice. Because Mind-Child and its function, Free Choice, are one and the same. Leaving Choice deprived of Free but not Mind deprived of Choice. Leaving the upper side of human-animal still protected by a boundary: between Choice and not-choice.

The only boundary still intact

The defining distinction between human and animal. Our saving grace that distinguishes us as “human.” Two-sidedness impervious to intrusion by opposite one-sidedness from our underside. Because Choice is who we are. Mind-Child, our Real Self -- Choice that’s Free in Reality, un-free in unreality. But still Choice.

Human-Choice above the boundary isn’t looking for a fight but it will defend itself. Not always by Marquess of Queensberry rules, but Choice makes it aware of the difference. Aware of the boundary. And, given a choice, it will generally try to do what’s right. Guided by principles and values, the morals of conscience, duty and accountability, and self-correction. Accessible through intuition, human Mind’s sixth sense. It’s aware of the difference between Innocence and guilt, right-doing and wrong-doing. And if choosing Innocence is asking too much it will at least choose to avoid guilt.

Extreme Makeover: Personal Edition

Degrees of contamination are reflected in personality types: less in Mind-centered types drawn toward the power of attraction inherent in Mind-Choice, inclined to resist contamination; more in body-centered types drawn toward the power of opposition inherent in body-“action,” inclined to welcome contamination. A source of conflict within the human Mind’s upper side since it’s contaminated. And the only boundary between human and animal still intact is between Choice and not-choice.

The boundary between opposite personality types is weak if it’s there at all. When types are taken as given, locked in place rather than subject to change by choice, the options for improving competence, or avoiding or reducing friction, will be limited. Perceptions and behavior, intention and action, take precedence while choice among different personalities, different selves, isn’t even a thought.

Yet Isabel Myers, in Gifts Differing (1980), says it’s possible and suggests how. For opposite personality types, working together, to identify personality components responsible for under-performance and disrupting relationships, weakened by neglect, so they can be strengthened. Suggesting that both Mind- and body-centered types can feed off of one another’s strengths to strengthen themselves. Re-engineering what they do by re-engineering who they are. Not by “re-inventing” themselves for self-marketing but by a self-awareness makeover for personal growth.

Where the “action” is

A concept that relies on variables to work, among them communication between personality types that may not work since they’re opposites. And if one supports the concept that alone would be enough for the other to reject it. But obstructions notwithstanding, the factor that makes support worth considering is Choice.

Our ace in the hole. Just as Choice can evolve from un-free to Free, just as self-unawareness can evolve toward Self-Awareness, personality opposites can choose reciprocal self-makeovers if shared purpose or other conditions make it worthwhile. The purpose, for example, of fortifying human’s defenses against its main opposite: animal. Where the “action” is.

“Action” that’s rational

Two-sidedness is Mind capable of choosing because that’s its purpose: Life-Worth and Creativity authenticated by Free Choice in Reality, the appearance of separation healed in unreality by Choice recovering Freedom -- its integrity. With the faculties of Mind needed to gain awareness of meaning and purpose, the ability to choose freely:

  • introspection / self-awareness
  • intuition-sixth sense / insight-reflection / connecting spontaneously with Guidance from Logic-Love for help discerning context / meaning-purpose
  • thinking-reasoning / analyzing / measuring-quantifying / evaluating-qualifying / sorting-differentiating, to lay a rational foundation for choosing among possibilities
  • judging-integrating / choosing-deciding / pairing the right possibility with the right context

All prerequisites for choosing freely and acting rationally.

Choiceless one-sided that’s not rational

Because Guidance that brings order to chaos is blocked by chaotic thinking. Irrational and willful. A self-centered two-year-old throwing a tantrum. Demanding gratification when the Vision of Logic, aware of choices between different perspectives, ideals and objectives, and personalities all sharing the same space, understands that yielding rational choice to willfulness opposed to choice only brings more chaos. Arbitrary, one-sided, authoritarian rule.

A mindless beast’s version of “order:” whatever it wants. To be taken by mischaracterization, domination, possession, and captivity. “Action” by animal instinct, purged of thought. One-sided, self-centered, delusional. Opposed to evolution. Deprived of the defining attribute of life: growth. Deprived of the joy and pleasure of learning and Creativity essential to growth. Lifeless. Soulless. Stuck in the mud. Unhappy. One-sided.

The self-destructive power of prophecy 

The Tao’s I Ching is consulted for its uncanny relevance to the present and for another psychic talent: awareness of the future. Said to be based on numbers. A theory I don’t question, more because it’s beyond my interest than because it makes sense. Clarity about context in the present is enough.

Nevertheless, the relevance of intuition’s Guidance is validated by Logic-Love’s Vision – the power of spontaneous insight to see beyond appearances. To recognize substance with clarity beyond time, no less an appearance than the apparitions that pass through it. A talent that exists but can’t be shared with Free Choice without compromising it.

It may be the real reason why Apollo took back his gift of prophecy from Cassandra, not to deprive her of a special talent but to save humans from accessing it. So while help from Guidance can be experienced as the presence of clairvoyance it’s present only in Guidance. Help transmitted to seeker is help from clairvoyance, not clairvoyance itself. If that were not so meaning and purpose from context would be overlaid by meaning and purpose from seeker: the search for supernatural power. The self-destructive power of prophecy.

“As it was written, so it shall be done.”
Ramses (Yul Brynner), The Ten Commandments 1956)
Winner by acclamation: Academy Award for Ludicrous Pomposity
Category: Ludicrously Pompous Motion Pictures

The motivating force of Why

No prerequisite for choosing freely and acting rationally is more important than context that gets meaning and purpose right. Because getting it wrong is allowing misperceptions and misjudgments to lead humanity toward self-destruction. The point in flawed thinking where humanity falls into an open manhole. Blinded by unawareness of who and where we are. Of what put us here, when, how, and why. Unaware of Mind-Child’s story and therefore unaware of our own. Unmindful of our circumstances and therefore why and how they can be managed.

Explanation needed to detach deluded from deluder begins with questioning Why. And the first Why for the uncommitted is Why is this necessary? Because making the right choice requires Understanding, Understanding requires explanation, explanation requires questioning, and questioning requires answers. None more fundamental to motivation than the answer to Why.

The story of Free Choice

Until explanation comes up with Logic-Love’s answer our circumstances will continue to manage us. A dangerous, unsustainable condition. Incomprehensible and unmanageable, until we get all of it right: the who, what, when, where, why, and how of Mind-Child’s story. Our two-sided story. The story of Free Choice.

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 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.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

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.

Published on Leave a comment on A Sober Salute to Saint Patrick’s Day from a Grateful Brain

Fun while it lasted

Your usual fare from me on Saint Patrick’s day is literature extolling Irish history and talents for one thing or another. One of their talents I personally experienced in Boston is drinking. They and my Welsh ancestors are celebrated for their rollicking contributions to music and poetry extolling the delights of their habit. Richard Burton, the talented actor who courted Elizabeth Taylor, was Welsh and noted for it.

A Boston Irish pol introduced me to life enlivened by drink that lasted 42 years. It was fun while it lasted but given the choice I wouldn’t do it again.

Energy does what it’s told

Matter is stored energy and brains are matter that operate by electrical impulses. Energy acts at the direction of Mind. When our minds tell our bodies to say awake too often they’ll start staying awake and make getting to sleep harder. When we tell our brains with drink, psychedelics, or other substances we want to alter them so we think or feel differently they’ll get in the habit of altering. It’s sometimes obvious that bodies and brains made of matter are doing what our minds tell them and these are two examples.

The grateful brain

Good judgment depends on brains not altering. Too much altering is physical and mental abuse that leads to misjudgments. Misjudgments that accumulate over time degrade performance. Human history is replete with examples of talented personalities like Richard Burton whose lives and careers ended prematurely because of physical abuse that involves brain-altering. Personality differences kept us entertained with his and Elizabeth’s dramatics but drinking would have had a hand in it too.

By the standards of my Welsh ancestry my drinking life was hardly worth the name. I was reasonably disciplined though not always aware that too much is too much and it shows. When I quit fourteen years ago, there was a noticeable improvement in physical performance -- quality of sleep, energy, appetite. Then, three years ago, a great leap forward in every function of mind. Almost overnight I got better with creativity -- insight, free association, imagination. It was as if a better mind than mine took over or else potential that was always there had broken free.

What is my brain telling me? What yours might tell you if you quit altering it. Thank you!

Published on Leave a comment on Why Is Metaphysics Relevant?

Disorder careening out of control

How do individuals and groups get into situations that take them down? Like Nixon and Watergate, Japan and Pearl Harbor, Putin and Ukraine. Like humanity and global warming, mass extinction. Like us all with relationships and projects, careers and enterprises, that become train wrecks.

Situations evolve from implications of Logic plus the connections and relationships of Love -- facts, circumstances -- that require interpretation within the purpose and meaning of context. Context which requires judgment based on Logic inseparable from Love. Misjudgment --  getting purpose-meaning of context wrong, i.e. not basing it on Logic-Love -- causes misinterpretation of facts-circumstances It causes misperception.

Misperceptions resulting from misjudgments evolve into more misjudgments, an accumulation of choices and decisions out of alignment with context-reality that, over time, widen the gap between reality and unreality. Between facts-circumstances and wishful-psychotic thinking that turn orderly evolution into disorder careening out of control.

Then there’s the broader context

Misperceptions that fail to perceive hazards and obstructions -- potholes, kids on bicycles, telephone poles, drunk drivers, sharp turns, cliffs -- inevitably cause accidents. Collisions with facts-circumstances -- with reality -- that aren’t foreseen because facts-circumstances in the present aren’t seen. Because they were misinterpreted until it only took one more mis-aligned choice, one more mistaken decision, to cause a wreck. Until the mistaken-misperceiving mind behind the hand on the steering wheel made one more wrong turn and it proved fatal.

The wrong turn was the result of getting both the immediate context and the broader context -- the big picture -- wrong. It was the result of illogic -- not making sense. Choice-decision that seems “reasoned” in the immediate context, that doesn’t make sense in the broader context, ultimately can’t be reasoned and therefore cannot be the right choice. It can only be part of a mis-aligned evolution of mistakes that necessitate reconsideration of the broader context until evolution gets back on track.

How to make sense of the broader context

The correct choice-decision will get both the immediate and broader context right with Logic-Love. It requires making sense of context that’s not possible without a sixth sense. Five senses of bodies that can’t see beyond appearances aren’t enough. Relying on appearances perceived by bodies’ senses while rejecting guidance from sixth sense guarantees crackups, because their causes can’t be seen by bodies’ eyes. It’s the root of all human misadventures, the ultimate cause of all human pain.

Sixth sense connects minds needing guidance with spontaneous insights through Intuition that connects with the source of guidance. With Logic-Love, our one ancestral Mind’s Source, through the agency of Soul that interconnects all of Life, all of Creation. That interconnects all minds whether conscious or unconscious, aware of Reality or dreaming of unreality. It’s our expressway to Understanding that’s accessible if we choose to relate to it and ask for its help. So that the hands on the wheel are the hands of Relationship and not just our own. Relationship with competence to share the driving and take us forward to satisfaction and pleasure instead of in circles of frustration and pain until we get it right.

The archetypal runaway kid

Our ancestral Mind’s home in Reality-Creation was Interconnected. The alternate “reality” where we find ourselves is disconnected. That is, it appears to be disconnected because separation in Reality is impossible. Disconnection is but our unawareness of connection brought on by self-delusion: the mistaken identity with our opposite, our shadow-reflection, that projected the dream.

What produced the Big Bang? Something analogous to the atomic bomb that released an atom’s nuclear force when it was split and devastated Hiroshima. An object lesson in the hazards of separating stuff that Reality says can’t be split. Our ancestral Mind, in extremis, sought safety in escape from Reality where it had lost consciousness and had no prospects of regaining consciousness. It was so desperate that it was willing to be led into an alternate “reality.”

To do this it needed to separate from Logic-Love, its Parents. It needed to break the Relationship that bound it to Life in Reality and to its function in Creation. As insane a thought as one can imagine, but this is what the self-deluded Child that we were was desperate to do. It performed a trick that psychology knows as “projection:” projecting itself out of Reality and into an alternate reality. Imagining that it was splitting its Relationship with its Parents.

One big exploding cigar

A split powered by Energy, the Force of Soul that Interconnects all of Reality, acting as it must at the direction of Mind. So momentous in its contradiction of this Force and Reality that it caused the equivalent of a nuclear explosion. That and the Child's unbearable pain of guilt that accompanied unconsciousness and its separation from Parents. Only on an unimaginable scale. Because in enlisting Energy to split the Relationship with Parents the Child was splitting Force itself. The Energy that powers our universe (metaverse?) is the dying Energy of entropy, not the living Energy of Reality-Creation.

All of it a phantasmagoria of impossibilities, but nevertheless seeming to be real because Energy, whose source is Soul, knows nothing of boundaries. Nothing of the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness because Everything is Interconnected. Even unreality that declares itself to our bodies’ senses as disconnected. If metaphysics relying on Logic-Love is certain that our alternate material “reality” is actually unreality -- an illusion -- minds dependent on sensory perception will point to Energy, in us and all around us, stored in matter, accounting for the strong and weak nuclear forces, the electromagnetic force, and gravity, and be just as certain that it can’t be an illusion.

What does A Course in Miracles say about this? That we live in an unreal world that has been “made” real. Not in a world that was created by the Relationship but in a world that was imagined by an unconscious, dreaming Mind. What will it take for the illusion to disappear? Awakening. The Child regains consciousness, reversing the projection and Energy that had appeared to enable it. Poof -- gone!

When pain is all that’s left

Until that can happen we must come to terms with unmanageability. The alternate “reality” we occupy that seems to rest on a foundation of disconnection. Separation not only between the Child and its Parents, living Force from dying Force, but Logic from Love, mind from heart. The great overriding task of humanity is to help restore consciousness by bringing Logic and Love, mind and heart, back together. By ending the absurd notion that they can ever be split. And in so doing to help bring the Child to a state of maturity and competence, because otherwise it can’t be entrusted with its function -- Free Choice -- in Creation.

It's urgent that the Relationship be restored because it’s our moral compass, the source of Plato’s Good. The reasoning with values that civilize us and supposedly reside in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. Relationship with moral character is all there is to govern the “bad thing” that Sigmund Freud observed in the human psyche: our animal emotion, our predatory will, the blind instinct of herds and tribes to dominate and kill. The great overriding task of humanity is not to let the predatory will of our animal-herd instinct dominate the civilizing functions of Logic joined with Love, mind joined with heart. Not to let the body-centered sides of our personality types dominate the mind-centered sides.

What would motivate minds otherwise content with things as they are and resistant to change? Pain. The legacy of separation in alternate reality, in all its forms, can be enormous pain. The young hedonist wedded to bodily appetites, entertainments, and socializing invests more in the avoidance of pain as time goes by. Until bodies give out and pain is all that’s left.

Nixon’s folly was everyone’s folly

Nixon, smart and able, was certain that he was “right.” His decisions were all “reasoned.” His assumptions were all “correct.” Yet something still went catastrophically wrong. His situation swallowed him up and spit him out. He still went down. Unapologetic to the end. Inattentive to the broader context to the end because he put all his faith in his body’s five senses. He dismissed both the broader context and the sixth sense needed to make sense of it. Neither was relevant, and he paid a price.

Why is metaphysics relevant? Why is the metaphysics of Parmenides and the Gnostic teacher Valentinus relevant? Why is the metaphysics of Jesus and A Course in Miracles relevant?

First of all because Nixon was by no means alone. History has entertained and appalled us with many more examples of fools toppling themselves from the pinnacles of power to abject humiliation and impotence below. Because he is us -- ourselves as individuals and humanity as a whole. We are all Richard Nixons, all fools, on lesser scales. His wasn’t an example of one individual going down. He was all of us making fools of ourselves. He was humanity going down.

The difference between Heaven and hell

Metaphysics done right, that sees beyond appearances, is relevant because it’s Guidance from Logic-Love. Guidance from another perspective accessed through the sixth sense of Intuition, toward making sense. Toward decisions and choices by individuals and groups that perceive and judge correctly. In alignment with facts-circumstances, with reality, instead of out of alignment with facts-circumstances, with unreality.

Wisdom combined with compassion and patience instead of youthful folly. Instead of eternal adolescence, the state of humanity content with things as they are, determined not to grow up. Willing itself into situations that take it down until it runs out of situations.

Metaphysics may be the difference between pleasure and pain, winning and losing, success and failure. It may be the difference between conflict and peace, survival and extinction, heaven and hell. What more can we ask? That’s why it’s relevant.

Published on Leave a comment on Personality Type: Where Wrongdoing Hides and Hope Abides

The Course isn’t doctrine

The lesson taught by A Course in Miracles is not presented for acceptance by any group. The Course does not insist upon its acceptance without regard to practical considerations. Its intended audience is individuals not groups. Readers are discouraged from forming groups,. As theory it is not only fit for application to practical problems this is its purpose. It is not doctrine or doctrinaire, dogma or dogmatic. To treat it as such, as though it were a commandment or a party line, is not understanding and use but misunderstanding and misuse.

If the Course is to be distinguished from established religion this will explain why. If established religion is to understand why it is incompatible with the free spirit of inquiry and thus has earned the distrust and enmity of science, philosophy, psychology, and other fields this explains why. The Course is not doctrine meddling in anybody’s business, group or individual. It is a sharing of mind and heart from another perspective than our own, that can be put to anyone’s use not only for what it teaches but how it teaches it: by making sense with Logic and Love. By setting an example that Free Wills can choose to follow by making sense. With help from the Logic and Love they can access through their own minds and hearts.

This is not a formula for setting up an ideological mass movement of any kind, religious or otherwise. It is Authority from the Reality of Logic and Love that serve every individual, that could never be or do anything authoritarian. It is gentle loving kindness that could never be or do anything coercive, unloving, or unkind.

Is the Course practical?

If the Course does not aim to assert the supremacy of its wisdom over the consciousness of humanity then how can it be expected to be of practical use to humanity? If only one individual puts its lesson to use and truly Forgives, this will undo the delusion our ancestral Mind has brought upon itself. It will end the dream. “Every vote counts.” The Course isn’t handing Free Will a fish. It’s teaching Free Will how to fish. It’s the ultimate affirmation and empowerment of individual-personal Worth: the Authority of Logic and Love from Reality explaining to individuals, where they’re at inside the dream, that anyone of us has the power to awaken our ancestral Mind from its dream.

Is it possible? What is a dream but a state of mind  where anything is possible? If unconsciousness that’s dreaming could make a metauniverse “possible,” where we the projections of a dreaming mind carry its Soul within us, whole and inviolate, animated by the same Force of Energy that animates the universe, then who’s to say that one individual contradicting the lie of guilt that the whole edifice of lies is built upon, can’t bring it all down? Translating theory into practice must involve mind-changing on a scale that’s been role-modeled for us but never yet achieved by us. It must involve self-awareness  brought into intimacy with our role model with such passion that they function as one. There is no possibility that a Free Will compromised by any vestige of self-delusion can truly Forgive. But mind changed and functioning as one with its Guide, with the Voice for Logic and Love, can do it. In theory it’s possible.

When the herd transforms itself into One

When will it be possible? When the conditions that enable it are met: circumstances that have enabled every step forward in Creation since the first step was taken by Logic and Love. The indispensable element of every context that defines purpose and meaning: circumstances in the here and now. What is the gift of the Course? The light that it shines on our circumstances so one individual can take it from there and change them if Free Will chooses. If Free Will abandons its infatuation with the voice of its self-delusion and aligns with the Voice for Reality and Truth.

So that one member of the herd that is humanity may break free from the herd and assert the Truth: that “herd” is a lie. That Child-the-many is a delusion That our ancestral Mind is Child-the-One and all it takes to restore sanity is one. All it takes is for “herd” to do what it does best: to follow wherever it’s led. And if circumstances change that have placed the wrong “guide” at its head -- the self-delusion of Child-the-many -- then exposing the lie will place the right Guide at its head. The right Guide that is the herd itself transformed by its own Free Choice back into one. Self-delusion restored to Truth. Wishful thinking giving way to fact. With the guidance but not the coercion of metaphysics going behind appearances to explain with Logic and Love. With Intuition.

The gift of metaphysics that’s role-modeled by the Course

What does this suggest for how individuals can help to bring about the circumstances that will enable Forgiveness? That we look to personality types. That we follow the wisdom of Isabel Myers, who intuited from Carl Jung’s intuition that personality types are dynamic rather than static. That they are subject to direction and discipline by their hosts. Personality types are composed of preferences among functions that can change. Functions divided between bodies, minds, and feelings that, depending on how the individual configures them, determine how individuals judge their situation. That is, how they understand.

Personality types reliant on body-sensing to understand their world judge humanity’s situation to be the opposite of the situation described by the Course. Judge themselves to be members of a herd or tribe. Accessing their personality’s capacity for Intuition could change that with Intuition’s access to Logic and Love. The gift of metaphysics that’s role-modeled by the Course.

The circumstance that needs to change

Circumstances are always idiosyncratic. Because the essence of circumstances that make up context is always unique to the individual. This is what gives them meaning. The circumstances that produced organic matter on earth -- “life” -- are idiosyncratic, unique to the earth and its situation. A tale told by Sean B. Carroll in A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You (Princeton 2020). The circumstances that produced our universe are idiosyncratic, suggesting that other universes exhibit different physics and that the differences imply the existence of a great many universes -- a “metaverse.”

The choice of the individual to remain deluded by the deception or to gain self-awareness comes down to a preference starting with two functions of personality type: between body-sensing and Intuition. Between seeing ourselves as bodies or seeing ourselves as minds. And ending with two other functions: judging and perceiving. Which do we prefer? If we wish to judge our situation differently so that our circumstances will align with the possibility of true Forgiveness, then the way forward is clear: recognize ourselves as minds not bodies and seek the Truth of our situation through mind-Intuition rather than preferring body-sensing. 

The trouble with humanity’s “feeling” 

Brain matter that registers and processes relations between physical objects, the body and its physical environment, is distinct from mind producing thoughts, from feeling producing empathy. The personality type extravert-sensing-feeling-perceptive (ESFP) can be a suitable stand-in for humanity when generalizing about personality type and its role in mind-changing. It’s all in for body vs. mind. It registers and processes all things physical, i.e. appearances on the surface. Anything beneath the surface escapes its notice. It isn’t felt and doesn’t register. Another’s physical pain registers but if it’s emotional pain that body-sensing can’t detect it makes no impression.

The ’F’ for feeling in the ESFP syndrome isn’t what “feeling” would normally imply -- empathy and compassion. A point where my interpretation and Isabel’s may diverge because my understanding goes beyond the scope of Gifts Differing. As I see it Intuition-Logic and Love-feeling guide thinking-reasoning toward judgment-understanding, much like organic entitles in constant motion acting upon one another. Body-sensing navigates spacetime-matter to keep bodies safe. But when body-sensing teams up with the perceptive function that’s opposite to judging, it can connect with specialness.  With body-brains’ animal herd-will that interferes with thinking-reasoning instead of guiding it.

The trouble with humanity’s “specialness” 

Specialness denies that either thinking or the direction and discipline of judging is needed. What’s needed is itself: one supreme authority without opposition. The impossibility of Freedom without Order. The bogus ideal of “liberty” without limits that fuels political polarization. The ESFP who takes the lure chooses in effect to elevate body-specialness to authoritarian supremacy to the exclusion of introspection, reflection, thinking, feeling, and judgment -- every function of mind needed for understanding and compassion. At great cost to itself in impaired vision and feeling, psychotic denial of reality, separation from valued relationships, lack of self-guidance and self-discipline, and stifled learning, growth, and creativity. “Lord” Vader in lordly isolation on his throne. The apotheosis of humanity's animal brain, the "triumph of the will."

Those of us who recoil from this behavior do so for self-preservation because, without feeling, ESFPs can’t understand. And if they tread on us there’s a good chance they’ll do it again. Not feeling the cost of their missteps and not understanding how it happened, they’ll assign responsibility to us for protesting and carry on unaccountably. And if we stand up for justice we will be smeared. They are not safe to be around. Many of us have had run-ins with ESFPs so we know the type. But if we haven’t noticed the Former Guy, an ESFP, is making sure that we do.

A way to facilitate personality type change

Personality types are supposed to protect us, like the body’s immune system, with failsafe mechanisms against wrongdoing. But this requires that the working parts of personalities function in harmony. In our separated world they don’t. Without feeling which derives from Love we can’t know the difference between right-doing and wrong-doing. Feeling is the wall between right and wrong and in some personality types it’s missing. The result is serial offenders like the Former Guy whose “reality” is the one-dimensional world of entertainment, populated by figures deprived of feelings and the values that go along with them. A “reality” of chaos that aspires to its apotheosis: authoritarian supremacy.

One possible remedy is for ESFPs exercising Free Will to shift their preferences from body-sensing that validates self-identity as body toward mind-intuiting that validates self-identity as mind. I can’t vouch for its effectiveness from personal experience but that may change.

Lunacy on an epic scale

Why is it important?

Because physical appearances and humanity’s body-identifying, body-sensing mindset deluded by spacetime-matter are enormously harmful. A mindset that deprives itself of sensitivity to circumstances beneath appearances deprives itself of feeling essential to compassion, loving kindness, and understanding. The damage isn’t limited to relationship friction or even the communal wreckage that one noisy demagogue can cause. It’s a curse that’s built into the human condition -- historic and universal.

How fundamentally nuts is this? Take another look at circumstances. Circumstances are with us always. They provide meaning from the bottom up: the essential element of the construct that would collapse if it were not grounded. The essential element of presence of mind, the first line of defense against misperception and misjudgment. Against mistake.

Detachment from circumstances commenced our ancestral Mind’s loss of Consciousness. Defined its situation while it deluded itself into recognizing its own shadow-reflection, its own opposite, as an “other.” Surrendered its independent sovereign judgment -- Free Will -- to the delusion so that a substitute will, another “parent,” would find and attach it to better circumstances. The opposite of where it had been so that it would be safe.

So that this couldn’t happen again because now it rules. Alone from the top down instead of sharing governance from the bottom up, grounded in circumstances that might change and rob it of Consciousness again. Rules from the top down where it can never again be blindsided by change because now it is the logic that defines both: its circumstances and change too. Where detachment from circumstances that define Reality from the ground up, rather than attachment, is now the order of the day.

Applause, please

And what is the order of the day? Psychosis. Unreality detached from sanity that can make sense of its circumstances. Recognized by itself not as a sign of madness but as the emblem of cool. Detached from awareness that knows who and where it is -- the very definition of a fool. Finding safety, the why and how of it, in wishful thinking that buries its head in the sand. All of it a magician’s act that accomplishes the impossible with one simple trick: making circumstances disappear. The act of a mind unconscious and delusional: getting rid of the foundation of all of Reality-Creation -- its circumstances. The act of a fool captive to authoritarian supremacy.

This is why it’s important.

Published on Leave a comment on To a Young Friend with a Very Special Talent

Gaslighting that's for fun

Before you and I get to the matter at hand, I just want to remind us both of the importance of coordination. You know, being able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Now, that’s never been a problem for me. But I do have a problem with something else, and I’m sure you’re just the one to help with this. Being able to walk and fart at the same time.

The word all over is that you can do anything and fart at the same time. I’ve worked so hard at this, and I just can’t seem to do it. I hope I never see another can of beans! They say you don’t even need to eat beans; it just comes naturally. What an incredible talent! I’m so jealous. I wish I could be just like you and sit down to dinner with a room full of people all dressed up in white tie and tails and evening gowns and light up the place. Awesome! Everyone looking shocked, disgusted, holding their noses, excusing themselves to go throw up or just throwing up right there in their Vichyssoise.

We should wait to get your sister's opinion because she’s really good at describing vomit. Maybe it would have a more dramatic effect if people threw up in their caviar. What do you think? But, of course, I’m talking to the world record holder for throwing up and farting at the same time. Now, that’s coordination!

Next week I hope we can have another great discussion like this. Maybe about how important it is to always be grown up and display good taste. That would be very timely because I have no talent for that, and you don’t either. Being really coordinated is no help here at all. Anyway, I don’t want you to change. I’ll never be grown up and have good taste, and if you’re grown up, we can’t be friends. So, I’m counting on us both being rotten little kids forever so we can be best friends forever. Here – have a nice steaming hot bowl of beans. Let ‘er rip!

Gaslighting that's not so much fun

People who think they’re bodies call themselves “realists.” People who identify with their minds think of themselves as “idealists.” There are a lot more “realists” than “idealists.” Still, that’s one of the main ways people divide themselves up because their differences show up everywhere. Like in how things are explained, how they’re governed or managed, how they’re decided. Realists being more numerous doesn’t make them right, but then the way things are going it doesn’t look like either one is right. Body-realist or mind-idealist = perfection to some, a big mess to others.

Have you thought about body vs. mind since I brought this up? Once a person decides which they prefer it’s pretty hard to change. It has consequences for themselves and others, too, because what will prevent consequences we don’t want may just be if idealists make better use of their minds. Body-realists tend to be OK with things as they are, and since they let their bodies do their thinking for them, they’re not likely to change. If idealists using their minds do change and get it right, maybe there’s hope.

The part of the body that does the thinking for a lot of “realists” is the base of the brain that sits at the top of the spine. It’s the part of the brain that connects us to our ancestors who swung from trees and lived on bananas. It’s actually called our “reptilian” brain, so I guess dinosaurs figure in there somewhere, too. It’s never evolved, and it doesn’t actually think. It directs us to act from instinct. You know, forget about being fancy with clever reasoning: just pounce on prey or snatch food or a mate, or beat up an enemy. Or run away if your enemy is bigger. “Fight or flight.”

King of the beasts

You’d think even realists who identify with their bodies wouldn’t want their behavior to be ruled by something so primitive. But there was a time and a place when a lot of them made a point of it. When they caused a whole lot of trouble -- 1930’s Germany. They associated instinct with action and action with having a will of steel and a will of steel with power that always dominates. That puts the “winner” on top with no more competition because everyone else is defeated. All by letting themselves be ruled by their bodies – by instinct acting -- instead of by their minds and hearts – by reason thinking and affect feeling. Letting themselves be ruled by instinct rooted in a part of the brain that links us to animals. That’s how Nazis “thought,” and when they let it turn them into an unthinking mob that attacked its neighbors, they started World War II.

The way they glorified their awful attitude was calling it “The Triumph of the Will.” You can Google it. It sought to put all of humanity under the yoke of one person’s mindless animal instinct. Its name was “Hitler.”

You’d think that everyone would be horrified but they aren’t. There’s a whole strain of art, music, literature, philosophy, and political ideology that glorifies “blood and soil,” tribal loyalty, racial supremacy, right-brained mysticism, and such. It’s what motivated the mob that attacked the capitol in Washington on January 6. All friendly to body and hostile to mind. All dangerous nonsense. But if you identify with your body instead of your mind, this is where it can take you.

Let's be rotten little kids forever

So, with your principal’s honor roll mind and talent for writing, maybe becoming a mind-idealist will make more sense and someday they’ll erect a statue in your honor at Andrews Park. To attract pigeons, and it will be engraved “Tomb of the Unknown Nobody.” OK, I’m being silly. Of course, it will say “World Class Coordinator.”

I’m sorry. I was trying to set an example for mindful idealism and got distracted. Not growing up is so much more fun. All the same, “World Class Coordinator” sounds pretty cool!

I have to go now. My limousine is waiting. I’ve been invited to a Hollywood dinner party where everyone will be dressed in white tie and tails and evening gowns, and they’re serving Vichyssoise. They told me there will be a young guest who will demonstrate her special talent. I can’t wait!

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Published on 1 Comment on Getting Rid of Guilt: The Possibility and Impossibility of Forgiveness

Logic and Feeling cannot be separate

Mind-thoughts and Love-feelings are both corrupted in our unreal, material world. Feelings are corrupted by non-being’s shadow code that doesn’t just rely on deceptions made “true” by flawed Logic but also convincingly by corrupted-manipulated feelings. How can both be corrected when feelings seem unrelated to thoughts? When what corrects mind can seem powerless to change feelings? Are they even related?

Jesus in A Course in Miracles makes Logic clear how to un-corrupt thinking and by inference how to rationalize the relationship between thinking and feeling so that uncontrolled feelings don’t contradict Reason. I.e. so they don’t contradict Logos, a representation of “God” favored by ancient Greek, Judaic, and Christian thought.

Favored also here with one possible distinction. “Logos” here is Logic / Authority-Judgment, and its definition centers on Reciprocity, the essence of Love. The interconnections of Logic’s implications, that govern all of Reality-Creation, are accomplished by the Reciprocity of Love: giving and giving back. Just as Mind and Love cannot be separate, neither can Logic and Feeling be separate. This is the attribute of “God” that undercuts the false premises, the misperceptions that deny the Logic of Authority-Judgment: its infinitely benevolent Reality and Truth.

Reversing the psychology of guilt’s projection

Brain-body sensing instincts that are tied to fight-or-flight fear, to food-procreation satisfaction, and other emotions attracting and repelling, are rooted in the origins of body-life, in the instinct for individual survival, in species propagation, dominance and protection. All reinforce the psychology of guilt-fear and hatred rooted in the origin of the unconscious Child-mind’s illusion, his dream of our material world. Our bodies’ sensing and feelings of guilt-fear manifest the Child-mind’s psychology of guilt-fear.

This defines the relationship between body-sensing emotions and emotions associated with the Child-mind’s psychology of guilt. They are all of one piece. They are not separate, unrelated. One produced the other; one is dependent on the other. Correcting source-one will remove the dependent-other.

Correcting the Child-mind’s psychology of guilt-fear will reverse its signature projection of guilt-fear. It will withdraw the illusion-dream back within Child-mind and cause its manifestation to de-materialize, i.e. to disappear. Corrupted feelings hard-wired into the human psyche from the origin of life will then align with Logic / Authority-Judgment, i.e. with Reason. It will happen when Child-mind corrects error, regains Consciousness with help from his Parents-Innocence, and ends the illusion-dream. It will happen when sensory perception and the material world of appearances that upholds it – when brain-body sensing -- is ended.

Until then, the practice of “Forgiveness” in our material world can never be free of contradictory feelings of guilt-fear and hate that are hard-wired into brain-body sensing. True Forgiveness requires an act of Child-Psyche that stops the projection of guilt. That opens Child-mind to recognition of his Innocence and triggers his awakening to Consciousness. It’s an act preceded and enabled by his choice of the correct Guide, the Holy Spirit, his link to Reality-Creation and Truth, and by his abandonment of the ego unreality-untruth, the wrong guide.

Logic / Authority-Judgment protects Innocence and Freedom

When guilt-projection stops, the “other” ceases to be “there.” Because all “they” are – all “we” are – is a projection of guilt by an unconscious dreaming Child. “They” disintegrate like the hobo in Polar Express even though they evoked feelings that seemed to verify their existence. That seemed to verify that they’re “there” because feelings seemed to connect us.

When projection of guilt stops, when the “other” is gone, it’s because self discovers that there’s no guilt at its source to project. The “other” became instrumental in recognizing the truth of self-Innocence by removing the object of projection, the illusion of an “other” to project guilt onto. The lure of an “other” who can be the object-target of projection perpetuates the act of self-punishment for guilt. The act of mis-identification of self as the embodiment of guilt that must be projected out-onto “others” to get rid of it. Projection of guilt imagined as lethal attack against others is the ego’s perversion of the Child’s otherwise harmless attempt to recognize himself as Innocent.

Recognition of self-Innocence requires Intuition from the Holy Spirit, the gift of Reason: Intuition that the Reality-Truth of Logic / Authority-Judgment is that it is for the Protection of Innocence and Freedom. That the Order and Discipline of Logic are not meant for condemnation. Not meant for oppression, control, guilt or captivity. These are ego-projections of guilt by an unconscious Child not in his right mind. They are projections by our corrupted minds that alienate us from the Will of Benevolence that would free us. That would restore Innocence and remove the need for Forgiveness.

Projection of guilt is guaranteed to fail

Projection of guilt entraps Child-mind / humanity in cyclical attempts to reclaim Innocence that are guaranteed to fail. Getting rid of guilt by expelling it from mind is impossible: thought cannot be separated from mind its source. Irrationality is not the way to reclaim Innocence. Insanity is not the way to reclaim Freedom.

There’s no “other” to project guilt onto. There’s no guilt to project because Logic / Authority-Judgment and the Child’s Parents, Mind-Love Innocence, could not put it there in the first place. Authority is the Necessity of Logic’s laws of cause and effect. Neither Necessity nor Order, prerequisites for Freedom, can be dictatorship or captivity. The lies of the ego non-being are perversions of Logic and its laws as captor not liberator, of its Judgment, its protection of Innocence, as projection of guilt.

These are two seminal errors of corrupted mind-thought and Love-feeling: Logic as captor, Authority-Judgment as projection of guilt. Thus corrupted, Child-mind then “chose” ego guide’s insane thought system, accepted ego’s illogic as captor, and projected “guilt.” Undoing the ego’s lies requires denying that Logic is captor, that Authority-Judgment is projection of guilt.

Forgiveness is undoing the Big Lie

What is the root of the ego non-being’s deception? Mischaracterization of Logic / Authority-Judgment. Perversion of Logic’s Innocence into guilt. Perversion of God / Love into illogic-ego / hate. One of five laws of chaos cited by the Course that disrupt our world. The Big Lie that alienates us from our Parents and from one another with guilt, fear, and hatred.

Forgiveness is undoing the Big Lie:

(1) The assumption of Judgment-guilt that isn’t here within us.
(2) The projection of Judgment-guilt to reclaim Innocence that isn’t possible.
(3) The assumption of “others:” objects of Judgment-guilt that aren’t “there” outside of us, that were only put “there” to sustain the illusion.

Forgiveness is recognizing the Truth about Logic / Authority-Judgment: Love-Innocence, the opposite of ego-guilt, fear and hate.

Forgiveness is freely choosing the right Guide

Forgiveness is a matter of free choice: Do we choose the Holy Spirit for our guide or the ego? The Intuition of mind or the sensing of body? The Judgment, Order, and Discipline of one personality type or the perception without Judgment of another? Choice requires Free Will, the Child’s unique gift to Creation. To the Creation and Reciprocation of Worth, the purpose and meaning of Creation that depends on the Child’s Free Will. In alignment with Logic’s laws of cause and effect and always with guidance from our Parents, Mind-Love, who gave their Child Free Will.

In their interactions with their Child through the Holy Spirit our Parents consistently role-model respect for it. It is an example we are meant to follow. The ego invades; the Holy Spirit guides when asked, consciously or sub-consciously. As the Course says, the ego’s voice always speaks first and it’s always wrong.

Can a Child endowed with Free Will and a central role in Creation do his job by joining a “flock?” Freely choose in Reality or in unreality by “surrendering?” Think about it.

Published on Leave a comment on From Anguish to Comfort: Accessing Intuition to Deal with Loneliness

Getting beyond appearances with Intuition

Isabel Myers believes that just because we get good use out of some elements of our personalities doesn’t mean we can’t get use out of all the elements. If accessing Intuition helps Intuitive Introverts fend off loneliness but Intuition hasn’t been put to much use by Sensing Extraverts, it doesn’t mean they can’t learn to use it. Isabel says so in her book Gifts Differing. Sensing Extraverts have Intuition and can use it to put an end to sadness living alone. Their personality type doesn’t take much interest in people’s internals and it’s time it did.

Sensing Extraverts are gifted with externals. They look outward rather than within to establish what’s real for them, to find Worth and affirm it, and to meet their needs. Sensing types identify with the body rather than with mind which is not matter. They rely on their bodies’ senses to tell them what’s real when they look outward. They do not rely on Intuition. This deprives them of attributes of mind – the inner guidance of Logic, insight, and wisdom – we all need to see beyond appearances. To get at the Truth and Meaning of things that lie behind the distractions and facades imposed on us by our bodies and their physical environment.

Sensing Extraverts get by without concerning themselves with internals, but that changes when they age and social connections dry up. Their internals tell them that this is so. Every time they feel the anguish of loneliness and abandonment, it’s their internals reminding them that they have work to do: to let go of attachments to externals which are only appearances. To get serious about attachments to what aren’t appearances: their real Self, their real Worth, their real companions. Their inner Guide who loves them, wants them to be happy, and will lead them there if they let her know that’s what they truly want of their own Free Will.

"Happiness is an inside job"

If they truly want companionship that will end the anguish of loneliness then they should know that what they truly want is to connect with their Self. With their inner Guide who’s there for them if they choose to connect with her through their own Intuition. In their youth, they may have suspected that “happiness is an inside job.” They may have written it, recited it, without reflecting on it. What it means is when other people can no longer provide companionship, there’s an alternative. An even better source of companionship than other people that Intuitive Introverts are blessed with: the Truth that we are never alone. That no one, including Sensing Extraverts, need ever be alone.

I’ve spoken in the past of the inner Guide that Christianity refers to as the Holy Spirit. I’ve suggested that Sensing Extraverts reach out to their inner Guide – to connect with their Self so they don’t have to be so dependent on others – by putting their thoughts and feelings of the moment into words. By bringing them to the surface and working with them. Teasing implications and meaning out of them by letting their minds reflect on them. Realizing that every thought, every feeling, is led forward by their implications to a deeper understanding of where they’re coming from and what they mean. To the message of Love and Hope they have for us when we delve into them and allow them to speak to us.

Experiencing emotions like grief and abandonment without inquiring into them is missing opportunities. To find and articulate the purpose and meaning of Life. The purpose that Life has for each of us subjectively, individually. Inquiring into feelings means being with them, letting them speak to us of their own accord, unforced, through the spontaneity, the Free Will of our Intuition. Through the Memory that all of humanity shares.

Serving a cause worth living for and not being alone

Where our inner Guide is to be found is not in anything to do with “social.” With professional resumes that detail our service to groups and their agendas. With social connections and the broad sweep of history’s flawed ideologies. With the “broad sweep” of anything. It’s in the specific circumstances of our individual lives in the moment. Accompanied by our most intimate thoughts and feelings. These frame the context Logic needs to answer the questions that trouble us: Where are we and what are we doing here? What is our Purpose? Where is Meaning? How can we turn the pain and despair of loneliness into fulfillment instead of emptiness? Into a sense that we serve a cause worth living for and in doing so we are not alone?

The key to getting started is putting thoughts and feelings into words. Composing sentences that require thought, that open us up to what’s going on inside our minds where the questions are, where the pain is coming from. Letting them lead us forward through their implications to deeper understanding, deeper connections, until there is reciprocation. Until our minds open and become accessible to another Self hearing us, responding to us. Until our awareness is no longer limited to bodies taking up space in rooms but is instead liberated by Mind to explore an expanding universe of possibilities. Our other Self, our Real Self, is there because our Intuition is there. The Sensing Extravert’s Intuition is there.

I describe what Intuition is and what it does. We all have Intuition. Sensing Extraverts’ Intuition hasn’t been exercised much over the years not from negligence but simply because of their personality type. Isabel’s theory is well served by Intuition and it tells us that they can fix that.

Questions of purpose and meaning always begin with circumstances

When Sensing Extraverts write what’s on their minds what they will be bringing to awareness is their circumstances in the moment. They will be examining their lives in all their extraordinariness and banality down to the last detail, as if they were looking at them through a magnifying glass. If they wonder what they would have to say to their typewriters, their computers, this is my answer. Getting at purpose and meaning must begin with where we’re at. Because without context Logic has nothing to work with. The philosophy built on this premise has a name: it’s called “existentialism.”

When Alice B. Toklas asked Gertrude Stein on her deathbed, “What’s the answer?”, Gertrude is said to have answered, “What’s the question?” It’s taken as a joke but it’s right on. Questions of purpose and meaning always begin and end with circumstances. With circumstances that are experienced, i.e. lived. Subjectively not objectively: with personal hopes, fears, desires, ideals, passions, pleasures and hurts, vulnerability and wounds, perceptions and beliefs, rationality and craziness. A point I’ve tried to make in Origin and Meaning: the Logic of Everything (April 4).

It’s hard for Sensing Extraverts to be subjective rather than objective. Being Introspective, self-aware. They can change that by accessing their Introvert. Any Introvert can help.

Our circumstances are raw material for purpose and meaning and there’s plenty of it in every life. Getting a handle on where we want to be headed now begins with being intimate with our situation, the details of our circumstances. With the specifics of what our mind-Logic and our heart-feelings have to say about them. Every observation we put in writing will lead to another observation. We will be led by Logic and by value, what our minds’ reflections produce and by the feelings they evoke.

The dynamic of conversation with our Self

Our individual worlds may seem static at first. Not being used to this Sensing Extraverts may even feel resistance. But as our Intuition opens up, as reflections come of their own accord, there will be movement. Our worlds will expand. They will be less and less anchored to concrete physical reality and more and more attuned to conversation, a dynamic-reciprocal flow of thoughts that won’t let us rest until the points our inner Guide wants us to have are made. Until the gifts of insight that incubate with yearning are brought to life through Intuition.

If I were the inner Guide of a Sensing Extravert suffering with loneliness I would be encouraged. Because I would know that I’m loved. That my host wants to be close. Yearns to connect, to communicate, and be involved with me. Other people fill hearts with love, too. But they come and go, don’t they? They’re not always available. And even when they are they can make us think we’re better off alone.

Our inner Guide is our connection to our Real Self, our Real Parents, our Real Home. She’s always available. My inner Guide has expanded into a spiritual-personal family: spiritual, human, and animal friends inhabiting a Temenos of soaring moonlit clouds, lakes, mountains, forests and streams. Lighthouses and great trees all connecting me with Mind and Love. Aligning my thoughts with Logic that leads me purposefully, joyfully back Home.

Feeling better

Want to feel better? That’s what our inner Guide is all about. It’s her whole purpose. So if you’re a lonely Sensing Extravert get to work! Your Intuition is waiting. She’s waiting.