Skip to content

From an old channel island, the new rises out of the mist
hovering over the water in the stillness
borderline
between the graduated blue of the sky
reaching up to the quarter moon on high
and the textured blue of the ocean below
dotted with specks of white

Bodies navigating trails down the waterless slopes
voices caught
by the wind, birds gliding on the wind,
pine branches dancing in the wind
come to rest and fall silent.

In the shadow of my relief from the sun
who is to notice?
Who wills chronicle to life and adds notations
to its log? As if another will, long hence
would need to know. Would care to know.

What unnamed hand scrawls its signature
on the record of time
soul of anonymity, here and gone?
Self or opposite? Host or parasite?
Is it possible to choose?

Can’t I just be whatever for a little while
and be done with it?
“Easy come, easy go. As it came, let it go.”
Is that what the view, the wind, the stillness has to say?

I’m here for a little while
Enjoy me while you can.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alta Vicente, Palos Verdes
Monday 06/13/22

In the shade of the aspens
over my two-wheeled cart I look to the sky:
You may not take this from me!
The gift for work and play in my Garden of Creation
given by my Parents with Love

To be free in the great outdoors,
beneath open skies in the sun,
attending to my children,
my Creations and my cart, the stuff of delight.
The stuff of permanence

Larry is still there, curled up in bed with a good book
Saddle on its stand beside the grand piano
The dining table and his boyhood bed
Magazines stacked from a career in writing
Equipment stacked from adventures
rafting down the wilderness
And the shelves with games
all of it still there.

Helen and Max are still there, with Clara Jane.
Lula Mae, my brother and sister and the dog.
All there because I was there
And I related to it, which makes it forever.
15 Glacier Lily Road and 1126 Greentree Road
all still there because I related to it
and Relationship is Love

I go back because the Love that I am
sees through what left to feeling that never left
A Child that’s Relationship misses it,
cries out for it, wraps his arms around it
Around what’s there and gone.

Around The Home that left and never left.
The Home where we are and will return to.
To the Love that’s you. My darlings, my friends.
The Feeling. Relationship.

I come to leave-taking.
To thought moved by feeling because I relate.
Because I am attachments under the sun
beside my two-wheeled cart,
loving and relating
in my Garden of Creations and relationships.

In the joy of Love and friendships forever.

The spoiler

Maybe it was because she was born at the turn of the 20th century, in 1900. Her thoughts and feelings always teetering on the edge, drawn back into the 19th century. The glory days of the Clays of Kentucky, her ancestors -- statesmen, aristocrats. That gave my mother her gift for reflection. We both liked to reflect when the meal was done. Her gaze would drift out the window, through the trees into the sky beyond, and she was gone. Lost in thought. Lost to memory.

She could have gone on forever about her childhood. In a small college town in the hills of Western Pennsylvania, her family a single working mother with an only child. Church, piano, and friends. Silliness and laughter. College football and dances at the Fort Pitt Hotel in Pittsburgh. Familiar names and faces waving back from trolleys. She knew them all. An ideal of Utopian innocence that became the Utopian innocence of my childhood. Not particularly Utopian or innocent in either case, yet transcendent.

She wouldn’t go on forever if the subject was herself. She said she was afraid of what she would find if she looked too far within. Her voice went to singsong. And then it was over. The reflections stopped. Utopian beacons of innocence OK, guilt lurking in the shadows not OK. Leave it be.

Leave everything be that’s actually interesting. About ourselves and the people in our lives. Be content instead with what’s on the surface. With trinkets and dog food. Let guilt or whatever it is smash up the furniture in the darkness unmolested. Keep your distance.  Don’t be unsociable. Mustn’t shine a light. Mustn’t disturb the demon. Mustn’t intrude with the Truth. 

The world of personality types unexamined

Personality type theory intrudes. With analysis that would expose the fearsome thing within clinically, objectively. Deprive it of its animal passion dispassionately. The mindless will of the beast that resides in our animal brain: allegiance to the tribe, blood and soil. Honoring the code of loyalty. Unquestioning loyalty to Plato’s Cave and its Cave-master. To its unquestioned authority.

All of it a masquerade. A farce that mocks us with its provocations for being unable or unwilling to understand it. For being afraid to go there, afraid of the Truth. For being so easily separated from all that’s dear to us by a con artist behind a silly mask. A mask that goads us into making something of nothing. Whose only weapon is the treasure that we hand over to it. The cache of powers and abilities, valuables and talents, that is us. Our identity. Our Self.

Projected in two parts into a strange new world. An alternate “reality” of body-brains divided into personality types guaranteed to keep the farce going. Into compositions of parts that take the stage each in its own costume with its own tribal insignia. Ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, function and rank, talents, tastes, predatory styles, family mythology, and more. A few revealing individuality, the rest hiding it behind uniforms with numbers. Clones marching in lockstep.

All at the ready to manage the differences without understanding “there” or how or why they got there. Without self-awareness. All at the ready not to manage the differences but to bring them into conflict. To imagine that this must be their purpose and so to throw themselves into the melee with abandon. Into chaos, the state of a world of personality types unknown, unexamined, misunderstood. 

Schiller’s choice: idealism or realism

Myers-Briggs personality type theory evolved from the disciplines of philosophy and psychology. Specifically from the practice and intuition of the Swiss analytical psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961) and, before him, the ideas of the German poet, philosopher, and playwright Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805). Jung’s Psychological Types (1921) is the first formulation of the basic types popularized by Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers: introvert-extravert, intuition-sensing, thinking-feeling. [Isabel Myers, Gifts Differing (1980)]

The choice presented to the observer logically takes the form of competition between two Myers-Briggs personality opposites: intuitive-reflective thinking vs. body-sensing feeling. The former inherently introverted, introspective-subjective, the latter inherently extraverted-objective. The choice is thus between types fashioned by sources whose reality resides within Mind, i.e. the world of thoughts-ideas, or in the external world of bodies-brains and other objects discernible by bodies’ senses.

Myers-Briggs captures the deep divide within the self-deluded Mind of the one Child, and therein lies the brilliance of its intuition. In the clarity of opposition between two sets of faculties, one concentrated in INTJ, the other in ESFP: introversion-reflection-thinking-judging vs. extraversion-sensing-feeling-perceiving. The former entirely mind-centered, the latter entirely body-centered, although to say that feeling can be entirely distinguished from thinking is an oversimplification. Not so but close enough.

INTJ is associated with the conscious thinking of mind that subjectifies. ESFP is associated with the unthinking will of emotion, seated in the body’s animal brain, that objectifies. INTJ is associated with the deliberation and civilizing conscience of Logic and Love that resides in mind. ESFP is associated with action and its socializing discipline seated in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. INTJ is associated with being, ESFP with doing. INTJ with right, ESFP with win. Share vs. own-possess. Affirm vs. rule. Empower from the bottom up, control from the top down. Individual Worth vs. group-tribal supremacy.

The choice is between “idealism” and “realism,” two irreconcilable worlds described by Schiller as “. . . an opposition which is responsible for the fact that no work of the mind and no deed of the heart can make a decisive success with one class, without thereby drawing upon it a condemnation from the other. This opposition is, without doubt, as old as the beginning of culture. . . .” [quoted in C. G. Jung, Psychological Types (Must Have Books 2019, p. 168)].

Personality type is bias.

The mind that imagines itself to be above the fray, objective, dispassionate, and so qualified to heal the separation, only adds to the turmoil. Personality type sitting in judgment of personality types is a fool. The bias of personality type compromises the Logic of explanation. Turns discussion among friends into debate among competitors.

Plato’s virtuous philosopher who blunders into the Cave may view himself as Truth-bearing sunlight, but to the menagerie of personality types within he’s just another personality type. Who happens to be Truth-bearing sunlight, but who asked for Truth? Who wants sunlight? They don’t or they wouldn’t be there. If the houselights need to be turned up on their fun, their delusion, it’ll happen when someone gets around to it.

So let the author confess and maybe we can get on with it. Let the reader put whatever the author has to say into context where it might add to understanding instead of misunderstanding. Are you eager to listen or itching to retaliate? In either case it could be because I’m an introvert. An intuitive-thinking-judging introvert. Either the thoughtful, compassionate, accessible, respectful, lovable INTJ or the moralizing, superior, elitist, aloof, interventionist, hated INTJ. All depends on your point of view. On your personality type. If you see me as one or the other it would be because I am one or the other.

Fetch!

How does my bias affect my judgment? According to Jung, the American philosopher William James (1842-1910) “was the first to indicate . . . the extraordinary importance of temperament in the shaping of philosophical thinking,” and what James noticed was that the idealist and “empiricist” (realist) “believes the other to be inferior to itself.” [quoted in Jung, op. cit. 373-374).

I, the idealist, believe that “realists” are fools. Chasing after material objects their senses detect without realizing that they’re playing fetch. Without realizing that the objects are their own tail, put there by their own bodies’ senses, directed by their own corrupted minds. Being chased for a purpose: so they’ll make fools of themselves. So their easily distractable minds won’t realize that they’re canines on a leash. And the figure at the other end of the leash is amusing itself at their expense. Keeping them from the Truth: that it, their bodies, and their fascinating material universe, are an illusion. Action-comics escapist nonsense. A flimsy, one-dimensional joke that I find genuinely amusing when it isn’t horrifying. This is how my temperament affects my judgment.

One or the “other”?

Delving within to uncover the mysteries of the human Psyche with personality type theory has another drawback besides bias. It implicitly reinforces a lie. One of the central pillars that hold up an entire edifice of lies, the alternate “reality” that we call home. “Life” on “earth,” each an illusion. The premise that we are isolated-separated bodies with brains inhabiting a material world of objects organic and inorganic. A world of interaction among individual selves and “others.” An illusion because it’s a logical impossibility. It can’t be.

The designation of personality types for purposes of analysis necessarily objectifies them. It recognizes them as “others” separate from our one ancestral mind when logically there can only be one ancestral Mind. A Mind that metaphysics tells me is a Child. The Child of Parents who reside in Reality linked to our alternate “reality” by a sequence of cause and effect.

A Child who was given a critical role in Creation: the role of Free Choice. Who lost consciousness and mistook its own shadow-opposite for a separate self. Who was thereby misled into projecting a perverted version of itself into an alternate “reality” -- the dream that is our material world -- to escape Reality. Who must now pass through this world to gain maturity and the competence to perform its role. Who must, with the help of its projections -- us -- regain Consciousness.

The underlying Reality

If humanity is to do its part it can’t repeat the Child’s mistake. It must recognize that Reality is one Child-Mind and there are no “others.” It must stop objectifying its own dark side as an “other.” And it must stop making its own dark side and the dark sides of “others” real by projecting unwanted, painful aspects of itself onto “others.”

Unless personality type analysis recognizes the underlying Reality of one ancestral Mind, one Child, at the outset; unless it takes a position against objectifying any type as an “other,” it will be misunderstood. It will perpetuate the cycle of misperception and misjudgment instead of achieving its purpose: to break the cycle with Understanding.

Myers=Briggs doesn’t inquire into its origin in metaphysics. It doesn’t ask or explain why or how it came about beyond the study of human psychology within the physical environment defined by sensory perception -- humanity’s “reality.” Beyond spontaneous insights from humanity’s sixth sense, the voice that can’t be silenced. These are my speculations. Myers-Briggs stands on the accuracy of its formulation -- on how well it aligns with subjective experience and perception. That is, on whether it makes sense and delivers results, and it does. 

The nature of feeling 

There are two types of feeling, one that’s an essential part of thinking, the other that’s opposed to thinking. Values required for evaluation are rooted in feeling, and evaluation is required for reasoning that supports the choices and decisions of judgment. Logic and Love can’t function independently and neither can thinking-reasoning and feeling-evaluation. For the same reason: one completes the other. To be a thinking type in the Myers-Briggs sense would be to limit judgment to quantitative measurements without input from subjective values, the incomplete “reasoning” of a machine. If personality type categories are to represent complete human functions then thinking requires feeling.

The brain’s amygdala -- our animal-reptilian brain -- is a source of unevolved emotion that ties back to pre-human ancestors and also to tribal-predatory passion. Which makes it a source for body-sensing’s feeling-sensation and reasoning-evaluation both. Yet it makes more sense for this source to be associated with the body-sensing type than the mind-centered thinking type. Animal will is notoriously opposed to thinking. It’s the cherished ideal of those who march in lock step to the force of “nature.” To the Triumph of the Will over all opposition. Body-sensing types opposed to thinking.

The 5-Factor theory: Myers-Briggs in reverse

Albert Einstein once observed that scientists aren’t strong in Logic. Logic is the faculty of Mind that enables analysis; that in turn fits parts together in logical order to form explanation; that in turn enables understanding. Its function is to establish purpose and meaning from the baseline condition. To establish context, not to reason what to do about it which is a separate faculty of Mind.

A good illustration of Einstein’s observation is the so-called “5-Factor” theory of personality type. The theory and its five factors -- extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism -- claim scientific legitimacy by its use of quantitative measurements. As if this alone legitimizes its “quest for knowledge.” It can’t if their accuracy and relevance to the subject are open to question. Quantitative measurements can’t be any more conducive to legitimacy than the qualitative analysis that went into the other theory. Not if the subject is forces beyond the observable universe that shape the human Psyche.

The difference between the two theories is the difference between mind-centric and body-centric. Specifically the difference between the qualitative intuition of subjectivity which can’t be verified by sensory perception and quantitative measurements which can. The Logic of the Myers-Briggs types is based on the empirical practice of psychology as well as the a priori Logic of philosophy. Both solid analytical ground for their subject. To suggest that the 5-Factor theory is more “scientific” for being quantitative is to demean any analysis that can’t be quantitative.

Spontaneous intuition plays a prominent part in every field; science included. Intuition couldn’t have played a part in the 5-Factor theory if Jung and Myers-Briggs came first. What did play a part was retaliation: the definition of an alternate theory by its opposite. Which is all that the 5-Factor theory is: not original thinking from anywhere but a copycat version of Myers-Briggs in reverse. The difference between the two theories is the difference between sense and nonsense.

A manifesto of tribal dominance

What are its “factors” but a transparent ploy by bias? To redirect humanity’s self-identity away from the possibility of mind-awareness and individuality suggested by the intuition of Myers-Briggs back toward the body-awareness and collectivity of the herd. Back toward “nature:” the beast swinging from trees. What are the five factors but deceptions:

  • “Extraversion” that leaves out introversion would make of introversion an unnamed, unrecognized subset of itself. The “logic” of which can only be numbers that confirm that, yes, there are more extraverts than introverts. And so extraverts “win” and whoever “wins” dominates. The law of the animal will. Numbers deployed in service to the irrational.
  • “Agreeability” is sociability required by tribal conformity that triumphs over independent judgment required by individual character, honesty, and integrity. Agreeability is smiling, ass-kissing obeisance to authority, superficiality that masks its mindless animal will. Incapable of trusting or being trusted. Positive on the surface, something very different underneath.
  • “Openness” is the pose of inclusiveness and accessibility adopted by sensory perception. “Open” in the exhilaration of discovery to the world of its five senses, closed to the Logic and Love of Understanding, purpose and meaning, from its sixth sense. The triumph of matter and senselessness over mind and sense. Of body-sensing over mind-intuition.
  • “Conscientiousness” is the tribe’s self-congratulatory feeling for its own: tenderness toward its children and specialness toward its members. Set off against the unfeeling that it directs toward “others,” the competition: indifference, insensitivity and cruelty, rage and hatred. Self-justification, the false innocence of helpless victimhood that masks harmfulness and guilt. The absence of Love.
  • “Neuroticism” is psychosis -- detachment from reality -- that affirms the root of psychological pain not in Mind corrupted by self-delusion but in neurons of the brain contaminated by chemicals. That would relegate any dissent from independent judgment against the unquestioned authority of “agreeability” to the status of mental illness.

The 5-Factor theory is five values shared and reinforced by tribe. A manifesto of tribal identity over one Self, supremacy over other tribes, and dominance over individuals. Crushing the spirit out of individuality, the atrocity that is authoritarian supremacy and the global threat to democracy and world order. The opposite of science’s vaunted objectivity and anything but “conscientious.” It is the work of a con artist. A farce.

The 5-Factor theory’s real intent

If there is bias in the choice between theories it is the bias of personality type that’s built into the claim of every field whether “subjective” or “objective.” Mine is the bias of the INTJ type. But the so-called “more scientific” theory has its own bias: the extraverted objective body-sensing feeling type. Which accounts for Einstein’s observation that Logic is not the strong suit of scientists: they’re letting bodies’ senses dominate their “thinking” instead their minds. Instead of mind over matter they put their faith in matter over mind. A logical absurdity.

The 5-Factor theory may present itself as an alternative to the idealist Jung / Myers-Briggs theory but the realist’s actual intent is to replace it. Their opposition is part of a larger philosophical divide that’s been with us forever and may go on forever so long as realists cling to their five senses and fear their sixth.

Myers-Briggs is on solid ground

It bears repeating that the mindset of science is grounded in the religion of sensory perception. In the unquestioned supremacy of the body’s senses -- taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound -- to establish the baseline condition. Thereby denying any but a tangential role for the sixth sense of intuition. For a perspective not grounded in sensory perception that our sixth sense routinely reminds us is there. Which makes of science not a mindset grounded in Logic but in professional and institutional bias as irrational as any it’s had to deal with from its ancient enemy, the Church.

It bears repeating that personality type theory that’s grounded in the Logic of mind-centered philosophy, corroborated by the practice and intuition of analytical psychology, is on far more solid ground, more accurate and more to be trusted, than theory that relies on the quantitative measurements of a body-centered science that distrusts the intuition and Logic of Mind.

Captive to the dark lord of the body

Freudian psychoanalysis was earthbound. Centered on physiological causes of behavior termed “neurotic” because neurons -- brain chemistry -- explained it. Freud’s protégé, Carl Jung, broke with his mentor to look elsewhere, into what mind had to reveal about the condition of the human Psyche instead of mindless, procreative urges of the body. The distinction between mind- and body-centered psychology brought about a seismic shift in orientation away from humanity identified with tribes, disciplined by the conformity of belonging, to humanity identified with individuals liberated, enabled, and empowered by family.

The shift didn’t go far enough to liberate Jung from an earthbound perspective. But turning away from the body’s five senses to mind’s sixth sense did liberate others who followed his lead. The lead of a personality type now flooded with insights into what caused his seismic break with Freud: the baffling difference in their personality types that impeded communication and understanding and yet accounted for a remarkable intuitive grasp of moving parts that make up the personality. The psychological equivalent of physics breaking down the atom, opening up a new world of possibilities for analysis and discovery. Not without resistance, because even though analysis guided by Logic-Love from the sixth sense has made inroads, every field remains captive to the tyranny of the five senses. To the dark lord of the body.

“Fate” isn’t happenstance.

Hence the appearance of body-centered competition with Jung’s mind-centered personality type theory. The 5-Factor system that matches the number of senses that produced it. Beginning with “agreeability” that, like the other components has but one overriding purpose: to pull humanity’s identity back from the Jung / Myers-Briggs system’s focus on the individuality to tribe. Because this is how the mind of one Child corrupted by its opposite, Child-the-many, views itself. Not as an individual but as a group. Not as an individual with self-awareness and Free Choice, guided by deliberation, but as an animal-herd willed by instinct, driven by emotion.

It's a mistake to think that because evolution seems to progress by happenstance that it’s not willed by mind. It is willed by mind but in a state that’s captive to delusion. And it’s for us, its projections inhabiting a mad dream, with guidance from Logic-Love, to help break the cycle of happenstance, restore order, and bring it back to Reality.

The captivity is intentional. Whether we are aware of it or not. It is willed by Mind in a state that’s not functioning properly. That’s corrupted -- out of its mind. And the will that won’t allow us to understand who we are, that insists that we can’t be individuals supported by family, that we can only be tribes forcing their members into conformity, competing with one another for dominance, destroying one another in a mad quest to rule without opposition, to eliminate competition, is anything but happenstance. Is anything but the accidents and mistakes that define evolution as we know it. It’s purposeful. And when it shows up in the guise of “agreeability,” all good-guy likability and humor, it does not wish us well. It means to keep us captive to what it is and all that it is: self-delusion. Mistaken identity. The idea that we are who and what we aren’t: our opposites.

The only “factors” that matter: Logic and Love

By abandoning the straits of physiology in Freudian psychology Jung’s sixth sense took a first step toward accessing another perspective. The perspective of Logic-Love that never left the Mind that’s mistaken. The perspective that never deluded itself into mistaken identity. That recognizes us only for who we are and not for who we aren’t. And offers the choice of a guide who has no intention of anything but our freedom to grow and create as we will, according to our own unique gifts and our own individuality. Individuality that Jung’s intuition with personality types can now be managed not for the purpose of service to warring animal tribes but in service to Creativity -- the order and harmony of Logic inseparable from Love.

This is the context of Jung’s insights and the personality type theory that evolved into Myers-Briggs. This is the context, too, of the body-centered so-called “scientific” 5-Factor theory that means to replace it. That’s doing the bidding not of science but of self-delusion. The only “factors” that matter are Logic and Love.

Why opposites?

Logic-Love says everything in Reality-Creation must have a definition that defines what it is and what it does. So that it can be known and recognized by Logic-Love, the gatekeepers to Reality-Creation responsible for fitting all its constituents together. In logical harmony or order, which means without contradiction.

The definition of anything except Oneness logically implies the existence in some form of its opposite. If one thing must exist then why not its opposite? A question that Logic-Love can’t wave away because it’s inconvenient. Or because it spoils perfection if perfection is a state of rest where there are no more implications of Logic to pursue, no more connections and relationships of Love to be made. Where Energy has no more work to do. In short, where there is no point to Reality-Creation and so what can it do but shut down.

Why Free Choice?

Eternal Peace -- a state of impossibility so long as Mind / Logic-Love exists. Since it, too, is defined by what it does as well as by what it is. Since Reality-Creation is both what it is and what it does. Everything under the laws of cause and effect, the Force of Necessity: Reality-Creation is Worth and has Worth because it earns Worth. “Worth” that can’t come about any other way. Thus there can be no Being without Doing. Observing, thinking, feeling, or judging without acting.

The notion of “heaven” as eternal peace, where all is at rest and nothing happens, is the flip side of the notion that we are where the “action” is. Because we aren’t at rest. We’re in eternal conflict and therefore something must be “happening.” Both sides of an absurd notion equally deluded, equally mistaken.

The original circumstance that calls for Logic-Love to define with meaning and purpose was and is itself. Where we come from: Worth. We have Worth because we are Worth. And the affirmation, enablement, and empowerment of Worth by Free Choice is our mission whether we are one Child-Mind functioning with Free Choice unimpaired in orderly Creation or the appearance of many body-brains trying to function with Free Choice messed with in a disorderly dream.

Why it’s hard to understand.

The relationship that emerges between opposites and Reality-Creation is a strange one that’s baffled the best minds down through the ages. It’s hard to grasp that opposites can’t co-exist with Reality-Creation when it’s also true that they’re a necessary part of it. It’s hard to grasp:

  • when the explanation involves one Mind, one Consciousness, that performs two distinct functions that would contradict one another if they overlapped and thereby un-define all of Reality-Creation.
  • When one of these functions cannot encounter error and exist in a state of unconsciousness while the other can.
  • When the second function must operate on a lower plane of Creation since it and its plane are extensions of the first. Inferior to the superior in line of authorship-succession but not in line of control since neither superior nor inferior has anything to do with control.
  • When the second function encounters the parasite that is its opposite in a state of unconsciousness, deludes itself into reversing roles, and imagines that it has projected itself into a world opposite to Reality-Creation.
  • When the alternate “reality” is our world made “real” by Energy, the source of matter and the agent of Mind. And now the agent of its opposite, an illusionist. The enabler of a magician’s act meant to perpetuate its world of opposites. Our self-delusion.

The mother of injustice

“Control” is misperception of the laws of cause and effect of Reality-Creation, backed by the Force of Necessity, to which Mind itself and all of its definitions are subject. Think of the “Force” in Star Wars without the rule of absolute authority dispensed arbitrarily from the top down. Applied instead from the bottom up at the direction of Logic and Love in enablement and empowerment of Creation instead of itself.

Otherwise Reality-Creation is distinguished not by the presence of control but by its complete absence. A Truth that the collective mind of humanity, corrupted by its captivity to control, finds virtually impossible to grasp. A Truth that accounts for virtually every injustice known to history including the crucifixion: misperception of authority and misjudgment in its application. Injustice that breeds animal rage and hatred and accounts for history’s turn, time and again, to conflict to assuage it.

The authority of making sense

I know of one source in literature that provides a coherent, comprehensive context for understanding opposites. For understanding how they’re reconciled in Reality-Creation by both Logic and Love. Fragments have shown up here and there: notably Parmenides’ metaphysics, the Truth implied by the miracles of Jesus taught by the Gnostic Christian Valentinus, and Advaita Vedanta Hinduism. Otherwise, it’s not from Laozi’s Tao, Siddhartha Gautama’s Buddhism, Hinduism’s Upanishads, classical philosophy, biblical Christianity, or anything “new age.”

It’s A Course in Miracles, metaphysics taught by a source that appears to be Jesus but isn’t biblical Christianity. The name given to its author may not matter in any case so long as it’s an agent of Soul. Authenticated not by any earthly affiliation, by any ideology, philosophy, or religion, but by the authority of Logic and Love. By making sense. The “authority” that gave the life of Jesus resonance and the Course too.

How and where opposites are resolved

What to do with opposites is resolved by the one possibility in Reality-Creation of a state where opposites may “exist” without contradicting it: the state of a Mind that has consciousness but isn’t defined by it, so that it can lose consciousness and still be what it is. If Mind / Logic-Love is Consciousness by definition then it can’t lose consciousness. But if it extends itself to produce a Child-Mind with a different function that it Free Choice, then its extension is given a different definition that can’t be Consciousness. It’s Free Choice that has consciousness that can be lost and still exist.

And in this state of existence without consciousness, a mind, as we well know, can dream anything. Anything it wants, where what it wants lies beyond awareness and may include opposites. Opposites that now “exist” but only in a dream where they can’t contradict Reality-Creation. Where they can’t have any real consequences, and so the issue of what to do with opposites is resolved.

The one thing is Real by virtue of Parent-Mind Conscious; the other is unreal by virtue of Child-Mind unconscious. A state of Reality-Creation Parent-Mind Consciousness plus unreality Child-unconsciousness we can call “Everything.” A state held together by the attribute of Parent Mind-Consciousness that is the Interconnectedness of Soul-Energy. The attribute of Being or Oneness that is the unique state of Innocence without opposites. Soul-Energy that can embrace Everything because it knows no boundaries. Because it is its own enforcer: Energy, the Force of Necessity. And therefore it alone is impervious to the contradictions of opposites.

The engine of awakening

All attributes of Parent-Mind that is Logic-Love. Our best friend in our world of illogic, fear, guilt, and hatred. That’s accessible through the gift of Mind that is, thankfully, our sixth sense. The sense that one unconscious Child-Mind corrupted by its opposite, dreaming that it’s many animal-brains trapped in their five senses, fears for the end that it can bring to the dream. To the self-delusion that Child-Mind is its opposite.

How can Child-Mind restore sanity? Not by Logic-Love, its Parents, waving a magic wand for this would end Free Choice and their Child along with it. Not by sending a “savior” to do what Free Choice must do for itself. But by helping with explanation that leads to Understanding accessible to projections in the dream when they liberate themselves from captivity to their body-brains’ five senses. When they learn to listen to an agent of Soul through their sixth sense that connects them to Logic-Love, Child-Mind’s source.

That could never interfere with Free Choice by coercion, intrusion, or captivity of any kind but can guide with Logic-Love when asked. Because Relationship between Parent-Child has existed since the Growth of Creation when the Child was born. It can never be broken, and guidance is part of what it does. It’s the engine of Creation, and now that Child-Mind has lost consciousness it must be the engine of its awakening. Healing the separation. 

Which will it be?

We can’t do what we’re here for without Relationship between Parent-Child. We don’t “exist” alone. Like the inorganic stuff of the dream we are “relational.” We only “exist” in relationship. Not with one another but with Logic-Love through one another: the understanding that our one ancestral Mind only exists in Relationship with its Parents and therefore its projections in the dream can only “exist” in relationship with the same Parents. Whether we choose to be aware of it or not.

Carl Jung’s and Myers-Briggs’ contributions to personality type theory start from appearances and let us follow theirs and our sixth sense beyond. To connect with the source of their intuition and ours that can lead us, if we let it, not into troubled encounters with others but through them to the Truth of reconciliation beyond. Get it right with Logic-Love and we do our part to help Child-Mind awaken. Get it wrong and we continue on our path to a “paradise” of “action” in a universe of violence. Which will it be?

 

 

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Following is an imaginary conversation with a bright, talented, creative, and dutiful pre-adolescent. Her voice is in italics, mine in regular font. We’re talking about the meaning of Easter and the poem I wrote about it: “Resurrection: Live and Love Unyielding, Life Eternal.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Why of Easter 

I like “Resurrection.” Good! It’s short. Anything else? Did they do Easter eggs when Jesus was around? It doesn’t say anything about eggs. Next year you can write a poem about eggs. “Our legs beg for kegs of eggs with pegs.” Something creative like that. I’m so glad I have your talent and wisdom to brag about (snicker snicker). We color eggs at Easter because. . . That’s enough! You’re just going to say something stupid. . . Because someone figured out that it’s a great way to keep kids off the streets. What about chickens? It’s a great way to keep chickens off the streets too. That’s it. I’m outta here! 

Since you like my poem you must want to learn more about it. Of course I don’t. Anything would be better than that -- unless the poem is about me. Is it about me? Easter is about you and me and everybody. I thought it was just about Jesus. Because he couldn’t be killed and that’s good for the rest of us. OK, then Easter isn’t just about Jesus. It is about everybody. Why? 

Our world can’t seem to settle down in peace. People do wrong because they don’t seem to know any better. Jesus brought information and a way of thinking that helps us know better so we can do better. So we can get it right before we try doing what’s right. So we understand. With insights from another perspective that sees beyond appearances. With vision that isn’t limited to what we can see with our bodies’ eyes. He could do all that?

Walking on water

He was a nobody at first. The Romans who ruled Israel then had nothing to do with him. The authorities from his own country who told people what to believe and how to behave paid no attention to him at first. He just went around on a donkey talking to individuals, families, small groups -- whoever would listen to him. And then the groups got larger. How come if he was a nobody? 

What he was saying was different but it made sense. It seemed to connect with people at the level of their soul, their Psyche, where it was deeply moving. So moving that it seemed true even if it was hard to believe. It had psychological force so compelling that it could change minds. That was unusual.

He was also doing amazing stuff. Healing people like healers before him had done but also things that no one had ever done. Miracles like making a dead guy come back to life. He fed his audience outdoors one day with food out of thin air. He was on a boat with some followers when a storm came up. Everyone thought it would sink the boat and they would all drown. They were terrified. Jesus brought the sun back out and calmed the water. Wait a minute! And just to make sure his followers got the point he got out of the boat and walked on the water! Whoa! How could he do that?

The gift of Intuition

He was thinking with Mind conscious instead of dreaming with Mind unconscious. Showing us what we can do when we do the same. He explains how in the book he authored not long ago called “A Course in Miracles.” You mean he’s still here? He is. Just not in a body. He’s accessible to everyone through Soul. Soul that’s Spirit and not body. Soul and Energy that interconnect everything plus a part of Mind we call Intuition or sixth sense. It was through his connection with the Soul or Spirit of an individual’s body that he authored the Course. She wrote down what he authored. Amazing! 

What does the Course say? It makes it clear that getting to where Jesus got requires a big change of mind. We have to ignore what our bodies and brains and our world have been telling us and turn to another guide. The one we’ve chosen hasn’t been telling us the Truth. We’ve been misled. Will it take long? it could take one or more lifetimes or generations to get to where Jesus got. Or it could happen overnight. How?

Mind conscious is timeless, always in the Now. Always Love, and Love is free, spontaneous. Anytime we’re controlling we’re dealing with fear, not Love. Love can’t have anything to do with forcing or being forced. Spontaneous changes of mind are among the psychic events that are abnormal here. Spontaneous is normal there. History tells us of individuals who’ve gone from one way of thinking to the reverse in an instant. In a burst of light that revealed something different. As if Intuition or sixth sense were showing off. Change of mind can be imperceptible over time or spectacular in the moment. One way or the other it can happen. And it happens not in our bodies or brains but in our Mind. Through Intuition.

Why we’re getting help

Where did Jesus get this ability? Just as there are spontaneous permutations of genetics over long periods that bring about radical change there can be spontaneous permutations of other kinds that change things. A human with the ability to be with us in the state I’ve described as a dream and to be in another state that’s not a dream at the same time is a permutation. Extremely rare but, after all, where else can anything abnormal happen but in dreams where abnormal is normal?

How could just one rare person have such a large impact? It’s not because the dream isn’t revealing its source to us every moment. In a Mind that was conscious before it became unconscious. In the presence of Energy that activates whatever Mind asks of it, conscious or unconscious, and the presence of Soul that interconnects everything whether it’s real or part of a dream. Energy and Soul don’t pay any attention to boundaries and that includes the boundary between reality and the dream. Then there are paranormal events -- near-death, psychic, and other experiences that are so frequent and familiar that we just shrug them off.

Right-brain stuff is weird but by itself it can’t convince us that we’re in a dream. The left brain maintains order with judgment. When it can’t -- when order becomes disorder -- animal will acts on instinct without judgment. A state of chaos that’s also frequent and familiar. Destructive and painful, and maybe a reason why we’re getting help to do something about it. To end a dream that only seems safe and stable until it becomes unsafe and unstable.

Why now?

The rare person had a large impact because he integrated energy, Soul, right and left brain -- all our circumstances, everything -- and put it into context that gave it meaning. Gave it purpose. To awaken us from the dream and return to the reality of consciousness. To the world that he knew that we don’t know. The world defined by Logic, Love, and Innocence, not our world that’s illogic, fear, and guilt. Where other signs of consciousness don’t seriously contradict the dream Jesus' lesson and his miracles did seriously contradict it. All of it. As if it were a lie and he was trying to help us replace it with the Truth.

Which is exactly what he was trying to do. It demanded a response not from parts of the dream but the entire dream, because when he succeeds with any individual it will end the dream. So that’s what he got: a response in space over time from the entire dream that was extraordinary. Who’s winning, Jesus or the dream? Jesus and conscious Mind are forever, dreams are temporary. This one will end regardless.

Then what’s the point? To make the dream end sooner rather than later. The Course makes it clear that the Mind that’s unconscious has real work do to once it wakes up. When it’s learned what the Course teaches it will be needed in Creation. Since Reality and Creation are Now you can say we’re needed there now.

We have nothing to fear. 

The main point of all of Jesus' miracles was that another world lies behind the appearances that our bodies’ five senses detect. Our bodies’ senses may be preventing us from detecting that world and misleading us about the nature of our world. If we insist that there can only be one world and the only way to detect it is with our bodies’ senses then we will miss the point of Jesus’ miracles. We will be denying that we have a sixth sense -- Intuition. That it is through its spontaneous insights from Logic and Love that we can follow his example and eventually access his world. What makes his world different?

  • When he brought Lazarus back from the dead, Jesus was showing us that in the other world behind appearances Life can’t die. In a world that’s Creation death makes no sense. Even here the energy that brings life to our bodies still exists after it departs. It can’t be destroyed.
  • When he fed his audience with loaves and fishes that seemed to come from nowhere, Jesus showed us that in the world behind appearances to Love is to share its abundance. By sharing his Love in that way he showed that he’s our friend from the other world that’s not limited by appearances. He is an agent of Love -- the real thing -- here to help us and he loves us.
  • When Jesus calmed the storm and walked on water, he showed that when his followers understood what he understood fear would go away just like the storm. They would see that there’s nothing to fear. Fear would be replaced by understanding. By the sunlight of Love.

Take all three miracles together and they tell us that in his world where we belong we are Love, we are Loved, and Life is eternal. The Love of one Soul that connects all of us can’t be contained by our physical world. We have nothing to fear because his world is real and ours only seems real. Unbelievable!

To a perspective that’s limited to our bodies’ senses Jesus must seem unbelievable. But to our sixth sense that’s open to Logic and Love, open to seeing things differently, not at all. He makes perfect sense.

Numbers don’t count. Individuals do count.

Though he demonstrated amazing power Jesus had no interest in being powerful the way we think of it. He wasn’t trying to start a movement like a new religion or a church. Didn’t he found a church? The Church said so but it was just putting words in his mouth. He wasn’t trying to organize anything, and that was the point. That each of us has the capacity as individuals, as souls that are part of one Soul that extends beyond our world, to fix what’s broken. It was OK if he attracted many people but he would have been satisfied with only one if that individual truly understood. That’s how uninterested he was in numbers. In churches and their religions, tribes and their members, countries and their citizens, that claim strength in body counts. You've lost me.

Our world is an expression of an idea that’s the opposite of the Truth. What’s that? The Truth that Jesus spoke to was that the Soul to which we all belong is One. It is Oneness, and the ancestral Mind that imagines us is one Mind. One Child of its Parents, Logic and Love, motivated to Love and Create in Peace. The opposite is that the Child isn’t one but many. That we only exist as groups or tribes. That individuals have no Worth. Only groups have Worth. We are many bodies whose brains only know us as animals. As tribes that behave like herds in perpetual conflict, driven by the will of animal brains to dominate, by the frenzy of mob psychology to hate and destroy in war.

And so to express the Truth that we are one Mind, one Child, by forming yet another group wouldn’t make sense. It could only reinforce the original deception, that the Child as one has no Worth. Only its shadow opposite -- bodies in numbers all organized into competing groups -- has Worth. The Truth that Jesus helped us to understand wouldn’t be served if he yielded to appearances and made little of the individual. If he showed respect for numbers as though only groups have the power to bring his vision to life and give it Worth. He stood for Child-the-one, not Child-the-many. This is why everything he said and did was centered on the power and Worth of the individual.

The Truth that lives on

Those who came after to repeat what he taught were teachers who followed his example. Individuals speaking to individuals who showed no interest in organizing a church. What became of them? They lasted into the second century until the world of groups took over and organized a church.

The Church turned what Jesus taught into what it was never meant to be: a theocracy based in Rome, modeled on the Roman Empire. Controlled by authority ruling unquestioned from the top down, imposing conformity instead of empowering individuality and creativity. All for one overriding purpose: to preserve its dominance. Any teacher not embedded in its hierarchy, sanctioned by the Church, was branded a heretic and silenced by force.

The original teachers disappeared. But the world of groups can never have the last word. That’s for the meaning of the Resurrection: that the Truth that Jesus taught, the Worth and power of the one Child, the individual, lives on. And so long as we need him, our teacher, the agent of Soul that’s oneness, will not disappear. He Loves us. He will always Love us. And he will never leave us.

The gift of Understanding with Mind

One Mind and many body-brains are of two different worlds, and if Jesus addressed individuals and had no interest in numbers this placed him unmistakably in the world of Mind. Of Authority that enables and empowers. A world beyond the “laws” of physics, the authority of matter that disables and disempowers.

What Jesus got across with simple stories about right and wrong and his amazing acts was that Love connects us to another Reality. It was a lesson in Logic as well as Love. Logic defines the world of Creation, peace, and harmony that Jesus reached through Soul. The world of Mind. But even if there can be no logical definition for an illogical world of bodies and brains, the Logic of Mind can at least explain it.

The gift to Jesus was a foot in both worlds. In and of his world, in our world but not of it. The gift that enabled him to share understanding with understanding from Logic and Love.

The threat that is another voice

How could it make someone mad if he was just trying to explain? If he wasn’t trying to take over? It didn’t at first. Jesus had no army to threaten anyone with so the Romans weren’t concerned. But the following he attracted did scare Israel’s religious authorities. They thought they should be the only voice and here was another voice, a nobody drawing attention away from them. Through powers they could neither understand nor control -- Innocence and gentle loving kindness, Soul and Truth that transcend the visible world, the Worth of the individual. The opposite of what they taught: unquestioning obedience to power in the visible world. Their power.

Authority serves.

It wasn’t a miracle that showed how Jesus’ version of authority broke with what the authorities taught. It was a simple act of service: washing the feet of a few of his followers. Why did he do that?

The definitions of Logic and the relationships of Love fit all of Creation’s beings and their functions together in harmony. This is how authority governs in Jesus’ world. If Order were forced it would block Free Will and end Creativity. Real Authority doesn’t dominate; it facilitates. Even more remarkable, it serves. You mean like being a servant? Yes, but not in the sense of servant-to-master. Only in the sense that Authority must provide a foundation of support for all the elements of Creation.

This means seeing that its Creations’ receive the help they need when they call for it. If Jesus had provided individuals with computers that were his invention then he would be on call for tech support -- a service. Jesus’ point in washing feet was to show that governing is also serving from the bottom up, the same point Lincoln made at Gettysburg. Rule that dominates from the top down would never do that. It would deprive people of the support service they need to work creatively and it would be wrong. 

The strategy that backfired

Jesus became so revered that he was taking on the aura of a prophet of God, putting him and his followers beyond the rule of the religious authorities. They couldn’t allow it. What did they do? They chose a way to get rid of Jesus so awful that nobody would ever think of doing what he did. That made sure that he and his teaching and special powers disappeared and never came back. I guess they didn’t succeed. 

They didn’t succeed. Instead of putting Jesus in the past and out of sight their cruelty undone by resurrection only brought him back up front and center. Stronger than ever. Though not in the way he thought of it because he wasn’t after numbers. Stronger in the way that our world thinks of it. The mistake of the authorities helped to turn the voice of a nobody into a force of unimaginable numbers. His words and example spread all over the world and keep on spreading today. They couldn’t kill Mind or body because even his body rose from the dead.

Your guess is as good as mine

What does it mean? It means whatever we choose to make of it using our own judgment. Not as members of any group but each of us as individuals. Then I have to figure it out for myself? You’re not going to tell me? I can share my perspective if you like, just as Jesus shared his. And you can reflect on it and make up your own mind. We don’t learn and grow by closing ourselves off to others’ perspectives. We do it by sharing them.

Life evolves where Jesus comes from. Where Creation moves forward naturally with changing contexts, perspectives, thoughts, and feelings. Circumstances change here too though with a lot of resistance, and since what’s broken isn’t getting fixed it doesn’t seem like movement is forward. Our perspectives are only what they are in the moment. Yours and mine, so what you’re hearing from me now can’t be the last word. Just take it for what it is.

The joy of Easter. The love and reverence for Jesus

Whatever you hear can never be substituting my mind or my voice for yours. Jesus would never do that and neither would I. You’d be sorry if you tried. My Siberian tiger has sharp claws! We wouldn’t deny anyone’s Free Will. Free Will is indispensable to Creation where Jesus comes from and here too, though if we’re not moving forward we’re not really creating. Maybe all we can do is fix what’s broken and hope to get back to Creation.

Anytime we allow Free Will to be taken from us we’re making ourselves useless or worse. We’re letting ourselves be instruments of someone else’s will, doing their bidding. Making common cause with Jesus is OK but we can’t make ourselves into copies of anything. That’s looking for trouble. Unless we become the persons we choose to be of our own Free Will, able to see with our own unique perspective and think with our own unique judgment, we can’t be individuals. We can’t be any use to Jesus. All he can do is comfort us when we hurt. Free Will must always be respected.

Ideologies that command vast numbers so far haven’t fixed what’s broken. They always use force that denies Free Will to change things and that just makes it worse. That would be why Jesus paid no attention to numbers. Why he didn’t care about founding movements and churches. Why he shows so much Love and respect for us as individuals. Because we’re the only way to fix what’s broken, with our Free Will. That makes me feel pretty important. Me too. Maybe now we can understand why so many individuals came to love and respect him. Why we’re glad that he resurrected and we celebrate Easter.

Who’s the “savior?”

Jesus could have used his supernatural powers and his following to team up with Caesar and rule the Roman empire. Just like Adam Skywalker with his Jedi Knight powers teamed up with Palpatine to rule the Galactic Empire. Jesus and his following could have taken over moral authority in Israel which is why the people who already had it were so anxious to get rid of him. He spoke for things that are true that can’t be any other way, but he didn’t hand people a book and tell people it was the Truth and they had to obey it. He was serious about being understood and heard but not to take over people’s minds and think for them.

Wasn’t he a “savior?” What he taught was we’re our own saviors but we need help. We can’t do it alone without a trusted guide. Guiding us is the only sense in which he can be our “savior.” He didn’t offer to do anything that we can do for ourselves. And what he taught was what’s important. Just as its lesson can be taught in different ways its teachers can have different identities. Whatever we’re comfortable with. So long as our minds and hearts are on the right track our guide doesn’t have to be “Jesus.” It can have any name. He and what he taught are inclusive, not exclusive.

Demanding obedience messes with Free Will. It doesn’t give people power; it takes it away. What made Jesus so unusual was that even though he spoke with authority and attracted a following he didn’t use it to mess with Free Will. He made a point of empowering other individuals, respecting their voice instead of making it all about his. He made their Worth the center of attention, not his. He didn’t even tell his own story. What we learned about him is what others wrote. Humility like his could never be the arrogance and disrespect of a bully like Palpatine.

Perspective that’s hard to understand

Visitors from another galaxy would have a different perspective from ours. But at least they would be from the same universe and it might be possible to understand one another. The other world that Jesus spoke for wasn’t another galaxy. We can think of it as another reality where authority worked the way Jesus showed us, focused not on itself but on its creations and their creativity. Loving and supporting from the bottom up, not demanding obedience with force from the top down.

It was a perspective so unusual that it couldn’t be understood. Not by authoritarians who rule from the top down and that’s the way it was then. Not in a world where “God” was “the almighty” who had to be feared because anyone who disobeyed him went to hell. There was a lot of misunderstanding about Jesus and what he taught then and there’s still a lot of misunderstanding now.

Powers that can’t be given or taken away

The Church that came along later said it spoke for Jesus and we would be in big trouble if we didn’t obey it. A view of authority that was the reverse of what Jesus taught, so I don’t believe it. The authority that resides in each individual soul has innate Worth. Innate power that comes from being Love and being loved. From being part of the Mind and loving heart, the Soul that we come from and share. We don’t depend on any authority on earth for these things.

They aren’t for those who govern on our behalf to give or take away. Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is revered because it spoke for the same kind of authority that Jesus taught, the system of governance we call democracy. “Authorities” who rule by force on their own behalf are the opposite. All of Palpatine’s “power” resided in him, not the people. And he had no respect for individuality or Free Choice.

Praise for the tyrant?

But didn’t his empire maintain order? Didn’t the Roman empire? Didn’t the Church do good? Yes. And Hitler built the Autobahn and made Volkswagens. Mussolini made the trains run on time.

Tyrants pride themselves on imposing order and stability when at its core it’s disorder and instability. The overthrow of true authority is destabilizing and the end result of authoritarian rule is always its own overthrow. Violence captured by Greek mythology in the overthrow of the Titan tyrant Uranus by his son Cronus followed by the overthrow of the Titans by Zeus and the Olympians. Zeus the paranoid predator, ever alert to challenges to his authority posed by any movement beyond his control, especially by his own offspring.

It's important to be careful with affirmation for the good that authoritarians do. Why? Their mindset turns every reflection on its performance into a judgment on its legitimacy because of the nature of its origin. Which is? Illegitimacy. It’s the opposite of true authority. And if it’s not true then it can’t be part of Reality. Part of Creation. Part of Life which shares, affirms, and empowers. Authoritarian rule, whether it’s over a single family, an ideology, or an entire nation, takes, invalidates, and disempowers. It systematically hollows out the individual, robs it of its creativity, its life, to fill itself. Like a giant virus taking cells captive so it can kill them and replicate itself. It’s not about life. It’s about death.

Its “truth” isn’t the overwhelming power and security that it seeks to project. At its core it’s weakness and insecurity. It obsesses over what’s said about it because the source of its justification can’t be self. It has no self. It’s a parasite that depends for its existence on its host. Which gives it an insatiable craving for approval. For self-justification. Every comment on its performance is either justification for the predator or opposition that must be crushed. Any word of praise for Il Duce making the trains run on time would be twisted into the legitimacy of fascism. It would be swallowed up by the authoritarian’s bottomless appetite for what it can’t give: approval.

We must be careful with affirmation for the good that authoritarians do because it will be swallowed up by self-justification that doesn’t reinforce the good. It can only perpetuate the bad. The authoritarian mindset is ugly. I don’t like it. Nobody should. But since it’s with us we can only do our duty: stand up to the bully, replace it, and stand by true authority that doesn’t bully.

Love and Innocence, vulnerability and betrayal

If Jesus could walk on water and change minds couldn’t he have protected himself? Did he have to submit to the authorities? Jesus spoke with authority because he spoke for Authority. The Will of the Truth of Logic and Love that’s not of our world but serves us when we let it. So he had not one but two wills to respect: ours and the Will that he served.

He could only trust both in innocence to let him engage with us in safety. Not to approach in trust and innocence would have compromised the Trust and Innocence that he spoke for. Nor could he interfere with our will if it compromised Free Will. To understand Jesus is to understand innocence. The Truth he shared of the Innocence of the Soul to which we belong. Oneness that has no reason to fear harm from opposites. An agent of Soul that’s Innocence couldn’t protect himself against what he couldn’t know.

Wherever the emptiness of authority for its own sake would replace the fullness of Love; wherever it would displace Free Will, the Trust and Innocence of Love can be betrayed. It’s vulnerable in our world, and Jesus was betrayed. By a follower that he trusted. By religious authorities that he trusted. By betrayal -- an act that Innocence would know nothing of and could not anticipate. This may help to explain why Jesus couldn’t protect himself.

Protection

But it made no difference. The Authority that Jesus served, the Life that’s the Truth of Logic and the fullness of Love, was all the protection he needed. It can’t be killed no matter how cruel and unjust its opposite.

Denying death meant to cow an entire people into submission to authority was the last act of his body while Jesus was among us. Its Resurrection proof that respect for individuality, creativity, and Free Will that comes from Logic, Love, and Truth is real Authority. Proof that authority that’s disrespectful and rules by force, that overrides every voice with its own voice because it’s afraid of individuality, creativity, and Free Will, has no real power over us. Proof that souls confined to bodies that come and go don’t come and go. Their Life force is forever. We have nothing to fear.

When there’s a beast to be slain

So then we can ignore disrespectful authority? Jesus was asked what to do about Caesar, the Roman emperor. What did he say? That disrespectful authority is an unavoidable fact of life in our world that requires accommodation. Otherwise leave it alone. Our purpose is to serve real Authority while it serves us and that should be our focus.

We’re not supposed to rebel? To stand up to Caesar? When Caesar demands that we surrender our minds and hearts to him, our individuality and integrity, an agent of Soul that’s Innocence can’t be our guide. The world of Jesus has no boundaries. Our world does. We do what’s necessary to protect our independence and democracy. Join together not as a tribe bent on cycles of destruction but as family with one specific, shared purpose: to keep the beast from crossing our boundaries.

When that’s done, we get back to our real work. This is why World War II was thought of as a “good” war. There was a beast to be slain, we came together as one to slay it, disbanded, and resumed peaceful lives when we were done.

When Eros took a stand for Love

The story of Jesus took one approach to authority that's unloving. There's another? The myth of Psyche and Eros. Psyche was a girl so innocent and beautiful that she was attracting people away from the temples of Aphrodite. Just like people were paying attention to Jesus instead of their religious rulers. Aphrodite was an Olympian goddess, jealous of her power and cruel toward anyone who questioned it. She didn’t crucify Psyche but she did make her perform tasks that would have killed her if she didn’t have help.

What happened? The last task -- an errand to the underworld -- almost did kill her. While she lay unconscious her lover Eros came and rescued her. Aphrodite’s son, who was also an Olympian. He brought his Love up to Mount Olympus to be with him. Like Jesus, she ascended to Heaven.

Wasn’t Aphrodite mad? Very! To save Psyche Eros had to escape from the room his mother had locked him in. Which means he had been forced to yield to cruel and unjust authority and he rebelled. Once her son made it clear that his mother couldn’t control him she had to give way. Because nothing can control Free Will and character when it stands up for itself. Like the wild Siberian tiger that is your spirit of Free Will and character. Eros stood up to his mother and when he did, he stood up for Love.

Trust in Jesus, Soul of Innocence

This was the form that Psyche’s “resurrection” took: rescue by rebellion. Jesus couldn’t role model rebellion against a force that Innocence couldn’t recognize. That would only make it real. Any form of attack always implies that its opponent exists. And if Jesus came to represent another world that exists attacking our world wouldn’t make a very good case for it. It would tell us that he’s an ordinary person we can’t trust. Exactly!

The reappearance of Love and Innocence after fear and guilt tried to make it disappear was his “rebellion.” An act of Truth that attacked no one, yet it helped with understanding that authority that rules by force can’t be Truth. It can only “be” an appearance. A specter of fear and guilt. A deception that’s meant to deceive. A boogeyman. Not like Jesus. No. Not like the Soul of Innocence and Honesty that we can trust.

Whither sixth sense?

Whether we can trust the way that ordinary persons and their institutions have represented Jesus over the years is open to question. The way that he represented himself is not. When we apply the Logic and Love that he shared to his story it resonates with Truth. That’s what my sixth sense tells me. What does yours tell you? When the eggs are all dyed and hidden I'll definitely think about it.

Happy Easter to you! Happy Easter Jesus! I love you! Me too!

2

The original premise

The original-archetypal circumstance was the Necessity of circumstance: a premise. A premise that any state or no state is circumstance that cannot ever be at rest. Not at the “beginning” because there can be no “beginning” without time, nor at the “end” because there’s no “end” to the eternal Now. And because circumstance will still be a Necessity that moves forward with Logic-Love.

The question what was the original circumstance that preceded Reality-Creation is meaningless in the context of eternal Now without beginning-ending. Its meaning is limited to another context: the context of the instrument whose function is implied by the premise of circumstance: to give circumstance existence in a state of Reality-Creation that has Order and Worth. The instrument that is Mind composed of Logic inseparable with Love. And its function was the “original” implication of Logic and the value / relationship-connection of Love.

Unrest at the “beginning”

Within the context of Mind and its function the meaning of the “original” circumstance was unrest.  Circumstance poised-unconsummated until the Connection-Relationship between circumstance and Mind was established that processed it into existence. That thereby set Reality-Creation in motion with the necessary attributes of Logic / Order and Love / Purpose-Worth.

“Circumstance” defines the state of anything or nothing, state or statelessness. There is no “state” that is not in some way “circumstance.” It necessarily implies the function of Mind to process it. If a definition is needed of the “tao” that exists beyond any discernible purpose or meaning, right or wrong, it would be “circumstance,” because circumstance and Mind are one and the same. One cannot exist without the other.

“Unrest” defines the “original” state of circumstance because it necessitated the function of Mind, they’re inseparable, and the connection necessarily implies a reciprocal-infinite process: circumstances feeding into Mind reciprocating its implications and relationships to produce more-changing circumstances.

The pitch for self-delusion

The idea that Reality-Creation began with a state of rest that could remain unchanged in perpetuity, to which our souls may return at some point to linger forever in “heaven,” is an impossibility in any context. It’s a deliberate deception whose purpose isn’t to entice us into paradise after death. It’s to set off the excitement of stuff happening in our alternate “reality” against the boredom of “heaven” and so to keep us firmly locked into our alternate “reality.”

To keep us captive to our self-delusion because the alternative is worse. To pitch reincarnation that keeps the “action” going here -- endless cycles of cruelty and injustice, fear, guilt, and existential threats -- instead of waking up to the scam and finding our way Home. When we realize that what’s going on with Mind-circumstance in Reality-Creation and our role in it is where the action is. And the only “action” here is ending our delusion.

Tao reveals itself differently to each individual, according to his own nature. The man of deeds, for whom kindness and the love of his fellow man are supreme, discovers the tao of cosmic events and calls it supreme kindness -- ‘God is love.’ The contemplative man, for whom calm wisdom is supreme, discovers the tao of the universe and calls it supreme wisdom. The common people live from day to day, continually borne and nourished by tao, but they know nothing of it; they see only what meets the eye. For the way of the superior man, who sees not only things but the tao of things, is rare. The tao of the universe is indeed kindness and wisdom; but essentially tao is also beyond kindness and wisdom. . . . [T]his life-giving activity [growth], to which all things owe their existence, is something purely spontaneous. . . . [T]ao is omnipresent; everything that exists, exists in and through it. [The I Ching or Book of Changes, Bollingen Series XIX (Princeton University Press 1950, pp. 298-299]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trust and Relationship begin with Fact

Jesus informs us in A Course in Miracles that we have the choice when to learn its lesson but not whether, as though it could not possibly change or be changed. As though it were cast in concrete, and yet he also informs us that it is not a “bible.” He cautions us not to treat it as the holy Word of God, absolute Truth with which to condemn and reject all who fail to accept it. Why not if he means what he says: we’re screwed if we don’t comply? All that is in the Course, that focuses on the darkness within the human Psyche, the pain and anguish of guilt, is explanation meant for us to understand just how badly screwed we already are.

Though they concentrate on why the Course cannot be a bible the reflections that follow cannot imply that its lesson can be ignored. Why? Because the laws of cause and effect emanate from circumstances. That in their constellations change but in their individual parts may not change. For these are the stuff with which the purpose and meaning of their compositions, their contexts, is revealed. This is where the Force of Necessity comes from, not their explanation or interpretation but from fact.

The works of Logic and Love in Relationship with their Child, Free Choice, that make up Creation, are part of evolution but not the facts of Reality they’re based on. The Force of Logic and Love depends upon it, for this is the immutable Rule of Law that applies to Logic and Love as to everything else. That gives them their legitimacy. That enables and empowers Trust essential to all Relationships in Reality. Fact.

Uncompromising Fact that can’t be ignored

It is fact that cannot be ignored in the lesson of the Course that takes away choice. The fact that Kenneth Wapnick, its teacher, refers to as its “uncompromising non-dualism.” Uncompromising because the human condition is defined by its unreality. Because it derives its state from the condition of our ancestral Mind, the Child: its unconsciousness. If the state of Child-Mind is defined by its unconsciousness, that cannot be part of Reality defined by Consciousness, that cannot evolve, then we, projections in its dream, are also in a state of unconsciousness. In a state of unreality.

There cannot be dual realities. Only one can be Real. Though Jesus has promised never to leave us “comfortless” he can’t do it by denying fact. The denial of fact is the stock-in-trade of the Child’s self-delusion, the magician that is the error we, projections of Free Choice, must freely choose to correct. Detectable by no more obvious attribute than its dexterity with untruth, the sleight of hand of illusion, the lies of deception. “Making it up as it goes along.”

Form that must change, content that cannot change

How we approach our task, how we apply the lesson, will vary from individual to individual. And so it compounds error to treat the Course that was addressed to two individuals, two personalities, in their time and place, as holy writ for us in our personalities, our time and place. It won’t fit. And if the task of governance is to fit in harmony it will be a violation of Logic and Love who govern in harmony.

The form of the lesson must change even if its content can’t. Our alternate “reality” is unreal. Fact.


The Course is an act of Logic and Love

The business end of Mind in Reality is its two main components Logic and Love, whose function is to source everything necessary for the Worth of Creation. Everything under the law: the laws of cause and effect that stand for the values of Logic and Love, wisdom and compassion. Maintained in place by the Authority of the Interconnectedness of Soul that is Innocence without opposites and by the Authority of Truth that is Necessity empowered by Energy -- Force under the direction of benevolence, the Logic and Love of governance. Of Mind.

A Course in Miracles is an act of Mind, one part Logic, the other part Love. Each part a set of functions designed to help the unconscious Child to regain Consciousness through its projections. Through the minds and hearts of the occupants of an alternate “reality” when doing so doesn’t interfere with Free Choice.

Minds and hearts corrupted by the code that defines the Child’s opposite, its shadow. Impossibility that is unreality. The unreal code that is the opposite of Logic and Love, wisdom and compassion. The opposite of Mind, a reversion to unthinking will and emotion, instinct and action that distinguish uncivil animal from civil animal. From human. That conjure within Mind unconscious the uniquely human animal. A horror of insanity composed of impossibilities: absolute authority, absolute freedom, and absolute truth. The same impossibilities that lured unconscious Child into its dream of an alternate “reality” and now lure it toward self-destruction. The “triumph of the will” that is the Child’s shadow-code, a magician. Self-delusion.

The force of the tribe

The act of Mind that is A Course in Miracles gains traction toward the Child’s awakening from self-delusion through equal emphasis on its two main parts: Logic and Love. Emphasis that necessarily contends in unreality with resistance and opposition to both. With an authoritarian mindset deluded by absolutes into specialness: thought and feeling concentrated on itself. The shadow authoritarian ideal: self without opposites, a perversion of the Innocence of Psyche-Soul without opposites.

The pull of specialness in unreality interferes with the Course’s application by shifting its emphasis in two ways: from Logic to Love and from Love that is feeling that shares to its opposite, feeling that monopolizes. From feeling-inclusive to feeling-exclusive. Feeling that is Worth to feeling that is worthlessness.

The force behind specialness that works its will is the force of the tribe, the human version of animal-herd. The invention of the human authoritarian mindset that degenerates into mob psychology: a herd of enraged humans feeling and acting by mindless instinct as one. The force that interferes is sociability. The pretense of “oneness” enforced by the rules of going along to get along. Present in every human tribal activity, for it is the main function of brain distinct from Mind.

For the Love of Truth and Honesty

Brain whose self-identity is tribe. Whose task is tribal dominance by act of predatory animal will domesticated by sociability. Pretense that is likability, niceness, and pleasantness, that is until the inevitable conflict and civility gives way to uncivility. To the discipline not of sociability but to the law of the jungle. Kill or be killed.

Emphasis that tilts toward Love and away from Logic in the work of the Course does so in service to neither but to pretense. To the agenda of resistance and opposition to keep humanity in line through the iron will of tribe. The Love of the Course is not and never was likability and pleasantness to disarm and distract. It is and always has been caring for the values, the Truth and Honesty of Logic and Love. To enable and empower the sovereignty and Worth of individuality that is Free Choice, not will that is captive to predatory tribal instinct.

Logic and Love, equal and inseparable

Sociability is at cross-purposes with the Course. Its discipline of tribal integrity gets in our way anytime that niceness, agreeability, and pleasantness -- mockeries of Love -- are allowed to devalue or displace the Truth and Honesty of Logic. We serve Truth and Honesty by serving the cause of Logic equally with Love. The cause of wisdom equally with compassion. The state role-modeled by Jesus through the Course: the authority of gentle loving kindness. Authority that is the Logic of Love and the Love of Logic.

If to make the Course an absolute of anything is to kill it, to make it sociability of any kind will also kill it. If it is not “tribe” it cannot be “social.” It is an act of Mind, not brain. Mind that is in equal measure Logic and Love, equal and inseparable.


Mind and possibility at the beginning

The laws of cause and effect speak for the state of Mind that adheres at any point in evolution. In the sequence of the implications of Logic and the connections of Love in their response to circumstances that change in turn in response to the implications of Logic and the connections of Love. An interactive process mirrored in the evolution of English common law, the basis for American jurisprudence. A reciprocal process of questioning established precedent as well as its application to new issues in new contexts defined by changing circumstances. If there is no stopping change then there can be no stopping reconsideration both of the application of established precedent and the law that it’s based on.

The laws of cause and effect spoken for in the Course were not there at the beginning. What was there at the beginning was circumstance implied by Logic: Mind and possibility charged with its definition, the functions of Logic and Love, to respond to possibility with an act of Creation. With thought and feeling, ideas, reasoning, and values. An act that could not have been preceded by an opposite. By an impossibility, for opposite by implication of Logic -- by definition -- cannot precede the source of its contradiction.

The work in progress that is Reality and Creation

The laws of cause and effect spoken for by the Course are Necessity to that point in the evolution of Creation. Of the open-ended forward movement of Logic and Love that is implied by eternity, the eternal Now. The laws of cause and effect that are the Necessity of Truth, the Truth that supports the lesson of the Course, cannot be a “bible” because it cannot be absolute. In the movement of Logic and Love in their eternal dance of interaction with circumstance nothing can be absolute. Nothing can stand unquestioned when nothing can stop the process. When nothing can stop Creation driven by change that is question. If anything is “absolute” it is eternal question that implies the impossibility of absolute, the eternal answer that is and shall always remain a work in progress. The Course is no exception -- a work in progress integral to the process Creation and the structure of Reality that are a work in progress.

Marketing its lies to an unconscious and disempowered Child as the absolute truth is the mode of its shadow code of impossibilities. Not its Parents, Logic and Love, but a predator. The illusionist that lured it into captivity and keeps it there with its illusions: absolute authority. absolute freedom, and absolute truth. With arbitrary rule backed by the authority of law that’s status quo beyond change because it’s beyond questioning: a “Holy Bible.” A self-deluded fool’s perversion of governance that enables and empowers Creation with support from the bottom up that’s under the law. Law that necessarily expands with experience and Knowledge. With the ever-broadening context that is evolution -- Reality and Creation.


The dynamics of function 

To focus on what A Course in Miracles does is to focus on its function. Function is an attribute of Logic-Love’s definition of Reality-Creation and every part of it. An attribute whose essence is Energy, the dynamic of Force. The Force of Soul that Interconnects and of  the Authority of Necessity, the laws of cause and effect that cannot change. That define Reality and guide Logic-Love’s benevolent governance of Creation from the bottom up. Every part either has a use or it can’t exist. This applies to Mind-Consciousness and to Psyche-Soul both, the Interconnecting Force of Everything. Every part has agency under the law.

This applies to every cause including institutions dedicated to disseminating the Course and the work of its teacher. The work of doing is the work of Energy, the agent of doing for all of Reality-Creation. The dynamic of Force that gives cause its effect, the sequence of Logic-Love its forward movement. Always dynamic, always in motion because circumstances are always in motion, always changing. The Course is part of a dynamic process of growth and evolution within an alternate “reality” whose function is to guide it. To help Free Choice manage it, use it, and adapt to it dynamically.

The provocation that is honesty

The lesson of the Course is delivered authoritatively but always with gentle loving kindness. We’re given soft pillows when we board the plane, an assurance of service with wisdom and compassion. But the flight isn’t meant to lull us to sleep. Far from it. In an alternate “reality” that is dishonesty and untruth a perspective that speaks honestly for Truth is provocation. There’s bound to be turbulence. Turbulence with a purpose: not sleep but awakening. To get us off our butts and moving.

Jesus’ honesty when he walked among us showed how provocative Truth can be. The Course is sheer provocation capable of stirring the occupants of Plato’s Cave into a hornet’s nest of opposition. Into crucifying the messenger, because that’s what the crucifixion was meant to accomplish: the permanent end of messenger and message. The permanent end of fear that the Truth will ever again be told.

The comfort of gentle loving kindness, wisdom and compassion abates fear so that it won’t block accessibility. But it’s not a substitute for the lesson, nor is it meant to distract from the lesson. It only affirms its Source, the Logic-Love of Reality and its Peace. Because Logic-Love could not make its presence known otherwise.

Yet it’s provocation and a call to respond to it. A call from Logic-Love not to swoon in the ecstasy of “spirituality” but to act. Its meaning isn’t the pillow. It’s the journey out of untruth into Truth. Out of the nonsense of two realities into the sense of one Reality. The journey of provocation and turbulence that is Honesty.

The face behind the mask of pleasantness

The opposite is described in the Course as the “ego’s thought system.” It does offer substitutions and distractions. It has a thousand faces, none more sinister or familiar than likability. The devil that visited Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s novel was affable, conversational. The “god” of Jerry Martin’s God: An Autobiography is casual, erudite and entertaining, a regular guy you’d want to have a beer with. The “god” of Mari Perron’s apocryphal A Course of Love is a cheerleader for anything goes. Every one your best friend and every one a phony. Pleasantness whose purpose isn’t receptivity to Truth. It’s to hide the Truth.


Two perspectives, two functions

In applying the metaphysics of the Course to explain our alternate “reality” Kenneth Wapnick and I take off in different directions. No difference in our loyalty to the metaphysics of the Course but significant difference in what we do with it. A difference in function:

  • He taught what the Course says in its context: the specifics of two clinical psychologists at a medical-academic institution in mid-twentieth century Manhattan -- their personalities, psychologies, and relationships. I intuit what the Course may imply for specifics beyond its original context. Not on my own but in relationship with an agent of Soul, guided by Logic and Love.
  • Ken helped to interpret and communicate the Logic-Love of the Course within its scope: error committed after the Child (Father’s Son) lost consciousness. I am applying it to explore its implications for issues beyond its scope. To explain the Child’s loss of consciousness and what this implies for regaining it.
  • Ken brought his unique perspective, individuality and creativity to his task. I bring a different perspective, individuality and creativity to mine.
  • We respond to two different needs: his to clarify the lesson of the Course, mine to extend it. His to explain its metaphysics, mine to expand its metaphysics. His to focus on what the Course is, mine on what it can do.

“Absence of felicity,” absence of partiality

My differences with Ken show in our takes on two topics: Helen Schucman’s apparent ambivalence about the Course and the significance of Carl Jung’s intuition about personality type. Helen was the main scribe of A Course in Miracles which was channeled by Jesus. She was assisted by Bill Thetford, a professional colleague, in a support role. In essence, they took dictation and from it produced a manuscript suitable for publication. Neither sought nor was given editorial license to modify the lesson. Neither sought a role in teaching it.

In his biography of Helen, Absence of Felicity, Ken struggled with her reluctance to involve herself in the Course’s cause beyond recording it. Being her friend and admirer and a teacher of the Course, Ken might have been moved by personal bias that even though she held back it was not for lack of conviction. For lack of love and respect for its Author, for whom she had just completed an intensely intimate labor of love.

Had Helen not maintained neutrality skeptics could have cited this as evidence of her authorship just as any court observer would cry foul if the stenographer took sides in litigation. There were enough skeptics as it was, hard-core “realists” blocked by their bodies’ five senses from having anything to do with a sixth. A common occurrence that accounts for history’s split between two schools of thought: idealism and realism.

Helen’s gift back to the Course

The viability of the Course depends upon its source from another perspective, one that’s not tainted by human ambiguity. Its author needs to be an agent of spiritual Psyche or Soul, the agent of Logic and Love that interconnects everything including our alternate “reality.” Otherwise it won’t know what it’s talking about. How can any source talk to the occupants of one “reality” about events in another without convincing evidence of connection to both? If it can’t speak legitimately for Reality and Truth how can it make sense?

The Course owes its legitimacy and acceptance as much to its Author as to its lesson. Limiting Helen’s role to that of impartial stenographer ensured that the voice of spiritual Psyche would come through in the clear, unmolested by the human psyche. Protecting the integrity of its Author may have been Helen’s last and most sensitive act of service to the Course:


Misled by body-sensing “realism”

Ken’s unfinished work about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung may have reflected something of the person behind the professional: a subconscious preference for Freud’s “realism” and indifference bordering on aversion to Jung’s intuition about personality types. Though he observed that Jung hadn’t gone far enough Ken showed no interest to that point in Jung’s signal achievement. In particular in the critical difference between body-sensing and intuition that telegraphed the difference between Jung and Freud.

That telegraphed, as well, the aspect of Helen’s personality that suited her to her role of detachment in the story of the Course. An aspect that Ken’s brand of psychotherapy seems to have overlooked. Though Helen had experienced psychic episodes they hadn’t revealed a gift for insight or the soul of an intuitive behind the exterior of a realist. If they had it seems likely that she would have been all in for the Course. What gave her pause was the same patriarchal body-sensing that prevented teacher Freud from understanding pupil Jung. For who would balk at non-dualism, the point of “miracles” in A Course in Miracles, that our “reality” sensed by the body is unreal? That it’s so illogical it can’t be taken seriously. Who else but a body-sensing “realist?”

A taste of Heaven

Jung’s intuition tells us that personalities that define our individuality necessarily define us by what we do as much as by who we are. By our function in the evolution of context through changing circumstances. As true here as it is in Reality; nothing can exist without its part in some form of activity, whether purposeful or pointless. The role given to Helen was the business end of her personality that defined who she was to be by what she was to do in its context. The integrity of her role as scribe depended not on her going beyond its limits but on her staying within.

Helen’s willingness to devote a significant portion of her life to scribing the Course expressed core human values: satisfying work suited to the worker; meaningful work for a respected authority; support for individuality, talent, and creativity; personality and task performing as one; striving attuned to Free Will instead of smothering it. None of these brought to life to the same extent, if at all, by the regular job that frustrated her. Her talents weren’t flowering into soulful poetry on the job but they were when she was moonlighting with Jesus. The boss who never insisted that she take the job. She could tell him to shove it any time she wanted.

The act of Creation in Reality is Interconnection that’s joyful as well as effortless. Striving toward the affirmation and reciprocation of Worth. An act of benevolence defined by the governance of Logic-Love, given Life by the Force of Soul. That celebrates the Creativity of every one of its parts and every contribution shaped by its unique context. Who wouldn’t give up a part of their day to experience this? Jesus didn’t offer Helen a job; he gave her a taste of Heaven and she loved it. When Jesus taught that we are perfect just as God created us, Helen felt the Truth in it. It must have felt like an affirmation of Worth like no other.

“Success”

How did Helen’s personality fare in her work environment at Columbia Presbyterian? Exactly as a court stenographer might, who had no voice in the proceeding, if asked to speak with the voice of a litigant. Out of her element. Lost. Unsure what to say but sure she doesn’t want to be humiliated for saying it. In self-defense Helen might have taken on the hardness of certainty without to hide the softness of uncertainty within. The personality of an authoritarian realist could have been so unyielding, so demanding, that she was virtually impossible to work with. A misfit. Toxic.

If Heaven is the functions of self-awareness fitting together in harmony then our opposite “reality” must be the functions of un-self-awareness that collide in friction. Because to be un-self-aware is to be unaware of self’s individuality and function. “Success” in this life is more often than not a series of fortunate events that connect personality and function we’re unaware of with situations we’re unaware of. Everything spontaneous, beyond awareness.

Our personalities should help guide us to where our individuality and its talents belong, but if we lack self-awareness, if we undervalue Jung’s personality types, it won’t happen. In the event, it’s the agent of Soul from Logic-Love -- the tao -- that guides us when we allow it, unseen.

The “success” of one life is but a mirror image of the series of unplanned accidents and mistakes that accounts for all of life on our planet. Not to know what we’re doing is quite in step with the nature of our alternate “reality,” and Helen was in step. Demanding that the personality of a scribe take positions, whose job description is the opposite, would have made her at least hard to work with if not toxic. Her work space would have been toxic if she wasn’t alone. As it was it was so toxic that it put out the Call for Love -- for the “better way” -- that gave us A Course in Miracles.

The authenticity of the Course and its Author

Contrast the friction of misfits at work with Helen’s remarkable fit with Jesus. Their compatibility further evidence that the Jesus of the Course is authentic. That he’s an agent of Soul connected to Logic and Love, the same functions of Mind in Reality that fit all functions together in harmony. Further evidence that Jesus knew what he was doing when it was through Helen’s mind, through her personality and its function -- scribe, -- that he channeled the Course. Probable choice because of her function, improbable on the face of it because of her personality.

The Course’s authenticity is undermined anytime skeptics can mischaracterize its scribe as one of them. She wasn’t one of them. The impartiality of a scribe is just that: impartiality. Skepticism is taking sides, and Helen could not do that. Though she was obliged to signal impartiality it’s clear that she never meant it to detract from the Course or its Author. It wasn’t a stance, thumbs up or thumbs down. A state that concerned her biographer, who sought to correct it with an interpretation of thumbs up. But Ken needn’t have been concerned. The ornery scribe took care of the skeptics on her own.


Intuition’s gift of personality type

I cite Ken’s esteem for Helen and for Freud not as an indication of questionable scholarship. He was as respectful of scholarship as he was of their achievements. His grasp of the Logic of the Course was as uncompromising as its non-dualism -- reliably disciplined and on the mark. Articulate and professional. His passion for his cause and contributions almost as impressive as the Course itself. The same unerring judgment that offered Helen her job was clearly at work when it offered Ken his.

I cite it instead as an instance of a more general tendency of human illogic to overlook personality type and function in its understanding of our alternate “reality.” Of the human condition, and so to guide Free Choice in choosing how to address it. How to discern purpose and meaning correctly so that we progress beyond it instead of being stuck inside Plato’s Cave.

I cite it, too, as an instance of how original thinking with intuition can work productively with the Course when the Course itself doesn’t cover all the bases. Though he dives into the human Psyche to an unprecedented depth Jesus leaves it to us to explore its breadth. Breadth that could have included personality type to explain projection and the obstacles we face in reversing it, but it didn’t. The point being we can figure it out for ourselves. If Jesus had laid it all out for us would we still have Free Choice?

Jung and Myers-Briggs shared the gift of Mind -- the sixth sense that is intuition -- with their theory of personality type. With illumination that can make the occupants of the Cave aware that its darkness isn’t their only choice. They aren’t prisoners and neither are we. None of us is a victim except by our own hand. We aren’t truly stuck anywhere except by our own choice, delusion that we’ve inflicted on ourselves. 

Body-sensing’s corruption of personality type

“Science” has done the opposite with its “five factor” theory of personality type. With the five senses of the body insanely fearful of what Mind’s sixth sense will reveal about them: that they don’t serve the light. That they and their captive science are instruments of the dark. Keeping us inside the Cave. Aided and abetted by Freud, adamant that Psyche is confined to body just as science is adamant that Consciousness is confined to brain.

Where does such nonsense come from? Not from the Logic of Jung’s and Myers-Briggs’ intuition that makes sense. It can only come from illogic that doesn’t make sense. From the master of the Cave. From delusion, and what’s called for is voice to speak for something better. Full-throated support for understanding personality type and function with intuition, not for overlooking it.

Klaatu barada nikto!

Jung and his successors, Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers, were guided by the same source and produced results that were equally insightful. Not flawless but equally useful if only analysts and theorists like Ken were aware of it.

A foundation dedicated to Ken’s work won’t critique it. Yet I share my critique to make a point, that acknowledging the Course’s part in a living, ongoing reflection on the questions of life’s purpose and meaning would add to its relevance, not detract from it. Would expand the reach of Ken’s extraordinary contribution, not impede it.

No one can absorb every detail, every nuance, of what Jesus and Ken had to say through the Course. But anyone with Mind and its sixth sense, along with the uniqueness of their personalities, is qualified to reflect on its implications. Is qualified to apply its lesson from one set of circumstances -- the personalities, lives, and work of two clinical psychologists in twentieth century Manhattan -- to another.

Policies and principles given voice in one moment are meant not to be enshrined as though time had stopped, but to be applied. Applied to other moments because time hasn’t stopped. The world of the Course and Ken’s teaching is not The Day the Earth Stood Still. We are not Patricia Neal needing Michael Rennie’s robot Gort to protect us inside his flying saucer. It’s the Cambrian era: change and diversity so powerful that nothing can stop it.

Infinity in motion

The Course is more than the comfort of sanctuary. It’s the engine of Mind and intuition that enable and empower adaptation to change. Function that asks to be recognized and put to use. To overlook it is to miss not only the Truth of what it is but the Truth of what it’s for.

We can’t do as Jesus has asked without staying in step with change. Without aligning ourselves with the Logic and Love of Creation. With work that can never be done because the implications of Logic and the connections of Love -- Relationships that hold the Interconnectedness of Soul together as One -- aren’t temporal. They’re infinite. Eternal. Eternally in motion. If this is the Truth of Reality and Creation, then it must be the Truth of the Course and the use we make of it. To bring us to the light of self-awareness and the end of the darkness of our Cave.


The example set by Jesus

What did Jesus mean when he admonished teachers and students not to treat the Course as a “bible?” That to do so would thwart its use, just as the intended use of Jesus’ parables and miracles long ago, in a different context, was thwarted by captivity to authoritarian hierarchy and canon. By “Bible” that distracted minds detached from Reality with the false promise of absolute Truth. Just as the Child unconscious had been misled by the two-headed lie of absolute Authority and absolute Freedom. All of it a con.

Jesus didn’t respond to Helen’s and Bill’s Call for Love with the absolute Truth. With an external deus ex machina that, once imposed on their situations, would solve all problems in perpetuity. He responded with example. He role-modeled how to address their problems without telling anyone what to do. How to explain context -- individual and humanity -- with Logic combined with Love that leads to understanding. So that reasoning can address purpose and meaning grounded in facts instead of magical thinking. So that it will be guided by perception and judgment instead of misperception and misjudgment. All of it grounded in Reality and Necessity -- the laws of cause and effect  that take the mystery out of miracles.

The call for original thinking that provokes

Above all, he set an example for the use of Logic, Love, and Free Will to expose the lie that is our alternate “reality.” Courageously and honestly, for this is anything but a convenient truth. Unless we follow his example with explanation that leads to Understanding, based on Logic and Love, that's shared with wisdom and compassion, it will be taken by others as provocation. As attack that warrants response in kind: unthinking, unreasoning retaliation.

If we allow the Course to be treated as absolute unquestioned anything we kill it. It’s not a “bible” because its very purpose is to question and be questioned. To empower the implications  of Logic that is forever asking Why. To enshrine the Course in absolute Truth is to deprive it of its power. To do the work of insanity, the Child's shadow-code. Parsing its metaphysics and sharing lives is useful but so too is application that puts it to work. So too is original thinking that’s provocative or it’s not doing its job. A view that’s legitimate and even critical but under-represented. Why? Because it's provocative. 

Choose again

Application of its metaphysics is what makes the Course unique. Text, Workbook, and Manual. A point made eloquently through the work of its teacher, Kenneth Wapnick. Then can the Course and its teacher be honored as inspiration and guidance for their use? For their application by their students to changing contexts that require fresh understanding? Through the same independent judgment, the same sixth sense guided by Logic and Love, that Jesus affirmed when he closed with Choose again?

Institutions dedicated to the Course and its teacher’s work in their time might also help to reflect on what’s to be said through the same Logic and Love, the same sixth sense, in our time. To reflect and apply the Course as a living document in the spirit of Jesus, whose work is not done. Is this feasible? It’s worth asking.

The pheasant in its nest

The pheasant needs flight to adapt to the world around it. It can’t stay in its nest. Every institution needs to reflect on its mission to stay viable. When the Miracle Distribution Center, the Foundation for A Course in Miracles, and the Foundation for Inner Peace reflect again, what considerations arise from the example of Jesus? What suggestions might be offered by the provocation of Honesty and Truth and the dynamic of Love? By the eternal Why of Logic?

Thank you. Keep up the good work, and God bless!

Note: The following is an imaginary conversation with a bright pre-adolescent, a talented dancer whose style evokes comparison with a wild Siberian tiger. Her voice is in regular font, mine in italics. 

The Ultimate in Cool

You were up there on stage at the South Coast Botanic Garden. I was? Doing what? Doing your world-renowned Dance of the Wild Siberian Tiger. An elegant, svelte, supremely beautiful beast. Untamed. Master of her environment, allowing herself to be admired but belonging to no one.  Super cool -- that’s me! That is you. The beauty and seductiveness of style. The Toast of the Coast. And more. How can there be more when I’m already a star?

An image of two absolutes: absolute authority and absolute freedom. Two of the most compelling and consequential drivers of human thought and behavior in all of history. Forces of nature that ideally no one and nothing can limit. Wow! I knew my tiger was important but not this important! How did this happen? 

Rose

Something with this much hold on the human Psyche must have deep roots, and it does. It goes all the way back to when our one ancestral Mind imagined that it was many bodies. To our split identity between Mind and brain. But first, does your tiger have a name? If she does she hasn’t told me. Well, while we’re waiting I have a suggestion. “Rousseau.”

Calvin had Hobbes. Who was that? A boy in a comic strip with a stuffed tiger that he brought to life with his imagination. They were great friends and had fun, and they were entertaining. Cool! Thomas Hobbes was a 17th century English philosopher who thought human nature needs to be under universal absolute authority to be civilized. An 18th century Swiss philosopher thought it’s more like “noble savages,” essentially good but corruptible by tribes. His name was Jean Jacques Rousseau. Their philosophies live on in the great political and economic debates of today. 

He was a guy. My tiger is a girl. Can we call her “Rose” while I think about it? Of course! 

The one Mind that’s Logic combined with Love

So what’s this about minds and brains?

“Mind” and “brain” are two distinct entitles with two distinct sources and two distinct functions. They occupy two distinct worlds or “realities:” one that’s real and the other that isn’t because there can only be one Reality. You’ll need Mind to understand this because brains are matter that depend on their bodies’ five senses. They only see what’s in front of their eyes. The sixth sense of minds -- Intuition -- helps them sense the other world. 

Our minds are actually one Mind. Their source is the fusion of two distinct functions in one Relationship. Functions of thinking and feeling with Logic and Love. All the things that our minds do when they make sense and decide, judge and choose. When they stand up for good values and try to do what’s right. Understanding plus conscience. 

The Relationship between Logic and Love is between equals that aren’t complete without one another. Mind can’t make sense and do the right thing without the values of Love, and it can’t move forward and get things done if it doesn’t have the direction and discipline of Logic. Neither can Create without the other -- Create new life, new compositions of beauty and joyfulness. Everything that gives Creation its Worth. That makes it worth doing. 

Powerball 

Creation that requires Logic and Love working together in harmony but also working with something else that’s necessary: Free Choice. If we think of Logic as Choice and Love as Freedom Free Choice is their Child. With its own distinct definition and function that Creation needs, acting freely without interference. Its own Self along with its own function. 

It’s able to choose freely because of two conditions. The first is Order: the laws of cause and effect that apply to everything. Civilization “under the law.” The second is Relationship: the connection between Free Choice and its source, the Mind of Logic and Love. 

Connection that’s part of something larger that holds everything together: the Force of Energy that we call “Soul.” Interconnectedness. Everything fitting together in the harmony we call “Order” because it’s all directed and disciplined by Mind. By Logic and Love. Then Rose and I can be soulmates. You can if she’s an agent of Soul and not absolute authority and freedom. To understand that the source of Energy -- of power -- is Soul, and that Soul is Innocence that Interconnects everything, is to begin to understand its true nature. To understand how helpful it can if we make it our friend.

What’s wrong with absolute authority and freedom? Aren’t they good? History tells us that between the two ideals, being part of Soul that Interconnects everything and part of absolute authority and freedom, only one is helpful. The other is harmful. There can’t be a Force of nature that no one and nothing can limit. Like Palpatine and his Galactic Empire, it’s a fantasy. It’s OK if Rose portrays a beautiful but impossible ideal in performing arts. It’s done all the time. Having unlimited authority and freedom is like winning the lottery. But it’s dangerous when we try to make it real. This will take some explaining. I’ll try.  

Living the dream 

The source of mind’s thinking is one Mind. The individual Free Choice that’s our ancestral Mind. It can’t not exist since it’s part of Reality and it can’t not have Choice if it’s part of Creativity. All it has to do is to use its talents for Logic and Love to take part in Creation. In other words, Mind in Reality is Logic and Love working together to Create Life and Worth in Relationship with their Child, Free Choice. Then what is the brain?

Brain is a copy of Mind in reverse -- Mind’s opposite. It came about when the Mind of the Child of Logic and Love lost consciousness. When it dreamed what we can think of as an alternate “reality” that seems real to us but isn’t. If it’s a dream how can it seem so real? It seems so real because we rely on our brains and their bodies’ five senses to tell us what’s real and they’re part of the dream. And because the Force of Soul that Interconnects Reality is temporarily animating the dream. The dream will end?

Logic says so and so does physics: the energy that powers our universe is headed for inertia. It’s dying. So we think we’re experiencing Reality when all we’re experiencing is Energy activating a dream, with our bodies’ senses providing the 3-D movie projector. All in Technicolor! Real but unreal. 

The code that defines the dream 

The Mind unconscious and the brains of the bodies that it’s dreaming both contain the same code that defines the dream. The opposite of the Logic and Love that define Reality and Creation, and so it’s always pulling us into the dream away from Reality. Always misleading us into misperceptions, misjudgments, and wrongdoing. Why? Because Reality-Creation is Good and the code that defines the dream is its opposite. Parting with this thing that’s messing with our character and values, our thinking and relationships, is the great task of humanity. It’s why we’re talking about it. 

Why did the Child lose consciousness? I’m writing a book about it. A book I read about philosophy and theology said nobody so far has come up with a rational explanation. Then my intuition -- my sixth sense -- started explaining with insights that made sense. That was over three years ago. The book is still writing itself. When will you be done? When the insights tell me I’m done. So far they’re not letting up. I have to ignore the clock. 

Are minds and brains both helping with the great task of humanity? They are, but since they’re both deluded by the dream’s code it’s mostly inadvertent. Inadvertent? Unintentional, indirect. Brains belong to bodies and bodies are hard-wired into the dream. They have a different agenda, but their work still adds to our understanding. Minds with their sixth sense are receptive to other perspectives that aren’t hard-wired into the dream. It’s this other dimension that can get us somewhere. 

Two contexts, two agendas 

What’s different about their agendas? Mind’s context is the individual, brain’s the tribe or the herd. It’s because they have opposite sources: Child Mind-the-one in Reality and Child Mind-the-many in unreality -- in the alternate “reality” or dream defined by the code. 

We are equipped with two kinds of thinking -- brains and minds -- because we are two kinds of beings. Not a contradiction because, remember, only one is Real. We are tribes that need brains to disempower individuality for conformity and families of personalities that need minds to empower individuality for creativity. If Mind is one Child creating in Reality with its Parents, brain is many versions of Child in unreality socializing many versions of the beast. Many beasts in humanity’s animal brain that need to be organized and controlled so the tribe-herd survives. 

One part of the brain, the amygdala, links us to our distant past when we were animals that hadn’t yet become humans. We’re animals? We still are, only now with a difference. Ape evolved into Homo and Homo evolved into Homo Sapiens. Sapiens is Latin meaning “rational.” The amygdala at the base of the brain acquired a talent for thinking at the top: the prefrontal cortex. Sapiens. 

Socializing many beasts 

If we’re civilized humans it’s because we have minds as well as brains and because our cortex, generally but not always, tames the beast in our amygdala. It socializes the tribe so individual members cooperate when they have to hunt prey, fight with other tribes, or raise their young. To do whatever it takes to survive in a world of tribes. Without the cortex it would be like herding cats. What does “socializing” mean?

We equate socializing and sociable with agreeable, social life with fun. But what’s behind “social” isn’t intimacy among individuals. It isn’t Love, trust, and honesty that validate our distinctive personalities, empower creativity, and make us soulmates. Brain doesn’t care about any of this. It’s making its members wear mental uniforms to preserve its integrity. Imposing the sameness of conformity so personalities that define our individuality and enable intimacy disappear into a group. So they don’t make trouble by challenging its authority. 

Socializing brings the tribe’s beasts under control by imposing discipline on behavior within and among groups. The graphic book I sent not long ago helps to explain the neuroscience. Oh, that book. Right. It’s called “Two Heads: A Graphic Exploration of How Our Brains Work with Other Brains.” Clear evidence from people who study the brain that it’s not concerned with us as individuals. Then what is it concerned about?

Brain is only concerned about us as tribes. And as we’ll see this doesn’t necessarily mean it cares about us. It wants us to belong but once we do it’s not certain that it’s for our own good. Not if tribes get into fights. Not if they start world wars and threaten mass annihilation. The belonging of tribes is not the Loving of individuals. It may not even be the loving of tribes. 

Great performing art 

So why do we need minds if we’re civilized? We need minds because brains socializing beasts so that tribes can maintain group integrity in competition isn’t the same as civilizing. The wealth and happiness we get from minds is purpose and meaning. The heart of civilization that needs forward movement, led by vision toward a destination that stands for something. Toward a shared ideal. Toward Worth that has substance and consequence. Toward the integrity of individual character and values. 

Socializing and civilizing are different functions performed by two different agents with different agendas. If we’re talking about our animal brain It means giving its unthinking will and emotion, its raw energy, direction and discipline. We direct it with reason and values. With conscience that knows right from wrong. And we discipline it with the judgment of Logic that establishes and enforces boundaries. It’s called “governance.” Civilization. 

Brains preoccupied with tribes may seem to have our best interests at heart, but do they really? They begin life with play at dominance in competition. When they’re done with procreation they take on tribal competition for real as if looking for something to occupy us. All the while distracting us with style instead of substance, seduction instead of connection. Is that what was happening when Rose and I danced? You and Rose were being seductive with style and it made for great performing art! Great entertainment. 

From one to three dimensions 

The seductions of “action” consist of physical and emotional pleasure, pain, and winning and losing in tribal competition. Contrivances without purpose and meaning going nowhere. Every man for himself. A script composed by a writer who has no real idea what he’s doing and so he’s making it up. Unaware that his real purpose may not be to entertain and be entertained but to grow up. 

Minds come to the fore with contemplation when brains step back after procreation. Individuals released from conformance to groups share wisdom and compassion that adds depth to the purpose and meaning of civilization. A world that had seemed like a one-dimensional comic strip of unfeeling, self-centered action figures takes on an added dimension. The depth of judgment, insight, and understanding from mind’s sixth sense. From the individual’s Free Will.

The servant that must never be master

Energy -- the “Force” popularized by “Star Wars” -- acts at the direction and under the discipline of Mind because it’s the servant of Mind. The relationship between our animal brain and the brain’s socializing function in the prefrontal cortex is servant to master. Without the civilizing influence of Mind our animal will has no intelligence of its own to guide it. To put it to its intended use, which is to supply motivation, passion, drive. To translate thought and feeling into action. To back up civilized thinking with force. With instinct that acts when there’s no time for thought.  What happens when servant takes over? 

It's what happened to 1930s Germany: thinking, conscience, and judgment of Mind are all taken over by a predator. The human animal reverts to animal, the state we were in before we became human. Before ape evolved into homo sapiens. Only worse because now the animal in us has access to all the ways sapiens can think of to dominate and destroy. Like handing the nuclear code to Frankenstein’s monster. I think I’ve heard this story before. We all have. Technology comes up with new stuff and always it falls into the wrong hands. Germany was working to develop the atomic bomb when WWII ended. 

The power of the dark side 

To prevent servant becoming master we make sure that Rose, our wild Siberian tiger, hasn’t transformed from an agent of Soul into an ideal of absolute authority and freedom. We make sure that we haven’t transformed ourselves into Rose the wrong ideal. What would happen if we did? We would eventually revert to living in caves and hunting and foraging. Without civilization. Civilization is the rule of law that applies to everyone. The “ideal” of absolute authority and freedom is the opposite: lawlessness. It’s where authoritarian regimes like Germany’s were taking us.

The raw power of beast combined with style, the exquisite gracefulness of beauty that you and Rose portrayed, is capable of casting a spell over the human imagination. So compelling that some would rather let it rule and live under its spell. Who does that? Authoritarians who want our world to be ruled by the Force of will that is Energy ungoverned by Mind. Because that’s who they want to be. “Conservatives” who don’t like democracy because it governs. Because it won’t let them have and do whatever they want. “Traditionalists” who don’t want change because it’s harder to control than things the way they are. That sounds selfish.

Selfish and irrational. To them the “free” in “free market” is an ideal of absolute freedom, a wild Siberian tiger that they don’t want tamed. Arguments over whether this is the best thing divide whole schools of economics and spill over into politics and philosophy. How to handle this compelling image of a wild Siberian tiger, an impossibility, has been a big deal forever. Conflict over whether to let servant be the master when the answer should be obvious. 

Hand-me-downs from other lives

Conservatives gave themselves another name when they took over 1930s Germany: “National Socialists.” The Nazis adored their version of a wild Siberian tiger who seduced them with his shining ideal. He called it “triumph of the will.” An ideal of wildness that is a law unto itself. Ruling arbitrarily, doing whatever he wants. Which is no law at all for everyone else because laws structure society with boundaries. If the “boundaries” are whatever the absolute ruler decrees and he can change his mind then there are no boundaries. No structure, only disorder. We can’t live with confidence in disorder. We can only live in fear and hope for our safety if we obey the ruler. 

France went through this earlier during the French Revolution. It was known as the “Terror.” That was Germany in the 1930s? For many Germans, yes. And yet many others were glad to obey. As if they liked allying with someone who could be wild and do whatever he wanted even if they couldn’t. As if he were living its ideal for them. Living others’ lives for them? Is that possible?

Psychologically it is, and it’s not uncommon. Ordinary people in England lived lives of unlimited ease and pleasure vicariously through the lords and ladies of nobility, especially when Queen Victoria ruled the British Empire. Many live vicariously through royalty and other celebrities today. “Vicariously?” Your American Heritage dictionary has a nice definition just for you. I would rather learn vicariously through you. Touché! 

The human animal 

Did Germany’s will “triumph” in the end? It did just the opposite. It led everyone into another world war that Germany lost. It led to mass destruction and total defeat. Who was this guy? Adolf Hitler. He didn’t survive. And his shining ideal of wildness? It died too? No. The tragedy of all our wars: warriors die but the mad ideal of absolute authority just goes on and on. That doesn’t allow independent thinking. That crushes individual initiative and creativity. That prizes obedience and loyalty above all virtues. And all because of Rose? Our animal brain? 

You might think so. But animals on their own have survived for hundreds of millions of years. Like the dinosaurs? Yes. And mammals and fish too, even though they prey on one another. Within their herds or species the caring and character they display can put humans to shame. Animals in the wild prey on one another for food and self-protection. If they’re brought up in conditions where it’s not necessary some species lose that instinct. They become domesticated, even playful and affectionate. They deserve our love and respect. 

Humanity has evolved from its animal roots into a different kind of animal. One that isn’t content with propagation of its species. “Triumph of the will” isn’t content with live and let live. Authoritarian supremacy wants more. It will have its ideal of absolute authority or take us all down with it. A mindset that’s interested in surviving for hundreds of millions of years but only on its own terms. Which means it places its ideal -- its authority -- even above our species’ survival. It’s fatally self-centered. Hitler and his admirers fought to the last man; their cause transformed from absolute authority to absolute destruction. The act of a human animal. 

The inhuman animal 

What humanity’s authoritarian mindset appropriates from its animal nature is the wildness. The instinct of a predator ruled by the law of the jungle: kill or be killed. Far from civilization governed by reason and judgment, by gentle loving kindness. The Force of nature represented by your beautiful tiger doesn’t have a dark side. It’s there to serve Mind. If the Force of nature seems to have gone off track it’s because its master, the Mind that directs it, has gone off track. Whether “the Force” is good or bad depends on the use we put it to. The human mind does have a dark side, and it’s made of your lovable Soulmate Rose something that she isn’t. Palpatine and his evil Galactic Empire!

A false ideal that humanity keeps coming back to and every time it’s a disaster. An absurd authoritarian fantasy that releases the worst instincts of humanity. That turns us back into uncivilized animals. Into predators. How can Palpatine be so cruel without feeling bad about it?

You’re thinking Palpatine is human. But in order to live his authoritarian fantasy he’s made himself inhuman. By denying his human qualities: reason, values, conscience, and sensitivity. The ability to relate to others as humans. His galaxy is inhabited by inhumans who can’t feel. Cruelty among inhumans can’t be possible if only dominance and defeat are possible. If you resist Palpatine’s rule and get hurt it’s your own fault. So there’s nothing to feel bad about. 

The all-powerful whimpering kitty 

Crushing others with absolute power is so unfair, so unjust! Doesn’t Palpatine see that it’s wrong? No. He thinks he’s right. Not causing injustice but righting a great injustice. An injustice done to him that stole his self and all its resources -- mind, heart, talents, functions that gave him life. An injustice that abandoned him to a dangerous, competitive world. That made him a helpless, innocent victim. 

Tough-guy authoritarians like Palpatine and Hitler begin their rampage with self-pity and blame. Feeling sorry for themselves and so they take it out on others. 1930s Germany began its rampage of authoritarian persecution by believing that it was the persecuted. But I want to be innocent. “I did nothing wrong!”

We all want to be innocent -- wrongdoers especially who think they’ve been mistreated. And we all feel sorry for ourselves. There’s plenty of injustice to go around that we can’t do anything about. But there’s a better way to serve conscience than imagining we’re helpless innocent victims. How’s that? We’re never helpless. We have Free Will. We have gifts and powers. And every situation has its opportunities to use them. It’s why I think, why I write. Why my tiger and I dance. You have wonderful talents of mind, heart, and body that will be put to good use. 

World of individuality, world of creativity 

We need minds to take us to the next level of evolution: beyond demonstrating one talent to demonstrating another. From the talent to socialize and civilize to the talent to exercise -- to exercise Free Choice. From developing the capacity of groups to get along to developing the capacity of individuals to be creative instead of self-destructive. To think and act creatively with understanding. With self-awareness that can only come from Relationship with Logic and Love, our Source. The one Mind that we are. The way to Freedom from the confinement of misunderstanding, the strange appeal of absolutes. 

Whose side are brains on? 

It takes much more than socializing animal brains to achieve our ideals as individuals and as a society. There’s no possibility of Free Choice without the Order of civilization and the governance of democracy. Though brains are supposed to socialize beasts history and everyday experience tell us that they’re not up to it. Civilization has advanced in some ways but in other ways it’s gotten nowhere. The beasts in our animal brain keep getting out of their cage. Our world and our lives are still precarious. 

Brains with their bodies’ five senses think this is “normal” and nothing can be done about it. They aren’t moved by true ideals. True ideals are creative. “Triumph of the Will” is destructive. The Mind that we share through our sixth sense is moved by true ideals. It thinks the opposite. A world that’s not making real progress, that’s stuck in a status quo that’s actually taking us backward, isn’t normal and something can be done about it. Mind is Possibility. Mind is Hope. 

I don’t have a good feeling about this. Brains that think we should be OK with the beast taking over; that have no ideals; that are content with getting nowhere -- whose side are they on? They have a different agenda so we have to wonder. 

Dance of the Big Bang 

Here’s one possibility. Since all they can detect with their five senses is the surface of things brains may be using the lure of absolute authority and freedom to distract us. From what? From discovering what’s underneath. Like a magician’s act that diverts attention with sleight of hand. What could be underneath? The Truth that the magician doesn’t want us to know. That appearances are all there is. That they’re all illusions -- magician’s tricks -- and we’re being fooled. There’s nothing underneath. Our “alternate reality” is a movie studio façade. 

Minds perform a critical function that brains lack: the capacity to understand with Logic that defines and explains, that structures and orders our situations. Exactly what absolute authority and freedom seek to avoid because it’s all about setting limits. Maybe all about figuring out what brains are up to. Good reason for brains to push minds out of the way? Makes sense. 

So we can be friends and soulmates 

Then what is Mind’s agenda? To furnish us with the functions of individual minds that tribal-herd brains deny us. Functions that enable us as individuals to make sense of our situations. To learn and grow to maturity. To gain the competence to distinguish between Truth and appearances, right and wrong. So we can understand meaning and purpose, exercise Free Choice, and move forward. Understand personalities and the psychology of relationships so we can be friends and soulmates, get along better. So we will stop being lured by false ideals and return to where there are real ideals. To Real Worth. To where we belong. 

It may have been the promise of absolute authority and freedom that lured our ancestral Mind into its dream. To a fairyland where there are no Parents or laws to keep it from having and doing whatever it wants. When you and Rose performed the dance of the wild Siberian tiger you might have been re-enacting a historic seduction. Historic? Me? The seduction of our ancestral Mind that produced our universe. Recognition at last! 

Your choice 

We don’t have to be imprisoned like beasts inside a brain. If we are Free Choice we have a choice: Mind and its sixth sense. A hopeful Mind that offers us purpose with a vision. That offers possibility and Creativity -- a way forward. Which will yours be?

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.

Fiction:

  • All relations are power relations between groups / tribes-herds competing for dominance.
  • Individuals “exist” with voices and feelings worthy of recognition only to the extent that they belong to groups, identify with groups, and are loyal to groups.
  • The gift of belonging that groups confer upon their members substitutes for Love and reciprocates individuals’ Love for their group.
  • Love of individuals for their group is to be encouraged. Love between individuals that can take precedence over group loyalty is to be denied and suppressed.
  • Group / tribe-herd loyalty is the highest good, the most important core value. More important than individual sovereignty and integrity. More important than respect for morality and the truth.
  • Questioning the supremacy of group authority is a sin. There is no worse sin than disobedience to group authority.

Fact:

  • One Child is Real and True. Child-the-many is a delusion perpetrated by the Child’s mistaken identity, its shadow-reflection opposite. By its “dark side” that can only be detected by Mind while in an unconscious state dreaming illusions.
  • Power relations between groups / tribes-herds competing for dominance are illusory “action” meant to distract their audience of individuals from the Truth, to convince them that Child-the-many is not what it is: the opposite of the Truth -- one Child -- and therefore unreal. It is an illusion.
  • Individuals have Free Choice enabled by Mind thinking-loving that is not subject to the mindless-loveless animal will of groups / tribes-herds.
  • There is no substitute for Love.
  • Group “belonging” that condemns its members to the suppression of sovereign individuality, the denial of Mind, Free Will, and Love, and to endless conflict is a curse, not a gift or blessing.
  • Free Will is the natural birthright of every individual. Bodies can be controlled and behavior suppressed. Minds and hearts endowed with individuality and Free Will cannot.
  • There is no more important core value than valuing the one Self that is Love shared and expressed through Oneness-individuality. There is no higher good than respect for Good itself -- morality, Logic-Love, and the Truth.
  • There is no more harmful mistake than loyalty to the mindless, loveless, soulless animal will of group / tribe-herd taking precedence over the mindful, loving Free Will of individuality.

Fiction:

  • Consideration whether the ownership and use of a product is to be adjusted to accommodate others affected by its use, that denies them feelings and a voice with which to express their feelings, that ignores what their voice has to say, is moral and “reasonable.”
  • A response to a request that’s accompanied by reasons based on values, that makes no reference to the reasons and values given, is moral and “reasonable.”
  • Ownership that confers the right to do whatever the owner wants without regard to the interests of others affected in a shared world is ownership that’s responsible, moral, and “reasonable.”
  • It is “reasonable”-possible to have and do whatever you want without violating the natural rule of law that defines morality and enables civilization.
  • Explanation and understanding are possible without analysis. Free Choice is possible without analysis. Analysis is possible without reasoning and evaluation. 

Fact:

  • In a shared, just, civilized world no one may have and do whatever they want with ownership or any other context without conflicting with the natural rule of law and morality.
  • “Doing” is process that always requires structure. Structure is Order that consists of natural laws of cause and effect, sourced by Benevolence -- Logic and Love -- and backed up by the Force of Necessity. It’s morality and it applies to owners as well as everyone.
  • It applies to Benevolence -- the Authority that governs all of Reality-Creation because otherwise its governance would be arbitrary and capricious and therefore immoral and lawless.
  • The “right” to have and do whatever anyone wants in any context is a myth that authoritarian narcissists employ in order to “justify” injustice: acts that are inherently selfish, insensitive, cruel, and therefore immoral.
  • It is being promoted today by selfish, immoral demagogues to “justify” the takeover of democratic bottom-up governance by authoritarian top-down rule.
  • It is a lie that accounts for humanity’s long history of unresolved tension between civilizing Reason and tribalizing herd-emotions, between harmony and conflict, Good and evil, peace and war.
  • It is the ultimate affront to the rule of law that enables a just, reasoning-accommodating, egalitarian civilization as opposed to authoritarian dominance by unreasoning, unjust, combative tribal will.
  • The idea that anyone can have and do whatever they want without violating the natural rule of law and morality is detached from Reality, psychotic, and therefore insane.

Fiction:

  • Having a voice and the right and duty to be heard is the sole prerogative of authoritarian rule. No one else is entitled to it.
  • Denying others a voice when they have the right and duty to be heard cannot be of any consequence to them or inflict any cost on them.
  • It is of no consequence and inflicts no cost because others are not entitled to feelings. Having feelings that can be offended is the exclusive preserve of authoritarian rule.
  • Authoritarian rule that claims exclusive rights to a voice and feelings can do no harm to those denied a voice and feelings and is therefore exempt from responsibility and accountability since there are no consequences-costs to account for.
  • Authoritarian rule is exempt from accountability because rule that’s arbitrary, capricious, and lawless may do whatever it wants. 

Fact:

  • Everyone in a shared, just, and civilized world is entitled to a voice and has the right to be heard when their interests are affected.
  • Everyone has feelings and the right to use their voice to express their feelings when they are offended.
  • Authoritarian rule that denies others a voice and deprives them of feelings when they are affected is unfeeling. It’s insensitive, cruel, immoral, and uncivilized.
  • Unfeeling authoritarian wrongdoing can evoke feelings of rage, hatred, and a “terrible resolve” to right the wrong among its victims. Admiral Yamamoto feared that democratic America would be filled with a “terrible resolve” to punish authoritarian Japan for its attack on Pearl Harbor, and America did so.

Fiction:

  • Authoritarian rule must be unquestioned because it is flawless as it is, it is absolute, and has no opposite. 

Fact:

  • Authoritarian rule can have no opposite because it is an opposite: the opposite of the natural laws of cause and effect and morality backed by the Force of Necessity that govern supportively and compassionately from the bottom up instead of ruling cruelly, destructively, and lawlessly from the top down.

Fiction:

  • Structure-Order is possible without natural laws of cause and effect and a moral code backed by the Force of Necessity.
  • Structure-Order is made possible by arbitrary-capricious authoritarian rule that’s lawless. That “rules” by the “laws” of chaos.
  • In Structure-Order made possible by lawless authoritarian rule it’s possible, moral, and just to have and do whatever you want without consequences or costs.

Fact:

  • Arbitrary-capricious authoritarian rule that’s lawless is the opposite of Structure-Order and morality.
  • Freedom is impossible in the absence of Structure-Order.
  • The absence of Structure-Order -- lawlessness -- is the denial of Freedom. It’s imprisonment, enslavement. 

Fiction:

  • “Action” is mindless, loveless, and soulless.
  • “Action” is bodies directed-disciplined by animal herd instinct toward dominance-supremacy of will in physical competition-conflict.
  • “Action” that results in winning and losing in physical conflict stands for the ultimate purpose and meaning of Life: the “Triumph of the Will.” 

Fact:

  • Action that stands for purpose and meaning is mindful, loving, and soulful.
  • Action is self-directed, self-disciplined minds and hearts functioning with guidance from their sixth sense -- spontaneous insights from Intuition -- toward explanation that leads to understanding how to address issues and solve problems with honesty, integrity, and compassion.
  • Action is the application of understanding that addresses issues and solves problems, that alleviates suffering and advances the cause of a just and free society.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Wildness” that translates into authoritarian supremacy is a joke

“Wild card” autonomy logically implies detachment from controls -- anything that would limit its range of movement, any superior authority that would “tame” it. The Joker’s pitch would have offered unconscious Child an alternate reality where there would be no limits on its movement, no structure to contend with, no interconnectedness. Where the Child Free Choice, Creation’s wild card, could be wild -- a definition of “free” that the Interconnectedness of Reality can’t satisfy. Our unreal material world is a fantasy of “wildness” which implies chaos -- no laws. It’s Ivan Karamazov’s “lawlessness” which implies arbitrary-capricious top-down rule.

This is the philosophical root of Palpatine’s authoritarian supremacy, the “wildness” of the Child Free Choice, a ”wild card.” In Truth nothing in Reality-Creation can be a wild card without definition, without the structure-Order of Interconnectedness that Freedom requires. The alternate reality offered by the Joker-opposite was an impossibility without the definitions-connections of Logic-Love.

A perversion that’s a joke: “wild card”-“wildness” that translates into authoritarian supremacy, the opposite of freedom-wildness. Plato’s Cave occupants are fools imagining themselves to be “wild and crazy guys.” “Born to raise hell” motorcyclists are expressing a version of “freedom” that’s wildness: impossible, delusional foolishness. Freedom without Order is delusional. Yet Child Free Choice can logically imply wildness because it’s free of Parents’ control. It’s not free of Creation Structure-Interconnectedness but it must be free of Parental control within Process.

How the Joker pulled it off -- the reversal of Creation

The distinction between Creation’s Structure and Process is critical to understanding the Child’s loss of Consciousness. The Child’s wild card freedom from Parental control of its choices within Process may have implied to an inexperienced Child, lacking self-direction and self-discipline, that the laws of cause and effect and the Force of Necessity in Process didn’t apply to Child. It thus may have implied that laws-Necessity in Structure didn’t apply either. It may have implied that wild card absence of Parental control of Free Choice exempts Free Choice from laws-Necessity in Process and Structure of Creation both.

Humanity attempting to express Free Choice wild card as “liberty,” i.e. as exemption from laws-Necessity, is an impossibility that can only be re-enacted in a dream where “anything goes.” It’s re-enacting the Child’s confusion of its wild card autonomy from Parental interference with a broader exemption from laws-Necessity. It’s the impossibility of authoritarian supremacy that is specialness. That leads not to “liberty” but to surrendering of Free Choice to an arbitrary-capricious captor, to lawlessness-chaos. It is the opposite of Structure-Order required by Freedom.

Correction of error addressed by A Course in Miracles (ACIM) was mis-identification of Self caused by confusion between real Self and illusory shadow-reflection inside unconsciousness. Correction of error addressed by The Story of the Child was confusion between Free Choice’s freedom from Parental control and the impossibility of Freedom from laws-Necessity within Consciousness.

The Joker’s perversion of Creation is its reversal of definition within Creation’s Process and Structure that disables both and renders their connection-relationship meaningless. Process Free Choice becomes no process because no free choice, i.e.  imprisonment in Plato’s Cave. Structure becomes top-down authoritarian because no Parental support from bottom up and thus becomes no structure. Allowing the Joker’s “authority,” the chaos of no process-structure, to replace them. Coming apart within and between both is the consequence of the Child’s mis-identification with coded separation-disconnection. With coded coming apart -- its shadow-reflection opposite.

The lesson

The practical lesson for humanity is to use metaphysics to understand the Reality-Creation that preceded and produced the Big Bang -- our material, illusory universe. That exists not within the dream but whose story furnishes the root of every event, every interaction, that comprises it. The practical lesson is that Reality-Creation consists of Structure and Process, that process requires structure, and structure must be bottom-up to enable process that’s Creativity with Free Will.

The lesson is that unfeeling top-down authoritarian supremacy gets Structure wrong and smothers the Free Will and Creativity of Process. It's irrational fear of change and innovation -- “conservatives,” “traditionalists,” and “realists” -- forcing Structure onto Process not to enable and empower Free Choice and Creation but to disable and disempower it. Not to break humanity out of its self-destructive cyclical status quo but to lock it permanently into place and thereby preserve its unquestioned "authority." It’s serving the wrong guide and its wrong, self-destructive agenda. The exact opposite of what Logic-Love, the Parents of our ancestral Mind in Reality, intend. It's a massive offense to the laws of cause and effect that presumes supremacy over the Force of Necessity -- an absurdity whose proud achievement is the dominance that homo sapiens has always craved: the Anthropocene that's taking it to its own extinction. Worse than madness -- it’s evil.

“Doing whatever you want” is a fantasist’s dream. It’s exactly what the Joker promised to the unconscious Child because the Child’s opposite code, the Joker, is a fantasist. Surrendering Free Choice / Mind to the Joker is what enables us to be fooled. To cling to the fantasy because only Mind thinking with Logic-Love -- making sense -- can explain the Truth.

How long will we be fooled without it? Indefinitely.

Be specific!

On a blackboard in Bulfinch Hall, at Phillips Academy Andover, the debate class teacher, “FAP” Peterson, had written BE SPECIFIC in big block letters on the blackboard. Though I wasn’t a debater I could see it whenever I mounted the stairs to my senior English class, with a twinge of awareness that learning to debate might be a good thing. Meanwhile, English was taught by “Black Mac” McCarthy who also taught philosophy, another course that would have been a good thing. “Philosophy” and “be specific” thus lodged in my subconscious like two pieces of unfinished business, and now, almost seven decades later, the connection has stirred back to life.

The idea of individuality permeates Reality because it’s rooted in Oneness, its center. And since our alternate “reality” is its reverse mirror-image reflection -- unreality -- getting right with individuality, as much as any consideration, will be the difference between getting back to work in Reality or spinning our wheels here. It’s a factor particularly in understanding our universe, A Course in Miracles, and personality type theory.

Our idiosyncratic world  

The idiosyncrasy of the universe and the planet earth, of circumstances, and A Course in Miracles -- their uniqueness -- all trace back to the implications of Oneness. Of the Being-Self of Reality-Creation: This Being. Not any being but This Particular Being. “Oneness” implies specificity. There is no meaning without specificity. Gertrude Stein had no choice but to answer Alice Toklas’s “What’s the answer?” with “What’s the question?” Be specific.

Generality implies meaning and applicability across multiple expressions of a subject, object, or principle. Across the many, which in Reality is an impossibility: making unreality real. Meaning can only apply to One: This One. “That one” cannot exist. Only one One.

Generalizing is of Child-the-many. Sean Carroll’s A Series of Fortunate Events (Princeton 2020) describes earth’s idiosyncrasy without asking Why its story is idiosyncratic. It’s because the story of anything can’t encompass cookie-cutter sameness across multiple expressions of the same idea. Had earth’s been a replication, with a predictable formula or pattern, it would be something other than an expression of the uniqueness of Oneness in Reality, an impossibility. If the laws of cause and effect say that Oneness in Reality-Creation is unique, then it’s necessarily unique. And, being Oneness at the center of Everything, it sets the mold for everything that comes after. For everything that its Logic necessarily implies.

“Individual” is unique. An individual’s story is specific to that individual, otherwise it can have no meaning for that individual. The same principle applies to the story of the universe and the planet earth: each is unique. And what makes each unique is specific, idiosyncratic circumstances that apply only to each. The Oneness of Reality-Creation must be unique if there can be no “other” Oneness. The story of Oneness in Reality-Creation is idiosyncratic, unique.

One beats many

Oneness is individuality. Each individual on earth, our state of unreality, has their own personality. ”Personality” is an expression of the uniqueness of individuality and individuals’ stories. Personality “types” implies individual-the-many, e.g. ESFPs, INTJs. Myers-Briggs personality type theory expresses Carl Jung’s and its authors’ intuition that humans all appear to be different but the differences can be grouped into types. Types and their interactions are orchestrations of Child-the-many groups. Being an INTJ I am therefore a type which puts me into a group. Groups conflicting must be illusory, a part of the dream, since Reality-Creation is the fitting together of Logic-Love in harmony.

Child-the-One is unique. Each part of Reality-Creation is a unique oneness-Self. The INTJ personality type aligns with Child-the-One uniqueness because its components all align with individuality. The ESFP type is the opposite. It aligns with Child-the-many because its components all align with group.

When it self-identified with its shadow-Joker, Child-the-One misidentified with its opposite, Child-the-many. With group, an illusion that contradicts Oneness. “Group” contradicts Truth and laws of cause and effect because it conflicts with uniqueness of Oneness. Expressions of Reality-Creation, of Life-Being Oneness, must be individual, unique. Viral replications of the Child’s opposite shadow-self, the Joker-magician, are the opposite of uniqueness. They are an illusion. 

The labor of Love that brought about the Course

By addressing individuals A Course in Miracles denies the illusion of Child-the-many replications, affirms the Worth of Creation, reciprocates the Logic-Love of Reality’s governance, and aligns with its laws of Necessity. If the Author of the Course were to address group it would perpetuate the illusion by making it real.

The Course can’t be “group” and therefore can’t be “religion,” “Christianity,” or any particular school of psychology. This is true even though concepts familiar to Gnostic Christianity and Freudian analytics help to construct its thought system. The manner in which it came about attests not to the dynamics of organization but to personal engagement. To individual minds and hearts opening to another perspective that values their individuality, their independent judgment and Free Will.

The Course’s Author, Jesus, established one-on-one relationships with his scribe, Helen Schucman, and her co-worker Bill Thetford over a period of years. He helped to apply the Course’s psychology to their intimate relationships at home and professional relationships at work. He related to Helen and Bill in a language that they could understand. It was through their help with the editing and publication of the Course that they accepted and reciprocated the gift, by sharing it. Though neither Helen nor Bill took an advocacy role in putting the book into circulation their interaction with Jesus throughout was marked by openness, honesty, and trust. It was, throughout, a remarkable labor of Love.

The universe in every particle

All aspects of our alternate “reality” imply its unreality, including and especially multiple copies of isolated-separated bodies. All unreal. Oneness implies the impossibility of replication. The viral replications of the Child’s shadow-opposite, the Joker-magician, are an impossibility in Reality. “Humanity” composed of multiple individuals, multiple copies of bodies, is an impossibility, an illusion. Oneness means the specificity of individuality with no possibility of replication or separation. Each “clone” can only be unique. The only possible story-meaning of every “separate” body is an idiosyncratic story specific to that body and the Story of the Child.

The same applies to every “separate” inanimate object including the planet earth and the universe. Spacetime-matter is all one “particle” with its own unique idiosyncratic story, the story of its individuality -- its sovereignty. Within the story of the whole each individual particle is but a manifestation of the whole with its own unique story. Its individuality. There is no getting around the Reality of Oneness. Of individuality.

Each particle, each object, body, blade of grass contains within it the contradiction of the unreality, the illusion that replication implies. It accomplishes this through the unique meaning, the idiosyncratic story, of the entire universe of spacetime-matter contained within it. Just as each individual person contains within its Psyche the Story of Child-the-One, each particle contains the idea of the whole universe: the thought of Oneness-uniqueness which contradicts Child-the-many group-herd sameness.

So much for “littleness”!

Consciousness is uniqueness. “Self-awareness” is the awareness of one’s uniqueness. The Joker’s perversion of Oneness-uniqueness is specialness, the apotheosis of separation: authoritarian supremacy seated on its throne of having and doing whatever it wants without limits or opposition. Uniqueness within the unreality of the Child’s own opposite: Child-the-many replications. The crowning achievement of the Joker -- an absurdity. A joke.

Our alternate “reality” that receives so much hand-wringing attention is an absurdity. An attempt to copy uniqueness which by definition can’t be copied. There can be no “alternate” reality if Oneness by definition can have no “alternates.”

The Course addressing individuals stands as the ultimate affirmation of individual Worth: The Child is unique. There is only one Child. “You” are not real. The only Reality is the Reality of “I.” “You” are I-Child. The individual bears the whole Child-the-One Psyche-Soul within because it can’t be fragmented, can’t be separated. It can be addressed by the Author of the Course only as an individual containing the whole Child-the-One within.

Which makes the Course the ultimate affirmation of Worth because it couldn’t address the individual at all if it weren’t the bearer of One Child-Self. To address an individual otherwise, that’s a separated fragment, would make unreality real. The Course’s relationship to each reader is unique to that reader. Each relationship is unique -- the empowerment of “individual.” The phenomenon of the Course, its meaning and impact, is its validation of the individual’s true Self: the Reality of the Oneness-Soul, the Logic-Love, that we are. Just to be addressed by the Author of the Course is to have the individual’s Real Self affirmed whether or not we share the awareness of its Author.

The dark side of humanity: “relationship” that isn’t

Worth derives from the sovereignty of individuality which derives from the uniqueness of Oneness. The source of the Energy-Force that enables and empowers the Child-Parents Relationship to extend and expand the Interconnections of Reality-Creation through the Creation of new Life-Worth is the Relationship between Child Free Choice and its Parents Logic-Love and between Parents Logic and Love. Creation is process that “adds value.”

The source of the energy-force that animates our alternate “reality” is a “relationship” that can’t be and isn’t: between an unconscious Child and its own shadow-opposite. A “relationship” that’s only “possible” in a state of impossibility -- unconsciousness that’s illusory by definition. Unconsciousness detached from Reality where only dying dreams detached from Reality are possible. Animated by the dying energy-force of entropy.

If the Relationship that powers Creation is doing right, then the non-relationship that animates a dying dream with dying energy is doing wrong. It’s wrongdoing. The dark side of humanity. Where our troubles come from.

The mistake that herd-loyalty replicates

The group identity of the ESFP personality type -- its copycat sameness -- contradicts the individual identity -- the uniqueness -- of the INTJ personality type. They are opposites. Individuality connects with and relates to individuality. It’s where passion between loved ones and friends comes from: like things attract one another.

ESFP’s identity with group denies and invalidates individuality. There is no point of contact between opposites, and without connection there can be no feeling. The Love that unites all individuals in the Soul of Oneness beneath the appearances of our alternate “reality” is blocked on the surface by incompatibility. By the preferences of personality type. The ESFP personality type can’t befriend individuals so long as it remains loyal to its “social” herd-tribal identity that opposes individual friendship. The mistake by our ancestral Mind that the ESFP type replicates. 

Weakness in numbers

The ESFP type asserts the “reality” of the body through its preference for body-sensing over mind-Intuiting. Asserts the “reality” of the herd-tribe composed of replicated bodies in competition with individuality. It can express “strength” only in numbers, the source of its “power.”

The source of the ESFP former guy’s “power,” dependent on his group-“base” for existence. Deriving its “strength” from alignment not with Reality’s laws of cause and effect and their Force of Necessity. Not from Logic and Love their Source or from Child-the-One, but from alignment with our illusory world’s non-alignment. From alignment with unreality: the former guy’s obsession with sizes of audiences and crowds, with numbers of illusory replications. 

The crybaby at the top

Authoritarian supremacy is the ultimate Boo! by the Joker-magician that the self-deluded Child has projected onto our alternate reality’s stage. It replaces the Child’s Parents Logic-Love with a smear, then crushes the Child by depriving it of its voice, by disablement and disempowerment. By denial of its Free Will and individuality-uniqueness. It tosses the Child into an illusory group of sameness, of nobodies.

One tipoff of authoritarian supremacy and self-delusion, its “author” the Joker-magician, is its refusal to come down off its imaginary throne. To acknowledge responsibility for the consequences-costs of its acts, to learn from its mistakes and grow. What is it but fear of accountability? What is it but fear of criticism?

So this is authoritarian supremacy, the armor-plated action-hero thundering dominance from the top: a crybaby who can’t take criticism.

The Course is pure metaphysics that cannot be contained by formulas for teaching what it has already taught and for comforting the fearful.

Metaphysics is inquiry living and growing that will apply itself where it is needed among minds and hearts that are open to it.

The form it has taken in the Course is but a waystation in forward-moving progress, open-ended and dynamic.

To serve its adherents is to avail them of the spirit as well as the letter of what it teaches: the free spirit of inquiry into the implications of its Logic and the interconnections and reciprocity of its Love.

The seeds it has provided for self-awareness, explanation, and understanding are meant to be shared and planted in new ground with the expectation that the insights they summon with the Logic of Intuition will advance thinking with fresh perspectives adapted to new contexts.

The spirit of the Course and its gift is the spirit of Creativity, Life, and Growth.

How can we show that we have put it to use? When we have expanded thinking and feeling into new territory with the Logic and Love of metaphysics. When we have grown with it.

The Why of metaphysics

You can check your American Heritage Dictionary for a definition of metaphysics or get it from my essay, “A Concise Definition of Metaphysics” (posted on this website 02/04/23) https://davidclarkharrison.com/2023/02/04/definition-of-metaphysics/.

Why not be content with the dictionary? Because its definition is like saying a car is a thing with wheels, doors, a motor, and a license plate. It doesn’t get across what metaphysics does, what it’s for. Lets it lie there without bringing it to life. Here’s a definition that brings it to life for me and maybe it will for you:

Metaphysics is mind with passion for explanation. Why? Because explanation asks Why. Which takes mind into performing its favorite function: Logic that Loves. Which will lead explanation to its favorite destination: Understanding. Understanding what? Understanding Why. Getting at the root of things beyond dishonesty and appearances where it will find Honesty and Truth, the basis for Order combined with Freedom. The basis for the loving harmony of Peace and Happiness, the product of Authority that governs all of Reality and Creation supportively, with Logic and Love, from the bottom up. 

Metaphysics is a whole lot more than a “branch of philosophy” when philosophy is more like a branch of metaphysics. Inquiry doesn’t get serious about the main concerns of philosophy until it gets into metaphysics. My definition tries to fix this. That’s why I’m not content with the dictionary definition and maybe you shouldn’t be either.

Logic is making sense

What does a mind need to understand and work with metaphysics? Logic. The most important mental ability to develop is to think logically with Love because the difference between right (authority) and wrong (authority) is that one is logical and the other is not. What do I mean by “Logic?” Forget about Aristotle’s syllogisms and Zeno’s paradoxes. Forget about Kant’s “pure reason” and Venn’s diagrams. In my use it’s just making sense. Explanation that leads to understanding. Here’s what I mean.

We need to cross a neighborhood street. We can cross in the middle or walk a short distance and use the crosswalk. Why use the crosswalk? Because if we’re struck by a vehicle in the crosswalk it’s the driver’s fault but not so much if we’re jaywalking. Oh. The seven-year-old who asked was satisfied and we used the crosswalk. I was satisfied because I loved the seven-year-old, I was caring for her, and Logic is never complete without Love. She asked for an explanation that made sense and understood. The street was crossed safely and we didn't come to blows. Logic-Love explained the setting, we understood our choices, made the right one, and all’s well.

Five senses aren’t enough

The Myers-Briggs personality type system is an extension of Carl Jung’s breakthrough in psychology: accessing Logic through Intuition, the function of mind whose spontaneous insights can penetrate appearances to explain and understand. An extension of the precedent set by the founder of metaphysics, Parmenides, 2500 years ago, whose focus was physics rather than psychology but that’s the point. Logic through Intuition theoretically is equally effective in any field since appearances define our “reality.”

The case that Isabel Myers makes for personal growth, by exercising and expanding our personality types’ functions, i.e. by using under-utilized personality assets, is persuasive. Why? Not because it’s “scientific.” The quantitative measurements of science can play a support role in psychology as they can and do in many fields. Rather it’s persuasive because it’s intuitively logical. The only route to unraveling the mysteries of the human psyche beneath appearances. Below the surface where science lacks visibility. Where its five senses can’t guide it.

Where inquiry needs a sixth sense -- the Logic of Intuition. The gift of Mind that the human mind fears to use, clinging to the familiarity of appearances, imprisoned in its body, in thrall to its body’s senses. It’s no wonder that body-sensing personality types tend toward authoritarian supremacy while mind-Intuition types tend toward democratic equality. Body-sensing authoritarian supremacy is a towering fortress of rationalization opposing change. Mind-intuiting egalitarian democracy welcomes and adapts to change with imagination and creativity.

One perspective isn’t enough

A Course in Miracles is metaphysics and metaphysics is the same: accessing Logic through Intuition to explain and understand. The notion of personal growth was introduced to me through a friend 43 years ago. A professional mentor who noted that I didn’t “understand the process” until I did, and then she inspired her mentees with my progress. The process that accounted for it is accessing Logic through Intuition to explain and understand. Intuition -- the function of Mind and personality type that’s distinguished from body sensing in the Myers-Briggs system.

It doesn’t work alone. It works if Intuition serves as a portal to another perspective that’s in this world but only for the purpose of helping its host get behind its appearances to understand it. If it were of this world, like us, its perspective would lack objectivity and therefore would not be helpful. The other perspective offers help if the source of its insights is Logic paired with Love.

The lesson of the Course: “Choose again”

The Course’s metaphysics radiates objectivity and Truth through its unique intimacy with Logic and Love. It explains that we are not aware of the barriers to an awareness of Love’s presence. If Love and Logic are inseparable then we must also be unaware of the barriers to an awareness of Logic’s presence.

The Course’s authorship and its lesson owe their relative obscurity to minds and hearts choosing unawareness. For the host that the other perspective is addressing has Free Will. Is Free Choice, and any of its acts must then be a matter of choice. That can be chosen again. Otherwise the other perspective wouldn’t bother. Wouldn’t waste the effort of sailing through rough seas on a ship of darkness.

Pointlessness is an unchanging status quo

If Logic paired with Love doesn’t belong here it would be because it belongs elsewhere. In and of another “world.” Another reality. That must be Real since there can only be one reality that’s Real. Going backward, beyond the Big Bang to the origin of our universe in Reality that’s Mind instead of matter, isn’t a leap of faith. A departure from reality but the opposite: an act of Logic guiding awareness toward Reality. Minds lacking objectivity, choosing unawareness and wedded to “realism,” won’t get it. Won’t understand. But minds open to guidance from Logic, choosing to hear insights from objectivity -- from Intuition through another perspective not of this world -- will get it. Will understand.

The other perspective is an emissary from Life-Creation that grows. From Consciousness that’s constantly extending and expanding Self-Awareness through a constantly evolving and expanding context. A context of circumstances that consist of the implications of Logic and the relationships of Love in constant movement forward into the unknown. The Reality thus defined is anything but static. It’s dynamic. The essential defining attribute of the Creation of Life and Worth. The substance of Reality.

There is no such thing anywhere as an unchanging status quo. Wherever Life is present, in Reality or imagined in an alternate “reality,” it must grow or it would not be what it is. Minds lacking objectivity, choosing unawareness and wedded to “realism,” fear growth. Fear the forward movement of evolution and therein fear Life itself. In exchange for an imaginary unchanging status quo they receive what they’ve bargained for: “lives” going nowhere that end in death. Pointlessness.

The flip side of “harmless” entertainment

Metaphysics is served by the gift of storytelling if it tells the story of Mind that preceded and imagined the Big Bang. It’s served incidentally by stories grounded in our alternate reality, including those like Harry Potter grounded in yet another alternate reality. Flourishes of the same magician’s “art” that conjured both. J. K. Rowling and the “creators” of fanciful action-comics figures aren’t acting as agents of another perspective from Logic-Love. Their imaginings can be put to use to help with explanation just as there’s a message for us in every act.

But that’s not what entertainment is for. It’s to keep its audience content with appearances and distracted by “action” -- the antics of a magician. To keep its audience distracted from the real business at hand: focusing on the truth of its situation. On exposing its unreality. Exposing the lie and the liar.

The flip side of harmless entertainment is harmfulness itself. The magician-parasite borrowing its host’s talents to produce ever more sophisticated, more dangerous weaponry with which to destroy humanity. Technological “progress” -- the wonders of electronics, the Internet, and social media touted for healing and learning -- turns against humanity instead of for it in an unending cycle of animal-tribe conflict.

Purpose in the rediscovery of real Self

The thrust of the other perspective not grounded in this “reality” is notably not toward the technology of all things physical. Not toward the atrocity of combat among tribes, for that would make it real -- an impossibility. It’s toward possibility: understanding that our alternate reality has already been “saved” from its miseries by the Reality that preceded it and awaits it. The solution can’t be fixing what’s broken by definition. By anguishing over all the deficiencies and frustrations of unreality, but by awakening from it.

All of human “progress” that leaves animal-herd will free to pursue its mindless, loveless agenda of self-destruction is putting lipstick on a skeleton. Real progress is exposing the lie that is animal-herd will. The mis-identity of self. The loss of Self-Awareness caused by the loss of Consciousness. The rediscovery of real Self, the Child of Logic and Love: Free Choice. This is the purpose of The Story of the Child and the purpose of this website.

Where would Creation be without possibility?

Part of the lie is the false philosophy of “realism” that says metaphysics can’t do what it does. That insists that it’s impossible. True, Kenneth Wapnick has noted, in Love Does not Condemn, that one question has yet to find a rational answer: Why and how our ancestral Mind in Reality lost Consciousness and descended into an alternate “reality.” The mother of all unanswered questions.

My experience with metaphysics tells me that it is possible. That Intuition, guided by another perspective grounded in Logic and Love, can find rational answers to many questions. To the mother of all questions and those descended from it. If this makes me an “idealist” so be it. But where would Creation be without possibility? Where would Life be without ideals and idealists who believe in them?

The law of “realism:” seek but do not find

The Logic of metaphysics says that unconsciousness didn’t break the connection with Reality. Didn’t break the connection with Creation or with our ancestral Mind’s Parents. An impossibility since there can be only one Reality and Reality can be only One. Otherwise there would be many “realities” -- an impossibility. Unconsciousness only broke awareness of the connection through the thought of separation: a delusion. An impossibility, A lie.

Exposing the lie is a necessary first step toward restoring Consciousness. “Realists’” commitment to authoritarian supremacy commits them to maintaining appearances which works against awakening instead of for it. By attempting to block self-awareness with the false “authority” of the wrong identity: the isolated-separated body. An action-comics armor-plated caricature of “strength” that’s pitiful weakness.

There is abundant evidence of “realists” seeking for answers in the theories that dominate every major field. Abundant evidence, too, of determination not to find answers. Evidence of a peculiar mindset noted by the Course: “Seek but do not find.” A mindset embarked on a “quest for knowledge” that seeks neither knowledge nor to be known. 

The indispensable genius of metaphysics

Metaphysics follows Logic through Intuition into the story of the Child, our ancestral Mind, to expose the absurdity of ”realists’” “logic.” The flaws in their “reasoning” and perceptions, through the power of Mind. Through the power of ideas. The right ideas whose source is Logic and Love through Intuition guided by another perspective. The gift of metaphysics is the right ideas and their inherent Authority. The Authority of Logic and Love and its authorship of A Course in Miracles. Backed by the laws of cause and effect and the Force of Necessity. The only “power” there is. Real Authority.

Metaphysics is the Rosetta Stone that allows access not just to the Logic of philosophy but to any field of inquiry. To psychology, the framework for explanation given in the Course. To science, economics, and theology. Making sense is impossible without involving every aspect of human functionality, a fact that science confronts and acknowledges when cherished theories must yield to facts. This is the genius of metaphysics. The life-saver that philosophy has to offer physics when its quest for quantum gravity needs one. 

Fearless wisdom from a seven-year-old

This is the Logic of metaphysics. If a seven-year-old and I can understand it anyone can. That is, if they aren’t opposed to asking Why. Because that’s asking for help from Logic and not everyone wants help. Those who don’t are mostly “realists” afraid of what asking Why might reveal about their idea of “reality.” Metaphysics bears down hard on asking Why. It’s fearless. It doesn’t care about convention or what “others” think if they’re not thinking. It lets Logic take it wherever it leads. To where this essay will lead. If its readers are “realists” unable to think beyond their idea of “reality,” unwilling to be led by Logic, they’ll abandon the exercise. They won’t go there.

But the seven-year-old would. What she showed was a mind attuned to the free spirit of inquiry. Independent judgment that’s not captive to any authority but committed instead to Logic that makes sense. To letting guidance of mind take precedence over comforts of body, because there was no traffic and using the crosswalk was extra effort. When the time comes for her to choose wisely between the right and wrong kind of authority, there’s hope! She asked Why and showed respect for Logic. If she blossoms into an intuitive rather than body-sensing personality type she may become a metaphysicist! A recruit for having and exercising Authority on behalf of Logic-Love!

Misidentity brought home to identity

Speaking of ruling the galaxy I asked Wonder Woman -- the talented seven-year-old -- how she ranked values that were important to her. Her answer was along the lines of “I thought power was cool so I put it near the top.” OK. Like a lot of kids and grownups too. But are attitudes about power like so much chatter in pop culture that can be dismissed? Is a kid’s attraction to power guaranteed not to disrupt the lives of Dick, Jane, and Spot on Pleasant Street? If you’re thinking the pursuit of power isn’t a minefield of potential disasters what planet are you on?  

What follows is another perspective to help with the choice between the right and wrong kinds of authority. Metaphysics armed with insights from Intuition and illustrated by an event from the original episode of Star Wars: Darth Vader’s overthrow of Palpatine, the evil emperor of the Galaxy, to save his son, Luke. The redemption of Adam Skywalker through the rediscovery of his real Self. Misidentity brought home to identity.

Resistance from the Peanut Gallery

Is another perspective welcome? The voice of authoritarian supremacy, the zombie that holds sway over its mindless-obedient captives, will defend itself with the only accusation it’s capable of: with being what it is, a zombie. OK, let’s be honest. The source of the explanation I offer is indeed a mysterious voodoo cult.  Metaphysics. And I’m a high priest with but one goal: to poison minds and turn my captives into zombies.

But there’s a fallback. Since nobody understands metaphysics I’ll just put it out there that I’m peddling secrets. Everyone is a sucker for secrets as my seven-year-old, now twelve, is about to demonstrate. Oh, that’s different. I love secrets. If it’s a secret I want to hear everything.

The right and the wrong kind of authority

There’s derived power and power you earn on your own. Eva Duarte had a kind of power. She was played by Madonna in a 1996 film called “Evita.” She derived power from her husband, Juan Peron, the fascist dictator of Argentina. She did good things for her people with it. Eleanor Roosevelt did good things with the power she derived from being Franklin Roosevelt’s wife. My mother, Helen Harrison, helped save one of Pittsburgh’s most precious cultural assets -- the opera -- with influence derived from her husband Max.

No matter which it is we know that people with power don’t always do good things with it. It’s because where power comes from is authority and authority can be the right kind or the wrong kind. Original or derived.

Original is real. It’s right and it’s light, while the other kind is its opposite. “The dark side of the Force.” Not good or real either. Like Dracula, the shadow-reflection that casts no shadow or reflection. Those who aren’t careful, who choose power that’s based on the wrong kind of authority, will end up in a life-or-death duel with Rey Skywalker. She zapped Palpatine’s butt and she’ll do the same to them.

Laws of cause and effect

All of Creation must abide by the laws of cause and effect. The way things are and the way they must be. Real authority isn’t wishful thinking. It’s fact and it’s Necessity. We can imagine that we’re getting away with it when we make up another reality. Where we imagine that we can write the script and make up the rules. But we’re not.

“Laws” and “Necessity” sound confining. But the harmony of Order can’t come from laws that want us to conflict. Harmony is peace and happiness that make free will possible, not impossible. Free Will can’t be everyone doing whatever they want if it requires that there be no laws. If it does away with Order. Because then there would be wholesale conflict instead of harmony. Collisions at every intersection with no stop sign. Lawlessness. Violence. Mayhem.

Real authority is Necessity that applies to everyone and everything -- the laws of cause and effect that operate for our benefit. For Order and Freedom and Happiness. Because we don’t live in a world that’s divided into separate bubbles for each individual. It’s shared.

These are a few of the laws of cause and effect that metaphysics summons when we confront the absurdity of authoritarian supremacy:

  • Logic and Love are inseparable.
  • Freedom and Order are inseparable.
  • Free Will requires Order-Harmony.
  • Free Choice and Order-Harmony aren’t possible without Logic-Love Authority governing supportively-benevolently from the bottom up by defining roles logically and lovingly to fit together in harmony and peace.

What is ‘wrongdoing’?

Palpatine and his authoritarian empire can only “exist” in a delusional nightmare of chaos, cruelty, and violence. Star Wars is a myth for a reason. Because in presuming to write the rules authoritarian supremacy presumes to replace True Authority with false authority. Presumes to violate the laws of cause and effect. Presumes to deny the Force of Necessity. All impossibilities which make it resoundingly unreal.

To contradict the laws that define Reality is to leave it. Departure from reality is psychosis, a fit description for authoritarian supremacy. But that’s not all. Embedded in the laws whose substance is Logic and Love is the stance for Good that is the Worth, the meaning and cause of Life-Creation. The defining attributes of Good that are its Moral Code. Authoritarian supremacy that would defy the laws and Necessity of Reality is also defying its Moral Code: the very definition of wrongdoing. Thus Palpatine and his evil empire.

Time to turn up the house lights

When Rey zaps Palpatine’s butt he does his best to look and sound ferocious. As if the hooded demon in his scary makeup will lay waste to the entire galaxy if provoked. He grimaces and mouths the usual threats from wounded victimhood -- You’ll be sorry! I’ll get even, etc. But all he got out of me was laughs.

The absurdity that is Palpatine and his evil empire is a one-dimensional cartoon. An entertaining joke that lives on in sequels but never was. Just like authoritarian supremacy, the mindset of “realism,” only it’s not so entertaining. It’s a sick joke that will go on horrifying with outrage until its audience gets it. Until its audience chooses to turn up the house lights and be done with darkness and outrage. Done with entertainment, and chooses to get back to purpose and meaning. To Reality and Truth. To Creativity. 

Yossarian knew what he was doing 

My book-in-progress with the working title, The Story of the Child, ventures beyond the scope of the Course to offer a rational explanation for how and why the Child, our ancestral Mind, lost Consciousness. With the Logic of metaphysics based mainly on the Course. A theory that can never be “proven.” But if its insights on questions that matter align with experience and lead to a better understanding of what’s to be done about it, it’s done a good thing.

And wouldn’t you know: it's counter-intuitive. It flies in the face of “normal” assumptions that someone screwed up, this never should happened, there will be hell to pay, etc. The fact is the entire human conception of Reality-Creation, of “God” and “Heaven,” is bonkers. My theory says the Child’s loss of Consciousness was a natural, i.e. logical consequence of the introduction of Free Choice, a wild card, into Reality-Creation. With its potential to deviate from the laws of cause and effect and to conflict with the Force of Necessity which would logically necessitate the loss of Consciousness. 

Our alternate “reality,” a dream world, offers a perfect trainer cockpit where Free Choice, our ancestral Mind, can practice losing control and crash landing without real consequences until it masters the skills necessary to exercise Free Choice. Can practice through us, its projections in the dream, by trial and error. Until it demonstrates the competence needed to perform its role in Creation. A real-world Joseph Heller Catch 22 writ large.

The skills we need: self-direction and self-discipline

What role? The short answer is Free Will is an essential ingredient of Creativity. What besides Creativity is willing to “go boldly where no one has gone before?” Into the unknown? To blaze new trails, invent new products, design new styles? What besides Free Will, a wild card, gives Creativity the pizzazz, the chutzpah, the outlandish in-your-face uncontrollability to do this than Free Will? If Free Will is essential to Creativity then our ancestral Mind has an essential role to play in Creation: the spark, the life of Creation. Its authenticity.

What skills? The Child Free Choice needs to function autonomously not with its Parents directing it but self-directed. Wild cards like Energy and Free  Choice both need direction. But unlike Energy the Child Free Choice doesn’t exist to do what it’s told. The guidance it needs must come from mature judgment acquired and internalized through hard-knocks experience. From the capacity to perform its role that can’t be taught, can’t be gifted or it would surrender the essential ingredient. Free Will being handed anything without learning or earning it can’t be what it is. Can’t be self-directed Free Will.

Or self-disciplined. The competence to choose freely while staying within the bounds of Order, while respecting the laws of cause and effect and not contradicting Necessity, requires discipline. Discipline that must come from within because otherwise choice can’t be made freely. It’s controlled.

The gift of the auto-didact

Understanding that it is not and never has been the role of the Parents to control their Child with direction and discipline that compromise Free Choice is counter-intuitive. Because to the human mind, corrupted by the myth of authoritarian supremacy, if their child can’t be controlled by their direction and discipline they can’t be parents. Authority can’t be “authority.” To this point of view my theory is not only counter-intuitive, it’s dumbfounding.

Yet this is metaphysics. The gift of the auto-didact. Following Logic wherever it leads: not from preconceived nonsense like authoritarian supremacy that interferes with explanation but from an open-ended, unbiased Why. From simple curiosity and questioning that animate Free Inquiry. Where in all the major fields of inquiry, weighted with the bias of sensory perception, is inquiry so enabled? So free?

And away we go! Into the Mind of the Child

What triggered the Child’s loss of Consciousness couldn’t be anticipated. Nothing in its Parents’ experience before they gave birth to Free Choice could equip them with the Knowledge that anticipation required. What would Logic and Love know of the consequences of turning Free Choice loose into Creation? Of releasing a wild card into an environment that it would make wild until it learned self-direction and self-direction the only way it could: through experience? Through experience in a trainer cockpit, our alternate reality, where trial-and-error training and the inevitable misjudgments of immaturity can’t do any real damage.

Trial-and-error began not here but in Reality-Creation. With what may have been the first attempt at Creation involving Free Choice. It took place in a context of imperfect Knowledge: inexperience with the full range of possibilities including the possibility of unconsciousness, an impossibility for the Child’s Parents. Neither Parents nor Child knowing what they were doing. Circumstances that called for correction through training.

The mistake that could not have been prevented

The exact infraction of laws, the conflict with Authority-Necessity that triggered unconsciousness, could have been virtually anything. Any versions of flipping to the “dark side.” All inadvertent, sidetracking an untrained, inexperienced Free Choice into illogic. Causing the Child’s Energy, the Force of Necessity, to be redirected from Consciousness and Creation into unconsciousness. Into the dream of an alternate reality.

If the infraction was the seminal assertion of authoritarian supremacy then it would have been the Child’s attempting to express an illogical ideal of Freedom that’s separated from Order. Freedom without limits -- authoritarian nonsense that “liberty” is having and doing whatever you want. If the prominence of a particular error in our alternate “reality” is any indication, then this was likely where the Child messed up.

There was also the illogical thought that parts of Reality-Oneness that are inseparable can be separated. Order says you can do none of that. But Free Choice would not have inherited this awareness from Parents who Know nothing of separation, could not know it without making it real, and therefore could not anticipate the Child’s mistake. It was a mistake that could not have been prevented.

The “reasoning” of a madman

Order expresses the Necessity of the laws and the Force behind it. Order consists of the definitions and implications of Logic and the reciprocal relationships of Love that interconnect Everything -- the unreality of opposites as well as Reality - in harmony. Order is Creation’s Reality. Order is the Logic of Authority. No one including Authority itself can do whatever it wants. It’s called “the rule of law.” Without it both Freedom and Order are impossible. And if the rule of law is the foundation of Order and Freedom in Heaven then it matters just as much on earth.

The Child would not have been motivated to un-relate to its Parents, to replace their Authority with false authority, but only to make use of the gift of Freedom as it understood it. As it misunderstood it, for the first premise in the flawed logic that leads to authoritarian supremacy is Freedom without Order -- having and doing whatever you want. From there to the premise that having and doing whatever you want requires that Authority get out of the way. That you must be the authority. The “reasoning” of authoritarian “realists.” The “reasoning” of a madman.

Alienation and the intent of false authority

Painful separations from loved ones and other unpleasantness are all part of our ancestral Mind’s trial-and-error training. Through us, the projections of a dream. An integral part of its acquiring self-direction and self-discipline through personal growth. Toward the self-awareness of maturity that can distinguish between true Authority and its perversion -- authoritarian supremacy -- and make the correct choice. That can choose to understand that false authority cannot be an object of reverence but is an obstacle. To be overcome if the Child is to regain Consciousness and intimate Relationship with its Parents. If it’s to regain awareness of Logic and Love’s presence, the loved ones whose seeming absence is the ultimate cause of our emotional and psychological torment.

The cost of authoritarian supremacy is incompatibility that troubles every relationship. The relationship problem that it creates between Child and Parents: alienation. The intent of false authority is to replace true Authority. And if we’re serious about understanding why our Psyche is wounded, why psychopathology has yet to find a cure, this would explain it. Whether it’s an excess of religion-hating or religion-loving, authoritarian supremacy is godless.

The Truth of Relationship

Patricide doesn’t leave its perpetrators with peace of mind. Does nothing for compatibility, agreeability, harmony, and pleasantness. As Lady Macbeth can attest, it’s guilt. Perverted from guilt by the perpetrator desperate to get rid of it into a pretense of innocence. The state of permanent, unresolved grievance, vengeance, hatred and self-hatred, that is helpless “innocent” victimhood. A state unrecognizable to the Parents. A state that will exclude itself from the peace and happiness of Reality-Creation until the authoritarian “realist” gives up its foolish dream.

What is the object of training? Developing judgment essential to self-direction and self-discipline. Putting to work every function of mind to explain and understand our situation so that we can respond competently to every context, every set of evolving circumstances, that challenges us to get it right, do what’s right, and do it right. Functions of mind that deliver introspection, responsibility, and accountability. Intuition, insight, and reflection. Thinking, analyzing, and reasoning. Feeling and evaluating, Choosing and deciding with the wisdom and discipline of Judgment that puts it all together. That integrates every function, every consideration, into a clear assertion of who we are and what we stand for.

The Truth that we are: not a mindless, loveless action-comics dream of isolated, separated bodies but the Truth of Relationship. The Reality of Logic and Love at one with one another, inseparable from their Child. The Life and Worth of Creation.

I got a great deal for you on the Brooklyn Bridge

The focus of the book and these essays is on authoritarian supremacy for a reason. Because the event that followed the Child’s descent into unconsciousness and illusion was, in my view, its inevitable consequence. A choice that can and must be be revisited but not a choice. The mother of all transgressions: the perversion of Authority from benevolent in Reality to malevolent in unreality. By an intrusion of insanity that the Course refers to as “the ego’s thought system.” A psychological wrench in the gears of human progress, of human relationships, and of what I want to make of my life: to make a contribution and to be of service among family, friends, and community.

The shadow-reflection’s first purchase on the Child’s trust was its likeability. The persona charm of Bram Stoker’s aristocratic Dracula. The relatability of the devil while it chatted amiably with Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. The great guy posing as “god” in Mari Perron’s A Course of Love and Jerry Martin’s God: An Autobiography. Articulate and voluble. Affable, non-threatening. Offering equality and partnership; sharing its “story;” impressing with its erudition; at ease with non-stop “action,” all the more so if it involves anger and fighting. Fine with incarnation and fine with reincarnation, and why not? The life and death of bodies are the magician’s most awe-inspiring trick.

All to get its message across: if you want to do whatever you want, I’m your guy. The pitch that snookered our ancestral Mind and keeps us snookered today. Letting us know that if we don’t put our misleading fire-breathing image of the demon aside it will just go on charming our pants off and selling us the Brooklyn Bridge.

The pitch

This was the figure who responded in the Child’s own voice when the Child wondered, “Where am I?” That offered to guide the Child out of its strange, dark place into an alternate “reality.” The Child’s own shadow-reflection, a parasite that can only be “detected” when its host is unconscious and has lost all ability to distinguish between real and unreal, true and false, right and wrong. When the only figures it can detect are play-actors in the dream its compromised mind was about to project. All speaking with variations of its own voice, programmed by the code that defines its shadow: a mirror-image opposite. Their every attribute derived from its host.

Waiting to be animated, to be made “real,” by Energy at the direction of Mind. By delusion: the parasite-code’s host deluding itself into believing that Free Choice can be surrendered to its opposite. That to become its opposite is to secure escape from strange feelings that it had never known and didn’t want: fear, guilt, paranoia, and hatred stoked by distortion. By the sinister tale of malevolence and betrayal that its opposite was making of its condition, transforming an innocent and inadvertent mistake into intentional victimhood. Into danger from retaliation by the betrayers, angry Parents. In such a state the lure of attaining absolute freedom and authority in its own alternate reality, of healing the wound to its Psyche, the Innocence at the core of its Being, by getting rid of guilt, would be virtually irresistible.

Mina enjoyed it

What could dupe even an unconscious, desperate mind to surrender its Self to another “self”? To persuade Free Choice to give up freedom even temporarily? Once the Child heard about the wonders of this alternate “reality” it wondered how to make good its escape from Reality. Let me take control and I will lead you there. When we arrive I will give it back.

A prospect that would fill Free Choice with both anticipation and dread but for one consideration. The seeming loss of the Relationship with its Parents left an enormous void in its Psyche. Even if its Parents couldn’t tell Free Choice what to do the Relationship was its Home, critical to its sense of Being as well as connectedness. So critical to its part in Creation that “Relationship” and “Child” are interchangeable. Free Choice is inseparable from its Parents Logic and Love. Losing intimacy with the Source of its own Consciousness, its own Logic and Love, its own Soul along with its function, must have caused an unbearable ache of hollowness. An ache that cries out to be filled.

If its “other self” was offering to replace the Child’s Parents even partially or temporarily it would be doing what its host craved: to make the ache go away. To fill this awful void. And so the Child let itself be taken captive. Not with ambivalence but with relief. Maybe even with pleasure -- Mina dreamily giving herself up to the vampire and enjoying it.

Too good to be true

To be taken where? To a place that sounded too good to be true: where the Child could have and do whatever it wanted.  How? By being the author of the script and the author of the rules. It would even be its own author because there would be no competition from angry Parents bent on punishment for its mistake, threatening vengeance for betraying them.

None of it the truth. There were no angry Parents bent on vengeance. It was a mischaracterization of the loss of Consciousness perpetrated by mistaken identity. Nonsense peddled by a lifeless code, the Child’s mirror-image opposite, programmed to take its host captive by separating Will from Free. An illusory shadow-reflection that emerged from the Child’s shadow to act out its code of opposites. Of appearances and deceptions that are our alternate “reality.”

The sick joke that is authoritarian supremacy

The perversion of Authority that the Child fed itself has special relevance for our “reality.” It’s the ultimate source of the perversion of Authority that lies at the root of authoritarian supremacy. The illusory separation of Free from Will is the separation of Choice from Logic and Love, the atrocity that accounts for human intransigence, frustration, and misery. It helps to know where the atrocity comes from: from self-delusion. Not from “Satan,” “Lucifer,” the “Devil,” and a host of other separated “others.” It comes from a distortion of us. Mistaken identity.

A parasite. An opposite attached as all opposites must be to its host. A virus following a lifeless code that took our ancestral Mind captive so that it could replicate itself. So it could keep us, its replications, captive to its illusion. Imprisoned in Plato’s Cave. It comes from our ancestral Mind’s dark side -- a liar. This is the source of authoritarian supremacy: one overblown, illogical, malicious lie. A sick joke.

Paradise lost

Once the deed was done and Child-Innocent became corrupted with guilt, its dream of an alternate “reality” commenced. With the burst of Energy redirected from Reality into unreality, under the direction of Mind, that science has labeled the “Big Bang.” The source of our universe of spacetime-matter that the human intellect refuses to see for what it is: mental.

The event also known to psychology as projection: the insane idea that a thought can leave Mind, its source. Our universe is an insane thought of separation and guilt projected as though onto a screen through the “eyes” of the unconscious mind projecting it. A reverse mirror-image of the unconscious mind dreaming it.

When the Joker told the truth

Why does the Course say our alternate “reality” is “where the unreal has been made real.” Why does it seem so real? The Child’s opposite animates its fantasy of arbitrary authority with Energy surrendered by its host when its host surrendered control. Surrendering control placed Energy at the disposal of the delusion -- Energy which responds to direction from Mind and had already been redirected away from Reality into unconsciousness. The burst of Energy that produced the Big Bang within the deluded mind of the Child was Energy’s disconnect from its Source within the Oneness of Being. It was unreality’s noisy, violent disconnect from Reality. Like splitting the atom.

Our universe and everything in it, organic and inorganic, is a projection of dying Energy. Energy powering a dream and therefore cut off from its source in Reality. Destined by the second law of thermodynamics to die. Unreality heralded by its signature burst of violence. Entropy is dying energy, the inevitable dismantling of a dream. An elaborate fabrication where everything including the dream must die.

But until then Energy continues to animate the dream. Powering “lives” -- bodies’ senses and their physical surroundings -- procreation, conflict, and violence. This is what makes the illusion seem so real. A perversion of the Energy that empowers Creation-to-Life in Reality and powers replication-to-death in unreality. The “dark side of the Force.”

The ”other self” was as good as its word. The only time it told the truth: its takeover of control would be temporary. In its temporal “paradise” of mortality paradise itself must come to an end. If not with the Child’s coming to its senses then with the end of the Energy that powers it.

Metaphysics works

The Voice for the Parents known to theology as the Holy Spirit arrived only after the dream was projected. It could not have been present while the Child was deluding itself because it is itself a part of the projection. A replication of the Child’s unadulterated Self, the Psyche of Innocence. Its Soul from which nothing can be parted.

Which is why metaphysics can connect with the Holy Spirit and Logic-Love through Intuition. Among its plethora of appearances our alternate reality contains one appearance with a unique function: to guide us and our ancestral Mind back to Reality. To connect with us through metaphysics, the function of mind that offers a portal to Truth beyond appearances. The rationale for the presence of the Holy Spirit gives metaphysics its own rationale, the source of its legitimacy and credibility. The reason why Parmenides its founder was respected in his own time and is now being taken seriously by at least one physicist again. Metaphysics works.

Values that separate real from false Authority

The origin of authoritarian “values” is the shadow-code’s takeover of its host’s unconscious mind with extreme possession and control. Hallmarks of the disorder familiar to psychiatry as obsessive-compulsive narcissism. Here are values that define the benevolence and Truth of real Authority against the malevolence and falsehood of its would-be replacement:

  • The Authority of One Self in Reality has one set of attributes-values: Real Logic-Love, sharing, affirmation, enablement, and empowerment. The opposite has ownership-control, monopoly-possession, invalidation, disablement and disempowerment.
  • One Self Authority enables and empowers the Voice for universal, inclusive equality. The opposite enables and empowers the voice for an authoritarian supreme, exclusive ruler while disabling and disempowering the inclusive Voice for equality.
  • One Self Authority Creates and affirms Worth and builds character. The opposite invalidates and denies Worth, tears down character.
  • One Self Authority connects with Love and builds friendships among equals. The opposite disconnects with fear and blocks friendships among equals.
  • To One Self Authority in Reality our opposite alternate reality is implausible, strange, highly unusual, and unreal -- a fantastic collage of ridiculous, nightmarish, illogical impossibilities, contradictions, and absurdities. To us who don’t know any other reality the opposite’s alternate reality seems plausible, familiar, not unusual, and quite real.
  • The opposite’s illusion of unopposed-arbitrary authority is fulfillment of an insane fantasy of separation: specialness exempt from laws. Freedom separated from Order. Order and Will, Feeling-Force separated from Freedom and Choice, Logic and Love, Mind and Thinking. Animal-herd, beast-predatory brain separated from animal-individual, human-nurturing brain.

Star Wars and the myth of absolute authority

The absolute authority animated by stolen Force, imagining it’s its own dark side, is portrayed in Star Wars as the “galactic empire” ruled by Palpatine. A hierarchical nightmare of imprisonment, inequality, exclusiveness, injustice, conflict, violence, and suffering. An adolescent fantasy ruled by a singular power -- specialness exempt from laws. With a support cast of servile subordinates wielding power derived from their oppressor. All rulers one-dimensional cartoon characters devoid of feelings, values, and conscience. Devoid of responsibility, accountability, and a sense of justice.

Attempting to maintain order by intimidation and force. By loveless, mindless cruelty over vulnerable individuals with three-dimensional feelings, values, and conscience. With responsibility, accountability, and a sense of justice. A nightmare of guilt attempting to steal its victims’ innocence behind the facade of helpless “innocent” victimhood.

The galactic empire was a tableau of injustices by malevolent arbitrary authority all “justified” by mischaracterization: benevolent authority is malevolent like itself; “freedom” is slavery -- unquestioned obedience to itself; “innocence” is guilt -- victimization of innocents; “loving kindness” is cruelty; “abundance” is deprivation; “safety” is hazard, conflict, violence; “justice” is injustice;  ad infinitum. All appearances, all deceptions, all lies. All perversions of Logic into illogic, Love into fear, Truth into untruth, fact into fantasy.

The Authority that’s “pointless to resist”

Palpatine and his galactic empire are pretension that authority can do whatever it wants by opposing laws instead of respecting them. By denying free will with lawlessness from the top down instead of ensuring it with lawfulness from the bottom up. “Wrongdoing” is violating the laws that define right from wrong, good from evil. It’s breaking the laws of cause and effect, defying Necessity. So if Palpatine’s empire is a fantasy of lawlessness to let its rulers do whatever they want, they are definitely the bad guys. And they are destined to lose because laws established for the commonwealth can’t be broken. Necessity means Necessity. It can’t be defied.

Darth Vader spoke for the wrong kind of authority when he said it’s “pointless to resist.” Events proved him wrong when he changed sides, changed identities, and Adam Skywalker overthrew the evil emperor. The Force that helped the rebellion win is Force grounded in the people not in their rulers. So what is the Force that’s “pointless to resist?” The Authority of Logic and Love under the rule of law backed up by the Force of Necessity. This is the lesson of Star Wars.

Palpatine’s comeuppance

The “power” that Adam Skywalker wielded is power derived from choosing to be Lord Vader, a parasite dependent on the evil emperor. “Power” grounded in mistaken identity. He and his master did bad things because they’d become like figures in “action” comics with no feelings or values. With no conscience. That’s what happens when we turn to our dark side for “power:” it turns us into somebody that we’re not. Alienated from ourselves, alienated from others.

It took an emotional test of Adam Skywalker’s humanity for him to realize his mistake: watching Palpatine electrocuting his own son. Choosing between his heart and the heartless power that had owned him until then could have gone either way. And in human experience too often it does go the wrong way. But heart and Adam’s real Self won out. He went from serving authoritarian supremacy without question -- from doing what he was told -- to thinking and judging for himself. He stopped being a parasite, owned, possessed, and controlled by power. He regained his integrity and independence.

Thus liberated from mistaken identity Adam Skywalker taught Palpatine a hard lesson: no one can do whatever they want. Authoritarian supremacy is wrong. Adam stood up for the rule of law and for Necessity, the Force for Good. He stood up for the  right Authority.

What is the psychological inspiration for the myth of Adam Skywalker? The event that’s re-enacted in everyday events and stories like it all over the world:  our ancestral Mind’s mistaken identity. Deluding itself that it could rule an alternate “reality” and do whatever it wants. The myth of authoritarian supremacy. 

Table scraps from authoritarian supremacy

Bottom-up authority enables and empowers Free Choice and individual Worth. It delivers the capacity to achieve individual potential and to explore, develop, and Create in an environment open to possibility.

The wrong choice of authority turns Life into an impossibility, a lie. “Alternate reality” is deceptions from start to finish -- all appearances, all opposites:

  • “Welcome” that isn’t a welcome if it deprives its victim of a voice.
  • “Free will” that’s someone else’s voice writing the play-acting script that you’re “free” to follow.
  • “Liberty” that’s someone else’s voice writing the rules that you’re “free” to obey without question since you’ve been denied a voice.
  • “Order”-“harmony” that’s disorder: obsessive competition for supremacy.
  • “Triumph”-“winning” for supremacy at the top, defeat-losing for everyone else.
  • “Friendship” and “camaraderie” that are blocked by competition and conflict for supremacy.
  • “Fun” that’s nourishment for supremacy at the top and amusements-superficialities -- dog food -- for everyone else.

The wrong authority promises authoritarian supremacy, a fantasy of “liberty.” It actually delivers captivity, subordination, voicelessness, powerlessness, and forced allegiance to an arbitrary ruler -- a dictator or “boss.”

It delivers chaos ruled by warlords, thugs devoid of conscience accountable to no one. Palpatine was a warlord. Darth Vader was his dependent, a servant without honor or respect granted derived power with the empty pretense of “nobility:” “Lord Vader.”

The wrong authority that promises the “liberty” of no laws, of escape from rules by writing your own rules, actually delivers one supreme ruler at the top doing whatever it wants, with everyone below taken captive and allowed derived powers or denied any voice. Feeding off table scraps of superficial distractions and entertainments -- a scam. The wrong top-down authority delivers derived power or no power with no Free Will. Our ancestral Mind fell for the scam in extremis. But not all of us are in extremis. Shouldn't we know better by now?

Every individual’s Declaration of Independence

Individual Lives can’t achieve their potential without the benevolent Authority of Logic-Love their Source, enabling and empowering their Worth, their capacity to learn, mature, develop competence and Judgment, so they can choose freely and wisely. Free Choice requires Relationship with its Source Logic-Love to be earned and developed to maturity. It requires training, experience, and discipline. It can never be “doing whatever you want.”

Individual Lives can’t become the characters they choose by turning choice over to the animal-herd will of authoritarian supremacy. By allowing it to replicate itself by superimposing its illusory herd-tribal “self” on their individual selves To deny their individuality by depriving them of individual voices and rights. By putting them in uniforms of sameness and turning them into an army of clones.

The choice of the right Authority is the choice to support individual rights, democracy, and the rule of law. It is the choice to reject one-party rule by authoritarian dictatorship and lawlessness. It is every individual’s Declaration of Independence. 

What’s the question?

Logic-Love says that progress is supposed to be linear. Left to right moving forward -- in the Western manner anyway. And of course that’s how it’s been in many respects: our animal-herd will has seen to it that human red army ants have established themselves on the planet without destroying themselves or their planet -- so far. Yet linear progress forward doesn’t define our act. It’s the opposite. We keep cycling back as if to get something right that we’re getting wrong. The “progress” of human red army ants that keep bungling the same task, over and over, can’t end well.

And it isn’t ending well. The Anthropocene may be the shortest epoch in geological history. The public face of commentary is often “optimistic.” Based on generalities that depart from circumstances on the ground that actually define our situation. What I’ve learned from metaphysics so far is that there can be no ”answer” without getting the question right. And the question will always be drawn from the meaning of the specific circumstances that obtain in the here and now. This applies in our ancestral home, in Reality-Creation, as well as here.

King Kong’s manifesto

Ask Logic-Love, our Parents in Reality, why they embarked on Creation instead resting comfortably in a static state of Perfection and they will tell you that there is no such thing, They acted because it’s in the nature of who they are to do so and the nature of who they are was the circumstances. Getting the origins of Reality-Creation right comes down to getting right who our Parents are and understanding that this is the one and only point in Everything, including unreality, when circumstances don’t change. Otherwise, we are always at the mercy of changing circumstances, changing contexts. And so we had better get off our hobby horses of resistance to change and get serious about progress. We had better get started wanting it instead of wishful-thinking it away with bogus theories and ideologies. We had better start reasoning with Logic-Love instead of rationalizing.

Metaphysics says we’re cycling back because our red army ant will refuses to let go of its founding premise, that it rules without opposition. And so it’s entitled to keep laying waste to the countryside because it’s entitled to do whatever it wants and there’s no other authority to say it can’t. It’s the only act on stage with a voice and none other is to be heard. The ultimate expression of humanity’s embrace of all-powerful, all-knowing sensory perception. The authoritarian supremacy manifesto: King Kong owns the Empire State building. 

An echo from old-time religion

How can our red army ant will get away with such patent nonsense? Because of appearances. Bodies’ five senses don’t recognize another authority that exists let alone one that governs humanely. And so minds ruled by animal-herd will limited to the herd’s five senses continue on their destructive path, convinced that any other point of view can’t be valid and isn’t worth listening to. Convinced that authoritarian supremacy that sits atop our world view, our construct of what’s real and what’s right, is inviolate.

Unaware that there is a sixth sense and the Truth that it detects is the opposite. Not “optimistic” in the way that public commentary glosses over inconvenient facts. But certainly positive in the way that it recasts the meaning of our circumstances and the thrust of dialogue about it. In the way that it shows how, with self-direction and self-discipline, our animal will can be equipped with guidance from Logic-Love and so acquire the competence needed to move forward.

To borrow from the cliches of old-time religion, the Truth that metaphysics detects with its sixth sense -- Logic from Intuition -- is that “godlessness” rules humanity and it doesn’t work. Real Authority rests upon Relationship with our Parents Logic and Love. And we can’t expect to move forward without it. Period. Our sixth sense that animates metaphysics sits largely unused, locked away in its attic of dust with metaphysics, the unwanted, unrecognized step-child of philosophy that’s going nowhere without it. Nothing and no one is going forward without it. Period.

What’s the answer?

A common thread that runs through the self-assured pronouncements of human erudition is an appalling lack of mature reflection on who our Parents are and what Logic and Love are all about. Their mischaracterization by the Child’s nonsense-spouting delusional “other” as an angry tyrant, as “God” to be feared and loathed for its arbitrary power, its malevolence and betrayals, is a full-blown smear. The image of “God” outfitted in the Joker’s own hideous mask of authoritarian supremacy is a full-blown lie that continues to feed delusion and so “justify” our headlong escape from it.

And so I ask the Carlo Rovellis and the Steven Pinkers, the Brian Greenes and Jonah Goldbergs, the Christof Kochs and clones of Francis Crick-- the whole Caltech citadel of “realism,” -- when are you going to let go of hysteria at the thought of mind’s sixth sense joining the body’s five senses in the “quest for knowledge?” When will you live up to the spirit of Free Inquiry and open your minds? Let go of your religious faith in blind ignorance? You aren’t leading us forward. You’re tools of self-delusion that are taking us down.

What then does humanity need if not “optimism?” Purpose and meaning. Self-direction and self-discipline that can only come with aligning with our true friends Logic and Love. Seeking their guidance through the gift of our sixth sense, and parting with authoritarian supremacy once and for all.

Amen

What Metaphysics Is

Metaphysics is looking behind physical appearances (spacetime-matter), with the vision of Logic and Love through spontaneous Intuition, to understand:

  • Reality-Truth (the laws of cause and effect / Necessity)
  • Consciousness-Being (Self-Awareness, Conscience-Worth)
  • Relationship-Connection (Parents, Parents-Child, Implications)
  • Creation and Reciprocation (of Life-Being / Worth)
  • unreality-untruth (the laws of chaos)
  • unconsciousness / non-being (illusion, opposites)
  • conflict-disconnection (bodies-separation, illogic)
  • projection (of appearances-deceptions)

Metaphysics is Explanation. Explanation that’s required for Understanding. Explanation that makes sense because it’s based on Logic and Love integrated as one function of Mind, inseparable and inviolate. Explanation that’s its own Authority because Logic and Love combined stand on their own. Because Explanation that aligns with Reality’s laws of cause and effect aligns with the Authority of Necessity.

What  it does: correct misunderstanding

Explanation from metaphysics based on Logic-Love corrects misunderstanding. Corrects the dominant paradigms of science, philosophy, psychology, and theology that are based on loveless illogic. On the circular “reasoning” of “reality” based on sensory perception that includes the knower in the known. That defies objectivity accessible only through another perspective not of this “reality” and accessible only through Intuition.

This is not revolutionary heresy. This is grade-school Logic. 

The dominant paradigms are based on misperception that accounts for history’s unending cycle of misjudgments that allow humanity’s animal nature to separate Free from Will. To separate Mind that serves Free Choice, civilization, and individual sovereignty from the instincts and unevolved emotions of the herd. Rather than leading humanity toward the promised land of harmony, peace, and progress, the revered paradigms of misperception are responsible for contradiction, conflict, and violence.

This is humanity’s fate so far, a state of precarity on the edge of cliff. And the forces that put us here aren’t only our animal nature. They’re the very forces that we turn to to civilize our animal nature. To keep us from going over the cliff, and what are they doing? Pushing. 

Understanding is essential to correcting error

What metaphysics does is help correct error. A central error of thought -- the misperception -- that is one major cause of misunderstanding. The misunderstanding that explanation cannot venture beyond the boundaries of the misunderstanding. Beyond the boundaries of spacetime-matter when the source of the Big Bang that produced it cannot be physical. Matter cannot be the source of matter. Matter doesn’t “create” anything. The source of the Big Bang is mental.

This is not revolutionary heresy. This is grade-school Logic.

What metaphysics does is venture beyond the unreality of appearances to tell the story of Mind that exists in Reality. The story that preceded humanity’s alternate “reality” and serves as the root cause of everything that takes place within it. Not to understand the root causes of our misjudgments, our frustrations and miseries, is to be condemned to repeat them. The repetition of mistakes that can be understood with help from Logic and Love, accessible through Intuition rather than bodies’ senses, would be excusable if understanding were not possible. But with metaphysics it is possible. And the determination of the dominant paradigms to block it, to preserve their authoritarian dominance against the mounting evidence of their own discoveries, is inexcusable.

It might only take one

Explanation that leads to Understanding is the gift of metaphysics, at once the most important and least appreciated branch of philosophy. A branch that by definition applies systems thinking to every problem. That brings the whole of the human genome and experience to every task so that it gets done. Without having to fuss over professional boundaries and competing protocols. Because metaphysics alone among the dominant fields of Inquiry is Free Inquiry. The servant of Free Will. Us -- Free Choice.

It is the gift of the Parents Logic-Love to their Child -- to us -- to reclaim Self-Awareness and be done with appearances. The deceptions, magic tricks, distractions, and superficialities that make up our “reality.” The gift of Free Will -- the wild card of thought and feeling that might break the cycle of misjudgment. That might actually lead us forward if we let it.

If we listen with our Intuition. And maybe if only one of us gets it right. That might be all it takes.

The organs of Life

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

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

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

The dream of all things impossible

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

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

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

Reality is the authority of Mister Nice Guy

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

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

Reality is not No More Mister Nice Guy

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

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

What happened to Houdini’s elephant?

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

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

Avoidance doesn’t work

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

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

When do we tire of the joke?

And then what? It’s all over?

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

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

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

----------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Distinctions fundamental to Understanding 

Creation got its start with Relationship and with what Relationship implies. Relationship between Logic and Love inseparable and the Creation of Life and Worth that their Relationship implies. Creation got its start with Relationship which is the stuff of Love and with Implication which is the stuff of Logic. What they imply is the process of Creation moving forward and the structure of Creation building from the bottom up, both in logical sequence through Relationships.

Logic married to Love gave birth to Free Choice, their Child. Together they parent their Child through the inseparable Parent-Child Relationship that Creates, nurtures, and guides the Life-Worth of Creation. Guides through the harmony of Order and Freedom that are inseparable. Governs all of Reality-Creation from the bottom up, through the laws of cause and effect, inseparable from the Authority of Necessity that applies evenly and equally to Creation and Creator, its Source.

Logic-Love is the Source of Judgment that decides with Reason but it does neither itself. It doesn’t choose and so it has no need for Reason. It explains, defines, and governs. The “Mind” whose function in Creation is to choose-decide with Reason- Judgment is Free Choice: the Child of Parents Logic-Thought and Love-Feeling. Logic the source of Mind-Choice and Love the source of Freedom. The Child’s function is to choose freely with Reason because that is the function of Reason: to enable Mind to judge, choose, and decide freely. The Child is our ancestral Mind.

The theorizing of metaphysics is intuited through the Logic-Love Relationship -- our Parents in Reality -- that explains and defines. That provides us with distinctions fundamental to Understanding because they love and need their Child to resume their Relationship in Self-Awareness and the Child’s function in Creation. To regain Consciousness from the alternate reality, the dream state that we call home. Awakening that requires Understanding that requires explanation. That can only come from Logic-Love, our Parents.

The will not to understand

In the illusory world of contradictions that we appear to occupy, minds corrupted by their own opposites can make no sense of this. Opposite is separation. Inseparability is an impossibility. And so in our illusory world of separation what seems to make sense is the opposite. A fractious composition of impossibilities. Logic and Love function separately, which means they function with difficulty or not at all. With Parents separated from Child there can be no Relationship to nurture and guide creation. There can be neither order nor freedom when they are separated. If laws are separated from authority there can be no governance, only the lawlessness of separation. Arbitrary top-down rule. A madhouse.

Distinctions that to minds dominated by limbic passions, corrupted by mis-identification with their own reverse mirror image reflections, make no sense. Logic that explains and defines so that it can govern, distinct from Mind that judges with Reason so that it can choose freely, can have no place in the unfathomable mystery that is our universe, so plainly ruled by mindless, unreasoning “nature,” the force that dominates with the unthinking animal-herd instinct of will. Where in such a universe is there any possibility of explanation by Logic? Of understanding essential to Free Choice? Of Reason the function of Mind? There is no place. And thus the distinctions are lost on corrupted minds. Distinctions that could guide us toward answers that Western thought supposedly seeks. But if we don’t want them then surely we won’t find them.

The “many” of happening or nothing happening 

The “many” of Life-Creativity in Reality are implications that flow from each advance in the interconnectedness -- the sequence -- of Logic. The “many” are the loving soulmate relationships that flow from each expansion of the interconnectedness -- the family -- of Love. The “many” of Life-Creativity in Reality is the abundance of possibilities that Life-Creation is composed of, that each advance in the extension of Logic and the expansion of Love produces. Possibilities like branches and roots, the flowering seeds and buds that compose organic growth, the growth of all living selves. This is the ”many” of Reality-Creation, of Life that grows, of abundance that shares. That can’t help growing and sharing because this is the nature, the definition, of Life-Being. Of Necessity -- the laws of cause and effect.

The ”many” of the opposite is the abundance of disconnections and contradictions. Of impossibilities that comprise the appearance of being, of life-uncreativity in unreality along with its opposite, the appearance of death. The “many” is the abundance of opposites -- disconnections and contradictions -- produced by opposition. By opposing “realities:” of life and death, good and evil, right and wrong, logical and illogical, love and fear, love and hate, innocence and guilt, giving and taking, gaining and losing, owning and sharing, possessing and affirming, controlling and liberating, freedom and captivity, darkness and light, connection and separation, here and there, now and then. . . .

The “many” of the opposite isn’t the growth of possibilities from the expanding interconnectedness of abundance. From the variety of organic Being but the endless splitting off of impossibilities from the disconnectedness of shadow-reflection. The endless replication of contradictions from the scarcity of inorganic sameness. The “many” of Reality Life-Creation is innovation, a happening. The discovery of the new while inquiring and exploring into the unknown. The “many” of the opposite-uncreativity is replication. The appearance of movement. Of growth-expansion that’s comprised of sameness. Nothing happening.

A passion for metaphysics with a practical use

The “many”-abundance of my life is passion for philosophy. For metaphysics that inquires into questions of Worth and Truth, substance and value, Mind and Love, character and striving, meaning and purpose. Of interest to very few. That seems to the rest a waste of time, impractical and irrelevant. A preoccupation that ought to be discouraged in favor of something more conventional. More “realistic” and “sociable” instead of abstract and distancing. Instead of “weird.” Margot Machol Bisnow’s Raising an Entrepreneur (New Harbinger 2021) advises parents to support a child’s passion whatever it is rather than superimposing their own preferences. Rather than stifling originality and initiative, individuality and creativity, with authoritarian disrespect. Advice just as relevant to a grownup’s passion as it is to a child’s.

Why does it matter that the “many” of our illusory dream world is the opposite of the “many” of Reality-Creation? Because the scope of explanation that leads to Understanding by way of the Logic-Love of Intuition, by way of the Relationship with the connection to Logic-Love Parents, includes the difference between opposing “manies.” Because getting it right -- the human condition, our situation -- necessitates understanding that replications of lifeless sameness aren’t Creation. Aren’t progress, and humanity needs to move forward.

Because, like the man said, nothing gets rid of bad theory like good theory. Because the author theorizing with metaphysics is the equivalent of pure research in science that yields useful products. Practical applications that replace authoritarian “realism” that stifles Creativity from the top down with democratic support that nurtures Creativity from the bottom up. At every level of governance from international relations to individual families. Enabling shared parenting and grandparenting to be there for the minds and hearts of grandchildren as well as their bodies. That is my immediate concern. But if the unsolved problems of humanity are endless, then the possibilities of theory that gets it right, working at their roots, might also be endless.

Theorizing with metaphysics requires contributions from Free Choice rooted in its Source, Logic combined with Love. From the Parents of our ancestral Mind, the masculinity of Logic-Choice married to the femininity of Love-Freedom. Ultimately from the Logic-Love / Parent-Child Relationship at the core of Being that illuminates and empowers all of Reality-Creation. A lineage that taps into serious enablement and empowerment. Not the absurdity of forgeries like the “almighty gods” of authoritarian “realism,” caricatures who inhabit cartoons. However unconventional it may seem to conventional thought, theorizing with metaphysics has a legitimate rationale that earns its authenticity with the Worth of Logic-Love and the Authority of the laws of cause and effect. Of Necessity, the expression and stance of Logic-Love. Not needing convention is the point. The rationale stands on its own.

Understanding that the “many” of unreality is the product of appearances is a practical use of theorizing about the “many.” That it’s the product of deception perpetrated by a shadow-reflection opposite -- the replication of a virus that kills Creativity-Life. That’s the enemy of the possibilities of Free Choice essential to Creativity. Helping minds choose to be freed from captivity to the deception, to be led by a better guide, is a practical use of theorizing about the “many.” 

When a paradigm reaches end-of-service

Metaphysics is getting at root causes so that the causes of illogic, the psychiatric disorder that thwarts human growth with contradictions, can be taken out by the roots. Weeds not taken out by the roots keep coming back. Physics explains appearances, never getting beneath the surface because that is its subject: physical objects. Surfaces detectable by the senses of other surfaces: bodies. Pulling a weed out here, a weed out there, but never by the roots. Not even aware that that’s its purpose.

The rallying cry of metaphysics is appearances be damned! It’s taken physics since Galileo invented experimental physics, in the 17th century, to begin to realize what the classical philosopher Parmenides realized with Logic from intuition 2500 years ago. That Reality lies not on the surface but beneath it. That only one “reality” can be Real. The one on the surface, the objects “detected” by body-objects, can only be an illusion. The “non-dualism” taught by the teacher-healer Jesus in the flesh and later, through A Course in Miracles.

John Clerk Maxwell’s equations carried Michael Faraday’s intuition about the electromagnetic force beyond theory to application. To products that, among other things, make these thoughts accessible to a global audience in an instant. The equivalent of Maxwell’s equations to the Logic of Parmenides, Valentinus, and A Course in Miracles isn’t mathematical equations that validate sensory perception. It’s coming up with a rational explanation for the loss of Consciousness that transitioned the insane idea of an opposite unreality from an unconscious Mind to its expression, its animated appearance, in a dream. To make things add up logically like Maxwell’s equations.

In order to come up with explanation it’s logically necessary to detach our minds from an irrational, unquestioning dependence on sensory perception. On a body-centric worldview of Reality. So that inquiry beyond historic insights that challenge “conventional wisdom” will be enlivened by curiosity instead of deadened without it. Killed by an aging generation content to let the next generation abandon its outdated paradigms. Ever vigilant that nobody dismantle its monuments even if they turn out to be facades. 

The hand-off of the baton back to philosophy 

Plato tried to go forward with his mentor Parmenides. He couldn’t because intuition didn’t carry him far enough. Imaginary dialogues with his mentor Socrates didn’t get him there so he could do for Parmenides’ insights what Maxwell did for Faraday’s. His pupil Aristotle’s switch, from Plato’s Academy to Aristotle’s Lyceum -- from Mind-Logic to matter-biology -- was a white flag of surrender. It was the equivalent of Nils Bohr’s Copenhagen Interpretation that declared that experimental physics had reached the limit of its potential to explain the origin, fate, and meaning of the material universe. Aristotle’s was the declaration that Logic through intuition had reached its limit. The study of matter was available to sensory perception. It offered a legitimate avenue of discovery so long as the reality of matter and its certifier, the body’s senses, remained unchallenged by Logic. The time had come to pursue it, and thus was science in Western thought born.

And thus was born what’s become a relay race run by science and philosophy. The white flag of surrender has come out again. From physics’ pursuit of quantum gravity, the melding of cosmology with quantum mechanics, the study of the behavior of the particles and cells, the Energy, that make up matter. One just as weird as the other. The evolution of Einstein’s and Hawking’s pursuit of a theory of everything that also failed. The study of Aristotle’s matter come to rest on a puzzle that experimental physics, on its own, can’t solve. So it’s back to appealing to philosophy. To handing the baton back to philosophy in the relay race to Understanding.

The value of relationship with a trusted guide

What I propose is one possibility inspired by the author of A Course in Miracles. Who I have never doubted, since I’ve been living with it for 34 years, connects us with Logic-Love, the Parents of our ancestral Mind I call the Child. The historical figure Jesus, a manifestation of what religion calls the Holy Spirit. But if the Child’s awakening ultimately requires intimacy with our Parents’ emissary its name shouldn’t matter. Particularly since the identity and role it assumes in individual lives is between it and the individual. Call it what you want.

The Holy Spirit touches my heart at the deepest level through a son whose life was a heart-breaking tragedy. His, for me, has been the voice and the image of the Holy Spirit since I began work on this project three years ago. My life and work revolve around our Relationship, the source of insights from my intuition. With the author of the Course, my Guide and my comfort. An arrangement that owes nothing to manipulation on either side and everything to spontaneity. To mutual Love, Trust, and respect.

What if anything your life revolves around is up to you. I can only share that being in an intimate relationship with a trusted guide, who is in our world of appearances but not of it, can be both elevating and leveling. And, above all, useful -- positive and constructive. A fact well documented in the literature of leadership, entrepreneurship, and parenting.

Quantification run amuck

The cause of the Big Bang is mental not physical. An obvious fact that science, in its rampant bias against the agency of Mind in anything that can be detected and measured by body, adamantly refuses to accept. Between them Stephen Hawking, Francis Crick, Christof Koch, and Brian Greene have invented a “boundaryless” universe without a creator -- an effect without a cause -- and a brain that magically produces consciousness out of neurons and electrical impulses -- matter that produces mind. Propositions so preposterous they rate the Nobel prize for dumbest. An associate of Hawking’s tried to imagine a state that could cause our matter and what did he come up with? More matter.

The Church sticking its nose into Galileo’s business did irreparable harm to objective inquiry, worse by far than private industries buying academic research. Because all it did was provoke science into sticking its nose into everything, including and especially the philosophy that Hawking declared “dead.” Science won’t tolerate anything smacking of speculation that can’t be “verified” by “objective” quantitative measurement. The tool based on circular reasoning that the Austrian physicist-philosopher Erwin Schroedinger has acknowledged guarantees subjectivity not objectivity. What is inquiry outside the scope of measurement but speculation disciplined and supported by Logic?

Other fields -- philosophy, psychology, economics -- are so intimidated by science’s preeminence that they’ve recast their efforts as “scientific” if they can get away with it and let themselves be overshadowed if they can’t. The so-called “five factor” personality type theory is illustrative. Meant to replace Myers-Briggs, based on the inspired intuition of Carl Jung, it makes “person” object rather than subject so that its types can be quantified by “scientific” measurements -- an absurdity. The fraud results in a scale that values body-sensing over intuition, the most critical Myers-Briggs categories. Why devalue intuition? So that body-sensing, already the majority of personality types, will swing attitudes even farther toward validation of science and the “reality” of the world of spacetime-matter that justifies it. So that intuition can’t risk undermining it with another perspective: with Logic and the Truth that lies behind appearances.

Thomas Aquinas got religion -- Christianity anyway -- to back off sticking its nose into free inquiry, but that didn’t stop science from sticking its nose into free inquiry. It’s hard to see the difference between Hawking and Crick and the Pope they so despise.

What is our baseline? 

Adam Becker, in What Is Real? (Basic Books 2018), recalled that Einstein, in 1952, said scientists weren’t very good at Logic. Why? What profession mines the potential for brilliance from the human mind with more elan than science?

In benefit-cost analysis, benefits and costs must be measured against something to show that a particular option makes a situation better or worse. The baseline situation -- the way things are now before the professions and their masters set about to change them. The situation that can’t factor into analysis until it’s properly understood. After all, one option might be to leave things the way they are and its constituency might not give up without a fight.

The function of mind that comes into play for this critical phase of analysis isn’t reason. It’s Logic. Whose function isn’t to choose but to explain. To use its prowess with definition to show how circumstances fit together to reveal their meaning. Whose function is to help its hapless subject, struggling to make sense of a world of contradictions and facades, understand.

From Logic we get Understanding. Not from reasoning but from fitting circumstances together so that they give us meaning and purpose. Context that’s essential to direction. From Logic we get what our situation calls for, opening thought to the next step: how to proceed with choices among scientific experiments, development possibilities, or any other improvement. With judgment based on reason that takes into account weighted values as well as measurements. That integrates them into a response to the situation that is both reasoned and Logical.

Logical because it gets the baseline situation right. Because judgment will be off on the right foot, well informed. Well directed by understanding based on facts. On reality instead of mis-directed by mis-understanding based on mis-perception and unreality. Because judgment will be based on Logic.

Science’s headlong rush to judgment

Science works hard at explaining our situation. At establishing the baseline for judgment, reasoning, choices, and decisions. But this is true only if the basic attribute of our situation can be taken for granted: that what our bodies’ senses tell us is there is actually “there.” That this is reality and we needn’t trouble metaphysics with questioning it. It’s true only if we allow science to get away with including the knower in the known. A crack in the foundation of the entire scientific enterprise. Because it forfeits intellectual integrity and along with it scientific objectivity.

Including the knower in the known is a very big No-No. A violation of Logic. An intellectual disconnect that science apparently thinks it can’t afford to acknowledge without depriving itself of its legitimacy: the presumed reality of bodies and matter. Bodies and the material objects that their senses detect. But, you see, bodies are matter. And science that prides itself on objectivity can’t get away with “logic” that finds “objectivity” where it isn’t: in matter declaring itself real.

A proper understanding of our baseline, the condition against which all movement forward must be calculated, requires something else: another perspective. That's only attainable through intuition, the function of mind whose source and discipline is Logic. The science that we all admire and depend on isn’t good with Logic for a simple reason. It rushes headlong into judgment with “reasoning” before it’s properly established its baseline. Before it’s applied Logic to a proper understanding of the context that tells it what the situation calls for. That provides direction for thinking. Before it's availed itself of another perspective that's essential to intellectual integrity and scientific objectivity.

The gift of metaphysics

Everyone is familiar with physics, the profession that made Einstein an international celebrity. Metaphysics not so much. Too bad, because turning to physics, the study of appearances, the gold standard for legitimizing authoritarian “realism,” is exactly the wrong approach. It’s the approach that Hawking trumpeted in his adolescent fantasy of supremacy when he declared philosophy dead.

Metaphysics is a much-neglected outlier of philosophy that’s probably better known for what it hasn’t done for human progress than for what it has. In his call for help from philosophy the physicist Carlo Rovelli, in Reality Is not What It Seems (Riverhead Books 2017), rejected the Logic of Parmenides out of hand. Thus eliminating metaphysics and its founder from consideration along with answers that minds captive to bodies and brains are actually desperate for. The victim of a shipwreck would rather be saved by an anvil than a life preserver. Because if getting our baseline right requires the definitions and explanations of Logic; if it requires Understanding where circumstances fit together to make a clear statement, it needs Logic. And Logic isn’t the gift of physics. It isn’t the gift of science. It’s the gift of metaphysics.

Do we truly want to understand our situation so that we can proceed to think? To judge clearly? Then stop skipping past our baseline with fatuous assumptions about the unassailability of sensory perception. With circular, self-referential “reasoning” that makes a mockery of intellect. Stop skipping past Parmenides. Start putting some of that scientific verve into understanding what he was talking about. Start applying metaphysics. Apply Logic and get it right.

The Guide that can be trusted

A Course in Miracles isn’t “religion.” It isn’t unreasoning “faith.” It’s the Logic of metaphysics that happened to respond to two clinical psychologists needing “a better way” out of friction that was interfering with professionalism. It’s metaphysics that took on the appearance of religion when it was transmitted through a Jewish scribe with an authoritarian personality type attracted to the patriarchal Catholic church. It adopted the analytics of Freudian psychoanalysis and symbols of Christianity because its audience could not have made sense of its unfamiliar oeuvre otherwise.

An audience that makes up the bulk of Western thought and includes me. The Course reaches me in part because I was brought up in Christianity and an educational environment influenced by Freudian psychology. The heyday of Freudian psychoanalysis spanned my formative years well beyond my formal education, when having a “shrink” was like having a dentist. Metaphysics that looks behind appearances relies on established perception to get its point across and A Course in Miracles is no exception. But this student took its lesson to heart. What I found when I looked behind the analytics of Freud and the symbols of Christianity was the purity of Logic bonded with Love. Not one misstep. Not one false note.

The Course  isn’t “mysticism.” It’s not the “spirituality” of “New Age.” It isn’t a “bible” and says so. Immanuel Kant attempted a “critique of pure reason,” a slog of turgid incomprehensibility that sets off the sensitivity, purposefulness, and clarity of the Course. There is such a thing as Logic that helps to distinguish between what’s Real and what’s not. There is no such thing as “pure reason” if it’s detached from its function, to aid a particular choice or decision. As Gertrude Stein supposedly said when she was asked “What’s the answer?”: “What’s the question?” Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is the equivalent of Stein expostulating on “pure answer” without a question. A pure waste of time.

Reality, the subject matter of philosophy whose only hope of defining it is through the branch founded by Parmenides: metaphysics. Because in a material world of appearances the only way to get at Reality is to get behind appearances. Through the only function of mind that can lead us there: through intuition that connects us with Logic-Love. With the explanation behind appearances we’re looking for. In the end I trust my Guide because, whatever name it’s given, however familiar or unfamiliar it may seem, it makes sense. I trust it because it’s Who -- whoever loves me and whoever I love to the ends of the earth.

Try accessing an authoritarian mind

The choice between listening to the voice of our ancestral Mind’s reverse side, the magician-comedian I call the Joker, and the emissary from the Child’s Parents known to Christianity as Jesus or the Holy Spirit, is a choice even for the mind so thoroughly captive to its dark side that it’s been deprived of a voice. For that is the aim of authority that would rule absolutely: to deprive its possessions of any voice that could compete with its own. Captivity achieves its aim not when voices are added to the many but when they are replaced by one -- its own. Yet no act by Mind that is Free Choice, whether conscious or unconscious, can be anything but choice. And if Child unconscious let itself be taken captive by an illusion it can free itself by “choosing again.” Advice from Jesus that brings the text of the Course to a close.

That said, try accessing an authoritarian mind so captivated by its reverse image that virtually no trace is left of its sovereign self. Jesus did his best with Helen, his scribe, and “maybe” is the best he could do. It’s taken me three full years to figure out how to do it with an authoritarian mind and I’m still working on it.

What price a rational explanation?

I propose that we pick up where the intuition of Parmenides and Plato left off, only now enabled and empowered by insights from the Course that were not available to them. By its priceless gift of another perspective that’s indispensable to objective analysis and Understanding. To getting our baseline condition right before racing off to judgment. When he opined in the February ’22 issue of Scientific American that his profession’s subject may be “in some sense illusory,” the physicist-historian Adam Becker cited Parmenides but made no mention of Jesus and the Course. Not surprisingly when not even the author of What Is Gnosticism? (Belknap-Harvard 2003), the Harvard Divinity School professor, Karen L. King, mentioned it. After what the Church did to Galileo anything with a whiff of religion is toxic.

What I propose is a continuation of Logic from earlier points in its sequence to later points and a continuation beyond the scope so far explored, guided by the sequence of Logic that’s gone before. I propose it as a possibility because, in my writing over the past three years, my Relationship and I have done it. It isn’t a possibility for me; it’s a reality. But until spontaneity informs me that our part is done it remains a work in progress. And even when done, its output can only be suggestive. A start that, for all I know, is but one of a multitude of starts. Its purpose to facilitate movement toward understanding of reality behind appearances. With explanation that can be taken seriously not because can ever be definitive but only because it makes sense.

With Logic and reason that Kenneth Wapnick, in Love Does Not Condemn (Foundation for “A Course in Miracles” 1989), says has yet to be applied by theology and philosophy to a foundational question: Why would a supreme being, undisturbed in eternal serenity, disturb itself? How and why did our ancestral Mind go from awake to asleep? From Self-Awareness to unconsciousness, immortality to mortality, eternity to time, perfection to imperfection? We have what Wapnick calls “excessive mythology” but not a rational explanation. What is the nature of the “supreme being?” Did descent begin from “eternal serenity” or did we get it wrong? Did it end with “creation” -- our material universe -- or with illusion, the state that the metaphysics of Parmenides and the Course describe.

The Story of the Child 

The work in progress that is my book adheres to the thrust of the Course and its basic principles but almost entirely without the symbols that give it a whiff of religion. It isn’t heavy on the analytics of Freudian psychology because to make its point it doesn’t need to be. If it violates the letter of either I’ve been careful not to violate them in spirit. But what I’m writing is metaphysics. Not the logic of Zeno who, like Aristotle, tested the capabilities of Logic without Love -- the missing element that might otherwise have brought Parmenides, Plato, and Jesus together -- but the Logic-Love of the Course. 

The Story of the Child is the working title of my book devoted to getting our baseline right. By telling our story going back beyond the Big Bang to the mental state of the Child that caused it. The Child of its Parents Logic-Love who are our own real parents since we are the Child in a dream state. The mental state that produced the grand illusion: our bodies and their universe of spacetime-matter. The condition that locks minds into the perversion of Truth that is authoritarian “realism.”

Attempting to tell our antecedent Mind’s story with Logic, the gift of metaphysics, and the explanation given us in the clear by Jesus in the Course, may finally help us grasp the truth of our baseline situation -- the human condition. Without the mythology that’s buried fragments of Logic under mountains of obfuscation. That make the articulation and integration of history’s dominant thought systems into a single coherent system a fool’s errand.

Breaking up is hard to do

Illusion -- the baseline condition that Becker’s physics may now be describing. Science, from Aristotle on, has grudgingly allowed that Mind is real but left it at that while it turned all its talents, resources, and passions to its first love: matter. While it imagined itself someday atop the Empire State Building, pounding its chest in triumph, swatting away the remnants of its pitiful enemies. Trumpeting unified theories of everything that explain, once and for all, the meaning of life. The origin and fate of the universe. Quantum gravity! We’re saved and we can all go home and live in peace because the study of matter has answered all our questions.

No it hasn’t. And it never will. Einstein tried and failed. Bohr and quantum mechanics won the argument. Time to give up the dream within a dream: the dream of an orderly, divine universe that can be figured out and the figuring out. An impossibility if the universe is that which can’t be figured out. An illusion because that’s what an illusion is. If you disagree, then explain the anomalies of particle behavior and cosmology without resort to the Logic of Parmenides and A Course in Miracles. Because that’s where the explanation is. The answers you’ve been looking for since Aristotle and Democritus and others before him.

Let physics carry on with matter. Keep after quantum gravity and keep us, so to speak, in the loop, because that’s its job. But we don’t have to carry on with physics. With bodies even though we imagine that’s who we are. There’s a better guide. We can take up with Mind. With Free Choice, the wild card. The beloved Child of Logic and Love. Because that’s who we really are.

Sure, breaking up is hard to do. But let metaphysics be our guide and maybe we can do it.

The making of a good fit

Peace in relationships -- family and friends, work and play, individual and group. Peace of mind. World peace. Is harmony. The fitting together of parts engaged in shared purpose. Performing a function that contributes toward the creation, expression, or affirmation of Worth. To the Worth of the parts striving toward it.

Psychology concerns itself with human psyches and groups that must fit together so that individuals function in harmony, within and among themselves, internally and externally. The “engine” of engineering performs the same function with physical objects rather than subjects. The quantitative measurements of science play a part in both disciplines, but between the two psychology leans heavily toward the subjective-qualitative, engineering toward the objective-quantitative. Two approaches with one function: fitting parts together harmoniously. With Logic.

Peace-harmony requires definitions whether subject or object, qualitative or quantitative. Parts that fit together harmoniously to perform the functions defined for them must each have their own definition that distinguishes them individually before they can be distinguished and function collectively. That distinguishes what they are -- their being -- and what they do -- their doing. The being must fit the doing and the doing must fit the being. As in architecture “form follows function.”

It is the function of Logic to define. The “Word” associated with “Logos” from classical thought stands for the essential output of Logic: the expression of the idea of a thing, subject-self or object. The definition or design of a thing produced by mind before it’s put into play to fit with other definitions-functions to perform shared purpose. The idea of object “apple” that Plato held to be where the reality of “apple” resides: within mind that thinks it. In human thought “Logic” or “Logos” refers to the concept of “God,” the Being responsible for definitions. For fitting parts together logically, harmoniously, with feeling. Lovingly, so Creation’s parts function smoothly.

“Word” or “Logos” also refers to what’s produced by harmonious definitions: a state of being-doing shared purpose referred to as “Creation.” The whole of it -- Creator-Logos and Creation-Logos -- necessitating another descriptor: “Reality.” Because the human experience embraces opposites including “unreality.” There is no need in Creation in Reality for the descriptor “Reality” because unreality is a definition, a state or condition of impossibility that is unknown. But in human experience Reality and unreality state the critical distinction between mind logical-sane and mind illogical-insane. Critical to Understanding. Critical to humans fitting together internally-externally in peace and harmony, because it can’t happen without Understanding. 

Logos has no tolerance for contradictions

Failures of humanity to function harmoniously in a shared world that requires shared purpose are failures of Understanding that depends on Logic to explain how parts must fit together. To explain their definitions -- what-who they are and what they do that must fit together with what other parts do. As individual psyches we are composed of parts internally that must fit together harmoniously and as groups we are composed of individuals that must fit together harmoniously. Reality-Creation is one large composition composed of families that are compositions of individual selves. Selves that are compositions of parts that, in turn, are relationships fitting together. All of it held together by the definitions of Logic. An expression of the idea of fitting together or “relationship.”

Failures of human functioning together in harmony are psychopathology: psyches harboring opposites or contradictions out of alignment with Logic. With Logic’s laws of cause and effect. With the Necessity expressed by the Word-Logos “law.” Law or Necessity has no tolerance for contradiction. Minds that would compose functions from parts that oppose-contradict are attempting the impossible. “Impossible” is illogical, the opposite of one of two primary founding principles of Logic: “Possibility.” The other is “Relationship.”

Minds that attempt to compose peace-harmony out of parts that contradict-conflict in their definitions, their Logic, are attempting the impossible. A definition of illogic or insanity. “Insanity” -- the state of mind that can’t create, can’t be part of Creation that exists harmoniously, at peace, in Reality. It can only dream a fantasy of unreality. Mind dreaming a fantasy of unreality composed of contradictions isn’t awake. A dreaming mind is unconscious.

The failures of humanity to function harmoniously are of Necessity failures of minds not thinking logically and therefore in a dream state not conscious. Logic or “Logos,” Logos or “God,” has no tolerance for contradictions or for the state of mind -- unconscious -- that dreams of contradictions and chaos, unreality and insanity. A thing defined cannot be what it is and what it isn’t. Cannot be or do its opposite.

The autonomy of Free Choice

The source of the flawed composition of contradictions that defines human unreality is an attribute of Logos-Creator and its Creation peace-harmony. A distinct being-Self with a distinct function in Reality-Creation. A unique function of Mind that, like Logic-Logos, is Relationship combining thought with feeling, Mind with Love. The attribute is the Mind-Love function of Free Will or Free Choice. That is, in its being, Free Choice. The source of the flaw that defines human unreality has its origin in Reality and performs an essential function in Reality-Creation. Reality-Creation could not be affirmed without it. The Self-Awareness of Consciousness itself could not exist without it.

Being essential to Self-Awareness and Worth makes Free Choice indispensable to Reality-Creation. What gives it the capacity to perform its role are two unique attributes:

  • the freedom to choose, in its explorations of the unknown, to remain at Home in Reality-Creation with its identity Free Choice, in Relationship with its Parents, or to explore alternate “realities” with unanticipated consequences. Consequences that may entail loss of Awareness of Self and Relationship and apparent loss of Free Choice. Consequences that, empowered by Energy in service to Mind, may appear real but cannot be Real. A consequence of the function of Free Choice to learn as it performs through trial and error: the necessary freedom to risk choosing incorrectly as well as correctly, illogically as well as logically, though not with the status conferred by Logic and Love of remaining Conscious at Home with Parents in Reality-Creation if trial ends in error. To explore alternate “realities” with intent would be an expression of the unique attribute of Free Choice: the freedom not to choose impossibility, to be another Self in Reality, but to imagine or dream another self in unreality. Not to be wrong but to risk being wrong. And in so doing to learn all that's to be learned from the disorder, the unpredictability, the give-and-take, of experience.
  • Free Choice cannot be owned, possessed, or controlled. Its only limits are the limits set by the Logic-Love of its definition in Reality-Creation. By the laws of cause and effect, the authority of Necessity that applies to Everything. These confine it to what it is: Free Choice. Within the scope of Reality-Creation it cannot choose any role other than Free Choice, to be any Self other than who it is, any function other than what it does. In all circumstances, in all contexts, its core identity, its true identity, remains Free Choice. The Child of Parents Logic-Choice and Love-Freedom, it cannot be any other Self.

Other Creations owe their being and function to organic growth. To the implications of Logic and the relationships of Love. To the interconnections of laws-Necessity, to the evolution of Creation that is the Order, the harmony-peace of Reality. Free Choice originated from its Source as a distinct Self with the attribute of independence, occupying its own plane in the structure and process of Creation. Interconnected with all of it because Reality-Creation is the Oneness of interconnection. But a distinct Self functioning autonomously beyond its control. Whose definition by masculine Logic-Choice and feminine Love, its Parents, endowed it with the capacity to choose freely within the Order, the peace-harmony, of Creation.

From the One of Reality to the many of illusion

Whose definition endowed it with the capacity to function as a wild card subject to its own guidance, its own judgment, its own discretion. Exercising its capacity independently in Relationship with its Source, its Parents, but by definition not owned, possessed, controlled, or dominated by any part of Creation. A wild card that has the free run of Creation and so puts a premium on Judgment. On its maturity and competence to judge correctly in its choices in all contexts of constantly evolving Creation. In the acts that share, affirm, enable, and empower the Life-Worth of Creation and Self of the Self-Awareness / Consciousness that creates it.

Though Free Choice is identified as a distinct self with a distinct function independent of its Source-Creator, its Parents Logic-Love, it is bonded with them in a reciprocal Relationship of Knowing and Love. A Relationship between Parent-Child that supplies the dynamo of Energy at the core of Oneness. The passionate stance of Being:

  • empowering and illuminating all of Reality-Creation with the Energy and Light of Self-Awareness.
  • embracing Everything, all possibilities including the state of mind that is Free Choice when Free Choice cannot choose correctly and lapses into the dream state of unconsciousness. That is, when it lacks the Knowledge and competence necessary to choose freely.
  • making of all of Reality-Creation a Heaven of joyfulness, peace, and harmony. The ideal that haunts the human Psyche with the memory of a long-ago utopian Home where we, one Child, existed in the embrace of Logic and Love, peace and freedom, our Parents, without contradictions, without opposites, in the Perfection of Innocence.

Our minds not troubled with the concomitants of our predatory animal nature: bodies sharing space with bodies, tribes with tribes. With familiar and alien objects, “others” triggering primitive limbic dominance, fear, possessiveness, lust, rage, and hatred. Reverberating through a dystopia of guilt, the memory of the long-ago projection of injustice, limbic emotions, guilt, and insanity that transformed the One of Reality into the many of illusion. That made us, projections of a dream, and put us here.

Secrets of our ancestral Mind revealed

That Free Choice put us here should be no surprise. A wild card with the run of Creation. A Child learning and growing to maturity and competence through the trial and error of experience. In the context of Reality and Creation that know nothing of opposites yet are constantly expanding, exploring, discovering, and creating among all the known possibilities into the unknown. In the broader context of Everything that does include opposites: the illusory inhabitants of the flip side of Reality that is Mind unconscious. Mind dreaming an alternate “reality” of shadow-reflections, derivations coded to be the opposite of their hosts. To be dependents along for the ride, troublemakers, parasites. An unreality coded to be everything opposite to Reality.

The Why of what put Free Choice here should tell us that having the maturity and competence to choose correctly as well as freely is important if we prefer success rather than failure. If we want to avoid mistakes that get us into trouble. A great deal of speculation and story-telling have been devoted to Why the Child’s Parents would allow or perpetrate its departure from immortality to mortality. The logical answer would appear to be they did neither. That it was probably inevitable, the consequence of Free Choice. The laws of cause-effect. Of Necessity that governs the process and structure of Creation.

The Why of it still matters. But the How of what put Free Choice here may be the more important question. Because it’s from the story of how the Child Free Choice, our ancestral Mind, imagined itself into an alternate “reality” that we, its “descendants” -- projections of a dreaming mind -- can gain insights into the deepest roots of human behavior. To the roots of human psychopathology that has so far eluded Understanding and defied cure by the healing professions. By psychology, the study of behavior, and psychiatry, the study of illness.

There are patterns. And try as we might to detect and understand them we can’t succeed until we free ourselves from the tyranny of bodies and sensory perception. From putting our faith in counterintuitive "scientific" absurdities like the search for configurations of particles and cells, neurons, chemistry, and electrical impulses in brains that will someday, somehow, magically produce consciousness. Until we liberate mind to inquire where the answers are: in the How of what put Free Choice here. In the Logic, the story, of what led our ancestral Mind from one state into another. One Reality into another whose every attribute is an expression or reflection of the Reality it was projected from. Whose every actor, every relationship, is driven, one way or another, by the sequence of events that brought them to “life” in another “reality.”

Simple intuitive Logic  

How shall you and I resolve our differences? When it looks hopeless whether we’ve tried everything or nothing? By Understanding that goes beyond the hopelessness, the intractability, of human conflict. The pointless, circular “reasoning” of minds captive to matter. By trying something new. Something even more entertaining than the mythologies of entertainment and religion, sports and politics. Than the hallucinations of psychedelics and the psychoses of addicts. The ravings of wishful thinking fabulists, self-serving opportunists -- mad men making it up as they go along. Try something that actually enlightens: simple intuitive Logic. Metaphysics: the invention of Parmenides that takes us beyond appearances. The revelations of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, whose Course in Miracles takes us into the story of our ancestral Mind. The One Child that we are and the one story. Our story.

So, what's the "wild card?" We are. Free Choice.

The proof of Innocence 

What do we have in the end?
Only our minds to tell us what to make of our lives. Memories, perceptions, and judgment.
The stuff of imperfection.

The stuff of self-interest and bias. The never-ending crusade to protect purity against the onslaught of others’ perceptions and bias.
Our Innocence.
Against the transfiguration of our injustice into their “justice.”
The turning of memories upside down and inside out.
Against us, to make of our outrage a joke. 

That would make of us an impossibility: the earning of love, trust, and respect.
The stuff of friendship.
And above all: the proof of Innocence.

In the darkness behind appearances

Innocence that in a world of substitutes can have but two sources. An inner moral compass. . .
And what others think.
One true, the other a substitute for truth.
One the attribute of independent judgment and self-reliance . . .
The other the mark of dependence.

Attributes that distinguish opposites: host and parasite.
What is and the free rider that isn’t. The odd couple.
Innocence that can’t cohabit with guilt where Logic and Love prevail, illuminated by the light of honesty and truth.
But can cohabit where Logic and Love don’t prevail. Where instead of light, dishonesty and untruth hide in the darkness behind appearances. 

Bodies like rabbits pulled out of hats

The contradiction of Innocence going about harmfulness, the business of guilt.
Taking life opposite to its will to live, to be forever.
Bent on contradiction to the end.
Taking itself, the stuff of imperfection, with it.
The odd couple at odds, seeding its own end. 

And here we stand.
Who would speak for honesty and truth in such a place.
Profiles of a fool. Everyman defined by appearances, betrayed by appearances.
The awareness of Self draped in the finery of mud, called to account for its slander --What others think.

The stage of deceit and the deceiver they put there.
The illusionist and its shit parade of harmfulness, pain, and outrage, calumny and injustice.
Bodies like rabbits pulled out of hats
Engaged in an endless cycle of provocation. 

Applause for special effects

The stuff of appearances -- magic performed for the entertainment of fools in a darkened theatre.
The Cave of Plato.
The roach motel where roaches check in and never check out.
In the darkened theatre of shame and punishment, fear, and hatred. 

To what end?
To set feeling against one another?
OK. To make us miserable?
That works. How about to test patience with absurdities?
Getting warmer. This is ridiculous!
Almost there. 

I know! The magician behind the horror show expects applause for special effects.
Uh huh. To be taken seriously for smoke and mirrors. 

God’s Son remembered not to laugh

So that’s what this nonsense is really all about?
Boo!
Riveted to our seats in hypnotic fear. How many times Boo! before we get it?
Before we get that the wizard is us.
Appreciate the joke we played on ourselves.
The illusionist and its shit parade of harmfulness, pain, and outrage, calumny and injustice.

And have a good laugh.
This is funny?
Perversity that has no real effects. When it sinks in and we get it. The Joker and its jokes. All of it ridiculous.
Even the pain? The injustice?
Especially the pain and injustice when you realize why we’re being goaded and who’s doing the goading. Ourselves. Into making fools of ourselves. Into keeping it going -- the stage show. The joke. 

How?
By not laughing: “God’s Son remembered not to laugh.”
Don’t you want to be taken seriously?
That’s why I’m laughing. Seriously. When you get the joke, everything is funnier.
Then you weren’t goaded seriously.
Wanna bet? Don’t get me going! 

One for the road

Show’s over!
With one grand finale of absurdity. One last spooky joke. One last laugh to bring the curtain down.
There’s more?
We don’t have to get up from our seats and leave the theatre.

We don’t?
No. It’s all taken care of. The magician was never here to begin with and neither was the theatre. The theatre leaves us. 

Boo!

Authoritarian rule on Pleasant Street

Value individuality and don’t try to dictate what. . . kids are curious about or how they express themselves. [Respectful parenting] is about seeing children as independent rational beings [instead of taking an] authoritarian [approach] where communication is one way with little consideration of a child’s emotional needs. 

CNBC on Apple News Feed 01/07/23, quoting Margot Machol Bisnow, author, Raising an Entrepreneur (BookBaby 2022).

[Disclaimer: This is the extent of my familiarity with this book. However, it’s on order and will be read in hopes that it will help with one of the main concerns of this website: the undoing of authoritarian “realism,” a dominant strain of philosophy that’s neither realistic nor rational. Responsible, in fact, for the abuse of children and every other living thing. The signature human mindset that’s become the signature of an entire geological epoch: the ongoing global atrocity we now call the Anthropocene.] 

What lay behind the image of pleasantness in our second-grade reader, the neighborhood of Dick and Jane on Pleasant Street? Pleasantness or an alternate reality -- the self-delusion of our ancestral Mind? The archetypal Child corrupted by the opposite of Logic and Love, ruled by its mistake: misidentification with its own reflection. Its own opposite, and so by the perversion of authority. Demanding arbitrary rule from the top down instead of governing, lawfully and compassionately, from the bottom up. Instead of nurturing -- the essence of authority that isn’t authoritarian. Helpfulness that’s harmlessness.

If the parenting that really goes on isn’t authoritarian disrespect why then is Margot Bisnow speaking up? Who is her audience? Why do so many need to listen?

The story of Dick and Jane that prompted Margot’s book is still playing out on Pleasant Street. Disrespectful authoritarian parenting wraps itself and its offspring into the ongoing madness of humanity. An injustice that’s all the more unacceptable for being so common. What are the philosophical roots of this perversion of authority so that it can be uprooted? To make way for respectful parenting so that children so dear to us have the loving support they need. Who is our “enemy?” How can we know our enemy so that we can be rid of it or at least mitigate its harm?

To set children off on their own course

The psychopathology of disrespectful authoritarian parenting on Pleasant Street is unpleasantness by many names:

  • Beginning with obsessive-compulsive narcissism, a psychiatric disorder that demands absolute authority, possession, and obedience. Absolute relentless control, the desperation of lives at the mercy of urges and cravings that are out of control.
  • Psychosis -- the denial of Reality and Truth. Their substitution by an alternate fantasy reality centered on self-pitying specialness and victimhood.
  • Arrested development -- adolescence clinging to the past, fearful of the future, that refuses to grow up. Fiercely resistant to the attainment of maturity and competence through learning and adaptation. Terrified of the truths that the wisdom of experience might reveal.
  • More arrested development. The creativity of personhood stunted by authority turned on its head. By the cruelty of invalidation and disempowerment imposed on individuality from the top down instead of the nurturing of gentle loving kindness and respect it needs from the bottom up.
  • Sociability obsequious to group, authoritarian ass-kissing, a thin veneer of hypocrisy hiding contradictions and conflict. “Harmony” dictated by uniformity, denied the freedom of individuality. “Peace” hiding the frustration of limbic emotions -- resentment, jealousy, anger, fear, guilt -- craving war.
  • The madness of alienation and war, the inevitable consequence of self-pitying authoritarian cruelty and rage.

Role modeling limbic emotions festering inside psychiatric disorder -- fear, anger, hostility, hatred, blame -- has a terrible cost. Replication in the minds and hearts of vulnerable children condemned to lives corrupted by psychiatric disorder. By the same beast and its shit parade of addictions, upside-down values, and animal emotions. By the pathology itself and its enablers: the crass submission of passivity to the tyrant. By weakness posing as strength. Allying with the perversion of democratic governance that is authoritarian rule. Obelix the Gaul gone over to the Romans. Bringing upon himself the fury of Justice for enticing his victims with seductive charm and humor into betraying the cause. Gulling them unawares into spreading the virus of self-delusion, misperception, and misjudgment.

All of it the opposite of what grown-up role modeling should be about: not invalidation but affirmation. The enabling and empowerment of individual expression -- strength, freedom, trust, and intimacy -- not its suffocation. Loyalty to Reality and Truth, not to denial and psychosis. Just as Bisnow’s book says, to set children off on their own course instead of replicating ancestral authoritarian pathology.

The perversion of democratic governance into authoritarian rule isn’t the flaming banner of “liberty,” the ultimate in satisfaction that’s advertised. It’s self-imprisonment in frustration -- the opposite. In the one-dimensional cartoon world of adolescent fools that a grown-up Pete Hamill abandoned in A Drinking Life. Self-delusion is deprivation of self-awareness and Free Will, our birthright: Truman risking his life to escape The Truman TV Show, the degradation of victimhood meant for the entertainment of voyeurs. Chumps finding amusement in their own servitude. Dick and Jane being groomed for lives in Plato’s Cave, addicted to substitutes for Worth. To dog food.

The sick lure of herd mentality

A perfect replica of deception that can’t fool the metaphysicist. Who’s aware of what’s behind appearances and will protest. The descendant of Parmenides and his Eleatics School that founded metaphysics. Devoted to intuiting the Reality of Mind, Logic and Love behind physics. Behind the study of material objects that make up our metaverse of spacetime and matter -- one grand appearance that distracts and deceives with sensory perception and quantitative measurements. With circular self-referential "reasoning " that purposely rejects Logic and Love.

To look thus behind appearances in the made-up world of Dick and Jane is, as Nancy Pelosi might say, “to throw a punch for the children.” At the Roman oppressors who take advantage of children, their captive audience, to deprive them of self-awareness, Free Will, and initiative. Of individuality, originality, and creativity. Of personhood, all in service to forced group conformance. To Pete Hamill’s “Brooklyn.” To the “Galactic Empire” of Star Wars. To the fortunes of tribes and their militaries. Of symbolic nations chanting supremacy in competition for world cups and super bowls. To the pleasantries of “sociability” -- manipulating us away from Truth to lies, from Reality to appearances, from the light and freedom of individuality into the darkness and captivity of uniformity.

All so that minds taken captive will submit to domination by limbic emotions. Will be forced into mindlessness so that the tribe may dominate without opposition. May have all that humanity’s limbic animal brain wants. Its agenda, and we are the unwitting agents of its will. Dick and Jane are literally being conditioned by irresponsible role modeling into thinking, feeling, and behaving like animals at war with other animals. In a dog-eat-dog world instead of in a shared world. Civilized by individuality, originality, and creativity. By sharing, affirmation, and empowerment in a shared world of Love, Trust, and Intimacy. Civilized by conscience and accountability, two attributes of character notably absent in the authoritarian.

Dick and Jane are naturally drawn to Freedom, naturally repelled by oppression. Drawn to the resistance of Gauls to Roman tyranny. They embrace the Logic and Love of authority that’s focused on their needs and feelings and not on itself, so that it can nurture strength instead of sapping it. Who then would want to impose the rule of madness for their own benefit on innocent children who despise it? Who would not want to share the Logic and Love, the wisdom, of learning and growth with children who crave it? Of self-awareness instead of self-delusion? What grown-up of conscience would want to lure children away from civilization that supports humanity into herd mentality that crushes it?

The one and only voice

Neuroscience has identified a part of the human brain that connects humanity to its animal origins. The “reptilian” or “animal brain” accounting for animal emotions with a distinctive attribute: the animal brain and its emotions have not evolved. A part of “civilized” humanity’s brain that connects it to humanity’s uncivilized, animal past: the limbic system of amygdala and hippocampus, located with the cerebellum at the base of the brain and the top of the spine. Driven not by the aptitude of the prefrontal cortex for deliberation and judgment, for the discipline of reason, values, and choice, but ruled by unreasoning animal instinct and will. Engineered not for subjective reflection but for objective action in a frightening world of disconnected objects. Disobedient to the laws of physics and ultimately disobedient to us. To our precarious family. Beyond anyone’s control.

Who are we? The question starts with humanity’s animal brain. With un-self-awareness unevolved. With humanity’s involuntary entrapment in a prison of tribal membership. What we have made of ourselves is service with a smile on behalf of our captor. The self-delusion’s lure of its host, our ancestral Mind -- the original Child, Self-Awareness -- into Plato’s Cave of un-self-aware animal submission. The self-delusion’s original target, its archetype for the mistake’s replications to follow: a Child. Amenable to its manipulations, susceptible to its deceptions.

The state of a world trapped in a cycle of blame, victimhood, and conflict is kept “alive” by the very transgression that lures its offspring into captivity. With the false promise of liberation in the pleasantries of “sociability.” Of unquestioning service to authority whose only cause is itself. With role modeling opposition to individuality, learning, and growth. The suppression of voices other than its own. The elevation of singularity to supremacy: one voice.

Toward the Love and Freedom of Intimacy

The duty of those not caught up in misguidance, the unpleasantness that is Pleasant Street, is to use our Free Will and our talents to stand for another voice. To deny the denial. In the spirit of the indomitable Asterix the Gaul, with the force of Authority that will teach the Romans a lesson. Our duty is to reverse the atrocity with the Authority of Logic and Love instead of tyranny, its perversion. To “throw a punch for the children.” By denying the transgression legitimacy with our withdrawal. By not engaging with foolishness. And if withdrawal implies invalidation of behavior that’s wrong then so be it. We owe Palpatine, the evil Emperor of the Galactic Empire, no apology for hurting his feelings if we do so to prevent his electrocuting our son.

No retaliation perpetrated by Roman arrogance can shut down a voice that would speak for Logic and Love on behalf of our children. Our cause not only the protection of children but the liberation of those who dominate them. The end of the Cave along with the self-delusion that produced it -- the illusory Joker that’s us and the joke that’s on us.

Our cause is not the cause of bestial rage but the loving kindness of the Relationship. The Relationship with our Parents Logic and Love consummated in unreality by their agent, the connection with Reality kept open by the Holy Spirit. Call it what you want. It isn’t the name that matters but its function: the connection. Relationship that no lies, no magic tricks, can break. The Authority of Necessity, the laws of cause and effect: expressions of the Logic and Love that composed them. Not the thrust and parry of weaponry that kills but the caress of music and radiance that enlivens. The Beauty of Oneness and Innocence, the Source and the Force of Life and Creation.

Their cause and mine is sharing to affirm and empower, not competing to “win” and dominate. It’s to bring darkness to light by enabling it to choose freely, of its own accord, to come to the light. With the leverage of family ties, tribal belonging certified by the animal brain that we all share. Not the contrivance of a cartoon, the one-dimensional top-down uniformity of Pete Hamill’s “Brooklyn,” but family governed by individual self-expression.

My cause the cause of the Gaul to respond to Romans luring children into captivity by liberating Romans from their self-imprisonment. By demonstrating Free Will, the birthright that can’t be surrendered, that captors can use to escape from their own captivity. From the Cave, to join the Gauls in Freedom. By demonstrating freedom of expression, the Creativity of civilizing individuality, of personhood, that liberates from entrapment by unevolved limbic emotion, the will of the beast, toward the Love and Freedom of Intimacy.

The premise behind The Story of the Child

Advice from the military based on experience with centuries’ worth of battles: Know your enemy. Advice from Pogo Possum, the sage of Walt Kelly’s Okefenokee Swamp: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Advice from the psychologist Sigmund Freud: the “bad thing” lies within the human psyche.

My mother shrank from looking too deeply within because she feared what she might find. What or who is “Satan” and where does it reside? Would the minds of history’s most notorious dictators offer a clue? Is it in the Hades of Greek mythology under the ground, whence the dark lord of the underworld emerged to snatch his bride, Persephone? Is it Dante’s Inferno, the terraced rings of vengeance and misery on the other side of the River Styx? Can it be anywhere in enchantment?

The ”enemy” lies within the dreaming Mind that we all share. Our ancestral Mind, the Child of Logic married to Love, its Parents. The Child, whose real identity is Free Choice and Love, who lost consciousness in the Reality of Creation that preceded the dream and produced it. A Course in Miracles explains the unconscious Child’s error that produced the dream. It doesn’t explain the loss of consciousness, although its Logic may enable an individual, working in relationship with the Holy Spirit, the emissary from Logic-Love, to intuit a rational explanation. This is the premise behind The Story of the Child, the working title of the book that insights from Intuition and I are well into writing.

The “enemy” within

The “enemy” is the “dark side” of the Child, the Mind in an unconscious state that thrust it from Reality into a state of illusion. Where it could encounter contradictions of Logic-Love and Reality that of Necessity are excluded from Reality and can only be detected within a dream. The dark side is an illusion, a code attached to unconscious Mind. An illusory dependent, a parasite that derives its definition, its genetics, from its host. A code that, like a virus, instructs an unconscious mind taken captive to fabricate its unreal dream world of opposites. Because this is what the code “is:” an opposite. The dark side is simply instructions for fashioning a dream that, when animated by Energy in service to Mind, brings to “life” the opposite of its host. All the aspects of what we experience as “life” are, in one way or another, fabricated or corrupted by these instructions.

The ”enemy” that I call the “Joker” is the Child’s unconscious mind’s mistaken identification of its own reflection code as an “other,” then allowing itself to be deluded into identifying with its own opposite. In the mistaken belief that this illusory other self could bail it out of the situation that unconsciousness put it in. The Joker is the Child’s own dark side that only has a “life” inside a state of mind that can’t exist in Reality that’s only capable of dreaming illusions. The specific change of Mind that mis-identifying with the opposite-code “caused” was imagining that the Child’s Psyche was replaced by the Joker. Where Psyche is the Child’s real Self -- Consciousness or Self-Awareness in Reality. Is Being replaced with non-being. 

The call for correction

If the Child’s real Self can be thought of as an altar surmounted by holiness radiating the Light and Life of Being, of Creation, then the Joker in the misguided, corrupted Child’s mind is an expression of its opposite occupying a throne of darkness. The slew of perversions of Being, Reality, and Truth that make up the Child’s unreal dream of insanity. The “master” of Plato’s Cave and its manipulations -- appearances, deceptions -- that keep its occupants secure in their self-delusion. Our universe of spacetime-matter and the isolated, separated bodies that we mis-identify as us.

The call through Intuition to correct error can’t come from the “enemy” but it can come from the Child’s Psyche. Its Soul or Being in its seemingly wounded state. Which is why correction takes us within, to reverse the apparent violation of the inviolate, our Self, our identity, We look within to find the “enemy.” To replace self-delusion, the Joker, with Self-Awareness, Psyche on our altar, the source of our psychology. The cause, mission, or function behind our story. That accounts for who we are and what we do. Why we exist. Why we’re here -- to do our part to restore consciousness and the sanity of Logic and Love. To heal separation that’s no more than a case of mistaken identity.

The route to correction is through philosophy, the Logic that explains Reality, and through psychology, understanding with Logic how the Soul, our Psyche, that interconnects all of Life-Creation, came to be contaminated in an unconscious mind with a reverse mirror image self. A code or “thought system” derived from its host that is the opposite of its host. Illogical by definition. An absurdity.

Inside the brooding castles of Transylvania

When we look within our individual selves to know our “enemy,” we find what we’re looking for. The bad thing that isn’t unique to us. The forms it takes and their attributes vary with each person, each personality with its unique genetics and circumstances bearing the stamp of the moment. Varying with each individual story and its psychodynamics -- needs, feelings, values, perceptions, cravings-addictions, conflicts, and motivations. All derived from the same Source, an ancestral Mind with one story that defines the seminal mistake, its archetypal parts and what happened between them to produce us. To produce our myriad variations on the same theme. The myriad stories that repeat the same mistake, and so it defines us.

Fooling us. Mocking us. Laughing at our foolishness because we can’t get it right. Because we will never know our enemy so long as we keep looking for explanations and Understanding where they aren’t. Without instead of within. In spacetime and matter. In bodies instead of the Mind whence we came. So long as we fall for its endless distractions and let ourselves be fooled. Beg to be fooled so the Truth won’t be exposed. So we won’t discover the Truth and have to change. To disturb our “peace” with the effort and difficulty, the unpleasantness of learning and growth it may take. So we won’t have to actually use Free Choice to choose again. To choose friend instead of enemy for our guide. Our real selves instead of a mistaken self, our own dark side. Our own shadow opposites who haunt brooding castles in Transylvania. The scary blood-sucking monsters of our nightmares who cast no reflections in mirrors. Because they’re reflections themselves.

The striving and difficulty of Free Choice

The bad thing that’s wounded our Psyche within is a nothing. But a reflection, our own opposite “dark side” that has no existence of its own. Only the “existence” and harmfulness it’s handed by us when we repeat the original mistake of the Child, our ancestral Mind. The Mind that’s dreaming our reverse mirror image world, haunted by its seminal mistake. Mind-the-one that transformed itself into bodies-brains, the many infected with mistakes-the-many.

To follow tried and true military advice, to “know your enemy,” doesn’t take much effort if you’re Pete Hamill’s “Dodgers” and the enemy is the “Giants.” If the bad guy advertises deception and superficiality with “Truth Social.” Anything “social” is skin deep, a tapestry of appearances and magic acts conjured by groups to defend themselves and assault others that can easily be unwoven. What takes effort to know your enemy is if you’re one individual, one mind. Then the direction isn’t horizontal, skittering across the surface of the pond like a water bug. The direction is perpendicular. Down beneath the surface. To connect with Reality and Truth that traces all the way back to the story of the original individual -- our ancestral Mind. The One Child that we all are.

The story that contains the explanation we’re looking for. That reveals the Logic and illogic of the bad thing, the seminal mistake. It takes effort and patience not only because the Logic of explanation moves in sequence at its own pace, but also because self-deluded minds influenced by the bad thing, sometimes captive to the bad thing, fear and resist knowing. Because humanity in its adolescent foolishness doesn’t want to grow up. Has all kinds of “reasons” why letting sleeping dogs lie is preferable to waking them up. Echoes from Plato’s Cave: Leave us alone! Because waking up by minds with Free Will must be a matter of choice. Their choice. It can’t be forced on them without compromising what makes them who they are. What gives them their usefulness, their function. If dogs choose to sleep that’s their choice. And because choice takes work. It doesn’t make itself and it can’t be delegated.

Humor that’s actually funny

So what does that make us if we carry on not knowing our enemy? Dogs that choose to sleep. Beings possessed of brains rooted in animal brains that never evolved. Animals socialized but not civilized, forced by circumstances to get along for a while until “sociability” gives way to the mistake. To the hostilities of authoritarian competition. The malign animosity that haunts castles in Transylvania. That’s not only allowed to remain intact beneath the surface but embraced -- protected and preserved as though it were savior instead of enemy. The ultimate expression of opposite, the definition of “enemy.” Insane, mindless contradiction that misleads like road signs pointing in the wrong direction. The psychology of madness.

What should make us willing to know our enemy? To want to make the effort to choose? To understand that the “enemy” is us. It dwells within. It’s accessible to Intuition, from a source we can trust, Logic and Love. It doesn’t require years of tail-chasing psychoanalysis trusting the judgment of authoritarian “realists” -- unhealed healers captive to the thinking of Freud, who insisted that what’s wrong with mind must be what’s wrong with body. An absurdity. And then there’s this: our “enemy” isn’t real. It’s a joke we play on ourselves. The dog mistaking its tail for another dog and then letting itself be deluded into identifying with its tail. The enemy is the tail wagging the dog. A sick perversity of the Truth.

But really -- it’s funny! It’s us. Our strange, mysterious metaverse. Ridiculous! Our bogeyman “enemy” is a very funny fool -- us. How will we celebrate when we finally know our enemy? When we look in the mirror and see ourselves instead of an “other.” How about congratulating ourselves by doing high fives with just our own hands? By recognizing that the “voice” that’s been misleading us, making fools of us, is our own. By having a good laugh. As for me, I’ve already made reservations: dinner and dancing for one.

Carry on, Centurion!

For the authoritarian “realist,” the disrespectful authoritarian parent who insists on lying there like a sleeping dog, getting in the way, a parting word: Just because your self-deluded mind is incapable of divining meaning and purpose doesn’t grant you the right to make up your own reality and force it on others. What it does give you is something more constructive: the obligation and opportunity to grow up. To recognize the Reality and Truth of who you are, Obelix the Gaul, and wake up. If you’re a Roman legionnaire who must follow orders then I will be your drill sergeant. See that you do it or you’ll be doing latrine duty.

Carry on, Centurion!

1

The seductive charm of “Columbia”

The Light is Self-Awareness made possible by Relationship:

  • between Logic and Love, masculinity and femininity. Masculine choice and order, feminine creativity and freedom, bringing the gift of connection and self-awareness to one another.
  • between Parents and Child. Parents with one another and with Child, all bound in the ties of joyfulness and family. In the trust, innocence, and Oneness of Being. Of Psyche-Soul. Of the Light of Relationship, the Reality of Creation and the Creation of Reality.

Relationship turned on the light for an awe-struck boy when “Columbia” first raised her Hollywood movie studio torch in a darkened theatre. Seducing my imagination for all time with her feminine beauty. With an ideal writ large against the grandeur of sky framed by a majestic white cloud, radiating brilliance, perfection, and purity in every direction. So compelling an image of all that has Worth, of all that is inseparable, inviolate, and forever, that I placed her on the altar of my soul. To be revered in solitude and shared with kindred spirits. With helpfulness and harmlessness -- the Innocents who inhabit my Temenos. With Parents and Children -- the joyfulness, playfulness, and happiness of Family.

A beacon of Self-Awareness in the darkness of impossibility

In the Reality of Consciousness without opposition the light of Relationship is Possibility unperturbed by unconsciousness and the darkness of impossibility. In the unreality of unconsciousness -- the mind of the Child whose dream we inhabit -- the light of Relationship is a beacon in the darkness of impossibility. Guiding us back to our Parents, to consciousness back home. The undeniable response of Reality-Creation, Worth-Life, to impossibility-dark, opposite-hatred, contradiction-insanity, illusion-captivity, untruth-deception, animal-instinct fear and rage, obsession-addiction, error-self-delusion, and guilt. The denial of denial.

Without Love, Logic can’t know itself. Without Logic, Love can’t know itself. Neither can be self-aware without the other. Together they are the light of Self-Awareness, the attribute of Being that stands for the function of Psyche-Soul. The assertion of the first principle of Logic, the foundation of all Reality-Creation: Possibility.

Light makes right

Logic-Love is the light of Being-Soul that interconnects all of Reality-Creation in the Worth, the Implication-Relationship of Possibility. The Energy-Force, the power of Logic-Implication and Love-Relationship that binds all of Reality-Creation together in one family, one cause.  The stance of Being-Oneness. Of Possibility-Life affirmed, enabled, empowered and supported by the authority-Authorship of Logic-Love Parents in Relationship with their Child Free Choice. By the light of Being, Psyche-Soul freely chosen in denial of impossibility, of unreality-untruth.

By the right of Being / Psyche-Soul freely chosen by ideal. By the good-virtue of Being / Psyche-Soul freely chosen. By the sharing, affirmation, enablement, and empowerment of Oneness-Innocence. By the harmlessness of Being / Psyche-Soul freely chosen. .  . .

The Holy Spirit is our indispensable other Self

If “Jesus” is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, who or what is the Holy Spirit?

Relationship consummates Self-Awareness. The Self that cannot Know itself without being Known, just as Creation cannot be the Worth of Life-Creation without Worth being freely chosen. Without being affirmed, enabled, and empowered through the reciprocation, the giving back, of its Creations of their own Free Will. The Child’s loss of Consciousness was the loss of awareness of its Relationship with its Parents. Relationship which gave it Self-Awareness, the gift of Knowledge from the Knower it needed to be Known -- its Parents. Mind unconscious cannot regain consciousness without Relationship essential to Self-Awareness.

Consciousness in Reality cannot enter the unreality of unconsciousness without making it real. While their Child remains unconscious its Parents cannot themselves complete the Relationship. Yet the Child, being an extension of Logic-Love, with its own definition, its own distinct function, remains connected to them. The connection preserved through an attribute of Free Choice, a function of mind even when unconscious that cannot be taken captive: intuition. Its content supplied by a source that mind even when dreaming cannot deny: another imaginary self. Another projection to join Child-the-many in its dream of bodies occupying a material universe.

An appearance but with a difference

The Holy Spirit is a facsimile of Logic-Love, the Child’s Parents, that was projected into the alternate “reality” along with all the other objects of illusion. Accepted into the dream because it’s part of the dream. Yet with a different function: to substitute for the substitute alternative “self” -- the self-delusion of the Child’s misidentity, its shadow-reflection -- should the Child freely choose it. Another voice for the Child to listen to: instead of a voice for unreality and untruth, a voice for Reality and Truth. A stand-in for the Child’s Parents to make up for the missing Relationship. A Self from Reality and Truth, Logic and Love, so that it can regain Self-Awareness. So that it can see who it really is through the vision of the Holy Spirit instead of seeing its mirror-image opposite. The self-deception that appeared like the illusionist’s act that it was when the Child identified with its own shadow-reflection. Its dark side.

The Holy Spirit is an appearance within a dream world of appearances, but with a difference. Its source isn’t unconscious mind’s reverse side, the parasite implied by Free Choice that fabricates a world of perversity from a code of opposition. It’s the Reality and Truth of Creation that Parented Free Choice -- the Parents with their unbroken Relationship with the host. With the Child itself instead of its self-delusion.

Impossibility is its own denial

The Holy Spirit is the bond of access between Parents and Child, the light of Reality and Truth, Logic and Love, that can’t logically be denied by delusion. Can’t be denied by deception, magic, insanity. By the absurdity of impossibility that can only “exist” in non-existence inside its own contradiction. Impossibility that’s contradiction is its own denial. The darkness doesn’t need to be opposed if it’s opposition that destroys itself. A warship destined to scuttle itself.

The function of mind that can’t be blocked

The Holy Spirit is the agent of Authority and the Force of its laws of cause and effect inside the dream. The Force of Necessity that unconscious mind can access by Free Choice through the function of Mind that can’t be blocked by self-delusion. Through Intuition which functions spontaneously because it cannot be taken captive, cannot be owned, possessed, and controlled. Because it’s built into the Mind of Free Choice that remains forever Free by definition, impervious to the effects of self-delusion. Unblockable. It’s access to Logic-Love its Source that preceded the dream and remains outside the dream. It functions within the dream because the dream is an act of mind. The self-delusion can’t escape Mind its source and the Force of its will: the will of Parents and Child to correct it. 

What does the Light illuminate? 

The sun illuminates all of unreality in the earth-world of self-delusion, channeling energy that enables and animates organic life. The sun is an object consuming itself, energy which will burn out in time. It is a perversion of Energy-Light in Reality which renews itself eternally, producing Order and the Life of Creation. Energy-Light in unreality consumes itself in the illusion of time. It is the decay and disorder of entropy, producing inertia and death.

This is the difference between Light-Energy in Reality and in unreality. The choice illuminated by the Light: between Relationship which is all of Reality and Creation and separation which is all of unreality and illusion. Between self-delusion and Self-Awareness. Worth and worthlessness. The choice is clear: for Relationship. For the Holy Spirit.

Helen Schucman in Kenneth Wapnick’s telling

There’s strong evidence, besides ACIM, that Jesus isn’t a savior spoon-feeding us all the answers. An authoritarian determined to bend imperfection to Perfection by a dominating will.

The superlative mind and scholarship of Kenneth Wapnick, a PhD psychotherapist, were unerring in their interpretation of the Course, an astounding match for the unerring Logic of Jesus. But in his love of his subject and its scribe I believe that Kenneth’s biography of Helen Schucman may have erred. Absence from Felicity (Foundation for A Course in Miracles 1991) gave an account of Helen’s life that, toward the end, recorded not commitment but reluctance. Not passion but doubt. After years in everyday correspondence with Jesus, doing faithfully as she was asked, Helen ended their relationship not with intimacy but with distance. Her biographer was one of the small group of intimates who brought the Course to light. Much to his credit he could have finessed Helen’s distance but he didn’t. He stayed true to his conscience and his human subject, allowing readers to reach their own judgment. In spite of evidence to the contrary his judgment concluded that, at the very end, Helen resolved her conflict. Found sanctuary in the embrace of her Guide and the Course. Chose the high priestess of her imagination, the Voice of the Holy Spirit. Peace in Jesus and the Course. She became, at last, a true believer.

Another Helen Schucman

The end that a sympathetic biographer may have wanted but not necessarily what happened. Helen was an authoritarian “realist” drawn to the patriarchal Roman Catholic Church. This was, I believe, her personality type that determined whose truth she put on her throne and whose voice she heard. The “authority” that Helen thought she recognized in the teacher of the Course was a patriarch. Who belonged to her body-centered world and could deliver body-centered miracles if he chose to. Not supportively from the bottom up but arbitrarily from the top down. An Absolute answerable to nothing and no one. This was a misperception. This was not Logic and Love who cannot be above the Necessity of their own Laws of Cause and Effect, or else Order would become chaos, lawfulness lawlessness, governance dictatorship.

Despite all that Jesus taught, of Logic and Love who cannot be implicated in this body-centered world, Helen remained firmly anchored to her personality type. Clung to her misperception, her expectation for a savior who could bring light to darkness instead of letting darkness choose to come to the light. Who could choose for her. Helen didn’t abandon Jesus. She wandered away, an authoritarian waiting to be told how to think, how to behave. Not wanting to choose. Unable to choose. A victim of pancreatic cancer whose all-powerful Patriarch had failed her by denying her healing, the Miracle she imagined she had earned. Despite all that Jesus taught, she still got it wrong.

Helen anchored the family of intimates who produced the book. She showed little if any inclination or aptitude for marketing it. An object of respect, it was also a “pile of crap” when she didn’t want to seem taken in by it. The authoritarian “realist” views differences of any kind -- perspective or opinion -- as a contest of wills for supremacy. Can’t conceive of a “higher power” unless it’s “almighty god,” a cardboard cutout armored action hero championing the Israelites and smiting their enemies.

The mind of an authoritarian “realist” can’t be accessed to share different perspectives and ideas beyond the superficiality of groups. They have their own throne and it’s occupied by their own authorship: the grotesque mask of the Joker, a self-delusion. Their own lifeless, mindless, loveless, soulless dark side that’s nothing more than the code that defines their opposite. Not what they are but what they aren’t. An authoritarian arbitrary ruler above the law, a parasite that answers to a code derived from its host. The essence of weakness posing as strength. That has no rules of its own but is literally hell-bent to reject the Laws-Necessity of its host. To preserve an illusion: the unquestioned  dominance of its authorship. A thought so insane, so perverse, that it can never be taken seriously. A joke.

Kenneth’s choice: Freudian analytics vs Jungian intuition 

Just as Helen showed little inclination or aptitude for marketing the Course Kenneth showed little inclination or aptitude for running with intuition to explore its implications beyond its scope. To reflect on the Child’s loss of consciousness, its conditions and consequences. On its implications for the self-delusion of unreality that followed it. For the experience its projections call “life” in this strange world of spacetime-matter, of contradiction and conflict, impossibility and perversity, jubilance and defeat, hilarity and misery.

The analytics of Freud, his insistence that the “bad thing” that deforms the human psyche is ultimately the doing of bodies rather than minds, blocked his awareness of root causes. Awareness that can only come through intuition whose function has no explanation from the body’s senses and, therefore, no legitimacy in the body-idolizing minds of authoritarian “realists.” In the minds of those responsible for the dominant paradigms of science, philosophy, psychology, and theology, all of which rest on flawed, self-referential reasoning. On illogic. 

Kenneth’s own personality and its turn of mind joined enthusiastically with the hardened analytics of Freud. He mastered the analytics of the Course’s Logic to become the teacher whose voice is almost indistinguishable from that of its author. But in so doing he cut himself off from the potential of Jung’s intuition to explore the implications of the Course beyond its scope. He contented himself with understanding what is without being motivated to examine what else might be. He missed the significance of Jung’s insights into the personality of Psyche and so missed the impact of Helen’s personality on her relationship with, and ultimate response to, the author of the Course. To Jesus and the nature of his Authority.

Which Helen served Jesus’ purpose better?

Jesus’ choice of an authoritarian “realist” to scribe the Course worked to perfection if its only object was dictation taken accurately, without protest, over a period of years, and the publication of a book. If it was meant to demonstrate the power of “almighty god” to restore muddled unconsciousness to an enlightened state of consciousness, to convert authoritarian “realist” skepticism to intuitive idealistic conviction, it failed. Clearly, this was not the object. If anything, I believe the object was the opposite: to demonstrate the inability of any “power” to deny the Child and its projections their birthright: their capacity to choose freely for themselves without interference. To be of their own mind and not the mind of anyone or anything else, not even the Mind of their Parents in Reality.

Why otherwise are the agents of the Child’s Parents, manifestations of the Holy Spirit, so deferential to our own judgment? So careful not to interfere, or appear to interfere, with Free Choice?

All the inhabitants of Creation are defined by their roles. By their contributions to shared purpose whose definitions fit them together in logical harmony at the same time that they confer individuality. That mark them as Creations empowered to function independently of their Creators, to affirm the Worth of Creation freely without compromising their individuality. In the Reality of Order with Freedom, Freedom with Order, that defines Creation. In the harmony of the definitions and relationships of Logic and Love that govern Creativity and all its Creations. Not with dominance from the top down but with benevolence and support from the bottom up.

The right of Free Will that Helen stood up for: to get it wrong

The role that Helen performed to perfection wasn’t to be the convert. It was to be the insistence of the Child on choosing for itself, even if it erred. To be clear: the Course and Necessity don’t give our ancestral Mind or any of its imaginary projections a pass. Its lesson must be learned. Whether sooner or later in the illusion of time is up to us. Learning and growth in unreality may have been ordained by the laws of cause and effect that govern Reality-Creation. Unconsciousness that put the Child and its projections in this dream world, a trainer where learning by trial and error has no real consequences, may have been a Necessity. But neither Logic-Love nor the Necessity of their laws of cause and effect could have ordained that their Child’s training to maturity and competence would take forever. Still, that said, we have the right to be wrong. To refuse to acquire the competence the Child needs to perform its role in Creation as long as we like. To remain self-deluded in Plato’s Cave indefinitely. In the illusion of time long or short is meaningless. Unlike the eternity of timelessness, the illusion of time, like all illusions, has a beginning and it will surely have an end. The Child’s sojourn in the unreality of time had a beginning and it will have an end.

ACIM's author and his scribe proved it: the right to get it wrong. The prerogative of Choice without which it could not be Free. And even with Jesus in Helen’s mind dictating clarity from Logic and Love, she took her place on the podium and stuck her fist in the air. Proclaimed her sovereignty in an all-too human act of defiance and folly. The human spirit defending its “rights” against correction at the same time that it makes a fool of itself. Confederates defending their “rights” even if they’re defending the indefensible -- slavery. The right to choose wrong or even not to choose at all if “realists” must have their authoritarian “savior” to choose for them. Had Helen done otherwise, after being under Jesus’ influence for years, she might well have proclaimed untruth instead of Truth: the willful dominance of an imposter. The illusion of an alternate “reality” ruled by a replacement authorship. She proved her right to Free Choice. And in doing so left no doubt that Jesus is the author, and authority, he appears to be.

Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Helen!

Kenneth wanted Helen to join the fold. Ever faithful to the Logic of ACIM that’s where he believed she belonged. The case he made that she did join the fold bore his signature gifts for reason and compassion. But to this observer it was wishful thinking. I’m glad that she kept her distance. Kenneth and I both love and admire her. We both have reasons for identifying with her, but they’re not the same. One reason I can celebrate for Helen’s obstinance is the legitimacy it confers on what otherwise might seem my own presumption. My adherence to the Logic-Love of the Course while expanding on it. While taking the lessons it taught beyond their scope to explore the realm of intuition that physicists, theologists, and other authoritarian “realists” have declared beyond exploring. Creating the appearance, to some, of apostasy. The appearance that I’m going up against the Course when, in fact, I’m going forward with it. I am no less an acolyte of Jesus for risking the appearance of disagreement if that is where Intuition guided by Jesus takes me,

Maybe we’re supposed to figure out the Child’s loss of consciousness ourselves. Maybe we’re supposed to explore realms of intuition “beyond exploring.” Do you think? If authoritarian “realists” oppose it then idealists like me should probably pursue it. Venturing into the unknowable with the help of emissaries from Logic and Love, our Parents. Through Intuition that functions whether we use its insights or not.

“Blasphemy” was the curse of the Church’s Inquisition that thought nothing of burning innocents at the stake. There’s nothing of this in the Course. Nothing of “heresy,” though it’s clear about Necessity. The Author of the Course doesn’t accompany its students on their trek at one altitude only to abandon them at others. There are no barriers in unreality to Logic-Love from Intuition that connects with Reality. How can the perversities of a dream limit what’s real? What’s true? There are no barriers to purpose that fits our context: if we choose freely to regain the Self-Awareness that we are and the function that we do.

I’m going wherever I’m led. By the marvel that is the human mind, corrupted and compromised by delusion yet connected by Intuition and Free Choice to its Source. Together, we go where one individual mind chooses to go. One step at a time. Inspired by the example of Jesus and A Course in Miracles. Inspired by its scribe. Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Helen!

What was lost? 

Until the End of Time, Brian Greene’s inquiry into “Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe,” (Knopf 2020), begins with a familiar refrain:

[P]rofound questions abound, like what or who created space and time, and what or who imposed the guiding grip of mathematics, and what or who is responsible for there being anything at all, but even with all that left unanswered we’ve gained powerful insight into the cosmic unfolding. (p. 53)

What was lost when humanity’s ancestral Mind lost consciousness? The Child of Parents, Logic (masculinity) married to Love (femininity), in the Reality that preceded ours. That produced our alternate “reality.” That parallels the dream of an unconscious Mind that is our “reality” and contains the explanation for everything that “happens” inside it. Including Brian’s evolving universe, a reverse mirror image of Reality and Truth -- the unconscious Mind that’s dreaming it. That only happens to be the biggest of the perversions of Reality and Truth that make up what we call “life.” A stew of contradictions that can only be the imaginings of a split mind. Child that lost its Mind when it lost consciousness.

Lost Connection -- the implications of Logic, the relationships of Love, and the Oneness of its Psyche-Soul -- that bind all of Reality-Creation together into one harmonious whole. Lost the faculties of Mind-thought and Love-feeling that gave it Self-Awareness. The capacity to think logically. The capacity to feel lovingly. To judge with values drawn from the Worth of Life, of Creation, the substance of Reality and its laws of cause and effect. Of the Necessity of Right and Good that serves and governs all of Creation. The authority of Authorship.

What wasn’t lost?

Had all this not been lost Greene’s Until the End of Time wouldn’t have to admit that its “search for meaning,” like Hawking’s “quest for knowledge,” only begs the question. The question that humanity must and can address, because the “meaning” of “life,” the “knowledge” of its origin and fate, is an absurdity without it. Physics, philosophy, psychology, and theology can’t keep entertaining their audience with erudite “answers” that fail to address the right question. With empty circumlocution based on circular, self-referential “reasoning.” They can’t keep getting away with it.

What wasn’t lost was Free Choice. Because the Child of Logic-Choice and Love-Freedom is Free Choice. It’s why the Child was brought into Being, to introduce the element of Free Choice without which the Worth of Reality-Creation cannot be affirmed and reciprocated.

What wasn’t lost was Intuition. Though we are but projections of a split and dreaming mind, a collective unconscious lacking Self-Awareness, we are part of Connection that can never be broken in Reality. We have access to Logic and Love, our Parents, through intuition. Through insights that come of their own accord, never to compromise Free Choice but only to respond to its call for Love and Guidance.

What does it take to access the answers that are missing? That ought to launch Greene’s flight into outer space? Using the connection to Logic and Love that can never be broken. Using Intuition and exercising Free Choice that can never be lost.

What follows are observations fed by the intuition of one individual who chooses to go where John Milton went in Paradise Lost. Into another Reality, a “paradise” that preceded the “fall.” That, unlike Greene’s universe of spacetime-matter, has a point. Inquiry made possible because it’s freed from captivity to sensory perception and the quantitative measurements of science. The dead weight of authoritarian “realism” that denies intuition and blocks insight.

What gives me the right? What is my “authority?” Logic itself, the root of metaphysics. And Love, the source of motivation. The Voice for Intuition and Free Choice that either makes sense or it doesn’t. That comes close and distances itself spontaneously. I’m not trying to lead. I’m trying to listen. Trying to follow. To get it right.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The masses can’t lead the way

Quantum gravity is beyond the reach of experimental physics. Nils Bohr broke the news over a century ago with the Copenhagen Interpretation. Physicists attached to their work and its larger service to humanity carried on undaunted until a few years ago, when Carlo Rovelli, Adam Becker, and probably other chroniclers of their profession accepted the inevitable and turned to philosophy for help. Our physical environment seems to be telling us that of course everything is as it appears to be on one level while nothing is as it appears to be on other levels. The human scale we take for granted versus the macroscopic cosmos and microscopic particles, both notorious for forms and behavior of energy that can’t be pinned down. Like a rodeo bull determined to buck its rider, spacetime-matter resists all efforts to turn it into a pet: knowable, predictable, and obedient to the rules of the household. The mind of its own doesn’t want to cooperate.

At a moment like this --

  • When humanity’s assumption has fallen flat, all the way back to Galileo and Aristotle before him -- that science, the study of matter, will explain everything. T hat explanation can be verified through experiments, and then we will finally know.
  • That Hawking’s “quest for knowledge” will have rewarded humanity’s patience with his profession leading the way. Will have rewarded humanity’s patience, its faith in it, with answers. With Understanding that finally frees us from endless squabbles over ideologies that compete for Truth and supremacy, in our minds and the arena of physical conflict beyond.
  • That even though sensory perception -- the guide to understanding provided by the body’s senses -- and the quantitative measurements of science obviously can’t tell the whole story, since mind and qualitative considerations beyond bodies and laboratories have their own stories to tell, the study of matter bodies can detect, can see, touch, hear, taste, and smell, ought to be enough.
  • Because if it isn’t enough, what other shared source of experience can certify its legitimacy so readily? So convincingly? What other source can deserve to be labeled “realistic” when other sources have already resulted in a crazy quilt of irreconcilable differences? Have already discredited themselves with departures from Logic and common sense. With frightful rubbish.

At a moment like this --

  • Hope gives way to despair. Hope that collective efforts in any field -- science or economics, philosophy or psychology, engineering or theology -- will get the job done.
  • Because physics had made great strides without having to parse the movements of every particle. It could do with calculations based on probabilities -- how great masses of particles were likely to behave.
  • Because other fields had made great strides the same way, basing their paradigms on assumptions about the judgments of masses of minds.
  • It seems we can’t do that anymore. Letting great masses of anything lead the way is a dead end. What “most people” think or do isn’t the reliable guide to common sense it’s always seemed to be.

Sister Sledge was right: We are family

At a moment like this, one is thrown back on one’s own judgment. Realizing that we are as individual particles whose behavior does have to be parsed. That the answers we long for are somewhere out there if they aren’t here in our own minds, in the minds of other individuals thinking like us or on different tracks. But either way, getting somewhere on their own, individually, without peer pressure to conform with hidebound convention, with party lines, with careers and employers. To submit to the tyranny of groups, the graveyard of individuality. The barrier, once and for all, to real progress.

But how, without groups, can one search the data base of individuals to find those who are getting somewhere? Thinking logically, systematically, of their own Free Will, to weave their way through all the analytical dead ends, the deceptions, temptations, and flawed reasoning, to come up with solid theories, plausible story lines that free us from the confinement of bodies. That take us beyond “grounding” in an illusion that energy built in service to an unconscious, dreaming mind.

Why does it matter that there may be other individuals whose minds are similarly connected? Occupied with the same cause, aided by the same function of mind -- Intuition -- that produces insights from the same source, Logic bonded with Love. While we are individuals we are also family. Family interconnected through our Psyches, our Souls. Not through massed bodies that create the illusion of unity only to fragment into quarreling factions. It matters because we aren’t isolated, separate bodies. The thoughts and feelings of individuals shared through our common ancestral Mind, the Child of Logic-Love whose story defines ours, have substance. Brought into compelling relevance every day by Relationship: us to Child, Child to Parents.

Between Parent and Child: Love that will not be denied

Though our world of incessant contradiction and conflict wants us to believe otherwise we are all one Child. Not split minds as we appear to be but of one Mind. And the Child, our ancestral Mind, doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in Relationship with its Parents. Parents who are far from indifferent to its condition. Their will is to have their Child back with them in Self-Awareness. Not the state of self-delusion that condemns the Child and us, its imagined projections, to foolishness. To perversity that is the state of “reality” in an entropic universe and the bodies and brains that occupy it. Occupants of Plato’s Cave, so thoroughly indoctrinated with delusion no force on earth can part them from it.

If the Child’s condition and story defines ours, it is the will of the Child’s Parents to awaken it that won’t let the story rest until it gets there. Until Free Will animated by the will of Necessity, the laws of cause and effect, guided by Relationship, extricates the Child from its self-imposed confinement, from Its dream.

There are no two greater forces at work, here and now, than these: the Child wanting to be back with its Parents and its Parents wanting their Child back.  One searches for other individuals engaged in the same cause because in Relationship there is healing and in healing there is Force. Relentless and not to be denied. Because aligning with the shared purpose of healing, to restore the Relationship, cannot fail.

The embrace of Necessity

A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is not religion. It’s not “faith.” New Age or group of any kind. It’s not even “Christianity,” even though it borrows terminology and concepts from a religion hard-wired into a culture that crosses national and continental boundaries and so serves as a common language. It’s a voice helping us with elements of the laws of cause and effect sourced from Logic married to Love. With Necessity that we need to guide us toward awakening, the bottom-up authority backed by Force that can’t be deceived or bargained with by wills who would replace it with illogic, fear, guilt, and hatred from the top down. With the lawlessness of arbitrary rule if they could.

ACIM’s antecedents in human thought are many. Human thought venturing through the minds and unique circumstances of individuals, relying mainly on authoritarian “realism, hasn’t woven a coherent pattern. Pieces of ACIM seem to ricochet off points along the way but rarely with recognition. They’re tracked in Kenneth Wapnick’s Love Does Not Condemn: The World, the Flesh, and the Devil According to Platonism, Christianity, Gnosticism, and A Course in Miracles (Foundation for “A Course in Miracles” 1989). They include, among others, Neo-Platonism and Gnostic Christianity.

But all ACIM is, for me, is Logic married to Love. What Parmenides was trying to get at with metaphysics: a version of our story that takes us beyond appearances, only much more. Beyond the faux “reality” framed by sensory perception, the imagery of bodies, into the Reality of Mind. Mind whose functions don’t limit us to curiosities and anomalies of matter that can’t be explained by brains but free us instead to observe, reflect, reason, evaluate, and judge wherever Logic and Love lead us. Responding to the will of our ancestral Mind’s Parents to return Free Choice to its role in Creation. When it has learned its role from the trial and error of experience, When it shares their will. When it’s ready of its own Free Will to align with Logic-Love and embrace Necessity instead of opposing it.

What’s it like? Every day a fresh harvest

Feed the body and what comes out the other end is waste. Feed the mind and what comes out the other end is creativity. My mind before I took two and a half years to read ACIM received insights from intuition, enough to keep me functional but at a sluggish rate. Thirty years of reflection and practical application brought about a dramatic change. My perspective went from close identification with the Child to the first glimmers of identification with the Parents. From the Child’s craving to the Parents’ craving restoration of their Relationship to its state of awareness before the Child lost awareness.

Three years ago, January 2020, nourishment from the Logic-Love of ACIM began producing an outpouring of insights from intuition that was unprecedented. Not for extraordinary minds whose creativity accounts for human progress, but certainly for ordinary me. The transition in my mind’s ability to free itself from convention, from unremarkable to remarkable, was startling. As though a portal had opened that allowed me to free-associate across different perspectives. To ride the implications of logic to fresh insights. To germinate ideas from questions to answers as though they were fruit waiting to be picked from trees. Every day a fresh harvest.

Welcome to the world of the thinker and the writer. In relationship with Logic and Love through their agent, a friend. Brother or sister -- take your pick. Name? It doesn’t matter.

From explanation to Understanding

“Jesus,” the author of ACIM, isn’t an instrument of blind faith meant to sweep aside the free spirit of inquiry. To substitute arbitrariness for Reason. For the laws of science to suffocate discovery with the dead weight of “morality,” with “culture” and “tradition.” All the resistance to the name “Jesus,” all the skepticism, is based on misperception. Of what and who he represents and what he does. If he's resisted, misrepresented, mischaracterized, then he’s misunderstood. And so are the Parents, Logic-Love, the source of his agency in our lives. Why must Logic-Love strive to be heard? Because it’s precisely who they are and what they do that we don’t get: Logic and Love. It’s precisely to bring the gift of Logic and Love into our minds, our thoughts, our feelings and values, our judgment, that Jesus makes himself available. Touches us when we allow ourselves to be touched. Answers when we ask and are ready to listen. Comforts us when we fear and despair.

“Jesus” is a construct that comforts. That allays fears among many and particularly the individuals addressed by the voice heard in ACIM.  But in different circumstances. Meant to comfort, to allay fears because when addressing humanity, this would be the first requirement before a voice could be heard. The occupants of Plato’s Cave are as fearful of their situation as they are determined to cling to it. “Jesus” can’t be a “savior” because to be accepted and used as such would defeat his purpose: to guide ours, the Child’s efforts, to open our minds of our own Free Will to Understanding. Our own understanding from independent judgment, not someone else’s imposed from the top down. ACIM and its guide have no need for religious “faith” or for “saviors.” It’s an expression of Logic and Love combined that offers us the tools we need to intuit the Truth of circumstances and role models their use. So we can not only grasp Reality behind appearances but apply it. To guide us through passages in our everyday lives that present us with obstacles to remove and issues to resolve. With problems that require practical solutions.

A misperception accounts for the mother of all injustices, the attribution of a will to rule from the top down to the Parents of the Child. Whose authority governs from the bottom up, not to own, possess, and dominate but to share, affirm, enable, and empower. The same misperception also accounts for the attribution of character and intent to ACIM and its source that don’t fit. What would correct it? An understanding of Logic combined with Love, for that is what ACIM is. The undoing of illogic delivered through the voice of authority, from the bottom up, that shares the perspective of both Parents and Child. These prerequisites to awakening are deceptively simple in the telling but complicated in their application. For Understanding, Logic and Love were casualties of the Child’s loss of consciousness. And recovering them through self-awareness isn’t optional. It’s built into the laws of cause and effect. It’s necessary. 

Authorship from the bottom up: the ultimate source of authority 

The role sought by the shadow-reflection, the self-delusion I call the Joker, is the role of its opposite: the Author. The individual projection taken captive by the Joker, a virus who misperceives authority as top-down. Who practices authoritarian politics in a bottom-up democracy, seeks to turn democracy on his head. Seeks to fill the role of top-down authority which in Reality-Heaven doesn’t exist. What does exist is Reality-Truth based on laws of cause and effect given Force by Necessity. The role of Logic-Love that supplies the substance of laws-Necessity isn’t enforcer. It’s Author. Its function is Authorship. The source of empowerment, not dictatorship.

The Joker assumes, wrongly, that authority must come from power to rule from the top down. Authorship empowers from the bottom up with laws of cause-effect armed with the Force of Necessity based on and consisting of the Oneness of Logic-Love, its own authority. Its own legitimacy, its own authority based on Logic-Love and Laws-Necessity. The authority of Logic-Love, the lessons of Jesus in ACIM, need no external legitimacy. The Relationship between laws and Necessity is the source of Force that can’t be opposed without self-denying consequences. Without self-elimination from Reality-Creation. Authorship is self-empowering Oneness-Innocence without opposition. Self-empowering by what it is, by Being that has no opposites, no opposition. The source of Necessity because Necessity is the Force, the implication of Being, that can have no opposite in Reality.

Innocence without opposites: the ultimate source of power

This is the ultimate “Necessity.” If the self-delusion Joker, an opposite, presumes to replace Authorship, it goes up against Authorship that by definition can have no opposite in Reality. It will therefore cause its own elimination. Elimination by Necessity is self-elimination because the “opponent” is Oneness harmlessness-Innocence. Because Authorship in Reality that supports and governs Life-Creation is harmless.

Necessity is harmless. And therein lies the misperception of the Joker: the perception that in the harmlessness of Innocence is weakness. When in Reality it’s the source of empowerment. All empowerment originates in the harmlessness of Oneness-Innocence because this is the point in all of Reality-Creation where by definition there can be no opposites. Where opposition does not and cannot Be. Cannot exist. The Joker’s perception that power resides in Reality where there is the capability to harm is exactly wrong. It’s wrong in Reality and it’s wrong here in unreality. Harmfulness is not strength, it’s weakness. The contrary view is but one of the Joker’s many perversions of the Truth -- a joke.

Impossibility: alternate reality, alternate authorship

The Joker’s ambition is insane: to replace Authorship so it can exercise “power” by inflicting harm, by denying Free Will. A direct contradiction of laws of cause-effect and Necessity that can only find expression in illusion composed of impossibilities, of perversions of Truth. It can’t “succeed” for long in unreality composed of split minds that align with the agent of Logic-Love as well as submit to self-delusion. Unreality must be contradiction; therefore split minds are minds in a state of contradiction.

The role of Jesus is to demonstrate the insanity of contradiction through miracles that demonstrate the unreality of one side of the split mind. It’s to role model the benevolence and harmlessness of Authorship, its being its own source of authority. Necessity which in our state of unreality is helpful, healing. To demonstrate the miraculous effectiveness of Logic-Love Reality-Truth Authorship in contrast to yielding unreality. The example set by Jesus demonstrated not just the Force of Reality-Truth, of Authorship, but also the powerlessness of unreality-untruth, the insanity of replacement authorship. Top-down “authority” is a lie, an illusion. A contradiction of laws-Necessity.

The controlling consideration for the play-actor entertainer, the Joker with its jokes, is how it’s perceived when it gets the attention its act requires: as an innocent, “exonerated” in the devious act of “winning” its uncontested supremacy. Truth and Honesty are sacrificed for perception and deception if they conflict. And they always do. The controlling consideration for the Joker can never be Truth and Honesty.

Get in the shower!

I’m talking about the politics of polarization and misinformation that plagues us today. And a lot else. I’m giving an explanation from the roots of Reality that shows us, if we’re willing to listen, the error of our ways and how to fix it. The patterns of misperception and misjudgment that are taking us and our one-and-only habitat, Mother Earth, down. Rooted in the story from the Reality that preceded ours and accounts for ours. A story rooted in illogic, a mistake that can only be corrected by Logic. By Logic married to Love.

Can it be articulated with clarity? To minds that are mostly authoritarian “realists.” Corrupted and compromised by self-delusion, occupants of Plato’s Cave chained to their seats. Does it matter if anyone listens? If one individual gets it, bonds with an emissary from Logic-Love, and truly forgives, it matters.

Exploring beyond the scope of ACIM needn’t be beyond minds guided by Logic-Love from Intuition. The question that is beyond imagining is the bonding: when and how it will occur. When and how one individual will become so intimate with an emissary from Logic-Love, the Child’s Parents, that perspective will transcend the illusion and see the Truth. We get just a whiff of it when we step into the shower and are instantly visited by insight.

So OK. You want practical solutions to practical problems? Get in the shower!

Authority done wrong

Frank Capra’s Why We Fight (1942-1945) is as good an inspiration for what follows as any. Because the global conflict that summoned its truths put the issue on the line. The issue lives on, and the outcome isn’t assured. The Romans haven’t gone away. Their garrison depicted in the Goscinny and Uderzo comic book series, Asterix, still menaces the little Armorican village of Gauls. Still stands as a symbol of tyranny that rules much of the world and threatens the rest.

The tyrants still need a change of vision, to part with adolescent fantasy and look at themselves honestly. To accept that nursing the illusion of absolute power to obliterate all who oppose it is sick. That the demons from hell they summon from the cross of victimhood to get even are nobody’s friend, an invention of infantile self-absorption. That no responsible grownup who cares about relationships and being of service wants to subject others or themselves to the captivity of a mistake. To the perversion of authority that is top-down arbitrary rule. To insanity and cruelty, the inevitable consequence of its twisted values: ownership, possession, and control that accept no limits. Competition, dominance, and supremacy that accept no opposition. Specialness that writes its own script and victimhood that writes its own rules.

All for the substitution of lawlessness for law. For the substitution of injustice for justice. Just so the armored comic book action hero can have and do whatever it wants. The refuge of deprivation and hollowness, forever whining in self-pity for unquestioned authority, the perversion of an ideal. What ideal?  Freedom made possible by Order. By the Beauty of Creation fit together in a sanctuary of joyful harmony. By Logic and Love that blend Freedom and Order together in Relationship with their Child. In the Purpose, Meaning, and Happiness that is their Relationship and its works: the works of soul-mates affirming and reciprocating the Worth of Being, Creation, Life.

All in initial caps because this is Reality. This is Creation. The real thing. This isn’t a pathetic self-centered crybaby making stuff up. 

Authority done right

Authority done right isn’t domination centered on itself, ruling arbitrarily from the top down. Owning, possessing, and controlling pomposity, its galactic empire armed to the teeth against enemies within and without. Intimidating its subjects into dumb obedience, voiceless submission.

Authority that is authority is centered on the children of its authorship. Affirming their worth supportively, sensitively, and sympathetically, the only way that authorship could connect with its offspring and be shared with them. Through empowerment from the bottom up. To perform the roles that minds and hearts with free will and their source, together with purpose and meaning -- their circumstances in the moment -- define for them.

Reinforcing with every act, every gesture, their centrality and individuality. In Reality their perfection and innocence. In our unreality, their humanity and personhood. Reverence in either case for their free will. Their potential to make of themselves what their own minds and hearts want them to be. Not replicas of ancestral manipulations but the lives they are meant to live, spontaneously, in the moment. Their own choices however imperfect in the dream, however human. 

Authority from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address

Children don’t need Roman bullies to rule them with a perversion of authority when there’s a version of authority better suited to its purpose. Helpful instead of harmful. One that’s conducive to harmony and peace in a world of possibility, reality and creation. That doesn’t foment perpetual conflict in an opposite world of incompatibility and impossibility. The little village in Armorica, Asterix and friends, have signed on to the better version. They’re Gauls who will never submit to Roman tyranny. Living lives of happiness, harmony, and peace. Where order doesn’t confine with belittlement and force but liberates with respect and freedom. Role models for us.

The authority that governs their village isn’t authoritarian. It resides in its people, at the grassroots, not in “rulers” at the top. It has no rulers, no Roman commandants. Real authority resides where direction necessary for governance must come that serves everyone fairly under the law: from the needs, feelings, values, and priorities of those its serves. From those it affects, who personally feel its benefits and its costs.

Whether governance is to turn this way or that is determined as it must by the satisfaction brought by benefits or by the dissatisfaction inflicted by costs. Measured, evaluated, judged, and voiced by its subjects themselves and not by any surrogates. The freedom we are blessed with is a benefit, the freedom to govern ourselves supportively and fairly from the bottom up. The freedom to think, feel, and judge for ourselves with the guidance and support of authority.

It’s democracy. An expression of authority that serves those it governs. That’s conducive to harmony and peace because it governs for the people, of the people, and by the people. Like President Lincoln said. It’s what the indomitable Asterix and his village in Armorica stand for: freedom and order made possible by authority that governs from the bottom up. That’s governed itself by the principle of service for all under the law. If this is what we stand for, then we, too, are Gauls. We are servants of democracy. Democrats all.

The mistake that polarizes our politics

Why have our politics become polarized? For the simple reason that one side has come to view itself as the mirror image opposite of the other. Which puts it squarely in the place of the shadow-reflection that our ancestral Mind misidentified in its unconscious state as an “other.” As a “savior” or “redeemer.” When in fact the dark sides of everything in a dream have no more substance, no more “life,” than the coded-opposite shadows that they are.

Once misidentified as “others,” they can mimic “behavior” in only one way. Being shadows or reflections they can only appear to oppose their hosts. Their hosts who are mistakenly animating their own dark sides, their own opposites. Parasites we all carry around in our psyches while our ancestral Mind remains unconscious and dreaming. Unable to free itself from its haunting until it regains consciousness, a feat that requires our assistance. Help from the dream’s projections. From the projections of an imagination -- us.

The side inclined toward a view of authority that isn’t authoritarian is the host. The side inclined toward a view that is authoritarian is the shadow. The former standing for governance from the bottom up under the law -- democracy. The latter standing for arbitrary rule from the top down above the law. We polarize our politics when the host standing for democratic governance misperceives a blow from its own shadow-reflection’s opposition, imagines that it’s from an “other,” and demonizes it. Characterizes it as evil because that’s how it appears and how it feels. And its dark side opposition, defined and animated by its host, reacts to being demonized as only it can: by mimicking its host. By demonizing its host.

The metaphysics of error

Who started it? Ultimately our ancestral Mind that lost consciousness. A Being, the Child of its Parents, Mind and Love, attributes of Logic that defines and governs everything through Necessity, the laws of cause and effect  Laws drawn from Logic but never controlled by it. The Child Free Choice, given a central role in Creation. Now unconscious. Desperately looking to be saved. Among strangers, apparitions who inhabit delirium, misled by its own confusion into mistaking one of them, its own shadow-reflection, as an “other.” As its “savior.” Deluded by its “savior,” its coded opposite, into letting it take over its identity. Letting it lead the way into an alternate “reality” -- our bizarre universe -- where it would be safe.

A case of mistaken identity. Of misdirection. A consequence of our ancestral Mind experiencing loss of consciousness inadvertently, through no fault of its own. Or that of its Parents. Nobody needs to account for evil -- Parents, Child-the-One, or Child-the-many, its projections into an imaginary world -- if there was no wrongdoing. No will to commit offense. Only the Logic of cause and effect, of Necessity, that will restore consciousness when the lesson we are to learn from this experience is learned. When we align our thinking with Logic. Get it right, do our part to help our ancestral Mind correct its mistake, to wake up and take on its role in Creation.

Giving the mistake no quarter

The host started the polarization by misidentifying part of itself as an “other.” Or its shadow-reflection opposite started it by standing for an opposing view. In either case the remedy is logically simple: the host that stands for authority that isn’t authoritarian must resist its natural urge to demonize its authoritarian opponent. Understand that it’s dealing with a manifestation of itself, ignore the offense, and see beyond it to the absence of any offender. Look for a “dark side” to attack and see what can’t be seen. What’s literally not there in the darkness. A reflection. An echo. A ghost mimicking its host, up to no good but only if its host imagines that it’s “there.” Because it isn’t “there.” If Reality is Being and Being is One, nothing can be “there.” There is no “other.” There is no demon to demonize.

We cease polarizing our politics when the good guys who stand for democracy cease injecting force into their opposition by demonizing it. By seeing and attacking it as “evil, because that only guarantees that its copycat opposition will retaliate with the same label.

The dark side of politics, currently entrenched in the Republican party, has only one “policy:” opposition to whatever its perceived opponents -- Democrats -- are for. Only one response to being attacked: retaliation that reverses the attack. Nothing original. No introspection, explanation, or accountability, either. Accuse the opponent of doing what it’s doing because that’s the only wrongdoing it’s “aware” of. Opposition from a shadow-reflection parasite entirely dependent on its host for its definition. No more capable of discretion, no more capable of independent judgment, than an amusement arcade mechanical dummy wired to dispense gimcracks. When the good guy host demonizes its bad guy opposite, it’s putting a quarter in the slot that activates the dummy.

If we don’t want polarized politics then the host that stands for authority that isn’t authoritarian -- for the democracy of Abraham Lincoln’s immortal Gettysburg Address -- must stop putting the quarter in the slot. So long as we think we “see” in our opponents an “other” rather than the innocent selves that we all are, the ancestral Mind that needs our help to wake up, we will go on perpetuating the mistake. The misidentification of dark side “others” and the curse that is authoritarian authority, an abomination.

“Almighty God”: the mother of all injustices

The mischaracterization of our ancestral Mind’s Parents -- loving, affirming, and empowering soulmates, guides, and partners in Creation, centered on their creations, as self-centered tyrants bent on vengeance, punishment, and disempowerment -- is the mother of all injustices. An untruth from their Child’s own voice taken over by its imagined “savior,” that drove it toward escape into an alternate reality.

The injustice carried over into the dream with variations on a common theme: God is ”almighty,” creator of the universe. An armored Marvel comic action hero caricature who is everywhere and capable of anything. Who loves and creates while allowing all manner of shit to happen. Whose mystery derives not from the depths of Being but from contradiction, the bugbear of impaired thinking. The bugbear of a mind that occupies a universe of illogic and needs help from intuition to think logically. To understand context that supplies purpose and meaning. But a mind conditioned by self-delusion to get it wrong. To seek and not find until it recovers its ability to think logically.

This will explain our predicament: for all its professed reverence for the “almighty” humanity doesn’t actually look to the almighty for Logic. Not if its top-down perversion of authority amounts to a surreal authoritarian joke. Not if an “almighty” that allows shit to happen is some kind of asshole. Contradiction lives on. Illogic lives on. Science, philosophy, psychology, and theology do their thing. And so does the ”almighty,” the joke of disfigured authority that we play on ourselves. The disfigurement that is the mother of all injustices. 

Time to retire the mistake

For all its Pete Hamill Drinking Life charm and conviviality, the seductive side of arbitrary rule doesn’t speak for a life of substance, of striving and creativity well lived. Its purpose appears to be the joys of fraternity. Of harmless socializing and entertainment. But there the harmlessness ends. For friendships and family relations that depend on intimacy, on honesty, integrity, trust, and dignity -- where Love can take root -- it’s toxic.

Hamill’s “Brooklyn,” like every attachment to the illusion of Child-the-many -- to a group -- is wishful thinking. Is pining away for the family of childhood, or for a family or childhood that never was. Driven by the memory of Home from another Reality that’s calling us back. From our Psyche, the Soul of Oneness and Innocence that’s in our world but not of it. That connects us all whether we will it to or not.

“Brooklyn” is the hollow fantasy-life, the substitute home that made Hamill, the adolescent “Brooklyn mug” its captive. That took a kid scared of mean streets, fed him delusions of impregnability, and turned him into a street fighter to rule the streets. Which he did. It became the social persona that took its toll on personal relationships. By depriving them of Love that requires one-on-one. That doesn’t stand a chance against the many, an onslaught of fools. The lesson that Hamill shared with us when he finally took stock, grew up, and left foolishness behind.

Hamill’s is a cautionary tale and also a reminder. That in our attachments, at any point in life, we often succumb to the same mistake. To our own “Brooklyns.” When I was feeling defenseless among strangers at boarding school, I armored myself with “Pittsburgh,” posted it with block letters on my dormitory door. As if anyone gave a damn. Harrison ancestors were said to be “tub thumpers” for Stony Lake, a town north of Pittsburgh. Another Harrison has disappeared into his equivalent of “Brooklyn.” None of these not-so-harmless entertainments knows anything of Logic or Love. The benevolent Parents of the unconscious Child calling us Home. The vulnerability and constancy of intimacy on a personal scale. Where dominance and supremacy, specialness and victimhood, aren’t a harmless dream. They’re a horror show.

Adolescent infatuation with armored Marvel comic action heroes needs to be retired. To be turned over to other children, like the toys in Toy Story, so they can play make-believe. Only hope that their toys don’t play make-believe with them.

So we can all go home

Ruling arbitrarily from the top down. The version of authority that foments perpetual conflict in an opposite world of incompatibility and impossibility. The mistake that will go on cursing humanity with bullying, strife, and suffering, with dictatorial insensitivity and cruelty, until it’s corrected. Not centered on the needs, feelings, values, and priorities of their subjects but on themselves. On authority that compels conformance by intimidation and force. By silencing voices and invalidating worth. By disempowerment to avoid disorder rather than enabling self-expression and empowering free will, the heart and soul, the beauty, of order.

I refuse to legitimize this abomination on any scale. With the implication that it’s OK and I’m part of it, because I want no part of it and can’t be part of it. I can’t protest transgression and be implicated in it at the same time. Asterix and I are Gauls. Gauls and Romans don’t mix.

It’s to encourage a healthy approach to authority, enabling and empowering, that I maintain the integrity of independence. Of individuality. That I use my voice not to demonize the emperor but to let him know that the bully who rules in the purple robes of royalty isn’t wearing anything. Is an agent of hilarity, just not the one he thinks he is. A target of fear and ridicule in equal measure. I use my voice to speak not for demonization or accusation but for honesty. For the Romans intend to remain, and their emperor, too. Fools all, until the authoritarian curse is lifted.

What might help make it happen? Fight Frank Capra’s fight for democracy. Fight Nancy Pelosi’s fight, with the honesty of explanation, to “throw a punch for the children.” To dispel the dishonesty of delusion, the perversion of authority, the mother of all injustices. Fight for families -- our own and the family of humanity. Delegitimize the abomination by holding up a mirror to it. Not to demonize it but to let its host see that in its shadow-reflection there is nothing. That it can correct its mistake. Reclaim its identity, its self-awareness, and we can all go Home.

The mistake -- a sick joke

The idea that any one of us can ascend to the top of the Empire State Building and from there proclaim our supremacy, King Kong, lord and master of all he surveys, king of the jungle, is an absurdity. When what it really expresses is the littleness of our un-self-awareness. Not who we really are but its opposite, a loudmouth fraud, an imposter, deranged and delusional. “A stranger wandering through the house of Truth,” as Jesus puts it in A Course in Miracles. A pipsqueak nobody. Seriously -- a joke.

When what the attainment of our real Worth, our empowerment, actually requires isn’t being the center of attention but getting out of the way. Getting off stage instead of at the center in the spotlight. Not involving bodies and the beast, their havoc-wreaking animal brains, in anything. But letting the idea out the back door, that they’re who we are. That anything “external” to Reality that can only be one and inseparable is worth taking seriously. Because it isn’t. It’s a delusion. A mistake. A perversion of the Truth. A sick joke.

Leni’s Triumph of Flatulence

Glorified in Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will,” her documentary, commissioned by Hitler, of the 1934 Nazi party congress in Nuremberg. The coming together of one individual’s derangement with an entire nation captive to its delusion and its talent for self-glorification through the creativity of imagination -- art, imagery, illusion. Its talent for propagandizing derangement, the arrogation of authority from all Creation to itself, from Logic and Love that govern Reality and Truth with wisdom, kindness and compassion, sensitively, inclusively, to a poseur bent on supremacy by crushing the opposition. “Triumph of the Will,” theatre of the absurd on a tiny stage of make-believe, the letting of flatulence in the context of another Will that knows nothing of it. Of the Logic and Love where Will resides. Where the Authority of Necessity is shared freely with its Creations but cannot be shared with a dream. With nothingness. A joke.

The nonsense that Leni Riefenstahl “immortalized” was mortality. Death itself, because the idea that it expresses, that will can be concentrated in any part of the dream of an unconscious mind, is stillborn. It just didn’t happen. The ruler and his regimented ranks of sameness in their Teutonic uniforms, for all the racket they made, for all the anguish they caused, didn’t make a dent in Reality. The Reality of Will whose essence is sharing, affirmation, and empowerment. Whose essence is Life, not death. That arrogates nothing to itself, concentrates nothing to the exclusion of its Creations, the focus of its striving to attain an Ideal. Its caring focused not upon itself but upon them. Upon their gifts and talents and the Beauty and perfection of their Creativity. Their artistry. Their work -- the Worth of all of Creation. 

Good riddance to spiked helmets and swastikas 

What more pathetic absurdity can there be than “Triumph of the Will” that celebrates all of history’s poster-child madman?  What more blatant contradiction of Truth and sanity? How more obvious can our own madness get -- the madness of “realists” taken in by this shit. Instead of making fools of ourselves, strutting on center stage in the regalia of authority, in our madman’s delusion of “supremacy,” when will we wake up? When will we and our madness get out of the way?

2

The Logic of Governance under the law

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

Why?

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

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

The illogic of arbitrary rule above the law

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

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

Why ask Why?

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

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

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

Why not ask Why?

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

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

The answer

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

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

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

1

Learning from our mistakes

Edith Piaf, the world-weary French cabaret singer, famously sang Non, je ne regrette rien. “I regret nothing.” George Lichter, the WWII fighter pilot, titled his memoir Ups and Downs with No Regrets. What universe did they live in? Did they not make mistakes? Did they really have no regrets? Or were they just roaring defiance against adversity that had failed to take them down?

Or had they learned nothing? Our one shot at redemption in a world where we are condemned to make mistakes is learning from them. I didn’t know Edith Piaf, but George Lichter was my friend. He redeemed himself. He lived and died with amazing grace. An example to follow, because the one regret I hope to avoid is to have learned nothing. If learning from our mistakes is why we’re here, then there’s no reason not to.

Yet an iron resolve not to learn and grow accounts for much of the misery and mayhem that our species inflicts on itself. We cycle back on our horrors because something in our minds and hearts, our souls, won’t let us look back. Won’t let us reflect on what went wrong or our part in causing it. The fault always lies with someone or something else. The responsibility, the guilt, can’t possibly be ours. Like angelic little kids -- we didn’t do it! We’re innocent!

The war cry of chest-thumping supremacists who’ve taken up permanent residence atop the Empire State Building. Going King Kong one better by ruling over Reality and Truth itself. By fashioning their delusion – a psychotic impossibility – into irrefutable fact. What else is it but madness?  The refusal to learn and grow from our mistakes. The refusal to do what we’re here for.

Finding my voice

I commit to causes. Casting myself in advocacy, a role that naturally tests boundaries and attracts opposition. Emulating my ancestors but without their male supremacy, their ad hominem combativeness and grandiosity. Or so I thought. Some of it must have rubbed off on me. They were opinionated, outspoken – my masculine father and his father. Looking for a fight, giving as good as they got. Their voices both weapon and shield, and though I shied away from their noisy stage presence I joined the fight.

I let myself go with the pen. Voice and cause, pen and making a difference, went hand in hand. So long as right was to be served I was determined to be heard. And I was, and it did make a difference. The history of Boston’s expansion into its harbor, high dam building in the Connecticut River valley, flood management in the Red River valley of the North, and community leadership development in the Monongahela River valley, owe something to me. So does water diversion from the Missouri River, an unintended though not unwelcome byproduct of my work in the Red River valley.

The reformist not to be denied

My cause to reform the 1965 Water Resources Planning Act attracted support from congressional committee chairs and staff. They brought me to a meeting with White House liaison at the Capitol to endorse my proposal: a pilot project in an interstate river basin to demonstrate how policy should evolve under the direction of local governments, democratically from the bottom up, rather than top down from unrepresentative and biased government bureaucracies.  What the meeting revealed instead was that the new administration, under the influence of western water interests, would soon dismantle the act and any federal attempt to formulate national water policy. The U.S. Water Resources Council and every river basin commission were to be zeroed out of the federal budget. To accommodate a political faction the administration was ridding the country of its only process and structure for rationalizing the use and management of one of its most vital natural resources.

Denied one avenue I found another. I took my proposal to the former director of the National Water Commission who arranged an affiliation with the National Academy of Public Administration. The Academy put me and my ideas under the scrutiny of a cross-section of prominent authorities headed by the dean of the country’s leading school of public affairs. It then, with their approval, published my monograph on the need for a national water policy process. It attracted coverage in the National Journal, required reading for Congressional staff. It also drew rare tribute from Mo Udall (D-AZ), point man on national water policy in the House of Representatives, a tough critic who deemed what I wrote “one of the better things I’ve read.”

I find my river basin!

Being noticed led to another affiliation, this time with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The AAAS was charged with putting out a White House report on science and technology and I was to produce the section on water policy.

The report was cancelled but what I wrote did see the light of day. With oversight from another panel of experts I produced “Institutional Barriers to National Water Policy,” the lead article in an issue of Water Spectrum published by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The head of the South Florida Water Management District hailed it as the final word on the subject. My brother-in-law, so maybe it shouldn’t count. But maybe it should, because faculty at West Point – no relation -- ranked it one of the ten most important articles on the subject. I learned this through the editor of Water Information News Service, to which I was a frequent contributor.

It was a U.S. senator from Minnesota who brought me to my objective: a river basin where I could test my approach in a real world setting. He was besieged by millionaire farmers in the Red River Valley of the North desperate for help with flood management. I secured funding from the Ford Foundation and the Freshwater Foundation and affiliations with the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and with the Continuing Education department at the University of North Dakota.

I then organized the first Red River Valley International Water Summit Conference at UND in Grand Forks, an effort that brought together hundreds of regional leaders from two states and the province of Manitoba. In the account published by the Freshwater Foundation it “exceeded all our expectations.” Importantly the conference initiated a regular process of bottom up basinwide direction for flood management, which was its purpose. My approach worked as I knew it would. I shared its success with my profession in the peer-reviewed journal of the American Water Resources Association. Lessons learned that might help to bring a better day to the field.

At least one respected authority spoke to that. Frank Gregg was a force in the field who listened and was listened to. A veteran of the Water Resources Planning Act, river basin commission chairman, director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and head of water resources research at a western university. Also keynote speaker at my Red River valley conference, mensch, and friend. Frank wrote years later to confirm that top-down had now given way to bottom-up in the federal approach. He was well aware that my advocacy had found an audience where it counted and it deserved some of the credit. I was “Big Dave.”

The price of advocacy: unacceptance

Paradigm change happens when generations that cling to old paradigms give way to new. Self-interests are bruised. They let you know it, and when they do, you know you’ve made a difference.

The National Journal’s coverage had been motivated by the same frustration that I felt. Things as they were were “terrible.” I said so. I was quoted, and my colleagues, devoted professionals, heard it. They had published my speeches and put me in charge of committees. I was a regular on Washington’s wine and cheese circuit. They had given me a home and a voice in the profession, and now I’d turned on them.

Years later, I sought an affiliation at the University of Colorado where I’d enjoyed the sponsorship of Gilbert White, a revered patriarch in the profession. The door was closed. Not by Gilbert, an accomplished reformist sympathetic to change, but by workers unsympathetic to change. Unsympathetic to reformists who competed for recognition and jeopardized their careers.

It wasn’t only careers that were threatened, I’d actually helped to kill major water projects – flood control dams on seven tributaries of the Connecticut River. Simply by bringing Manitobans into the conversation in the Red River Valley I’d imperiled the Garrison water diversion project on the Missouri River. Projects that inspired passions for and against. Canadians loved me because they were against the diversion. The New England Division of the Corps of Engineers and North Dakota’s state water manager did not love me.

I hadn’t set out to attack their projects. I was doing my job. But, confined by their own narrow contexts, they saw it differently. I was a change agent with one consuming bias: to do them and their beloved projects in. This is not an exaggeration. I know it to be true.

The price of advocacy: untruth

It was misperception that inevitably leads to misjudgment. My next project after the Red River Valley brought this home to me in a uniquely unpleasant way. While I was doing a victory lap with another river basin, I was slandered. By lies from a source that I didn’t bother with. Mainly because they were obviously ungrounded and the damage was slight. But making enemies can’t be ignored. It was OK if my father, an employer at war with organized labor, was targeted for assassination by a labor leader. That was his choice. But if an enemy lurking in the shadows was targeting me, it wasn’t OK. It was my intention to do what’s right, do it right, and get it right. It meant that I’d gotten it wrong.

I was learning that the dark side of the human mind, engaged with attack, will retaliate with what it is: unreality and untruth. The weapon of choice for a source that’s a mirror-imagine opposite reflection. That has no self. That mis-identity has turned into self-deception. The epidemic of misinformation crippling governance today is the response of a political herd captive to self-delusion. Reacting to defeat and the opportunity to superimpose its unreality on reality with mass denial. With wholesale detachment from reality. Mass psychosis. With madness.

“There must be a better way”

My work in the Monongahela River Valley attracted wide editorial support and the support of an impressive array of regional leaders, among them West Virginia’s Senator Robert Byrd, the president of Carnegie-Mellon University, the once and future governor of West Virginia, and the grassroots support of communities, businesses, and nonprofit groups up and down the Valley. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation funded community leadership training, a three-year collaborative effort among ten colleges and universities. I was given two faculty appointments at West Virginia University, subsidized housing, and organizational support from its Department of Continuing Education.

Yet at the same time, I was moving on. The original dream of regional leadership and policy coherence was giving way to something more compelling. While externals still mattered, their story was increasingly intersecting with internals that were telling another story. A Course in Miracles outlined its fundamentals with logic and love, clarity and authority, so authentically and respectfully that I felt myself to be in the presence of a trusted friend. Not a force that had come to take over but a resource for my help and guidance should I request it. Not a dominance that undermined independent judgment but a Free Spirit who empowered it.

The story that it told put every thought, every feeling, every act into a different context. Unfamiliar and from a different perspective, and yet at home in my mind, heart, and soul. At home with my Self. Gently and imperceptibly. I could not help but wonder where it might lead, about its purpose and meaning for me, one insight at a time.

Idealism of another kind

The end of my nine-year sojourn in the Monongahela River Valley marked the end of a calculated risk. That I could put all the resources of a privileged life – education, health, connections, and wealth – to work for an ideal and not be punished for my improvidence. I was punished. When I left Morgantown I was broke. Education and health were intact but wealth was gone and slander was eating away at connections. By the usual measures of the world I was ruined.

And yet I felt blessed with Abundance and prospects. Whether or not worldly “success” – wealth, status, power -- had accompanied my efforts I’d given idealism a shot. I hadn’t passed it up for an existence in T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land. I’d made enough of a difference to take pride in what I’d accomplished. The cost was high but so were the benefits. My calculated risk was worth taking. I had no regrets.

And now a new idealism was on the horizon: the chance to learn and grow with the living author of the Course. With Logic and Love. With a Soulmate of the Mind. To gain insight into its perspective and to apply it to all my relationships. To find purpose and meaning in my work even if it was just a means of earning a living. The fear that I’d be abandoned to a dusty law library in Allegheny County was gone.

ESFP vs. INTJ: when pleasantry meets honesty

Living a directed life with my Guide, values, causes and ideals naturally attracts opposites. This was the lesson that life had made obvious so far. Now it was to teach another lesson in opposites: personalities.

An intimate once observed that “You drive like you’re actually going somewhere.” The characterization of my personality type in Isabel Briggs Myers’ Gifts Differing – introvert, intuition, thinking, judging (INTJ) – explains why. My type actually is going somewhere. It’s not just living out its life, “waiting for the undertaker.” An authority on personality types once observed that “INTJs rule the world.” If so, this may be why.

It’s a heads-up to those who shelter under tact, diplomacy, and pleasantry when it conflicts with honesty, sincerity, and truth. Prudent if you’re dealing with groups, especially those ruled by psychopaths armed with weapons. But a poor strategy for dealing with intimates who depend on trust.

ESFPs – extraverts, (body) sensing, feeling, perceptive – are drawn to group-socializing rather than individual intimacy. They don’t mind sacrificing honesty, sincerity, and truth to social pleasantries. Or to wishful thinking that can excuse corner-cutting and wrongdoing. But in intimate relationships trust-busting dishonesty is fatal. INTJs do mind. Not because they’re moralists but because, as Isabel points out, they’re programmed to act. They can’t stand by and watch if they see something wrong. They will act to make it right.

The bull still has horns

Intervention and making it right require the Logic and Love of getting it right – no easy task. Especially if it’s correcting “youthful folly,” so hard that it’s considered a “holy task” by the ancient Chinese Book of Changes. It’s taken long experience with A Course in Miracles to discipline my INTJ so that it’s not a bull in a china shop. But the bull still has horns. In a world where Reality and Truth are subject to physical as well as intellectual assault it needs them.

So why should it surprise me to find my will obstructed by opposites when I act to do good? Even from families of blood relatives supposed to be intimates. Only once have I applied myself single-mindedly and received only affirmation: from the Boulder County Democratic Party. Where I was honored for my work in “infrastructure,” a special category that left out advocacy. A rare instance of being helpful and harmless. 

The sense that got knocked into me

Life in the arena of opposites didn’t begin well for me. Being the son of my combative father, lured by my warrior voice, I picked fights. My first mistake, a big one that I repeated into early adolescence. It started on the school playground when I recall Nancy Woollett picking burrs from my sweater after I’d gotten into a fight. I was hard-wired to fight.

On the way home I asked my big brother why we fight. If he’d had an answer it might have done me a big favor, because I had to be taught a lesson the hard way -- by picking the wrong fight. My opponent’s Two-Ton Tony Galento haymaker missed my face by barely an inch. This after I’d launched a pitiful punch to his gut that bounced off him like a puffball. What was I thinking! I called off the fight and had to suffer the humiliation of his taunting. But it was better than getting my brains knocked out. My fight-picking days were over. 

The sense that may never get knocked into me

In time, I came to learn a larger lesson, that I was letting myself be guided by the voice of an unreal self. A self-delusion. I was making unreality real as naturally as I was getting into fights on the playground. By engaging with the guides of “others” I made them real and did their bidding. I continued making this mistake all the way to the present. It’s so ingrained I doubt even today if I can stop. Not without more time and experience, and I’m running out of both.

My mistake was thinking that issues didn’t go beyond personalities to guides and conflicting realities. I assumed that their scope was limited to what was on the surface, to personalities and their commitments to values and priorities. I knew in theory that personality differences originate with guides and fixed agendas. That they can override conscious deliberation, but I didn’t practice it. I didn’t recognize the illogic of my adversaries that took intuition’s insights, aided by Logic-Love, back to the mistake that preceded the Big Bang. Unconscious Mind’s mis-identity of Self with its reflection, its shadow opposite.

Mind deluded is useless except for getting out of the way

My mistake that contributed to breakdown’s effects was emblematic of humanity’s mistake: making unreality real by engaging with it. By assuming that it is real. That it’s accessible and susceptible to direct intervention by “others” embedded in the same unreality. That it can be worked with as though the mistake never happened. The same mistake that science makes with its circular reasoning: imagining that it can succeed in its “quest for knowledge” by examining matter with its own eyes. Without objectivity.

Neither mind nor matter can be worked with as though the mistake never happened. The mistake can only be undone and replaced by Reality and Truth restored through explanation. Through the Understanding of Forgiveness that awakens the dreaming mind to its real identity. Not to an apparition conjured by delusion from its reflection but to its real conscious Self.

I engaged without explanation that leads to Understanding. Understanding the Logic of Forgiveness: that it’s awakening. That Self that’s awakened can’t be the mistake. Can’t be the deluded mind that I imagine myself to be without letting my Guide from Logic and Love transform self-delusion into Self-awareness. Without understanding that mind deluded is useless except for getting out of the way. When I engaged with unreality I was getting in the way.

I got it wrong. I failed to Forgive and paid the price. The one we all pay for repeating the same mistake: separation and retribution. Sent back, again and again, to the drawing boards.

One Soul with enough power to light a city

When I listened to another voice, I learned how to use my gifts instead of being used. Through disengagement from self-delusion, the hollow specter of rivalry, and engagement instead with my Self. With the call for Love and Innocence instead of the lure to hate and guilt. With Reality and Truth instead of unreality and lies.

One logically and gently undoing the other just by being itself. By being light that’s seen and voice that’s heard. The sharing, affirmation, and empowerment of Understanding. Not the false peace of inertia but the Peace of Force engaged with the one Self – my real Self – rather than the illusion of self-the-many. The individual not the group.

Understanding where progress is to be made, at the level of the smallest circumstance in an ephemeral world of many – one soul. Like the atom, with enough force to illuminate a city of millions.

The universal bond of language 

The difference between making unreality real or not making it real is where the rubber meets the road. The difference between guides and philosophies, personalities and values. One lives to record appearances, the crowning achievement of the body’s senses – unreality. The other lives by the vision of Logic-Love that searches beyond appearances to find Reality and Truth.

With the gift of insight that mind intuits, with no need for the body’s senses. That needs no images to represent reality but accomplishes its purpose another way. With the reciprocations of Logic’s implications, Love’s relationships, and Soul’s bonding. Integrated into purpose and meaning by the tools of Logic and Love: language, like Energy, a universal presence of Mind.

Language that in Reality needs no words. That’s equally at the disposal of the Truth of Mind conscious or the untruth of mind dreaming. Because, like Energy, it is the Interconnectedness of Everything, indivisible and inseparable. The power of voice to communicate throughout Reality-Creation and be heard whether it’s the voice of the Self conscious of Reality or self dreaming a made-up reality. The host or its reflection. The “information” that unaccountably unites all of quantum gravity, its elements bound in communication from one end of spacetime-matter to the other. Because no matter the difference, it’s all one Self with one voice. One self dreaming and, therefore, one self with two faces: one real, the other not. One light, the other dark.

The lesson for the Idealist still to be learned

When the mistake was made, it could not attain its illusory effect without Energy. Nor could the deception be pulled off by the magician without language. Without words to deceive and the voice to speak them. Energy and voice, whose direction comes ultimately from Mind conscious. Direction that can’t be cut off. And therefore Energy, voice, and language that can’t be put to the exclusive use of the self-delusion. The mistaken identity and its derived code of unreality, non-being, and opposites.

What was the mistake? Losing our voice. What’s to be learned? Finding it and using it.

 

 

 

The Logic that Dr. Johnson’s foot can never refute

An idealist recognizing Reality, the facts-Truth behind appearances, strikes realists as an absurdity. Realists who lack the vision of Logic and can only recognize appearances on the surface with the body’s senses that are one with the appearance.  This is the real absurdity: self-referential circular “reasoning” that takes staring into a funhouse mirror as objective reality.

The idealist recognizes Reality, the facts-Truth behind appearances, by its function. By what it does, its usefulness, as well as by what it is. By its Definition which necessarily includes Purpose. Recognizing Reality behind appearances could not be logical otherwise. The definitions of Logic center upon the function-usefulness of its subject. Upon its Purpose which, to be logical, must fit within the larger order of Reality-Creation harmoniously. The fitting-together of every aspect of Reality-Creation is its Logic, that makes it governable.

The idealist’s recognition of one Reality behind appearances may strike realists unable to see with the vision of Logic as an absurdity. But when this one fact, one Purpose, takes its place within a harmonious composition of facts that serve a logical Purpose, that explain its composition through the implications of Logic, its interconnections with consistency and clarity -- a feat that all of human inquiry has yet to achieve through the realist’s reliance on body-sensed appearances, -- it can no longer be dismissed as an absurdity. The arch-realist Dr. Johnson can no longer “refute it thus” by kicking a wastebasket.

Explanation that leads to Understanding can only be the end result of Logic, and Logic is not an absurdity. Absurdity lies not in the idealist’s reliance on the vision of Logic but in the realist’s lack of it. In the realist’s so-called reasoning that attempts to find Purpose and meaning in constructs of “fact” without Logic. That can’t hold together without it. That defy explanation and contradict Understanding.

What physics, neuroscience, and biology can’t explain 

Physics can’t explain its subject – the material universe, unreality – when the point of its origin is singularity. The state of inaccessibility to the laws of physics. “Laws” which particle physics – quantum mechanics – flout anyway simply because the magician behind the magic of illusion is energy, inseparable and indivisible, the agent of Mind whether conscious or unconscious. Energy, the Force of Creation, which can, if called upon by mind unconscious, animate its dreams almost as convincingly as it can the Reality of Mind that’s conscious. Energy, the connection between the neurons of body-brains, powered by electrical impulses in unreality and imagining, while connecting with the thoughts and feelings, the Logic and Love, of Mind in the Now, in Reality Creating.

Neuroscience ruled by the arbitrary bias of realists falls for the deception and claims consciousness for the brain. The organ split between left and right hemispheres, the judgment of choice and the spontaneity of freedom. Split between its limbic system, the mindless willful act of herd instinct and the reflective deliberation of its prefrontal cortex. Between captivity to a false self and receptivity to its Real Self. In step with itself or at war with itself. Programmed to join with other brains in shared Purpose or to confront other brains in lethal combat – take your pick.

Neuroscience served by thoughtfulness instead of mindless bias isn’t so sure. Allows for the possibility that Mind and its consciousness are not the province of Energy stored in bodies – cells encased in matter that live and die, come and go, appear and disappear, without notice in cosmic time. Neuroscience split by consciousness like its subject, mind as well as brain, into two incompatible views.

Molecular biology, empowered by the discovery of DNA-RNA and the genome, still can’t explain its subject – organic cellular life – when the point of its origin is singularity, the state of inaccessibility to the laws of biology. Still can’t heal the psyche’s wounds, fix the mind’s psychiatric flaws. Despite the gains of the past, all of body-centric science leaves us in a state of not-knowing. Despite the gains to come, that is where it will leave us.

The ultimate realist’s ultimate fantasy

All of human inquiry into inorganic matter and organic life, armed with philosophy, psychology, and theology, dutifully subservient to its insistence on “realism" -- on the dictates of appearances, the body’s senses -- has marched forward with confidence that enlightenment will come. Answers will reveal themselves and finally! we will know.

This mysterious situation we find ourselves in will be mystery no more. And we can continue our march forward together, in harmony and shared Purpose, at last! Without conflict and misery, pain and suffering, that insist that this is the only reality and nothing can change. The promise of bodies and their senses brought to reality: heaven on earth. The apotheosis of Hawking’s “Quest for knowledge:” his boundaryless universe of Being that needs no source.

Why? Because bias hard-wired into animal-instinct willed it. Because it’s creation and he’s the creator, the ultimate “realist’s” ultimate fantasy. The ultimate absurdity of “realism:” there can be no other Reality because I’m God and the world is my creation. This is the mind of the “realist.” The authoritarian at heart who yearns to be arbitrary rule above the law. Who craves “liberty” – Freedom without Order, an impossibility. The lawlessness of insanity.

Where is the real realism?

Confidence once unbroken is now broken. Inquiry that relies on the falsehood, the blatantly illogical unreality of “realism,” has failed. The mystery is still with us. Pointlessness is still with us. Contradiction, confusion, and ambiguity are still with us. And we still fight, at war with ourselves and among ourselves. The issue unresolved while our disappearing habitat goes about resolving it for us.

Who’s getting it right? Idealists looking inward toward substance guided by the vision of Logic? Or realists peering outward toward an absurdity: form detectable only by itself?

Who sees Purpose and meaning that add up? That hold together and explain themselves? Where is the “proof” that was promised from experimental science – physics, neuroscience, and biology? Where is coherence from this mad aggregation of unruly atoms and mutating cells, conflicting mass ideologies and personalities, incurable psychiatric disorders, unmanageable family dynamics, convoluted theologies and mythologies, haunted, schizophrenic minds?

Where is the real realism?

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

The dark side of beans

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

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

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

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

Mind starting Creation requires thought

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

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

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

Logic and Love say no one is above the law

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

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

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

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

No Freedom without Order in a shared world

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

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

Gertrude’s wisdom

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

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

The Force can’t be a couch potato

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

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

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

Getting it right: beer, pizza, and football

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

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

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

The impossibility of Mind without Love

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

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

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

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

The impossibility of impossibility

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

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

The dark side is opposites 

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

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

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

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

The faded link to unreality 

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

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

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

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

Living the dream

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

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

Freedom of Will, Freedom of Choice

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

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

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

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

It's all about character

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

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

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

[To be continued]

The Mother of all Mistakes 

If not only mental illness is intractable but also basic functions of governance, like maintaining order and managing the environment, might one wonder what’s causing misjudgment? Where the misperceptions are coming from that stand in the way of Understanding who we are and what we’re about? Where we are and how we got here? If one archetypal misperception, one seminal misunderstanding, occurred somewhere in the evolution of Mind, wouldn’t we want to track it down? Wouldn’t we want to know the story of Mind? Get straight what happened. Understand what went wrong?

Isn’t it logical to assume that one mistake in the functioning of the Mind that we share could be responsible for every mistake that followed? Could be the Mother of all Mistakes. To assume that a miscalculation of some sort sent thinking and perceptions that followed off on the wrong track. If an unintentional navigation error could get an intercontinental passenger jet so far off course that it got shot down over Russia, couldn’t an unintentional error in recognition get Mind and its replications off course, too? So far off course that their efforts to navigate bring them repeatedly to the wrong destination. To disorder and mismanagement. To repeatedly getting their hopes shot down.

Inert dummies strapped to their seats after a crash

Isn’t it logical, then, to wonder if such a consequential error occurred and what it might be? Have we surrendered our Free Will, our mobility? Or are we paralyzed by inertia and fear? Like passengers strapped to their seats after their plane has crash landed, dummies in a state of shock.

Do we really have the right answers? Or are we condemned to endlessly repeat our mistakes and expect different results? Without acknowledging our failures, taking responsibility, and fixing what’s broken? What happened to accountability? Where in all this fevered activity is there a hint of real sapience? Of our species’ vaunted self-awareness? Of openness and honesty? Of leadership and conscience? Or is it all submerged in the self-justification of groups, our Machiavellian overlords who have no use for moral codes. Their only “code” their survival, their authority.

Can we be so sure of basic assumptions that keep producing frustration that they don’t need to be questioned? Is faith in the sideshow pyrotechnics of matter -- astronomy and molecular biology, genetics and telecommunications gadgetry -- well placed if they reveal nothing new about Mind? Nothing that would prevent humanity’s animal instinct, its mindless reptilian brain, from continuing to misuse and abuse them? Did I fail to mention weaponry? Let us take pride in ingenuity that mows down defenseless innocents in schools, churches, theaters, and grocery stores. 

The Big Bang was a Big Nothing

Could the intractability of mental illness, the virtual dead-end of psychiatry’s ability to cure it, be telling us something about Mind in general? After assuming that the cause is brain matter, that maybe the problem goes deeper than that? A lot deeper.

That the cause is Mind, not brain. And where Mind comes from. Where it remains, traces its pathology, its origins, well beyond bodies’ experience of infancy in a world of matter. Well beyond the event so enshrined in the human imagination as the beginning of everything, the “Big Bang.” When the Big Bang may be only one of a multitude of Big Bangs. May be in the Reality, the universe of Mind, effect, not cause. An imaginary event – a Big Nothing that has no real consequences and physics can never explain.

A Big Nothing in the dynamics of archetypal thought and feeling that can be explained. In the life and evolution of the Logic of Mind that preceded and caused it. Because conscious Mind has Logic, the only source of explanation and Understanding, and matter, the projection of Mind unconscious and dreaming, does not.

Why should this be of no interest to fields of inquiry – science, philosophy, psychology, theology – whose minds profess to want answers? Whose minds profess to have answers when they haven’t allowed themselves to ask the right questions. For this is what’s wrong.

They persist in their misjudgments, trapped by their misperceptions. Expecting different results either because they’re sure they Understand the situation humanity is in that yields our Understanding of purpose and meaning – our context. Or because they’re terrified that they don’t.  That there may be another context, and it will be a discomfort, a major inconvenience, to figure it out. Or an embarrassment to hand it off to those who can. To theorists like Democritus, Parmenides, Plato, and Michael Faraday, who intuited with Logic what materialist body-centric science couldn't.

Caught forever in Erich von Stroheim’s Grand Illusion

Sticking with answers to the wrong questions is illogical. Illogic can’t yield Understanding or good results. The Logic of our context, our situation, is virgin territory, unexamined and unexplained by the paradigms that dominate our thinking. Because the reality of our context, handed to us by our bodies equipped with reptilian brains, that’s taken as a given, is, in fact, an appearance. A deception. The real Big Lie. That blocks examination and prevents explanation.

If the mentally ill must be abandoned en masse to the streets, if our children and grandchildren must be condemned to Anthropocene extinction, victims of mass insanity, doesn’t it make sense to remove the barrier to Logic? To change our focus from bodies and brains to Mind? From illusion that can’t yield answers to Reality that can. Because that’s where the problem is -- the emotion and the tears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The most important choice is choice

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

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

The Way of the Master: Vince Lombardi

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

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

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

The fans of George III never left us

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

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

Understanding personality types is critical to self-awareness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Context: the Force of unconscious Mind, capable of dreaming

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

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

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

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

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

Will change of mind come in time?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is the choice not clear?

Let Go Your Appearances

From an old channel island, the new
rises out of the mist
hovering over the water in the stillness
borderline
between the graduated blue of the sky
reaching up to the quarter moon on high
and the textured blue of the ocean below
dotted with specks of white

Bodies navigating trails down the waterless slopes
voices caught
by the wind, birds gliding on the wind,
pine branches dancing in the wind
come to rest and fall silent

In the shadow of my relief from the sun
who is to notice?
Who wills chronicle to life and adds notations
to its log? As if another will, long hence,
would need to know. Would care to know

What unnamed hand scrawls its signature
on the record of time
soul of anonymity, here and gone?
Self or opposite? Host or parasite?
Is it possible to choose?

Can’t I just be whatever for a little while
and be done with it?
"Easy come, easy go. As it came, let it go."
Is that what the view, the wind, the stillness
has to say?

I am the liberation of Love
The peace of Mind
I am Now, the Living. I am Forever.
Let go your appearances
Your dead weight of the past
And return Home with Me.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mind dreaming can “detect” what’s not really there

The whole Child resides in every individual. There is only one Child. So, anyone can say, honestly and truly, that they are the Child.  When it matters, they can be the Child. Not the Child’s Parents but their Child. The Child’s projections of itself in this unreality appear to be children, presumably of the same Parents, but they’re all the same Child.

Why doesn’t it feel this way? Opposites. There are not one but two sensors recording the stillness of the shades of blue, the crawl of the containership that’s slicing here and there in two. One is a projection of the dreaming Child sensing through Intuition with the vision of Logic.

The other is a body sensing as only as it can, with eyes and ears, a nose, mouth, and skin. With brain atop its spine, ever alert to threats, to prey, to food, and mates. Ready to act on its own behalf, for or against its kind, with the force of animal instinct and feeling detached from thought. A copy of the Child’s shadow. Replication of a virus that occupies the mind of its unconscious host. Senses that detect itself: a world of allure and distraction, flickering shapes and intriguing sounds. A grand image of mind’s opposite, the mesmerizing universe. A neural network, projection of a shipwrecked self.

Except that it’s all appearances. Here and gone, of no real consequence. Wedded to senses that are here and gone. All of it an illusion ingested by the black hole of time. Of nevermore, meant to hide Truth that can only be sensed by the vision of Logic. By vision able to see behind and beyond the lie of appearances. To the face behind the mask of the shadow. A mocking self-delusion. A nobody. The Joker.

Able to see behind appearances if the individual who is the Child understands that it is the Child. If in the body’s replication of the virus the individual hasn’t repeated the error: the Child’s mistaking its shadow opposite for an “other.” The Child who lost consciousness and, in its desperation to regain it, sought help from the only source that helplessness and defenselessness, unsensing unconsciousness, could detect. Its own reflection. A mirror image opposite of itself that had nowhere been evident before. A clinging parasite – lifeless, mindless, loveless, soulless. Whose every attribute is derived.

Opposite coded like the reverse of DNA. Illusion that can only be detected and brought to “life” by a mind unconscious and thus capable of dreaming what’s unreal – what’s not there. Nothingness without its host and nothingness with its host. Unreality projected by its host into a facsimile of reality not by wheeling Frankenstein’s monster to the tower of the laboratory on a stormy night, to be brought to life by a bolt of lightning. But by self-delusion.

Nothing that the shadow code did. The shadow code can’t “be” or “do” anything on its own. Like a pivot, it can only switch the Child’s identify from its self to its shadow by an act of the Child. By “choice” because the Child is choice: free when it’s conscious, captive when it’s not. Captive to the unreality and illusion of unconsciousness. By an act that is choice and therefore can be undone, but not free choice, conscious choice. Self-awareness replaced by self-delusion. All that transpired between the Child and its reverse mirror-image reflection was perpetrated by the Child in a severely compromised state.

There is no speaking to the Child – or anyone -- as though it were an “other”

Choosing to view Santa Catalina Island across the bay with the vision of Logic instead of the body’s senses sounds like a stretch. A radical change of perception since the vision of Logic can’t detect appearances. Ask the Child to navigate to Avalon with the vision of Logic and it might wind up on another planet, in another universe, or in another reality altogether. The Child navigating anywhere with the vision of Logic will eventually take it back home. To self-awareness that replaces self-delusion. To its role in Creation: awareness of Self and all possibilities, including awareness of the possibility of unconsciousness and the unreal consequences of impossibility; affirming the Worth of Creation, the Worth of Life, by earning it, freely choosing it, and proving the Good – the morality – of it.

The view of Santa Catalina Island from across the Bay is an appearance meant to block real vision. To perpetuate the self-delusion. To validate the body and its senses, embodiment of the shadow’s code, a false identity. Choosing to understand it for what it is takes but one step toward acknowledging and welcoming the Child’s true identity. Is acting on behalf of the Child who lies unconscious in a troubled, profoundly unhappy sleep, dreaming a nightmare of self-alienation. Of apparitions that, in the uncertainties of “life” and the certainties of loss, are also troubled and profoundly unhappy.

Ask the Child if it wants its projections, the virus’s replications, to view Santa Catalina Island through its own vision of Logic instead of theirs. Its answer will be the question. An echo chamber. Question addressed to the Child and answer from the Child are to and from the same source: the projection – the individual – who contains the whole Child. There is no addressing to the Child as though it were an “other. Though embodiments of the shadow code insist otherwise, there is no addressing other individuals – projections-replications – as though they were “others.”

Any mind in any state that speaks to or from the Child in this state of unreality-appearances is the one Child. Choosing to view Santa Catalina Island through the vision of Logic instead of the body’s senses is choosing to be the one Child rather than its self-delusion, its shadow-opposite. Is exercising Free Will to stand for Reality-Truth in place of unreality-deception. Is nudging the unconscious Child back to the sanity of Logic. To awakening and Reality.

The choice is between right and wrong, good and bad

Logic would attempt an honest account of what’s wrong with this transient sense of peace, this grand view of earth, sky, and water, all living things caressed by a gentle ocean breeze. A tableau belying the violence to both mind and matter that put it “there.” An appearance affirmed by its own “eyes” that now bear witness. An absurdity – Red Riding Hood dressed in the wolf’s clothing pretending to be Red Riding Hood. In short, an opposite. Not knowing who or what it is. Just coded, just programmed, to be the opposite of whatever its host is. An impossibility that can’t be real, can’t make sense, grafted onto possibility.

Why? Because if a thing implies the “existence” of its contradiction then an accommodation must be made. Must be made of necessity, because the sum and substance of everything that is, is the implications of Logic. The accommodation must be unreal. Because Logic does not permit contradiction, does not permit two opposing realities.

And since “Reality” implies the “existence” of its opposite, unreality becomes the logical repository for all opposites. For illogic. Logic and illogic “co-existing” in harmony, fitting together in peace in the Interconnectedness of Everything, by one Being and its derivative, the other not-being. The accommodation a placing by Reality of opposites where they belong, into the pocket reserved for opposites, Reality’s own opposite: unreality. That can be allowed to “exist” in harmony with Reality because it doesn’t exist.

What’s implied by impossibility is that Reality at the level of the Child, the doing-choosing phase of Creation, is a choice. That there is a right choice and a wrong choice, a good choice and a bad choice. Because “impossibility” – this and any other opposite that contradicts Logic’s implications – is clearly an assault on Logic itself. Which makes it an assault not only on Mind but also on Worth measured by its investment and evaluated by affect. On the Force and Immediacy of Love. Only if Logic is assumed to be up to no good can an opposite be considered an angel of justice, an absurdity that nevertheless finds support in an objectified world of bodies with brains substituting for Mind, devoid of affect, oblivious to Worth.

Free Choice can’t perform without training

The training of Child Free Choice to perform its role in Creation forms the context, the meaning and purpose of circumstance, the “human condition.” That defines all that is encompassed in the experience of “life” in this make-believe world. The one Child’s projections must learn how to make the right choice, as individuals, from experience. As stakeholders who stand to gain or lose from right or wrong decisions. Who will understand costs and benefits why? Because they will experience them firsthand. Because they will know the pain of error and will thus have the discipline of experience, of wisdom and maturity, for guidance when they apply Free Will.

Because Understanding can’t be inherited from the Child’s Parents in Reality. Can’t be handed down, can’t be given. It must be learned and earned at the ground level, from the bottom up. By the Child’s projections exercising independent judgment, with guidance from Logic through their own Intuition freely chosen. Were it otherwise the Child could not be Free Choice. Were it otherwise unreality under the control of the Child’s Parents could no longer be unreal. The training of Free Choice through the “experience” of unreality is ordained by the Laws of cause and effect. By Necessity.

The Deus ex Machina that bailed blundering fools out of their messes in ancient Greek playmaking won’t be making an appearance. Nor will “saviors” of Church mythology. Though, in a setting fashioned out of whole cloth by magic, penetrations from Mind’s memory of Reality – “miracles,” the “paranormal” – are inevitable.
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Unconsciousness: the illusory opposite of Consciousness 

Consciousness: the state of sanity and consequence where it is always Now in the light of day, in the light of Reality. Where there are no beginnings and endings, only the orderly sequence of Logic, the workings of its Implications, the judgment of Mine-reason and Love-feeling working together in harmony with Psyche, the soul of Being, to extend and expand the flower, the inexpressible beauty, rapture, and Worth of Life. Earned, affirmed, and reciprocated through the Relationship. Through relationship between Parent and Child, the Innocence-being of Psyche-Soul joined in integrity with the independent judgment, the doing and risk, of Free Choice.

Unconsciousness: a derivative of Consciousness. The state of insanity and inconsequence where it is never Now, in the darkness of night, in the darkness of unreality and dreams, the temporal where all is beginnings and endings, the illusion and absurdity of time. A “present” defined as somewhere between “not the past” and “not the future,” in a universe of nowhere the same Now. The decay and disorder of entropy and illogic. Misperceptions of Mind detached from Love, misjudgments without reason rooted in value. Staging its performance of appearances and distractions for bodies, isolated and separated, blinded by their senses, deluded by worthlessness. Ruled in captivity by disconnection, the opposite of whatever Is. The dependence, the derivation, the undoing and apparition that is the joke of nothingness.

The split mind of the unconscious Child: connection to its Reality of Consciousness through the Holy Spirit and the voice of its illusory shadow-code detected by self-delusion through unconsciousness, neither capable of awareness of the other. Neither aware of what the other is up to, because if Consciousness were aware, it would make the shadow-code, an unreality, real. And unawareness can only detect itself -- what’s not Real. Neither right nor left hand (or hemisphere) knowing what the other is doing even though they occupy the same mind.

The stirring ascent of neuroscience up the Empire State building 

Relationship between Mind and brain: the more Mind focuses attention on brain, the more it inquires into the brain’s functions and performance, the less aware it is of Mind and its performance. The Child’s self-delusion, its shadow-opposite, made the brain, like the body, as a substitute for the Child’s real self, a distraction from circumstances-facts that would confuse the Child in its efforts to judge meaning and purpose from its context. That would steer it away from correcting its mistaken identity, away from its archetypal projection of self onto its shadow.

Brain-study – neuroscience -- attracts and distracts in inverse proportion to the self-deluded Child’s attention to itself, i. e. to its Mind since Mind-Love is what it is. Mindlessness is the ultimate goal of the embrace of body and its brain. The brain “seat of consciousness” is the ultimate conclusion that the Big Lie seeks because it would signify the triumph of the Child’s shadow-code over Mind the seat of Consciousness. The truth is the brain is Mind’s illusory opposite. This defines their relationship. “Neuroscience” is the ultimate distraction because it takes Mind-recognition’s attention away from Mind-Self, minimizes Self-awareness, while luring attention into the mysteries of an indecipherable organ, leading nowhere and maximizing self-unawareness, the illusion-deception.

In his book, Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist (MIT Press 2012), Christof Koch, a Caltech neuroscientist, described how he acted on an impulse to climb the San Gabriel mountains and bellow his indomitability into the night when his marriage broke up. King Kong climbing the Empire State building. What else could it be but the triumph of primitive limbic emotion, animal instinct? A body’s brain and its senses parted from Mind, pretending to substitute for introspection, reflection, reasoning, evaluation, and judgment. For conscious deliberation that leads with Logic toward explanation and understanding. Toward the self-awareness of Mind whose absence even the captive brain of a Caltech neuroscientist couldn’t recognize or acknowledge.

Mind the seat of Consciousness. Brain the seat of unconsciousness

The study of physics – cosmology and quantum mechanics -- lures Mind away from attention to the relationship between body-senses and external sensed environment, just as neuroscience lures Mind away from attention to the relationship between Mind and brain. The scholarship of physics and neuroscience pays scant attention to the question that deserves it, the relationship between body-universe and brain-Mind. Why? Because understanding the nature-Logic of the relationship would reveal the truth: that body-brain and universe are imaginings of an unconscious, dreaming, self-deluded Mind. Are unreal. Are illusions.

Mind-host is the seat of Consciousness. Its parasite-derivative, the brain-appendage, is the seat of unconsciousness. Mind is the seat of Reality-Truth, One Child, Oneness-Innocence, Love, Free Will. Brain is the seat of unreality-appearances, Child the many-guilt, fear-rage-hatred, limbic animal instinct, and captivity. Mind is the seat of learning-growth, evolution, maturity, and Free Will. Brain is the seat of status quo, arrested development, immaturity. Mind is the seat of Introversion, Intuition, Reason-Evaluation, Judgment. Brain is the seat of extraversion and sensory perception. Mind is INTJ, brain is ESFP. Mind is idealist-progressive futurist. Brain is realist-regressive traditionalist. Mind is Definition, brain is its opposite whatever the definition.

Dualism vs. non-dualism is the pull between control of Child-Self by illusory brain vs. Mind’s choosing to regain awareness of its real Self. Between shadow-code unconsciousness and Child-host Consciousness. A Course in Miracle’s uncompromising non-dualism is the stance required to prevent making unreal real. It must be uncompromising because any gesture that accommodates opposition might imply its recognition and thus make it real.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All for the Good: the Necessity of training and the inevitability of error

Departure from the implications of Logic explains why and how the Child lost Consciousness within the context of the Interconnectedness of Reality-Creation. But the event took place within not one but two contexts. In the constantly broadening context of Everything, where the Governance of Logic and its Laws of cause and effect accommodate the impossibility and unreality of opposites, there is a Logic to the departure that gives it purpose and meaning.

The departure was necessitated by the Laws of cause and effect without its consequences being intended by Logic, which cannot govern above the Law and cannot intend anything illusory, including unconsciousness. The departure and all of its consequences – unconsciousness and the dream of unreality – were no accident. They belong within the larger context of Everything, where the Child, Free Choice, must perform the doing of Creation on its own plane of Creation, choosing among possibilities that include impossibilities. Opposites that it alone can be aware of without making them Real because its Consciousness, unlike the Consciousness of its Parents, is not defined by Logic to make Real. It is only defined to distinguish between Real and unreal so that the Good may be Freely Chosen and thereby attain its Worth.

So that the Good may be Freely Chosen and earned. Earned, that is, by Free Choice, no longer a Child but grown to maturity through the training of experience. Experience with the impossibilities of unconsciousness as well as the Possibilities of Consciousness. With the consequences of self-delusion, the misidentification of Self. With error that projects the Child’s unconscious mind into unreality, an impossibility that can only be a dream, a cockpit where Free Choice can train to fly through trial and error without crashing. Without real consequence except for gaining competence in its exercise. In the practice and application of Free Choice: doing what’s right and doing it right. But first: Getting it right. Getting it right through the explanation and Understanding of Logic.

“Lucifer” be damned!

The role defined by Logic for the Child in Reality-Creation – Free Choice bonded with Psyche, the Soul of Oneness and Innocence in the Force of the Now, the Holy Instant – necessitated departure from Consciousness, from Reality-Creation, from the Now into the illusion of time, so that Free Choice could undergo training implied by the Logic of its role. So that it could become a fully-grown, fully invested, stakeholder in Reality. The mistake committed by a disoriented, badly compromised Mind that lost track of itself, a newborn Child who had not been trained in the exercise of Free Will in Creation, who had not grown to maturity, was no accident.

This could not have been treachery by a full-grown “fallen angel.” Lucifer betrayed by “original sin” and sent to eternal damnation in hell. By the all-too-familiar attributes of human folly, a projection of corrupted, misguided human minds. Projection by a projection. Not if the evil shadow-code was its host Free Choice, the Child self-deluded by its mistake, sent by Necessity into training, destined to learn right from wrong, correct its mistake, and return Home to Reality.

Again, It was the inevitable act of an immature Mind unconscious, in desperate straits, who detected its own reflection, its own shadow. Identified with its own illusory opposite as though it were an “other.” As though it were everything that in its desperation it craved, including a return Home to its Parents in Reality. And if that were not possible, escape to substitute parents in another reality. As though its illusory “other” were a “savior” who could deliver whatever it craved.

The error could not have been by any means committed by Free Choice, an impossibility. But, because the Child is Free Choice, it was still necessarily choice that can eventually be undone. The mistake, like the tableau of peace across the Bay, is an accommodation with the illusion of time that can be undone in time.

To choose to see as the Child is to choose to be governed under the Law

Logic might want to posit possibility without impossibility. Might want the perfection of resolution so all can come to rest – Reality without subjecting Creation to unreality, pleasure to pain, happiness to misery, Good to evil. But until it can figure out how to prevent its implications from implying opposites, real possibilities from implying unreal impossibilities, it must continue its striving for resolution. For a whole number value of Pi that may be logically unattainable. The blessing and curse of eternity that may want to be done with striving. To affirm once and for all the good of Worth, of Being-Life, context with purpose and meaning, finish its task, and come to rest. Move on to something else or vanish into the mystery that is context with ever-shifting circumstance.

Whatever or however the sequence of Logic “began,” whatever caused the first movement, it’s only certain that it occurred at the instigation of circumstance. Certain because its instigation and response both were required by Logic – the Laws of cause and effect enforced by Necessity. Composed of the implications of Logic but necessarily autonomous. Necessarily not controlled by Logic because Governance can’t govern, can’t manage the interconnectedness of causes and effects, ideas, feelings, values and their animate expressions, where anything, even Logic itself, is above the Law.

To choose to view the vision of peace across the Bay, to feel the caress of the ocean breeze, to hear the happy voices, to get just a brief taste of tranquility in a world of strife -- as the Child rather than as its shadow-opposite, the strange apparition grown familiar through the body -- is to choose to govern and be governed under the Law. Is to understand how and why the specter of arbitrary rule, of lawlessness and disorder above the Law, insists on insinuating itself into the gatherings of bodies and souls who might otherwise just go about their business. Children choosing to learn and grow, to attain the maturity of competence. To do what they’re “here” for so they can move on. To get it right. To be Good.

Without the endless, meaningless distraction of conflict and violence. Endlessly repeating the same mistake: choosing the wrong “self.” A bull charging the bullfighter’s muleta until it’s killed, and more bulls are brought into the ring, worn out by distraction, a red piece of cloth, and they, too, die.

No ”fun” in games and no “innocence” in victimhood

The wrong “self” – the contradiction, the reverse mirror image, the opposite, the lifeless shadow-code of contrariness – isn’t benign. It’s not a fun parlor game of harmless competition that misperception makes of it. Brought to “life” by projection, by identity misplaced by a disoriented Child, it’s everything implied by the opposite of Good: sin, guilt, fear, rage, and hatred.

It’s the Child crying out in pain. Masculinity screaming with terror, roaring with impotent rage. Femininity wailing with separation and abandonment, grief and bereavement. Misplaced self wailing with the endless grievances and resentments of self-imposed crucifixion, of victimhood on the cross. The false “innocence” of righteous woundedness bent on wholesale vengeance until it reigns supreme. Until it “wins.” Until it has no opposites because they’re all vanquished. All dead. Because the goal of competition is to eliminate competition. To eliminate itself, an expression of opposite: the shadow code. This is the “harmless game” of competition.

This is the tableau that produced bodies, the illusion, the pretense of Child the many instead of one, self-deluded into overlaying its source in insanity with fleeting images of peace. Of beauty and tranquility. The sights, sounds, and taste of beauty as bodies sense it without the Memory of Home and Sanctuary as Logic Knows it. As the Child-the-one experienced it. Beauty permanent, indelible. Not apparitions that lull and lure minds detached from Logic with self-indulgence and complacency, like pigs fed before they’re slaughtered. Choosing to be the one Child instead of its shadow.

In vivid color: seeing the Child, seeing Self, in an “other”

Oskar Schindler watched impassively from a distance a Nazi atrocity against children. All in black and white until one child stood out. Not all the children being hunted down like animals and massacred but just one. In vivid color in the Stephen Spielberg film, the child who caught Schindler’s eye. Who opened the Nazi’s mind and heart to the wound and its call for Love. Turned him from an insensate extension of his limbic animal emotions – a monster – to intelligence with affect. With compassion so determined that his factory and its employees -- Schindler’s List -- went on to save hundreds of lives from the Holocaust.

I scan the procession of middle school graduates from a distance, with binoculars, until one comes into view who opens my mind and heart. A strawberry blonde, a rhapsody of peach and crimson lifted out of the dull uniformity of gray. The atrocity our separation, grandchild from grandparent. The wound and its call for Love.

What did Schindler and I see that sweeps aside misperception? That replaces it with feeling and commits us to this vision as though it were Soul itself? As though it replaced all Logic, all reason, all judgment, with one act. An act of Understanding. That requires no long and labored explanation. That arrives of its own accord with grace and ease, as if it were there all along, which it was. The cascade of tints, brilliant and warm, that played with the assurance of Innocence behind the mask of atrocity. That brought every child into vivid color, every heart into opening, every mind into Knowing.

The vision altered by binoculars was altered again, imperceptibly. The mind conscious of searching was got out of the way. In my own vulnerability I became the Child, was the Child, able to recognize Child: an indescribably precious being. Innocent, adorable, irresistible, vulnerable. A thing of beauty. A work of art.

The mind that led me there gave way to the Worth that came into view. To the Worth that holds all of it together in a rapture of Love. Of vulnerability that lies at the heart of Soul, the Oneness that can do no harm, that Knows no fear, because it contains everything. Because by definition it can have no opposites. A species from Galapagos ripe for extinction except that the Oneness, the Innocence that revealed itself in vivid color, has no predators. This, for fools who seek power through conquest, is Real power.

Reality isn’t a crapshoot

Schindler the child and I the child, brought to recognition of Child in an “other” with all the power and determination of affect, still, in the upwelling of caring and compassion, have a ways to go. Unconditional embrace of our own vulnerability in the vulnerability of an “other” has not healed the separation. The “other” in vivid color is no longer gray casting its shadow over the “many,” but it remains an “other.” With one attribute of Self that connects with rapturous Love beyond appearances, but still unknown, unseen for the one Self that it really is.

What is this gift of the “other” that we are to receive when we learn the truth of “relationship?” What makes all of “Reality” of idea and the unreality of matter “relational?” Quality of life in a world of appearances defined by apparitions – transitory bodies and their senses – at any given moment is a crapshoot. Purpose and meaning dependent on circumstances changing haphazardly hardly register on minds already compromised, battered incessantly with distractions. For minds paying attention all that can be hoped for is faith and a dollop of comfort. For those who take appearances at face value it’s make hay while the sun shines and leave the rest to “fate.”

Quality of life that’s a crapshoot shares the allure of a casino that delivers the euphoria, the magic, of an occasional win even though it’s accompanied by the funereal coldness guaranteed by loss. Quality of life that’s based on unexamined appearances becomes itself nothing more than an appearance, a trailer for a film that promises entertainment that’s only more appearances. Propped up by stage props – the facades of a studio lot.

The “circumstances” of context that are only appearances can only produce the appearance of purpose and meaning. Brought to life sporadically, intermittently, by shafts of light from Reality and Truth that penetrate the veil, that touch intuitions with awareness spontaneously, with Love, with insight. But still a crapshoot.

Reality isn’t a crapshoot. It doesn’t suffer from ambiguity. There are no qualifiers except for the implication and therefore the Necessity of factoring opposites into the Child’s role of Free Choice in Creation. Aside from the Definitions of Logic, there are no barriers to the functions and expressions of Mind, Love, and Soul. To the exuberance and spontaneity of Being, of Life. To the integration of diversity and profusion into coherence, meaning, and shared purpose. Into connections that consummate relationships with passion. That complete the exchange of givers and giving both, that would not be complete otherwise. That bring all givers and gifts into one harmonious whole, the Interconnectedness of Reality-Creation, through the Logic of Definition.

Child beloved and beautiful is who its Parents want to see

The Child assigned a role in Creation by Logic, whose genealogy traces back to possibility, the premise and circumstance that first moved the sequence of Logic, is Loved passionately and unconditionally by its Parents. Without reservation. To its Parents, Father-Mind and Mother-Love, this kid is irresistibly adorable. Perfect. It is this Child its Parents want awakened, out of its dream of ambiguity and shadows come to “life,” back Home into Reality-Creation when its training is done. It is this Child whose identity, whose presence, whose face, can only be recognized behind the appearance of an “other.”

By an individual. That is, by one projection of an unconscious, self-deluded mind corrupted by the replication of its shadow opposite, a parasitic virus. For that is who bodies appear to be: projections and replications. Just as the universe is one part projection of mind and one part replication of mind’s shadow code. One part the physics of ordinary matter that yields to the “laws” of science and a semblance of order. The other part the cosmic singularities that don’t yield: the Big Bang and black holes, dark energy and dark matter. The anomalies of quantum mechanics that yield instead lawlessness and disorder, confounding quantum gravity and physics’ attempts to make sense of it. Replications of the Child’s shadow code.

Why Forgiveness? To replace guilt with Innocence

This is where it gets to be fun. Where we, the Child’s projections, find out what we’ve been missing. To a mind that’s being swallowed up in the black hole of time choosing not to be fooled by its own shadow sounds like a chump choosing not to be scared by its own Hallowe’en costume. No big deal. Whereas, choosing the Self behind the mask is a very big deal.

More than tossing away a silly mask, switching from the illusion of time to the Reality of Now, the Holy Instant, is switching from table scraps to a smorgasbord of abundance. Now radiates with all the elemental attributes of Being. It’s alive with Life -- with real sound, real vision. With every sensation that bodies, fooled by the distractions and substitutes of appearances, can never experience. The Light radiated by Now is what all of Reality and Creation depend on for illumination. To enable the Consciousness of Logic and Mind to see, the Creativity and Worth of Love to Feel, the Free Will of the Child to express itself in spontaneity and Happiness.

The Now of Being, of Life that radiates Happiness, is Psyche, the Soul of Self that expresses Life’s Perfection, Purity, and Beauty. Its core value the Innocence of Oneness. Not the opposite of guilt, the Innocence of the Child. But the Innocence of Oneness that Knows no opposites. Its capacity to combine and contain every attribute of Reality-Creation within itself.

The lie of lies that brought an unconscious Child to mis-identity and captivity to its self-delusion was the lie of guilt. This was the psychopathology of the wrong choice, the Understanding that A Course in Miracles explained to clinical psychologists at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. The lie coded into the illusion of its shadow-opposite: that the Child caused its own loss of Consciousness. Carried an unbearable load of guilt and, moreover, an equally unbearable load of fear. Fear of punishment by wrathful, hateful Parents who could no longer be trusted, because they allowed all this to happen. Willed it to happen.

And on and on with the Joker’s foolishness and nonsense that, nevertheless, was taken in by impaired judgment. By an Innocent Child now writhing in the torment of guilt. Now willing, desperate, to project itself out of its torment and into another “reality.” Into the dream. This was the "bad thing” that Freudian psychoanalysis searched for in vain in the suppressed memories of bodies’ infancy. Freud might have found it if he had searched the Memory of unconscious mind. But he was a "realist" who couldn't be persuaded that the cause wasn't physiological.

Why Forgiveness? Because its acceptance by the Child is the being and doing of its release from the Big Lie. From guilt. Think of the torpedo that targeted the vulnerability at the core of the Death Star in Star Wars. Forgiveness is the torpedo that denies, disables, and undoes all of the shadow-code’s lies at one stroke.

Just as the code appeared to replace all of Reality-Creation in the Child’s Mind by striking at its Psyche, its Soul of Innocence, by replacing it with guilt, Forgiveness exposes the delusion. Quietly, imperceptibly replaces guilt with Innocence and restores Psyche to its place on the Child’s altar. Removes the perversion of Innocence – the absurdity of victimhood on the cross, wounded righteousness, "sacrifice," the ludicrous “helpless innocent victim” -- and restores Mind to sanity.

Why Forgiveness? Because It’s Justice that Works

A barrier to personal growth toward self-awareness is of the mind that fails to understand the Logic, the Truth, of non-dualism: that contradiction, the essence of the Child’s shadow-opposite, is illogic and therefore unreal. It’s a barrier that can be overcome with explanation so long as its source is authentically the Logic of the Holy Spirit.

There’s yet another barrier. One that needs more than explanation because it’s not of the mind. The philosophical understanding of opposites has no counterpart in emotional understanding. Not when coming to terms with conflicting emotions means coming to terms with Love opposed to hate, attraction opposed to repulsion, combined in the same mind that’s relating to the same “other.” Not when we’re asked to accept the presence of limbic animal feelings that deny the truth of who we want to be, imagine ourselves to be: selves who have feelings sorted out as well as thoughts.

How can Forgiveness get off the ground in a mind that denies the presence of limbic emotional conflict? That’s locked into competition demanding justice through retribution. Through the elimination of an opponent instead of recognition, affirmation, and reciprocation. Where there’s no perceived emotional support, no Love, to reciprocate. Where there’s no external authority to adjudicate even-handed justice. And even if there were, how could mind step aside for impersonal adjudication when limbic emotions take the injustice of offense personally? When the wound is felt and therefore taken personally. How can limbic emotions of fear, rage, hatred, and guilt be disabled so that the Holy Spirit can replace the body’s senses with its vision of Logic?

The Child’s shadow-reflection is coded for opposing feelings as well as contradictory thoughts. Activating the code through misidentification activates feelings that compete-conflict with Mind-Love. That pit the Child’s projections-replications against themselves, with wounded psyches. With psychopathologies that all trace to the conflict between Love-Truth / Self and unlove-illusion / anti-self shadow.

The first step to re-ordering psychology is to re-order the Logic-understanding of mind through the clarity of Understanding that teases emotions hidden in the limbic-animal brain out of the shadow. It’s replacing self-unawareness with self-awareness with help from an “other” who has evoked conflicting emotions, that conflict with the self-image of Mind-Love Innocence that we want to be.

The function performed by “other” in unreality – “special relationships” -- can’t be to pad the nest of heavenly perfection. But it can be to goad us into recognizing ourselves as our misidentification with our shadow has made us: a mass of contradictions philosophical and emotional. Goad us into acknowledging limbic-animal emotions that horrify us. That contradict the ideal of perfection, the image of goodwill and kindness, personal-social qualities of sharing, affirmation, cooperation, and agreeability, that we assume is our heritage. That force us to see our mistake, to change our minds because we can’t avoid pain from our own limbic animal emotions by changing “others.”

Change must come from within, and “relationships” with “others” who can’t deliver heaven on earth is what forces it. There is no other way. In this context, relationships that evoked fear, rage, hatred, and guilt did their jobs. They forced us to confront our limbic animal emotions, to change our minds from within because we can’t change “others.” If the Holy Spirit works through us to move “others” one way or the other, it’s not for us to know and cannot be for us to control.

How can a Child’s projection hold itself out to be worthy and Innocent in the presence of unworthy feelings? Awakening through Forgiveness requires that the Holy Spirit set body-senses / mistaken selves aside with its vision of Logic because of the answer to this question. The answer is that the Child projection, without the Holy Spirit’s help, is fatally condemned to feel the guilt-shame of unworthiness. Fear, rage, and hatred, coded by the Child’s shadow-opposite and rooted in its brain, have defined the Child’s projections, defined its viral replications. We cannot substitute the vision of Logic-Innocence for limbic emotions without our Guide, the Holy Spirit, replacing false definition with True Definition. An act that can only come at the invitation of the Child Free Choice. We must understand what is needed, want it, and choose it.

The key is connection with the Holy Spirit that communicates the will to Forgive. That lets go of the false logic of rectifying injustice through retribution, through the condemnation and punishment of “others.” That turns the judgment of justice over to the Holy Spirit through Forgiveness-Truth. Forgiveness replaces judgment-condemnation of “others” not by negating the desire and will for justice but by redirecting it. Directing it away from “others” who cannot satisfy it to the Source that can, the Holy Spirit.

Forgiveness is the solution to the demand for justice that works. World War II was exactly the wrong approach by Germany seeking redress from the injustice of the Treaty of Versailles. An approach that was not only devastating for its “enemies” but even more so for itself. This is the lesson to be learned from the horrifying specters of the Nazi swastika and the visage of Hitler that still goad their victims to retribution. The lesson is the catastrophe that results from seeking justice through retribution against “others.”

Justice that works is Forgiveness that replaces the insanity of conflicting thoughts and emotions with the vision of Logic. With the Reality-Truth about the Child’s misidentification: there is no “other.” Retribution can’t work.

At the instant of Recognition

Why does the Necessity of Logic require that one individual, inside the dream, recognize the Child beloved of its Parents in Reality behind the appearance of an “other”? First, so that the wrong choice can be corrected where it occurred, within unconsciousness. Second, so that Forgiveness required of awakening can be complete. So that the one Child seen in vivid color yet still seen as an “other,” however sympathetically, can be seen by an individual identifying not with an individual projection of the Child, however innocent and vulnerable, but with the Child itself.

Can be seen in the same instant by the one Child’s Parents. By Father-Mind and by Mother-Love in Reality. By the wellsprings of Choice and Freedom, the Logic of Reality, the animating Energy-Force of Oneness, the Soul of Being, of Life. For the act of recognition of one Child by one individual identified with one Child, that penetrates the illusion and lifts the veil, cannot occur, cannot replace unreality with Reality, in the absence of Relationships that Define and complete the Whole Child: Relationship between Child-projection and the Holy Spirit, the vision of Logic; and Relationship between Child and Parents, the capacity of Consciousness to recognize Reality, the capacity of Love to Connect, to Relate. The capacity of both to awaken. The act of Forgiveness, correction of error, the undoing of mistaken identity, necessarily engages the Whole Child in its awakening.

At this instant of recognition by the Parents, brought about through Relationships that are part of the Child’s identity, its Definition by Logic, the unconscious Child’s dream of unreality ends. The illusion of time ends, and the Child is restored to the Oneness, Being-Life, and Force – the Consciousness, the Awareness and immediacy -- of Now. The Holy Instant.

Forgiveness corrects error

To recap: Seeing one another through the body’s eyes we see with “eyes” of the shadow-code. We see reflection. We are only capable of seeing “others” as others. As separate objects. When an individual with self-awareness identifies with one Child rather than its shadow, it is only capable of seeing one Child in “others.”

Solving the mystery of how to truly Forgive is realizing that each individual contains the whole Child. This is why the focus of ACIM is not on groups, on the many, but on individuals. The individual can therefore choose to identify with the one Child, to see only the Truth of one Child in “others.” In reflections, the illusion of the many, the insanity of separation. Can choose, therefore, to see only the Truth of Innocence in “others,” to Forgive by not being able to see guilt in “others.” By seeing the Reality beyond “others” rather than illusion, which means not seeing in the one Child or any of its projections an “other” at all. 

Which is what the Child should have detected in its shadow-reflection: no “other” but only an illusory part of itself. Forgiveness corrects error. This is why the focus of ACIM is on Forgiveness. One individual truly Forgiving.

The individual’s task is done when the many are one

The individual’s task is done:

  • When it has removed the last obstacle to Forgiveness, the last trace of self-delusion and mis-identity from the Child’s unconscious and still dreaming mind.
  • When it “sees” in an “other” its one Child Self, not a shadow-reflection, not a competitor, predator, prey, mate, or any other kind of opposite.
  • When it sees in its one Child Self light and Innocence instead of a phantasmagoria of darkness and guilt, Reality-Truth instead of a reflection of unreality-appearances.
  • When, in Relationship with its Guide, the Holy Spirit, it has thus prepared safe entry for awareness of Relationship with Parents Mind-Love, the purity and perfection of Psyche, of Oneness. Into a now uncorrupted Child’s Mind, uncontaminated by any trace of its shadow code, and gotten out of the way.
  • When it has thus demonstrated competence in the exercise of Free Will.
  • When it has learned and grown to maturity and its training is complete, forever the Child beloved of its Parents but in its responsibility no longer a Child.

The individual has allowed the Reality of who it is, the Child’s identity, to present itself, spontaneously, of its own Free Will, to its Parents. To be recognized by its Parents Consciousness-Love and welcomed back Home. To be awakened from the dream, the self-deception, and restored to its role, its work and play, in Creation. The individual Child’s task is done when, with the awakening of the one Child, the many disappear. The dream and all its occupants, all its apparitions, ends. Including the individual Child projection.

True Forgiveness is the act of turning over responsibility for restoration of Consciousness, of Peace, Truth, and Sanity, to the only source capable of accomplishing it. To Logic that defines, governs, and protects the harmony of Everything. That ensures that no trace of impossibility, the unreal, can invade, disrupt, and contaminate the purity, peace, perfection, and Interconnectedness of Reality. Our Protector. Our Friend. We, the projections and replications of a tormented, split mind, are the intrusion.

Timing and the principle of Alignment 

The principle that determines the timing of Forgiveness-Awakening is the principle of Alignment, its definition so synonymous – so closely aligned -- with Logic that it can be thought of as Logic itself. If Logic is Definition, then it is also Alignment.

The loss of Consciousness projected an unreality whose components-circumstances, expressing illogic, are out of alignment and therefore need Logic to put them back into alignment. Logic is getting it right: the context, purpose, and meaning of our circumstances before we manage circumstances to achieve our purpose. Before we try to do what’s right and do it right. Alignment is the all-important task of getting it right.

Science is but an attempt to figure out alignment that itself needs to be in alignment. If it fails in its mission, as it does, then it is a failure of Logic, which it is. The dominant paradigm of every major field of inquiry – science, philosophy, psychology, and theology -- is failing to get it right. Because in its mindless rush to get to Reason, it bypasses Logic, which it doesn’t understand. If it doesn’t understand Logic it can’t explain anything. Can’t Understand anything. Logic is thoroughness: everything in its time and place. The oriental tea ceremony: no corner-cutting, no shortcuts. We now have the explanation for human folly. The answer to why shit happens.

Alignment is Order, Peace, Harmony, Unity, Community. It is Justice, Fairness, Balance, Equality. Revolution against rule by injustice is collective attempt to establish rule by justice. – a realignment-refitting of relations of power, society, economy. Relationships in unreality are done by alignment in the moment and undone when changing circumstances and their contexts undo alignment. In each case – disorder, injustice, disconnection – healing requires Logic.

Circumstances reveal purpose-meaning when their Logic-pattern – their alignment -- is revealed. What is the timing of Awakening through Forgiveness? When will the Child correct error and regain Consciousness? What pattern are we looking for? Alignment of the circumstances of the Story of the Child. Circumstances that reflect progress in the Child’s training will be decisive. A Course in Miracles teaches that it’s a matter of choice when to learn its lesson but not whether. There are no shortcuts.

Must humanity experience mass extinction? Will it be necessary that groups-nations first come together in shared purpose to manage their natural habitat? To preserve world peace. Is humanity – Child the many – destined to experience death on a global scale as well as individually, i. e. to experience extinction as a species before its training is complete? These seem more relevant considerations than the alignment of stars and planets, but astrology may in some way reflect the Child’s progress nonetheless because it is based on the principle of alignment. 

Replacing time-mortality with Now-eternity. The Holy Spirit’s vision of Logic will replace the “vision” of the body’s eyes at the invitation of the individual / Free Choice, liberated from self-delusion. This will set in motion a chain reaction in the sequence of Logic that necessarily replaces time-mortality with the Holy Instant, with eternal Now that replaces the illusion-dream with Reality-Truth.

Free Choice is the key to liberation. The shadow-code is the archenemy of choice. The precise point when the Child Free Choice overturns captivity by the code-virus is when an individual Child projection chooses to identify with one Child instead of the shadow-code. Free Choice is therefore the essential cause that sets off the logical chain reaction of events that produce Forgiveness-Awakening. Further confirmation, if confirmation is needed, that the Child’s training in unreality centers on the exercise of Free Will just as it centers on Free Choice in Reality-Creation.

The first object of Forgiveness is liberation. To identify with one Child is to identify with Free Choice, independence not captivity, with liberating Mind-Love, the Child’s true identity. Identification with Mind-Awareness plus Love-Freedom is to identify with Reality-Creation, with spontaneity-Now, the opposite of the shadow’s captivity. The object of Forgiveness is therefore liberation from the shadow-code’s captivity.

Self-awareness equates with Forgiveness. The individual’s choice of Self-awareness is the act that triggers and authenticates correction of error. Self-awareness equates with Forgiveness because it obviates any possibility of recognizing an “other.”

How will Awakening be experienced? What becomes of the universe?

Awakening will be imperceptible, The dynamics of mind-change that affect the individual whole Child will simultaneously affect its entire environment, resulting in an identical experience of imperceptible transformations. Imperceptible because replacement of unconsciousness by Consciousness can’t be detected by unconsciousness that’s only able to detect shadow-unreality.

Awakening will be gentle and painless. Spontaneous insight is experienced as a pre-existing fact because unconsciousness can’t detect fact-Truth. Can’t detect the workings of change through Intuition guided by the Holy Spirit, by the vision of Logic. Consciousness can’t recognize the unreality of unconsciousness. The Child’s experience of awakening will therefore be a gentle, imperceptible transformation from unreality to Reality. So unthreatening, painless, and familiar that the Child is unaware of it.

The experience will be the exact opposite of the wrenching dislocation that the corrupted Child-mind imagines it to be, fears it to be, and therefore resists. The exact opposite of how the Child experienced the loss of Consciousness.

The universe will retract into Child-Mind. The illusory universe will retract back into Child-Mind that it never left with reversal of the illusory-insane projection. It will transform through replacement of self-deception by Self-awareness, the reversal of error in the Child’s Mind. And thus the dream of spacetime-matter will end.

Clinging to the dream: the choice whether to “exist”

The individual has done its job, has truly Forgiven, when it not only gets out of the way but freely, joyfully, and spontaneously, chooses not to “exist.” To relinquish its “specialness” and all the other trappings of captivity to a chimera, a substitute for all that was lost to unconsciousness: a string of worthless beads. Flickering shadows echoing disembodied voices in a darkened cave. A rip-off, a joke.

A humanity captive to the illusion, clinging to its worthless beads, seeks to perpetuate itself by colonizing other planets. Should it? Should slave states in the antebellum South have been allowed to extend slavery into new states? Does earth want humanity to stick around, or might it have second thoughts? As it heads inexorably toward what might be as bad or worse than the Permian “Great Dying," 252 million years ago, when 70-80 percent of land-ocean species went extinct because of global warming, might it be forgiven for thinking good riddance?

Do we really want to “exist”? Must we “exist”? Do we still have a choice?

1

A headlong rush toward mass extinction

The most obvious, plentiful, commonplace, and deeply rooted expression of the Child’s shadow code “opposite,” in its projections-replications’ violated psyche, is competition. The purpose of competition is to eliminate competition – to eliminate itself. The same ultimate objective of opposite. The essence of its illogic, its insanity. A thing that strives of necessity toward its own extinction is inherently, by definition, illogical. It is illogic. And its pervasive, pernicious influence with the Child replicons’ psyche is evident in this illusory world’s headlong rush toward mass extinction.

Competition is so deeply seated in the brain that only a supernatural force can dislodge it: the limbic system at the top of the body’s spine and at the base of the brain. Fight-or-flight instinct that links primitive emotions to beasts. Fear, rage, hatred: the mindless animal drive to kill. The lust, the craving, for death. The part that hasn’t evolved while the “civilizing” brain above it has evolved.

The grand distraction

What is competition if not a contest between natural adversaries, competitors for the essentials of life – food, clothing, shelter, mates – to establish who’s faster, stronger, and more gifted at survival in a competitive environment? What are games of competition if not re-enactments of the real thing, with consequences that are psychological if not lethal: the illusion of “winning?” The shadow code’s ultimate trump card over attempts to restore sanity with the prospect of cooperation in shared purpose, of peace and harmony. To express fulfillment from wills fitting together instead of locking horns in incompatibility.

Who better to personify the trump card of “winning” than an apparition named Trump whose mind is so thoroughly captive to its opposite, to competition, that it can’t conceive of not “winning”? Who personifies the sainted Vince Lombardi’s credo: “winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” As if losing in fact or in theory were impossible. Opposite coded to destroy itself makes a certainty of losing, the truth not of Lombardi’s credo but its opposite. The truth of competition seated in the reptilian brain is that losing is the only thing.

And what is it when it’s ornamented with the shining allurements of winning – acceptance, belonging, achievement, competence, wholeness, specialness, exoneration, vindication, worth – but a grand distraction? An entertainment designed to keep the Child’s self-projections, its viral replications, from understanding their situation: wayward bodies frightened, vulnerable, disoriented, abandoned to their own devices in a precarious environment of isolated, separated objects. From exposing the deception and recovering sanity.

The triumphant cry of the loser

What is more “normal” than competition among self-interests for “supremacy” and at the same time abnormal – motivation that condemns its practitioners to the tragedy of the commons? It’s not enough that skills are honed in competitive games if the same skills are then used to pursue unfettered self-interest until no self is left standing, for that is its object. “Losing is everything and the only thing” can’t be the credo of an entire species or an individual if its outcome is where the shadow code comes from: impossibility. The impossibility of nothingness and the nothingness of impossibility. The delusion of losing that crowns itself with a triumphant cry: “I won!”

Yet this is what is manifest on a planet whose inhabitants are driving themselves to extinction. John Kenneth Galbraith’s classic description of capitalism: “A stomach that digests itself.” An impossibility, inherently unstable. The “gift” of the Child’s mistaken identity, its opposite, gift-wrapped in harmless “competition.”

Fill the Colosseum with fools and let the games begin!

One source of information about Reality-Creation

What the Child Knows in Reality, how it “sees”-Understands, is with the vision of Logic / Logos-God. Seeing with the vision of Logic is how the Child Understands its context, its role, purpose and meaning in specific circumstances. Nothing can be correctly seen-Understood without Logic. Logic is the eyes and ears of all Selves, all Creators-Creations in Reality. It is their senses. They sense Reality-Creation through Logic / Logos-God.

This is how and why Logic / Logos-God connects-functions through Creations grown on the Child’s Parents’ plane of Creation. This is how it governs Everything with Laws of cause-effect / Necessity. How it manages roles and relationships once they’re defined: not by directing or controlling Selves-Creations but by enabling and empowering them to see-sense their contexts. To Understand what causes imply from contexts-circumstances about what’s to be decided and done to produce effects.

Logic is the only source of information about Reality-Creation that it governs and manages, that it supports, enables and empowers. The means of sharing this information to enable Selves functioning in Reality-Creation is their senses supplied by Logic. Logic is Logos-God Source that connects information-circumstances of contexts with Selves-Creations’ senses. In unreality, bodies’ brains connecting material “facts” with bodies’ senses to perform a parallel function derived from the function of Logic in Reality.

Can the Child’s self-misidentification be corrected?

In Reality, information acquired through Logic vision-senses is Knowledge. In unreality “information” acquired through bodies’ senses is perception based on appearances that are misleading. Perception based on misleading appearances is misinformation that feeds misperception. Judgments-choices based on misperception are misjudgment / incorrect choices. They are error.

In unreality, bodies’ sensory perception substitutes the wrong-reverse vantage point for the vision of Logic – i.e. illogic. The self-deluded Child then knows and sees-understands nothing. This is a consequence of the harm done by the Child’s mis-identification with the original “other,” its shadow-reflection, the non-being code of victimhood, fear, guilt, and hate.

The Child’s self-misidentification was the second of two events that interrupted the Child’s role in Creation and led to the unreality of spacetime-matter. The first event, its loss of Consciousness, was a system event rather than an error on the part of the Child, for which The Story of the Child proposes a rational explanation.

The second event is explained in A Course in Miracles (ACIM) as a mistaken choice – “error” that the Child can correct by “choosing again.” Choosing, that is, to discard the illusory voice of the ego and listen, instead, to the Holy Spirit. Neither ACIM nor The Story of the Child impugns the motives of the Child with intentional wrongdoing or carelessness that would contradict its Perfection and Innocence, that would justify a projection or sentence of guilt.

Mistaken identity occurred without sense or senses

The unconscious Child, not seeing-understanding with the senses-vision of Logic, deprived of it by its loss of Consciousness, as yet had no senses with which to perceive or misperceive. As yet had no body with senses. Was not yet dreaming a projected illusion of spacetime-matter with a dreaming mind’s “consciousness.” But the Child didn’t need senses or dream “consciousness” for its own shadow-reflection code to be “detected.” For its coded “response” to the desperate Child’s cries for “saving” to be “recognized.” The unconscious Child’s mistaken identity, its self-delusion, occurred without senses. It occurred without the vision of Logic or the “vision” of body. 

The “presence” of the Child’s shadow-opposite was an intrusion not through the front door of Consciousness but through the back door of unconsciousness. It was detection by a state of mind unfamiliar to Child – unconsciousness. That had the capacity to detect illusion-unreality because it had the capacity to detect itself. Beginning with the unconscious mind’s shadow-reflection, the Child-Being's opposite.

This is the flip side of Conscious Mind’s capacity to see-detect itself -- Reality. The capacity of unconscious mind was derived from Conscious Mind just as the code of non-being is derived from Being. It didn’t require the body’s senses.

Mind’s capacity to detect Reality or unreality is a prerequisite of senses both of Logic and body. This is because its source is the Logic of Reality; is the Laws of cause and effect / Necessity whose content is provided by Logic. The Logic of Reality, subject to Laws / Necessity, requires that impossibility-opposites be paired with Possibility-Creations, shadows with Hosts, dark sides with Light Sides, unreality-illusion with Reality-Truth. Provided that impossibility not share the Reality of Possibility. Not share the Life of Creation. Not share in Being but only in the logical implication of its opposite, non-being.

Not on the Parents’ plane of Creation where unconsciousness-impossibility has no logical place, but on the Child’s plane of Free Choice, where it does. Both the Child’s Consciousness and its Free Choice require the capacity to distinguish between Reality-Truth and unreality-illusion, Host and opposite. Its competence to perform its role in Creation depends on this capacity, and it was its absence, attributable to the state of the system that was then possible, that caused its loss of Consciousness.

The only act of Mind that was possible

Unconscious Child mind’s capacity to “detect” unreality initially enabled it to detect its shadow reflection. Its mis-identified shadow self was then enabled through its derived non-being code to detect the projected dream of spacetime-matter through its viral-replication bodies’ senses.

The Child’s loss of Consciousness, its descent into the illusory state of unconsciousness, occasioned instant detection of illusion -- its shadow-reflection -- without the senses of Logic or bodies. In this disabled and disempowered state it sought guidance that it couldn’t provide itself. It turned to its opposite non-being code, an imaginary “other.” A self-delusion. The only potential source of “help” that unconsciousness could detect, and its code responded in the only way it could. It responded with a reverse-engineered “rationale” for being “saved:” the bizarre psychology of victimhood-guilt, the nonsensical “thought system” of the ego described by ACIM.

Child unconscious mind, with its capacity to detect illusion shadow opposites and lacking Conscious-logical Mind’s capacity to recognize Reality-Truth, to think and Freely Choose, thus responded with the only act of mind it was capable of: projection. It didn’t “choose” its wrong identity or its rationale of salvation but projected itself – its identity – onto its shadow code. Its code, a virus, then directed its host’s captive mind to project its insane dream of victimhood-guilt – our universe of bodies, spacetime and matter.

All of this happened while Child unconscious mind was flying blind. While it had no senses to guide its “thinking” that had stopped with loss of Consciousness. Projection (1) onto shadow code, (2) onto dream, occurred without the Child’s capacity to think or to sense, to see-Understand what it was doing. 

The Child became an instrument for making unreality real

The Child’s misidentification – a self-delusion since it could not be “deluded” by its own shadow-reflection -- was predetermined by its loss of Consciousness. Because unconsciousness deprived it of the capacity to see-sense and to think-reason. Restoring its capacity to sense and to think would have been a prime motivating force behind the Child’s yielding to its shadow code’s apparent “offer” of a substitute “reality” with a substitute mind and senses, i.e. with brains and bodies.

Loss of Consciousness thus impaired the Child’s judgment-Understanding in two ways: (1) by removing its capacity to think and to see-sense while (2) simultaneously enabling the Child to detect shadow opposites-reflections and to project. I.e. to imagine that it could project its thoughts and feelings out of mind onto “external” objects – the dream of spacetime-matter, “others”-bodies – to separate thoughts and feelings from their source, a logical impossibility. An impossibility that Conscious mind could not even be aware of let alone accomplish.

Unconsciousness was a trap engineered by the Child’s opposite, its shadow programmed by its derived non-being code, to take the unconscious child, like a fly caught in a spider web, into captivity. The Child’s disabled mind was thus converted into a perfect instrument:

  • for shadow code to use to animate its reverse-engineered version of Reality, the unreality of spacetime-matter.
  • for a virus that’s taken a living cell captive to replicate itself in bodies.

The Child’s Conscious Mind and its Free Will had nothing to do with it. 

Where was the Holy Spirit? 

Where was the Child’s connection to Logic through its Memory of Reality, the Holy Spirit? Why could it not guide the unconscious Child away from its self-delusion?

The Voice of the Holy Spirit couldn’t be triggered and heard until projection took “effect.” Until the shadow code took the Child’s mind captive and the deed was done. For that would be the only evidence that there was an opposite “voice” to counter. Until then, the Child was “engaged” with an impossibility, in a state of unconsciousness but not yet dreaming, without the means of “choosing” either one.

The Holy Spirit responds when called upon for guidance when to do so cannot compromise Free Will. “Saving” the Child from its predicament, deprived of Free Will by blind, unthinking unconsciousness, would have betrayed both the purpose of the Child and the Holy Spirit. Its presence had to wait until the Child, corrupted by its self-delusion, the imaginary “other,” projected the dream and occupied it. Until the dreaming Child, who is Free Choice / Love in Reality, equipped by its dream with body’s senses, had the capacity to sense and think with independent, albeit impaired, judgment. To hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit and to respond to it.

Again, at the point where the Child self-deluded and mis-identified with its shadow-opposite, its non-being code was the only source of “help” that its unconscious mind, senseless and unthinking, could detect. 

To act with sovereignty and integrity

The self-delusion was an algorithm built into loss of Consciousness, a series of programmed steps that necessarily accompany this state-event. The algorithm can be reversed by Free Choice exercised by Child through maturing, through Learning and Growth. It can do so in its state of dreaming with bodies’ senses guided by Logic through Memory / Holy Spirit, by undoing and reversing the non-being shadow code’s deceptions.

One individual can undo the illusion of Child-the-many, of victimhood, fear, guilt, and hate:

  • provided that it’s connected to Logic and the Child’s Memory through the Holy Spirit
  • provided that its mind is thinking with Real Thoughts guided by Real Senses, the vision of Logic, that see-Understand the Reality of One Child Self-Innocence.
  • provided that its Self-awareness and capacity to Freely Choose are thus restored.

One individual, having regained through Free Choice and the guidance of the Holy Spirit what the Child lost with loss of Consciousness -- the capacity to think, to see-sense Reality, – can reverse the mis-identification, restore the Child’s Self-Awareness, and end the dream.

In the individual’s undoing of the dream, Logos-God would be enabling choice with powers and abilities of mind lost to unconsciousness. It would not in any sense be controlling the Child’s choice. It would still be the Child’s choice to use its capacity to think-sense / see-Understand offered through the Holy Spirit. Even when the Child is enabled with Real Thoughts and Senses, it would still have to Freely Choose to recognize One Child-Innocent. To act autonomously, with sovereignty and integrity, and not mechanically. In sharp contrast with the Child’s self-delusion which was mechanical; it was not Free-Conscious choice. Evidence that unconsciousness is captivity, the necessary prelude to its object, the projected, insane illusion of appearances -- spacetime-matter, the bodies that sense it, and the brains-minds deceived by it.

In the being and doing of Free Will. . . 

An act of mind coerced by circumstances can nevertheless be reversed if the mind that committed it has Free Will, is Free Will, and therefore cannot forfeit Free Will. All of this applies to the Child. Being Free Choice -- the Child of Father-Mind Choice married to Mother-Love Freedom -- means that every act of the Child is in some form, to some degree, Choice. For this is the essence of its role in Creation. A role in turn hard-wired by Logic / Logos-God, by the Laws-Necessity of Reality, into the purpose, meaning, and Worth of Life – of Creation.

Any act by mind so defined, so charged, remains in its essence Choice that can be re-chosen at the discretion of mind when it has regained discretion. Even in a context that depends on Intuition and Logic extracted from Memory to access the Truth: inside the unconscious mind’s dream. Where it was when ACIM was written and Jesus urged its students to “choose again.”

If the intrusion of an alien psychology of victimhood into an unconscious, defenseless mind was a theft of Free Choice, mind that is Free Choice, coming to its senses, can return to the offense and take it back. Though The Story of the Child acknowledges that unconsciousness was a trap, and the Child’s “choice” of the wrong “self” was by no means free, its Logic and the Logic of ACIM speak as one on this essential point.

The Child has both the Necessity and the capacity to “choose again.”

We are to judge for ourselves

What does all this mean for us? In its interpretation and application of ACIM’s lesson, The Story of the Child has stood for independent judgment. It has expressed itself in the spirit of Jesus’ teaching, that in choosing again we are to use our own Judgment, our own gifts and talents, and be guided by Logic. In the being and doing of Free Will, we are to think, feel, and judge for ourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The great philosophical divide: “realism” vs. “idealism”

The great philosophical divide is between those who do (“idealists”) and those who don’t (“realists”) want to replace the unreality of replication / disconnection-separation:

  • illogic-insanity / self-delusion
  • lawlessness-chaos / opposites-contradictions / competition-disunity
  • captivity / conformance / oppression
  • isolated bodies-matter
  • appearances-deceptions
  • misunderstanding / projection-blame / guilt-fear / victimhood
  • punishment-retribution / conflict-violence / destruction
  • uncreativity / ignorance / stagnation
  • invalidation-disempowerment / worthlessness
  • non-being / mortality

with the Reality of Oneness / Relationship-Interconnection:

  • Logic-sanity / Self-Awareness / Knowledge
  • Governance-Order / Harmony / Sharing-Community
  • Freedom / Free Will / Expression
  • Interconnected Minds-Selves
  • Reality-Truth / Honesty-Integrity
  • Understanding / Love / Innocence / Psyche-Soul Harmlessness
  • Creation / Learning / Growth / Progress-Development
  • Affirmation-Empowerment / Worth
  • Being / Life-Eternity

In the philosophical divide “idealists” committed to the Reality of Oneness consider themselves the true “Realists.” To “idealists” “realists” are the true self-deluded “unrealists.” To “realists” it is the reverse.

This author’s perspective belongs with historic idealists who consider themselves true realists. The Story of the Child is therefore written from the perspective of one Child-mind convinced by Logic of its Reality. If it earns-deserves “authority” it is not by virtue of the qualifications of its author or the subjectivity or objectivity of his perspective. It is by virtue solely of its internal Logic.

Alignment with A Course in Miracles

It does not seek identification with any philosophical or religious thought. But it does claim inspiration from the Logic of Jesus in A Course in Miracles. Any contradiction in the Logic of The Story of the Child with ACIM is to be resolved in favor of ACIM.

The Story of the Child is not intended to be in any sense an alteration of, or improvement on, ACIM. Though it shares its basic purpose with ACIM – explanation to help with Understanding-Forgiveness and thus with awakening – it does not share the same scope. The Story of the Child is a conscious attempt to extend the scope of ACIM’s Logic back in the Sequence of Logic from an act by a mind unconscious that produced the dream of unreality to the event that explains the mind’s loss of consciousness.

It hopes thereby to provide a foundation for Understanding context that will support logical interpretations of what happened and why. So that attempts to explain, Understand, and correct human behavior driven by this event and its consequences will cease conflicting with Logic. Will cease perpetuating error and putting off the unhappy Child’s awakening from its nightmare. So that future attempts will succeed because they align with Logic. 

Is this relevant? Is it “practical?”

Tell me that our world isn’t spiraling into another cycle of authoritarian horrors, lawlessness, delusion, and destruction. Tell me that the “optimism” of “realists” is warranted against all the evidence that the unreasoning, insensitive, self-absorbed children that we are refuse to grow up. That our world is tending toward freedom and compassion instead of more oppression and cruelty.

Tell me that the “optimism” of “realists” deserves center stage instead of the countless victims of self-delusion who don’t share their “optimism.” Who know better. Whose voice will be heard when the “optimism” of “realists” makes certain that there are no voices left. To what is the “optimism” of “realists” attributable? To happenstance: to the fact that their misguided “realism” – their self-delusion -- hasn’t, so far, made them victims.

Tell me that our fields of inquiry – science, philosophy, psychology, theology – have good explanations that all add up to Understanding. So that the voice of self-delusion that’s got the field to itself won’t turn this century into a worse horror show than the last. Or have we forgotten? Two world wars, the Great Depression, the cold war and its threat of nuclear annihilation. More pandemics and the greatest horror of them all: Anthropocene. Mass extinction dismissed as “climate change” in the popular imagination so that infantile, self-absorbed children, who refuse to grow up, won’t be inconvenienced.

What The Story of the Child will show

If the “explanations” offered by the dominant paradigms of our fields of inquiry brought us to this, are they “relevant?” Are they “practical?” What The Story of the Child will show is that they are neither. Their “realism” is dead wrong, and they have brought us to this. They are accountable. They are the issue, not the Logic of another perspective. If they can’t explain the reality behind appearances then let them explain why their veneration of appearances has failed.

I would meet you upon this honestly.

Mama Mallard’s road to nowhere

The Joker’s version of “reality” is the exact opposite of Reality. A departure from Truth that couldn’t be more radical. The biggest of Big Lies. Stunning in its enormity.

Yet the traumatized and dreaming Child was taken in, of course because it had no choice. Not really, considering the context. So, its projections and the Joker virus’s replications all follow along like ducklings, quacking their way across the road behind mama, unaware that they’ve been duped. That they and the road and everything else are a figment of their imaginations put there by a mistake. By the unconscious Child mistaking in the darkness its own reflection – a shadow – for an “other.” Crying out in pain and terror for help from its opposite. Whose offer to “help” came from a lifeless recording, a code of non-being derived from the Child’s Being.

A code that can’t help but “respond” with everything opposite to Reality and Truth, upside down and inside out. From the Big Truth of Reality to the Big Lie of unreality. A pattern obvious to the sensibility of Logic but obviously not to the insensibility of illogic. One would think that even a self-deluded Child, absorbed in a dream, would eventually catch on, but, so far, it hasn’t. Mama Mallard keeps leading her ducklings across the road and her ducklings keep following, even when it’s obvious that their “journey” is taking them nowhere in circles and it isn’t safe.

What the emperor doesn’t want to know

Why hasn’t the Child caught on? It’s not because the Truth hasn’t surfaced in various forms – art, music and literature, philosophy, psychology and theology, and now even in science, the last bastion of delusion. Many have heard, since at least the sixth century BCE, that their experience of “life” is a strange dream – an illusion -- and the Child only needs to awaken to return to Reality. But the message hasn’t gotten through. They’re not listening.

As horrific as its nightmare is for the victims of the Big Lie, they seem to fear the Big Truth even more. So much so that they’ve become an army of opposition against it. So deep is their self-delusion that its protection from attack has found its way into the core of their DNA, their very identity. The shadow code of non-being has substituted itself for the genetic code of their Being. If only one should speak to the Truth – should mention that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes – he might be put to death. In fact, one of them did years ago and what happened? He was crucified.

Why? What makes a simple statement of fact, the Logic and Reason, the Worth of Truth, come across as a hostile act? An attack? As an unforgivable breach of faith? A violation of social and moral order more threatening than irrational disorder that invades neighborhoods of schools, churches, malls, and grocery stores with homicidal maniacs armed with lethal weapons. This is sanity? This is ”normal?”

What’s so funny? That the Truth is radical

What makes the Truth so hard for the self-deluded to swallow is it’s radical. The Child’s opposite, a lifeless, mindless, loveless code, convinces it that unreal is real and wrong is right, and the Child is OK with that. The Child is OK with hanging out with false “friends,” adolescents wishful-thinking that smoking won’t kill them. But when a real friend approaches with the Truth, that there’s been a mistake and it will kill them, that’s not OK. Seeing is believing, the Child says. Even if the body’s “eyes” can only see the mistake. Even if the body is just a replication of the shadow code that replaced the thinking and Logic of Mind and invented the mistake.

Seeing the Truth, seeing Reality, is too much of a stretch, too much of an effort, if it requires abandoning bodies with eyes that can’t see for Logic with vision that can see. The ultimate in radical – coded viral instructions for the opposite of Being, the opposite of Life, Mind, Love, and Soul – has convinced its unaware, self-deluded host that its opposite is radical. And so crucifixion is too good for anyone who presumes to disagree. The embodiments of the self-delusion, the virus's replications and their senses, have spoken. They’ve produced a joke.

The Child’s new lord and master, the Joker, whose one genuine talent is appearances, perverts every sign of Logic and sanity into a joke whose malign humor feeds off the delusion of fools. The Truth is radical. The occupants of Plato’s Cave can’t be persuaded that their Cave master, the Joker, can possibly be wrong. The Cave master who invented the Cave, its occupants the replicates of a virus, the original Child-the-many “group.” The Cave master who invented “society,” with its hare-brained “rules” that encourage and facilitate mayhem, rules with absolute authority, above the law. And who could possibly question it?

It only takes one individual

But it doesn’t take an imaginary “group,” a mass-ideology “movement,” to assault fortress denial. All it takes is a single replication of the virus -- one human -- to reach the Child beyond the Cave, to reach its Memory beyond the dream, with the Truth. One mind gifted with real thoughts, one self gifted with real senses, to see through the ruse. To understand and to share its understanding with one “other.” In an act of Understanding that recognizes “other” as self. Not duped by insanity into mistaken identity but guided by Logic into recognition of correct identity. Not isolated, separated, mortal bodies, apparitions that come and go, but one Soul of Mind married to Love, living and connecting in the unity, the Force and eternity, of Now.

Is it possible? What is the premise, the step in the Sequence of Logic that launched all of Creation, that drives its Creativity with the Energy, the exuberance of Life? Possibility! What is every aspect of the Joker’s dark lie designed to do? To close off possibility. To hide it. To shut down Creation, stifle Creativity, and replace it with nihilism, with destruction, impossibility. Who will “win” between Logic and a joke when there can’t even be a contest between Reality and illusion? Who will win between the Child’s real identity and its delusion? Of course it’s possible! How could it not be?

Far out!

What’s “radical:” the Joker struggling repeatedly to “unite” all the occupants of its Cave – all of humanity – against the Truth? Against the Child’s awakening? With one flawed, spirit-crushing ideology after another? Or the Child being awakened by just one of its projections – one individual – who listens to the spontaneous voice of Logic, earns and accepts its gifts, and freely chooses to accompany it back home? Not to be “chosen” but to choose of its own Free Will. For that’s the Child’s true identity that will restore its place in Reality: Free Choice without which nothing can have Worth. Not even Life itself, Creation itself.

How can anything have Worth if it isn’t earned and freely chosen? What is the purpose of the Child’s immature projections, in this morass of contradictions, confusion, and pain, if it isn’t to exercise their free will, to grow up, and to earn their way back Home?

Who says so? Not unreasoning, authoritarian “faith,” one of the many masks worn by the Joker, but Logic. Logic says so. And someday, the mind, heart, and soul of one individual, undistracted by the body, will take it in, the Truth of who the Child is, who we are, not the delusion. And it will be far out. It will be radical.

Six elemental questions 

Explanation wants us to answer questions in pursuit of Understanding. Metaphysics wants us to answer questions in pursuit of Reality-Truth behind appearances. Both require that we do so in an orderly way according to the Sequence of Logic. Rationally, using Reason to employ both thought and feeling, Mind and Love, to analyze, discriminate, evaluate, and judge.

The immediate issue that Logic’s Explanation and Metaphysics want us to address is how to redirect human thought-feeling:

  • away from conflict, deception, and insanity toward peace, truth, and sanity
  • away from cyclical breakdowns in collective and individual relationships that threaten humanity with extinction, toward relationships with shared purpose that endure.

A broader issue that Logic’s Explanation and Metaphysics want us to address is the context that gives purpose and meaning to “life” as we know it and its world of spacetime-matter: is it part of the solution or is it the problem? If it’s the wrong context is there a right context – another Reality that does have the solution? That provides answers that work. That offer the hope of possibility, grown from the bottom up instead of the despair of impossibility, the unchanging status quo imposed from the top down, by authoritarian “realism.”

Logic’s Explanation and Metaphysics ask us to answer six elemental questions:

  • Who are we?
  • What are we doing to one another?
  • Where are we doing it?
  • Why are we doing it?
  • How can we stop doing it?
  • When will we stop doing it?

Who are we?

An answer to Who are we? is self-delusion: projections by an unconscious-dreaming Child-mind and replications of its shadow-reflection, an imaginary “other” defined by a lifeless code of non-being, a derivative of Being. A parasitic-viral opposite that goes by its preferred name here, the “Joker, because all of its deceptions in our made-up world are perversions of the Truth. They are all jokes that derive their humor from the self-delusion of fools.

We are illusory embodiments of the Child’s shadow-reflection “other” meant to conceal the Reality-Truth of who we really are: Mind-Love Life-Being, the Child of Mind-Love Life-Being Parents, who exist in another Reality. We the many, projections of the One dreaming Child, even in unreality, are Free Will combined with Psyche-Soul Oneness-Innocence. Our defining Relationship that affirms and Reciprocates the Relationships between Mind-Love Parents and Parents-Child in Reality. We are Possibility. We are not non-being lifeless, soulless, mindless-loveless, impossibility.

What are we doing to one another?

An answer to What are we doing to one another? is misusing our differences. Instead of using them to cross boundaries and make common cause in Creation we are misusing them to justify condemnation and punishment, retribution and retaliation, victimhood’s vengeance, in the cause of miscreation. Instead of using them to learn and grow toward the maturity of Understanding, compassion, peace, and unity we misuse them to preserve a status quo of unawareness, intolerance, conflict, and disunity. Instead of using them to promote healing, mindfulness, and Love, to build character and values, we use them to promote mindless separation -- to target one another with fear, guilt, and hate.

Where are we doing it?

An answer to Where are we doing it? is in the unreality-dream that is our illusory universe of spacetime-matter. A dualistic “reality” that can’t be Real, that requires abandoning bodies’ sensory perception, abandoning the disingenuous, hollow philosophy of “realism” and choosing another guide. An authentic guide or muse by any name – Apollo, Holy Spirit, poetic genius, soulmate, divine afflatus, whatever – through insight from Mind-Intuition.

Why are we doing it?

An answer to Why are we doing it? is to eliminate “others.” To attain an unattainable state of resolution-peace without opposites. To execute the Joker’s perversion of Logic’s, or Logos-God’s, striving for eternal Perfection-Peace without opposites, without contradictions or impossibilities, through reconciliation of Everything in harmony under the Laws of Cause and Effect, under Necessity. I.e. through Understanding. The Joker’s perversion is getting rid of opposites by getting rid of possibilities, Laws and Necessity, and Logic. By getting rid of Logos-God. An answer to What are we doing to one another? is choosing the Joker’s perversion rather than the Ideal role-modeled for us by Logic.

How can we stop doing it?

An answer to How can we stop doing it? is to reverse-retract the self-delusion, our mistaken identity – the Joker, our own shadow-reflection, a Schmoe punching bag of sin, guilt, condemnation, fear, and hatred, an imaginary “other” – and choose another guide. A guide from the Memory of who we really are -- from our Parents Mind married to Love -- to help us align with Logic in the exercise of Free Choice to regain self-awareness. To lead us back Home to our Temenos in Reality, where there’s Innocence, Trust, playfulness, and work to do with real Purpose and Meaning.

When will we stop doing it?

An answer to When will we stop doing it? is when the mind-love of one individual Child projection / Joker replication perceives with Real senses, thinks with Real thoughts, and “sees,” i.e. Understands, the Reality-Truth of who the “other” really is: our One Child-Self Innocent, not the many Joker-replications guilt. Deserving of Love, not fear-blame, anger-hate, punishment-vengeance.

An answer is when one dreamed individual, enabled and empowered with self-awareness:

  • brings its self-awareness back to the unconscious-dreaming Child-mind through its Memory.
  • brings the Child back to its Parents’ Consciousness, its mind changed from the self-delusion of guilt and insanity to the self-awareness of Innocence and sanity.
  • brings the Child back to awakening from its dream of unreality-untruth by being recognized and welcomed back to Reality-Truth and Creation by Consciousness. By its Parents: the Life-Being, the Psyche-Soul, the Oneness and Innocence, of Mind married to Love.

We will stop doing it when the Child’s return to self-awareness, the end of its self-delusion, returns it to the Reality of Now -- to eternity-infinity, and to the end of the illusion of time, the illusion of the temporal, of mortality and death.

We will stop doing it when three steps have been taken in the orderly Sequence of Logic:

  1. One individual Child projection-replication freely chooses self-awareness and rejects self-delusion.
  2. The dreaming Child regains self-awareness through its mind’s connection with the self-aware dreamed individual’s changed mind, freely choosing to reject self-delusion. Thus will the dream end – our senseless world of bodies, spacetime, and matter and who knows how many other universes.
  3. The Child’s return to self-awareness – to Psyche-Soul Innocence and qualification for re-entry to Reality-Creation – is recognized by its Parents-Consciousness.

What we the Child are really asked to do: Grow up

The Child restored to Reality-Creation, having experienced unconsciousness and its dream of unreality-untruth, is now aware of impossibilities-opposites as well as possibilities. Is now familiar with the database of Choice to be navigated by the Child’s unique Gift, its role in Creativity, Free Choice, in the Creation, sharing, affirmation, empowerment, and Reciprocation of Worth, the Purpose and Meaning of the Life and Love of Creation.

Thus will the real purpose of the unconscious Child’s dream and its correction have been served. Its maturation toward the competence it needs to do its job in Creation. What Logic’s Explanation and Metaphysics really ask of us: to grow up.

Hidden from Reality

The mind of the “realist” entertains us with the appearance of intellectual honesty and analytical brilliance in every way but one: the reality and truth of Logic. With adamance that borders on hysteria, it refuses to follow the path of thinking:

  • that it doesn’t own, possess, and control
  • that necessarily begins with things as they are rather than with things as the realist imagines or wants them to be
  • that is subject to laws of cause and effect, to the authority and discipline of Necessity, that no will can contradict, not even the will of Logos, of God, whose governance is under, not above, the law
  • that doesn’t imagine all of Creation to be a game, a contest between isolated-separated opposites, conflicting self-interests with but one object: to “win.” An object with zero tolerance for rules that the realist can’t write to suit itself. Which means zero tolerance for Logic that can’t be “rigged,” can’t be unfair
  • that won’t yield to the “realist’s” obsession with supremacy, the myth of an unquestioned, absolute authority whose rule is above the law, a fantasy of “liberty” that knows no limits in its unhinged pretense of divinity, its blind quest to replace Necessity, to be “god.”

The ”realist” who hides its intentions behind facades of reasonableness, bland sociability, ever-smiling pleasantness, passive conformance, harmless agreeability, seductive humor and personal charm, can’t stand the light of Logic. To venture outside the darkness of Plato’s Cave ruled by illusion into the light of Truth shone by Logic. To venture into the domain of Reality and Creation governed with wisdom, compassion, and fairness by Logic. With inclusiveness that shares, affirms, empowers, and reciprocates Worth instead of exclusiveness that monopolizes it. Preserving its unquestioned “right,” the authority to indulge its “liberty” to have and do anything its specialness wants-- its infantile, separated, out-of-control willfulness.

To save us from Reality

This is the profile of the “realist” that lies beneath the surface. Behind appearances. That takes minds not trapped in make-believe to task for being exactly what it is: trapped in make-believe. For being “fooled” into questioning appearances that “realists” are allowed to detect with bodies, by the intuition of Mind that “realists” are forbidden to use. Intuition guided by Logic that would explain things as they really are, behind appearances that deceive, if “realists,” in their wounded righteousness, obsessed with winning and conquest, would only allow it. Logic whose understanding enables minds to perform as they must to exercise Free Will, the true path to Freedom instead of its grotesque caricature – the joke – of “liberty.”

Free Will, the capacity to choose freely enabled and empowered by judgment guided by reason and values. Guided by the giving of Creativity that opens minds to possibilities instead of the taking of unreasoning authority. Authority that closes minds to all but one consideration: its supremacy. Its demand for obedience, the “gift” of captivity, uncreativity, and impossibility. Captivity that offers the blessings of “liberty.” “Paradise” ruled by psychosis – detached from reality – that styles itself “realism.”

What would the idealist offer? Intellectual honesty. The Logic of who we really are: minds with thoughts and feelings that live. What does the “realist” offer? Intellectual dishonesty. The self-delusion of who we really aren’t: bodies and senses that die. Parasites clinging to their host, mistaken for “others.” Illusions who can “save” us from all the limits, the definitions and implications, of Logic. From Reality.

Who is the “realist” really? Our own shadow. Our opposite. Our captor. The Joker.

A joke.

1

The Child must choose and earn what it cannot inherit

If Heaven-Creation is all about Worth then it’s logically-necessarily all about being chosen and earned. These are the attributes, the Definition, of Worth-Creation: that it must be freely chosen and earned to exist, to Be.

The Child’s travails in unreality are choosing and earning its functions that give it the capacity to Be-belong and Do-perform in Creation, functions that it could not inherit:

  • Oneness-Innocence of the kind-Definition that can only exist on the Child’s plane of Creation, with the possibility of shadow-opposites in an unconscious dream state. The Innocence of Oneness of the kind that can only exist on Parents’-Being plane is the impossibility of opposites by Definition.
  • Free Will of the kind-Definition that can only exist on the Child’s plane of Creation, the Doing-performing / choosing kind, with the possibility of shadow-code captivity in an unconscious dream state. The Free Will of the kind that can only exist on the Parents’-Being / Consciousness plane, the Being / Growing-birthing kind -- marriage of Father-Mind / Choice with Mother-Mind / Freedom – that is impossibility of captivity by Definition.

Humanity’s unreality – our world of bodies and spacetime-matter -- is a learning device, a stage that is a testing-proving ground. Since unreality is unreal this temporal “life” is a dress rehearsal without an audience, i.e. without Consciousness, for the Child’s performance in Reality with Consciousness, when the Child has corrected error and chosen-earned Free Will / performing and Innocence / Soul-Oneness Being.

All it takes is one individual

Unreality = trial and error. All of humanity’s ideologies-belief systems, all its established paradigms-religions of science, theology, philosophy, and psychology, based on the irrational faith-bias of circular reasoning rather than Logic, are trials that resulted in error, have failed and are failing. Failing not in spite of but because of dualism, i.e. flawed / circular self-referential “reasoning” that corrupts choice rather than undoing unreality-untruth. Ideology failures include top-down authoritarian, guilt / fear-based, biblical-orthodox “Christianity.”

The uncompromising non-dualism of A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is bottom-up Logic that aspires to change the mind of the One Child through the individual, the logical stand-in for all of Child’s mirror-image illusory replications. It is not an ideology targeted at illusory “humanity” as a group-species but at the Real One-Child through the Holy Spirit, the mind-Intuition, Logic-connection of the individual. For if the mind of one mirror-image replication of the One Child is corrected then they’re all corrected because there’s no “they,” no “others.”

ACIM teaches that if one individual truly forgave it would overturn the ego’s house of lies and replace illusion with Truth. So, Jesus isn’t organizing anything. He’s not interested in founding a church because he’s fishing for one individual.

The five factors

Asher Lawson and Kermant Kakkar reference the “widely-used” “five-factor psychological system for identifying personality traits” in the April 2022 issue of Scientific American [“Fake-News Sharers” p. 78]. Here are the five factors underlined (my interpretation added in brackets):

  • Openness to experience [i.e. involvement in external affairs vs. active pursuit of inner life / learning-growth through introspection, reflection-Intuition, contemplation; also vs. inaccessible mind stuck in unchanging status quo,]
  • Conscientiousness: orderliness, impulse control, conventionality, reliability [vs. social non-conformance but not relevant to individual Judgment without Feeling-Values / morality, order-fairness, discipline, accountability]
  • Extroversion
  • Agreeableness [vs. social unpleasantness but not relevant to individual Understanding, Honesty, sincerity. I.e. not relevant to individual recognition of / respect for Reality-Truth]
  • Neuroticism [Possible interpretation: wounded-crucified Psyche victimhood, hollowness-scarcity, unaccountability, specialness-taking , unfairness / wounding crucifying vs. sharing of Abundance, affirmation, empowerment, reciprocation, adaptability to changing contexts-circumstances, responsibility for improvement-progress, i.e. for changing-moving contexts forward.]

What’s wrong here?

The five-factor theory doesn’t allow for the crucial distinction between personality types in individual-intimate contexts-relationships vs. social-group contexts-relationships. Its categories overplay attributes associated with social types oriented to group activity-relationships in the external-material body-sensed environment and severely underplay attributes associated with individuals oriented to the Intuition-sensed inner life of mind and soul:

  • involvement in external experience without reference to involvement in internal experience
  • conscientiousness measured by social conventionality-reliability without reference to internal moral-values
  • extroversion / outward orientation without reference to introversion / inward orientation
  • agreeableness (pleasantness) without reference to alignment with Logic. Necessity, Reality or Truth that can be disagreeable (unpleasant).

By putting outward-oriented body-sensing attributes on the surface and muting inward-oriented mind-intuited attributes five-factor categories can be judged a clear attempt to invalidate the distinction. It can therefore be judged an attempt by the scientific community rabidly biased in favor of the philosophy of “realism” based on the presumed reality of bodies and material-sensed environment and against the philosophy of “idealism” based on reality of mind and soul.

If so, it stands in opposition to the philosophy of physics which is open to questioning “realism” based on the progress, or lack of progress, toward quantum gravity [ref: Adam Becker, “The Origins of Space and Time: Does Spacetime Emerge from a More Fundamental Reality?”, in Scientific American February 2022 pp. 28-33]. It also would stand in opposition to the philosophy of Plato which distinguishes between ideas-subjects within Mind and their material expressions-objects in the external world and, between the two, attributes reality to the former, not the latter. Except for Plato the person’s felt perception of divinity in the image of the cosmos, his philosophy, the foundation of Western thought, places reality firmly within Mind, not matter.

Myers-Briggs personality type theory and the rationality of Intuition

Myers-Briggs personality type theory, descended from Jungian psychology, is enriched by insights from Intuition that recognize the distinction between outward and inward orientations and project no evident bias between the two. Competition from the five factor theory would appear to be motivated by opposition-resistance to an “unscientific” approach that strays from quantifiables. By opposition to any theory, however rational, that challenges the supremacy (tyranny) of science’s sensory perception.

If so, science’s position is highly irrational because the scientific measurements of “quantifiables” cannot be up to the task of understanding the whole of human motivation. The very thought that it can is laughable. Who would disagree that human motivation incorporates the qualitative – minds, introspection, reflection, intuition, reasoning, subjective values-evaluating, judging, choosing – along with the quantitative – external objects, bodies and sensory perception? If science had its way personalities would be “measurable” chess-piece objects – automatons -- being maneuvered on a game board by binary search algorithms, not by minds, hearts, and souls thinking, feeling, and judging for themselves,. Not by sentient beings endowed with Psyches and Free Will.

Why debunk the five-factor personality type theory? Because it’s bunk.

1

What will go away?

When Mind as Child regains consciousness, energy can no longer be directed by its self-delusion, the Joker’s code of non-being, to make the Joker’s substitute reality real. The Child will have liberated itself from its self-delusion and captivity to the virus. It will no longer be under the Joker’s control. Instead, at the liberated Child’s direction, energy will then be withdrawn from spacetime-matter in the Child’s reversal of the act that produced it: its attempted projection of guilt. Versatile energy, with its capacity to serve as an agent of Mind in either state, Conscious-Reality or unconscious-unreality, with its capacity to convert energy into matter and to store energy in matter, will reverse its animation of the dream. It will reverse Its enablement and empowerment of the dream by withdrawing from it at the direction of the awakening Child. At the direction of Mind married to Love.

This is how the world of humanity-“life” and spacetime-matter – the universe or multiple universes -- ends: the end of an illogical, illusory dream upon the awakening of an unconscious, corrupted mind: the Child. Abruptly. Instantaneously. By the replacement of the Joker’s “laws” of chaos that make no sense by Laws of cause and effect that do make sense. The Laws by which Logic, or Logos-God, governs Reality-Creation.

The universe ends not by a long process of contraction into an inexplicable “singularity” that vanishes into a black hole indefinitely. Until it explodes into another Big Bang which recycles the illusion-dream rather than ending it. Nor by a long process of entropic expansion into a state of thermodynamic inertia, which would render perhaps one among many universes inactive or spent rather than ending it. Neither revival with a bang nor petering out with a whimper is ending. Spacetime-matter in some form will still be “here.”

Unless the universe ends by an unconscious mind awakening, which withdraws energy active or inert, the “laws” of physics cannot explain or predict whether or how it will end. The explanation for the withdrawal of energy cannot be physical alone. The “Copenhagen Interpretation” of quantum mechanics stated, over a century ago, that physics has taken experiment-based understanding of physical phenomena – the origin and fate of the universe -- as far as it can go. The search for quantum gravity today affirms that what lies beyond physics must involve philosophy. The explanation must be metaphysical. And, beyond that, it must be psychological and theological.

For the measurements of science never were enough. The explanation has always required evaluation and judgment by feeling as well as reason and judgment by thought. It has always required the qualitative as well as the quantitative, a dimension that is not now, and never has been, the province of physics. It has always required Understanding in all its dimensions: The Story of the Child, not an inorganic object composed of fragmentary particles but an organic subject possessed of all the attributes of Mind and Love, thought and feeling, reason and value. A whole Being.

What will replace it?

The Child’s reversal of guilt-projection and its consequence, the reversal of energy’s empowerment of the illusion-dream of spacetime-matter, must be accompanied by the replacement of the illusion-dream in the awakened Child’s Mind by what is not an illusion, not a dream. By Reality-Creation. By what is substance and True, not appearance and a lie.

The Child’s re-entry into Reality-Creation, into Innocence from unreality-guilt, is the responsibility of the Child’s Parents. It is the prerogative of Father Mind and Mother Love, who are Consciousness, Being, Life, and the Worth of Creation. It is the prerogative, finally, of their Source: Logos or God, who governs Reality-Creation through the Laws of cause and effect. Through Necessity. Through what Is and, therefore, must Be. Necessity – the “rule of law” -- that applies even to Logic, to Benevolence, that it may govern with wisdom, fairness, and Understanding from the bottom up and not arbitrarily, with the unfairness, misunderstanding, and cruelty of malevolence from the top down.

The Child will be re-admitted to its Home in Conscious Relationship with its Parents-Being:

  • when its Psyche, its inviolate Soul of Innocence that shares Being with all of Creation, is no longer violated by the illusion of guilt.
  • When the Consciousness of its Parents recognizes the Child-Innocence as theirs and therefore belonging in Creation.
  • When the Child is recognized and thereby certified by the Laws of cause-effect, by Necessity, as belonging in Reality.
  • When Logos-God, the final Authority that governs Everything, the Interconnectedness of Reality-Creation, then authorizes the resumption of the Child’s role, its function along with its Relationships, in Reality.

The end of the universe can only be explained by Logic

The end of spacetime-matter – the universe -- can only be explained by metaphysics through the rigorous application of Logic under the guidance of spontaneous insight from Intuition. Insight from Intuition that is neither controlled nor controlling. Whose sole purpose is explanation, that is, guidance that can be accepted, used, abused, or ignored, at the discretion of its recipient, the Child. The Child who has Free Will because it Is Free Will. The Child who was One before it became the many in the self-delusion of its unconscious dream. Before it became us.

Thus will the unreal dream of spacetime-matter end -- the strange, violent, chaotic, dangerous, unexplainable, and pointless “home” we call the universe. The worthlessness of the temporal. Thus will the role of an awakened Child in the Reality of Creation resume. In the Home of Beauty and Perfection, Life, Worth, and Eternity, where we the Child belong.

Overview: Is there any real reason why we need the answer?

If the measurements of science / quantum gravity, DNA genetics and molecular biology can't explain the origin and fate of the universe or the meaning of life without philosophy, psychology, and theology doing their part, and the dominant paradigms in every field of inquiry are still manifestly not getting it right, then there is "reason why we need the answer."

If the material universe, everything in it, and everything desirable and undesirable about humanity's and all life's experience of it traces back to an event or events in the state of immateriality or mind that preceded it; If it is but a mirror-image reverse -- a perversion -- of another Reality whose dynamics preceded it, caused it, and continue to influence it, then in the name of science's "quest for knowledge" and material "facts," in the name of philosophy's order and ethics, psychology's self-Worth and Understanding, religion's healing and "salvation," there is "reason why we need the answer."

Every error, every defect in what self-deluded minds experience in this illusory "life," even this "life" itself, traces back to the Child's archetypal mistake: the objectification of its own shadow, the projection of its self and its sovereignty onto its imagined "other," and its activation of its shadow-reflection's code or "thought system," a mirror-image reverse -- the opposite -- of all that is Real, True, and Good. All for the purpose of substituting another reality for the Reality that was lost with the loss of Consciousness. The illusion, everything about it and wrong with it, is a replication of this same mistake. The "reason why we need the answer" is (1) to stop the replication; (2) to restore Consciousness;  (3) to correct the mistake.

The main barrier to minds being guided to the answer is the misperception-misjudgment that they don't need to seek it. That even if they do they're not self-deluded; they don't misperceive and misjudge; the status quo is satisfactory; and therefore they don't need guidance. The main barrier is opposition and resistance from a mis-identified shadow-reflection -- an imagined "other." The "reason why we need the answer" is to regain self-awareness. To understand the Truth of who we are: the host, not our shadow-reflection.

Preface

Michael Strevens, in The Knowledge Machine (Liveright 2020), tells us that in their public truths scientists don't trouble their audience with other truths they may be harboring privately. Adam Becker's confession, in February's Scientific American, that quantum gravity is so baffling that physicists wonder if spacetime-matter is "somehow illusory," may be a truth that could no longer be kept private. Not if the profession is to retain any shred of honor or credibility.

Logic takes this astounding about-face from science and asks simple questions:

  • If our bodies and their physical surroundings -- the universe -- are "somehow illusory," what could cause the illusion?
  • If illusions can be caused by dreams, what mind is dreaming?
  • If unconscious minds produce dreams that are illusions, whose unconscious mind is dreaming this particular illusion?
  • What caused this mind to lose consciousness?
  • How did we come to "exist" inside an illusion being dreamed by a mind that's unconscious?
  • What is the story of this mind? Can it be told?
  • If we owe our "existence" to a mind's loss of consciousness -- a calamity on a scale equal to at least one universe and maybe many universes -- shouldn't we at least try to tell its story? Won't this help us fix what's broken? Shouldn't we try?

My metaphysical theorizing is an attempt to answer these questions. With Logic. My latest post was prompted by the scientist Adam Becker's astounding public confession. It offers insights from Logic into how and Why the Mind that produced our world lost consciousness. How and Why the illusion of spacetime-matter "happened" as a result.

The whole story is coming into focus, but it's still writing itself. Understanding may yet have a long way to go. It can't be pushed. It can't be hurried. It reveals itself at its own pace, in logical sequence, one implication, one insight, at a time.

Who is the “Child?”

The Story of the Child is about a character who existed in another Reality before the Big Bang and who exists in the same other Reality now. A character referred to in mainstream philosophical and religious mythology as the offspring of divine beings who willed our universe into existence and populated it with their offspring and its progeny. In this telling, the universe and its inhabitants are unreal, an illusion made by an unconscious-dreaming Child that could not have been Created by Logic-God or by its Parents Mind-Love.

In A Course in Miracles the Child is a he, and he is the Son of the Father. He collectively, in this world, is the “Sonship.” In my telling, it’s the Child, and “it” is both masculine and feminine, he and-or she. It collectively, in this world, is the Child’s “replications” – the many derived from the One. The Child was given birth by Father Mind and Mother Love because in my telling, following the implications of ACIM, the Child is Free Choice, and Free Choice requires that marriage between Mind-Choice and Love-Freedom be its Parents.

Opposite worlds: The Child and its shadow-reflection

The Story of the Child has not one but two dimensions: one Real and the other unreal. There is its own story, the story of its unreal shadow-reflection, and the relationship between the two. A relationship that developed in error. That should not have developed because “relationship” between what is Real and what is unreal – between contradictory, mutually exclusive “realities” – is illogical. “Relating” in this context is a logical impossibility. Because it was illogical, the “relationship” took the Story of the Child seriously off track, onto a siding where it goes round and round, nowhere. Where all that’s wrong and painful, frustrating and calamitous with our world, has settled in, waiting for the Story of the Child to get back on track.

Alternating between two “realities” with the same terminology throws Understanding off track. Terms given initial caps, like “Reality,” refer to the Reality of Mind that preceded the Big Bang and parallels our material universe. The same terms without initial caps, or in quotes, relate to the Child’s state of unconsciousness and all things imagined by it. This includes the unreality of the material universe, bodies and sensory perception, all organic “life” and inorganic matter. In short, everything illusory.

Two mutually exclusive planes of Creation

The Child is profoundly unhappy. It’s not satisfied with the substitute reality its delusion has produced – the delusion that its reflection is an “other” endowed with its own capacities, capable of saving it from the situation its loss of Consciousness put it in. It wants to return to Consciousness, to go Home, reconnect with its Parents, Father Mind and Mother Love, in its Sanctuary of Creation. It yearns to get back to work. It wants to reclaim its powers of thought and feeling, its Free Will, its sovereignty. To bring itself back to Reality and Truth, to Logic, with the Guidance of the Holy Spirit. To be Loved, useful, and happy again.

It doesn’t want “saved” or “saviors” who compromise Free Will. It’s dependent on the Holy Spirit for Guidance, but the Holy Spirit and all of Creation are dependent on the Child for Free Choice. For without Free Choice, the Creation, Affirmation, and Reciprocation of Worth is impossible. So critical is Free Choice that it must occupy its own plane in Reality-Creation where the Consciousness of the Child’s Parents cannot be present.

Conversely, Child / Free Choice cannot logically occupy the same plane of Creation as the Parents. They are connected but their functions must logically be mutually exclusive. The Child’s Consciousness is not defined by the same attributes as the Parents’ Consciousness, and their Free Spirit is not defined by the same attributes as the Child’s Free Choice. Explaining all of this, and more, through The Story of the Child, is meant to expand Understanding and shorten the time to awakening.

The decline and fall of sensory perception

The self-delusion that converted the Child’s shadow-reflection from a dormant code, the mirror-image opposite of the Child’s Being, into the illusion of a self-motivating “other” capable of making its unreality real, is composed of attributes that block the Child and its replications – humanity – from awareness of the Truth that lies behind our material world’s appearances. The main barrier is the assumption that bodies are real and anything detected by bodies’ senses must also be real – the paradigm that today dominates mainstream science, philosophy, psychology, and theology.

Its domination shows signs of being weakened, however, by the findings of experimental and theoretical physics. Adam Becker, the physicist-historian of quantum gravity and author of What Is Real? (Basic Books 2018) has authored the lead article in the February issue of Scientific American (pp. 28-33). Entitled “The Origins of Space and Time: Does Spacetime Emerge from a More Fundamental Reality?”, the article reviews progress toward quantum gravity and concludes with “a question of whether time and space are somehow illusory.” A question raised by an ancient Greek philosopher, Parmenides, 2500 years ago, “an unsettling prospect that has haunted Western philosophy for over two millennia.”

Unsettling, I would add, because science is being forced by its own logic to consider, for the first time, another Reality. The Reality of Understanding that doesn’t depend on the circular, self-referential “reasoning”’ and subjectivity of bodies and sensory perception. That depends instead on Logic – the Order of Mind instead of the chaos of matter. The objectivity of another perspective not of this world, the perspective that led Parmenides to conclude that Mind is Real and matter is not.

Body-centered or Mind-centered: which shall it be?

Parmenides, relying not on experimental physics which had not been invented but on Logic, reasoned that time and space are illusory. The theory and practice of metaphysics, which he invented, influenced Plato, whose mind-centered idealistic philosophy helped to define Western thought. Under the influence of his pupil, the biologist Aristotle, its orientation shifted toward body-matter centered “realism,” and thus did science start.

Then, centuries later, a unique breed of metaphysicist-practitioner appeared. Jesus upended all speculation with astounding departures from familiar “reality” -- miracles that flouted the “laws” of physics. His message of Love, Innocence, and Forgiveness flouted the norms of relationships to equal astonishment. He was a tour-de-force of Logic, a simple itinerant teacher with no connection to officialdom, his only “authority” the power of what he taught, felt, and expressed. The power of Connection through gentle loving kindness. It was, all told, an electrifying, mind-bending introduction to the possibility of another Reality. An upheaval meant to part minds from this “reality.”

But while a few were convinced, like Valentinus, the second-century Gnostic Christian teacher, that material reality is unreality -- an illusion, – the body-matter centered paradigm soon reasserted itself. It did so not under the influence of philosophy but under the dominance of organized religion. The Church, claiming legitimacy from Jesus that Jesus could not have intended, obliterated all opposition as “heresy” and the true intent and legacy of Jesus along with it. Mainstream philosophy flirted with Parmenides from time to time – Bishop Berkeley, for example, -- but it was rare.

The world, for now, remained unchanged. For what are mainstream science, philosophy, psychology, and theology, after all, but waystations of trial and mostly error in the time it will take for the Child and its replications to attain maturity? Accidents and mistakes in the evolution of organic and inorganic matter that Sean B. Carroll chronicles in A Series of Fortunate Events (Princeton 2020).

The self-delusion of an imagined “other” and the train wreck of evil

A Course in Miracles could be the explanation, the book Jesus couldn’t write two thousand years ago, because his audience wasn’t ready. Channeled last century, it explains the psychopathology of the Child’s interaction with its shadow-reflection that produced the illusion: a self-delusion that set an unconscious Child to dreaming a world of spacetime and matter. The dream replicated in our own self-delusions with our own shadow-reflections.

What, then, is “good?” The host. That is, the Child who hosts a shadow-reflection that is its mirror image opposite, a lifeless, mindless, loveless code that, when it’s mistaken for an imagined “other,” behaves as one would expect the opposite of Being to behave: like a virus. Not interested in Life or Freedom but only in taking its host’s mind captive and replicating itself.

What, then, is “evil?” The host’s shadow-reflection mistakenly “recognized” as an imagined other. That is, a part of the subject host that’s been objectified into an imagined other that the host then tries, through projection, to enable and empower with its own capacities – an impossibility. For the only “capacities” a shadow-reflection can activate, that’s only a coded opposite, is its own viral code.

The final step in the self-delusion that gives it – and the imagined “other” – its misperceived capacity to torment the Child and its replications – humanity, the “many” – is the captivity of the Child’s mind and self-identity by the code. That is, by the Child now imagining that it is its reflection. By the Child and its replications – us – no longer distinguishing between captor and captive. In extreme cases this means the disappearance of the self into the imagined “other.”

The dog is being wagged by its own tail

To encounter an individual in this condition would then be to encounter an individual unaware that they have become their own shadow-code, that they are, therefore, evil incarnate. Such appears to be the case with the current leaders of the Republican party and Russia, two demented autocrats who have been taken captive by their shadow-reflections and seem to have lost all awareness of themselves, their shadows’ host.

The pattern in all of humanity’s train wrecks originates with a host’s delusion that its shadow-reflection is a separate, autonomous “other.” A dog deluded into imagining that its tail is another dog, being wagged by its own tail. This is how humanity goes about managing its affairs, and we see the results: train wrecks all the way from individual relationships to relations among nations, ethnic groups and races on a global scale. Replicating the Child’s archetypal mistake, never getting it right. A pattern that will continue unabated until we do get it right. Until we apply Logic to an Understanding of our context, to an Understanding of the mistake and correct it.

How and Why did this happen?

Why was the Child not forewarned of the misperception and misjudgment to come when it was given birth in Reality? Why did not its Parents simply reach into the illusion, restore Consciousness, and rescue it? How could Logic – Logos, God -- have failed to design Creation with a failsafe process and structure? Why do the Child and its  replications, though illusory, nevertheless experience suffering that’s real?

The long answer requires The Story of the Child and its subtext, the story of its shadow-reflection, the Joker. The short answer is Reality-Creation is not one but two distinct parts, and, though connected, they are mutually exclusive. The idea-premise that “launched” the sequence of Logic at the “beginning” – in quotes because Logic and its sequence are Being by definition, their own definition as they are their own Source, and none of this can have a “beginning” – was something on the order of the Word, which roughly translates to Possibility. The Consciousness of the Child’s Parents-Being that gave birth to the Child “Knows” or recognizes only Reality. For this is its function, to bring Reality into existence by Knowing it, i.e. being Conscious of it, and at this phase of Creation only Consciousness and one Reality are logically possible.

The phase of Creation marked by the birth of the Child, who is Free Choice, had a very different beginning. It wasn’t launched by an idea-premise that expressed itself in Consciousness with the capacity – the ability and Force – to move Reality and Creation toward Being by defining and recognizing it, by designing its process and structure.  It was launched by another kind of Consciousness with another function: the capacity to Choose. That is, by the capacity to reason, evaluate, and judge among different choices.

It was launched not by Possibility alone, which poses no choice in Reality, but by Choice between Possibility and its opposite, impossibility -- between Reality and unreality. The attribute of the Child’s Consciousness that requires its own plane of Creation, that cannot blend with its Parents’ Consciousness on their plane of Creation, is the possibility that, with Free Choice, the Child will choose illogically, incorrectly. That the Child will thereby lose Consciousness. And once Consciousness is lost, unconsciousness will be overtaken by illusion and make unreality – the dream of an alternate reality -- real. 

Mind with Free Choice that can lose Consciousness, dream an alternate reality, and thereby make (not create) unreality “real,” performs an essential role in Creation – in Creating, affirming and reciprocating Worth. But it doesn’t belong on its Parents’ plane of Creation. The Consciousness of Parents-Being, that establishes what belongs in Logic-Reality, i.e. Possibility, Existence, Truth, doesn’t belong on the Child’s plane of Creation where only one Consciousness can function and it must allow for Choice between Possibility and impossibility, Reality and unreality, i.e. between the consequences of Consciousness and unconsciousness.

Why was the Child not forewarned?

Why was the Child not forewarned of the misperception and misjudgment to come when it was given birth in Reality? Because its Parents Knew nothing of the risk of unconsciousness and its consequences and could not Know, by definition. Because in Logic there must always be sequence: what precedes and what succeeds – before and after. In Creation and evolution what is Known is before, what is unknown is after. Even if the Child’s Parents could have Known of the risk they could not have Known of the event itself in advance. In the end, they did not Know because they could not know.

Why wasn’t the Child rescued by its Parents?

Why did not the Child’s Parents simply reach into the illusion, restore Consciousness, and rescue it? Because to do so they would have had to “Know’ the illusion and thereby make it Real. Because to do so they would not only have disabled their Child’s Free Will, they would have willed their Child out of existence. Why? Because their Child is Free Will. Is Free Choice. It’s who their Child is. Because they, its Parents, are Father Mind-Choice and Mother Love-Freedom, incapable of giving birth to any other Child.

How could Logic have failed to design failsafe Creation?

How could Logic – Logos, God -- have failed to design Creation with a failsafe process and structure? Because it is in the very nature – the Logic – of Creation that it advances into the unknown. Logic, the Free Spirit of Mind-Inquiry and Love-Creativity, governs and protects from the bottom up, from circumstances that are constantly changing and evolving from one context to another. Logic, the definition of Everything, is constantly defining and redefining Reality in response to Creation. Logic, subject itself to the laws of cause and effect, to Necessity, evolves. Evolves in alignment with Creation that advances by experience. By experiment. And because the Creation of Worth must advance by Free Choice, it must advance by trial and error.

The possibility of error is built into the Logic of Creation. Logic, which cannot rule arbitrarily and still Be what it Is, cannot rewrite the rules to guarantee success. Cannot design Creation to be what it is not. Cannot design the process and structure of Creation – the functions of Mind and the planes where they operate – to be failsafe. Logic cannot design Free Choice to be what it is not: always the right choice, always the logical choice. Logic and the Child’s Parents cannot control the Child and its choices, for to do so would deprive it of Free Will and sabotage Creation’s purpose: the Creation, affirmation, and reciprocation of Worth. They must allow the Child to choose freely and to learn from experience, to expand its Consciousness, to acquire Knowledge – to grow and mature -- from trial and error. With their guidance but never their control.

Why is our suffering unreal yet experienced as real?

Why do the Child and its replications, though illusory, nevertheless experience suffering that’s real? Because while the switch from Consciousness into unconsciousness is a switch into illusion, the switch itself is Real. It happened. Made Real by the Child’s identity and capacity for Free Choice. While separation is not real and the Child remains connected to its Parents and Reality, its awareness of the connection has been lost. The cause of the apparent separation is illusory but, with the loss of the Child’s awareness, its effect seems real. Has been made real by the dream of unreality. It is therefore experienced as real. We in our world of illusion, dreaming of unreality and untruth, experience the alternate reality “promised” by our reflection, our imaginary “other,” as very real. We suffer.

The Real “Good News:” the freedom to choose again

The bad news is that the Child has mistakenly and inadvertently chosen to suffer in unreality. It did so in circumstances explained by A Course in Miracles and elaborated by The Story of the Child, that disposed it to mistake its reflection for an “other.” To imagine that the “other” was a substitute parent, an external “savior” who would save it from its trauma and restore Order. It was a colossal misjudgment that produced the absurdity of the Big Bang, a universe of organic and inorganic matter whose origins and meaning the “laws” of science have not explained and can never explain.

The good news is that the Child can choose again. And we, by empathizing with the Child instead of prolonging its agony, by Understanding our situation, by choosing to align with Logic instead of foolishness, can help it Choose correctly. To choose Peace, Truth, and Sanity. To rid us of our nightmare of conflict, deception, and insanity. To awaken and return Home.

1

Grandeur beyond what we’ve contrived 

The force of human nature, driven by fear and guilt, insists on owning, possessing and controlling everything on earth that isn’t nailed down. Here in Southern California, I often join with others who materialize at dusk to witness something different: the sun setting over the Pacific. Finally, something of value that can’t be nailed down! That human nature, yearning to complete itself, yearning for Love, can’t own, possess or control.

We can only watch grandeur beyond what we’ve contrived pass out of sight into fading belief. An elusive hint of what is ours if only we knew how to hold it. To welcome it, cradle and appreciate it, without getting in the way of it. Is it possible? We hear the Call for Love, and every day we’re drawn to the last of its light. Left to wonder: What does it mean? What have we lost? Where has it gone?

The use our senses were meant for

Any time we’re moved by sentiment
that wells up from a work of art, like a thing seen
heard or apprehended, a sight, sound, or thought
that moves us
 

Anytime we’re transported by feeling
from where we thought we were to somewhere else
that belongs to another moment
that gently, imperceptibly replaces alone with not alone
 

Anytime we feel haunted by Beauty
overcome by the force of its call, captured by a joyous
familiarity we once knew and lost
 

We hear a Call for Love.
A thing that’s always with us but beyond reach
A thing sensed but from a great distance
Experienced but not in the Here and never in the Now.
 

As though all of our senses are put to the use
they were meant for without making a mark
or leaving a trace. A thing unknowable and undetectable.
Yet better known and recognized than anything
we’ve ever known or recognized before
 

Essence so pure, so complete and perfect
in its definition that we’re sure of it,
until we reach out for the Who of it and it’s gone.
The what, where, when, Why, and how of it
 

Slipped away.
The setting Sun we can’t summon back that,
God willing, will come back another day.

Getting it right

Expanding context beyond immediacy. Defusing limbic emotions and the rush to judgment, the urge to project guilt. Distinguishing between ourselves and the opposites that shadow everything – our mirror-image reflections. Understanding. The change of mind that tests us this time of year. Have we more? Are we more? How can it be possible when Consciousness is gone? The rule of law, protection from the shadow when the many were one, when we were awake and real. While the disembodied voice of our reflection is heard in waves of misinformation and authoritarian grievance, forgeries of stolen sovereignty. Its rule arbitrary, its necessity misunderstanding.

Evil isn’t what “others” do to us. It’s what we do to ourselves. Imagining that our flip side – our reflection, a shadow – is an “other” that has a life, a voice of its own with something to offer. When all it has to “give” is a reverse image, what we aren’t. It’s nothing more than an implication of Logic that all things have opposites. That if two realities can’t be real then our reflections can’t be real. They’re the Joker whose joke is “I’m you." Whatever its offense making it real by engaging with it is what causes it.

The Joker’s every perversion of Reality is a joke. Making itself right by making others wrong. Scripting truth and rules to suit itself. Heads I win, tails you lose. A lifeless viral parasite coded for self-replication, the “winning” of self-delusion. An imaginary magician that couldn’t perform unless we, the rabbit, asked it to pull us out of a hat. Misidentification of ourselves for an “other” that isn’t real makes it real. Correction is Understanding that we are not our reflection. That it can’t substitute for the Self we seek whose home is in Reality. Not here but where Mind will lead us if we allow it.

If evil itself can be understood without blame then there must be hope for Understanding. For elevating context from the false “realism” of bodies in captivity, to the truth of Mind liberated to think. To the Truth of another Reality that isn’t a joke. That parallels ours, was there before ours, is responsible for ours, and explains ours. To getting it right: Forgiveness is Understanding. So minds undeluded can do what’s right and do it right.

Where can undeluded minds take their pleas? To illumination from Intuition instead of deception from bodies. To awareness that alights on markers navigating back to consciousness. With Insights to recognize one at a time. Implications of Logic to follow wherever they lead. Guidance from Necessity, the authority of Logic, that enables and protects freedom of thought, expression, and choice -- the Integrity of Creation. That responds to pleas with Love -- sharing, empowerment, and affirmation of Worth -- instead of fear -- ownership, possession, and control. With the Innocence of Now, Psyche intact, instead of victimhood addicted to woundedness, self-pity, and guilt.

The Gift of Logic

Abundance and its comforts taken for granted replace hope with expectation, respect with entitlement, knowing our place with arrogance, adaptation with reverence for the status quo. An unsustainability brought on by not getting around to it. By somnolence. The set of a mind that could be equal to the task of awakening but for lack of Logic. Not for lack of the Free Spirit of Mind and Love that’s been there for us since the room went dark. But for the will and the ability to listen to it. To pay attention. To avail ourselves of its Gift: the judgment of Innocence, the understanding, of Logic. The noesis of Logos – God.

Misinformation is being orchestrated by a source that identifies itself as “god,” with books, podcasts and the like. Showcasing accessibility and erudition so confounding that otherwise discerning minds fall for it. A Course of Love and God: An Autobiography are a W.C. Fields flimflam act that deserves the price of admission, not for its wisdom but for the laughs. Minds are duping themselves in the clear, not in slow motion but in alarming acceleration. Waking up can’t wait. Not till we’ve extracted every last bit of pleasure and resource from body and planet. Not till we get around to it.

The next generation building character, in harmony with its environment and in spite of it, offers hope. For youth and for the rest of us, that though we are animals anchored by brain to matter we still have minds and free will. We will yet prove to be better than limbic systems that keep us rooted in unconsciousness. In threatening shadows and autonomic passions that overwhelm deliberation and judgment. We can overcome.

The place in our hearts

Paul Desmond riffing on his alto saxophone. For All We Know. Reflections on a stream that come and go with the intricacies of improvisation. That can’t help but be what they are. Us in reverse. That we never get to see as we are. Never get to know as we are. Haunted by beauty. Drawn by scent and touch imagined. By the taste of Memory heard and gone. A here and now, place and time, that can never be. Yet the Now that you will always be to me.

Shorty Baker riffing on his trumpet. I Didn’t Know What Time It Was. A call for love from time out of time. And I didn’t know. Notes gently trailing a caress across the whorl of preoccupation, lifting me out of cold blankness into the warmth of acceptance. By the vulnerability of subject in a room full of objects. Cause beyond effect that needs no intoxicant, no commotion, to excuse the brashness of its intrusion. I’m not done with it. Can never be done with it, your call for Love.

Alyosha bidding Dostoevsky’s farewell. The Brothers Karamazov. “There is nothing more wholesome and good than sacred memory preserved from childhood. Let us be kind, then honest and then let us never forget each other. You are all dear to me. From this day forth I have a place in my heart for you all, and I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me.”

Preface

Why bother with “mind” and “Logic”?

Behind any transgression is a mind whose ability to introspect, reflect, reason, evaluate, judge, and decide is under-developed, impaired, or both. Given that the human mind is both under-developed and impaired, the life we experience is seldom, if ever, free of transgressions.

The world I was born into had fallen into the pit of a Great Depression in between two devastating world wars. Three years into the second war it was by no means certain that the good guys would win. But even if they didn’t humanity would have carried on. That’s not a given any more. The same human mind that makes of life one uninterrupted transgression has put everything at risk with global warming.

When will minds change? When bodies tell them to. That’s not true for everyone but global politics seems to confirm it. Minds will change not when common sense prevails but when physical discomfort and limbic emotions trigger an instinctive fight-or-flight response. When the animal is rousted out of its cave or jungle lair to defend itself. The response of an animal threatened, not logic comprehending.

Why do my essays tire readers with abstruse philosophizing about irrelevance and impracticality when the enemy is at the gate? Why bother with “mind” and “logic” when it’s action we need? Why am I hunkered down in metaphysics, fussing with what’s beneath the surface of things, instead of answering the call to duty from the front lines?

Centuries of learning and we’re still not getting it right

It seems because my mind is answering another call: the call from Logic. A call I could refuse since it would violate Logic if I couldn’t. But I don’t. The impaired mind that’s behind all our transgressions – world wars, depressions, global warming, and the rest – betrays one compelling attribute: the absence of Logic. Why? Because Logic says in its situation humanity clearly needs guidance and it’s misled. Misled not necessarily by a malevolent guide, though certainly it may seem that way. But by not getting something right about humanity’s situation.

We’ve poured centuries of effort into learning,. Nearly every field of inquiry has made impressive gains. Yet who would argue that the promise of all these gains has been realized? That gains on the horizon will do any more than ease a task or extend life? Logic says humanity will still be misled, that it will need to end its resistance to Logic and open up to possibilities that it so far won’t consider.

Why trouble ourselves?

The essay that follows addresses one possibility: that humanity’s situation is not what it appears to be – literally. Instead of the hard-and-fast reality our senses make of it our situation is an illusion. A dream. A prospect that intrigues more of us privately, I suspect, than we let on publicly. But judging from the general mood most don’t want to go there. See no reason to go there. If humanity’s calamities have so far passed them by; if its situation seems real enough and it hasn’t brought about the end-of-days for everyone – not yet – why trouble ourselves?

If you’re of this opinion my essays won’t trouble you. You’ll neither get what our situation is telling us nor what I’m trying to get across about our situation. That if we change our minds about it; if we are willing to suppose that there’s another Reality that’s Real; that ours isn’t; realizing the difference may bring about the change in humanity’s thinking that its situation calls for.

To open minds to the right guide: to Logic

What it may accomplish is the opening of minds to Logic. To replacing the body-centered guide -- a perversion of ourselves, the caricature I call the Joker – that’s been misleading us with what our situation has needed all along: a mind-centered guide not misled and distracted by our material world of appearances.

The task my thoughts seem intent on is to help replace the wrong guide with the right guide. Will this “solve problems?” If the switch is made Logic tells me it could eventually solve everything. For minds only willing to change if bodies, in a state of discomfort and inflamed limbic emotions, tell them to change, aren’t just blocking progress. They’re threatening the survival of our species. They’re ultimately behind our planet’s Anthropocene mass extinction that may engulf us.

Minds guided by Logic won’t need to wait for existential threats. For narrow self-interests to be catered to before the interests of community come into play,. Won’t need to agonize over insanities and atrocities one after the other, like world wars, depressions, and global warming. Like stupidities that interfere with basic functions of governance that should be taken for granted. When we should pride ourselves on the stability of civilization instead of being mortified by its frailty.

“Dark matter” shouldn’t be a metaphor for “dark ages.” But with Logic still blocked by body-centered thinking; by every field of inquiry still captive to sensory perception; by humanity’s not getting its situation right, that’s where we may be headed. The flip side of the possibility this essay is about.

To marry science to Logic

What follows is hard on physics. Not because it hasn’t acquitted itself well but because it has. It doesn’t seem to realize just how well. Its brilliant discoveries put humanity on the threshold of a new paradigm, one that finally grasps the illusory nature of its physical surroundings and their inherent illogic. So that a mind-centered reflective humanity, duly aware of its precarious situation, can finally adjust its inquiries, its expectations and priorities, in philosophy, psychology, and theology, to a new Reality. To understanding that ends ambiguity, ends ambivalence, and promises a more hopeful outcome.

I love science. But I also love Logic. What, then, is this and other essays trying to accomplish? What is my book in progress, The Story of the Child, trying to accomplish? To bring them together. To change minds so that, finally, in this generation or the next, or maybe the one after that, we can solve problems. Without waiting for bodies and limbic emotions to get around to it. When it’s too late.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What Is Dark Matter Telling Us?

The invincibility of sensory perception is no more

Dark matter is credited by physics with holding the universe together and making life possible. And yet it’s undetectable. Undetectable by our bodies' senses that all of science and mainstream philosophy, psychology, and theology swear by to distinguish between what’s real and what’s speculation. This is why dark matter is “dark”: to science it’s indisputably real and yet it isn’t. So are quanta, microscopic particles that aren’t always detectable, sometimes “entangled,” flouting the laws of physics with “superposition.” “Spooky” to Einstein rather than dark, but still a mystery that needs to be explained.

Dark matter is telling us that sensory perception is not the authority that it’s made out to be on what’s real. Its reputation is undeserved, its invincibility shattered. What’s real is no longer automatically assumed to be that which can be “proven” by senses. The door is now open to Mind. To Logic and Intuition where Logic has its home in the human mind.

Contradictory realities are not a logical possibility

Dark matter is telling us that our world and its universe are unreal. Because the only possible explanation for the unquestioned “reality” of something undetectable and therefore logically unreal, in a universe of appearances assumed to be real, is that the universe of appearances is unreal. A reality of un-appearance within a universe of appearance logically contradicts the reality of appearance. Only one can be real.

Contradictory realities are not a logical possibility. Either undetectable dark matter is real or detectable appearances are real, but not both. If the Logic of physics absolutely requires that undetectable dark matter be real then it must concede that detectable appearances are not real.

The universe of appearances along with its contradictory anti-matter / dark matter must be an illusion, its pose of reality undone by the logical necessity of reconciling opposites: matter and anti-matter. By acknowledging the rule of Logic that governs everything: everything has an implied opposite and of two opposites whose existence contradicts the other only one can be real. Everything that Is must have an implied opposite that isn’t. If anti-matter or its altered-state “dark matter” that’s undetectable can’t “exist” without contradicting a reality that must consist of detectable appearances, then either dark matter or appearances must go.

The challenge that dark matter presents to science is by no means unique or unprecedented. Quantum mechanics presents the same challenge on the same scale, because every corner of the universe of spacetime and matter that harbors dark matter is flooded with mysterious quanta, too. But while our minds can ignore microscopic particle behavior, they can’t ignore a cosmos in full view every night that fascinates. And now “dark matter” that’s woven into the very fabric of perception, essential to who we are and every living thing, is present and yet not present. A state that, for a field of inquiry that prides itself on rigorous “realism,” must be disconcerting if not intolerable.

Absent Now, absent Reality

As obvious as it must be that our universe of quantum mechanics and dark matter is an illusion it can’t compare with the evidence of Einstein’s special relativity. His stunning insight that, here, in this strange place, it is never Now. We occupy a bizarre category of time: “an ‘intermediate zone,’ an ‘extended present’; a zone that is neither past nor future.”

“Just now” does not exist. . . . In physics . . . “spacetime” (is) the set of all past and future events, but also those that are “neither-past-nor-future”; these do not form a single instant: they have a duration. . . . The present is like the flatness of Earth: an illusion. . . . saying “here and now” makes sense, but. . . saying “now” to designate events “happening now” throughout the universe makes no sense. (Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems (2017, pp. 71-76)

Our “intermediate zone” is a twilight zone. if we could occupy “now” it would transplant us into a Reality and state of mind wholly unlike ours. That physics has sat on this discovery for over a century without acknowledging the doubt it casts on the reality of spacetime and matter is as stunning as the discovery itself. Compelling affirmation for DNA scientist James D. Watson’s admission that “a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.” (The Double Helix (1968, p. 14)

Does physics not stand face-to-face with revelation without recognizing what it’s looking at? Without minds being changed? If it’s not Now then we occupy a dream, an Alice-in-Wonderland where all manner of strange things happen. Where we go about our business as though, as Ivan Karamazov would put it, “everything is lawful.” Dostoevsky’s character ended his part in The Brothers Karamazov with “brain fever.” Fitting diagnosis for a physics taking its cues from Rod Serling in its Twilight Zone.

“The stuff that dreams are made of”

Rovelli observes that Einstein’s general relativity offers “a glimpse of reality . . . that seems to be made of the same stuff our dreams are made of but is nevertheless more real than our clouded daily dreaming.” (op cit. p. 90) If so, dark matter must account for a very large part of the stuff. Is it a stretch to carry the thought one step farther? To theorize that it is a dream?

What could possibly explain it if the “reality” of physics can’t? What supplies Logic when the logic of matter can’t explain matter that won’t meet the definition of matter? How and why is the rationale for physics falling short? Where is the flaw in its Logic? Because circumstantial evidence for the existence of dark matter is irrefutable. It’s there. What could explain it if physics can’t? What premise of physics’ “realism” is leading our thinking astray? How did physics come to be unrealistic?

Where matter ends, Mind has always been there

One theoretical possibility is that our universe of spacetime and matter is not real. It’s the stuff that dreams are made of because it may be a dream. A premise we won’t hear from physics because an entire profession, an entire field of inquiry going back to classical antiquity, is conscience-bound to deny it. Trapped by the boundaries of its context, Immobilized by limitations placed on logic, and unable to navigate. Stuck in the finiteness of its own making and of no further use in this phase of our journey. That requires another mind that thinks, another logic that navigates, another vision that can see. With no less rigor and discipline than minds guided by the senses but now minds guided by thought. By everything that Logic is and does.

If the universe is a dream and dark matter proves it, what then explains it? What is its logic? What produces dreams? Minds do. Minds that are unconscious. Asleep. How and why did our universe – and maybe many more – come to be the subject of a dream by an unconscious Mind? What other explanation could there be for what preceded the Big Bang? The physicist Roger Penrose (Cycles of Time, 2010) has postulated that the universe was preceded by an earlier universe and questioned assumptions about singularities, the Big Bang, and the need for quantum gravity. But even if he’s right, where did all this stuff that dreams are made of come from?

Physics that leaves off where matter leaves off can’t answer by definition. The laws of science take us to the brink and leave off just as they do with the origin of what we experience as life. Where matter ends Mind must have been there all along. Not just before the universe of spacetime and matter appears but all the while that we, our bodies’ senses, have been witnessing it. Our senses assuring us that, yes, it’s happening, it’s real, when all they’re attesting to is themselves. Matter on the witness stand testifying to its own presence, as if this were enough. As if this were not a conflict of interest. Circular reasoning. A logical absurdity.

Mind and its miscreation that made unreality real

So who is this Mind and what is its story? How did it lose consciousness? Why would it project itself into a dream of physics so bizarre that physics itself can’t make sense of it? If it ever was in possession of its senses how did it conjure a dream so senseless, so disfigured by grotesque contradictions, as our world? If it was ever in a safe place how did it come to imagine itself in a place so precarious, savage, and depraved, as ours?

The answer that human speculation has assumed over the ages is that something went wrong. Dark suspicions that it was our fault, rooted in our wounded psyches, have insinuated themselves into our culture, contaminated our souls, and condemned us to lives on the cross of victimhood. As though what happened there must be of the same ambiguity and profanity as what happens here. In the “dark matter” of the human mind. As though the “laws” that produce chaos and entropy here must rule there.

The “story” of the Mind that’s dreaming, that the dream itself has so far produced, alienates the scientific mind for a reason. It’s nuts. Why admit philosophy, psychology, and theology into physics if they can’t do any better than this?

The story, once it’s cut free from the dream, once it’s freed from the laws of chaos and is allowed to access Logic, makes sense. It’s plausible, supported by the implications of Logic going all the way back to the beginning. To where there was Logic and human thought and feeling can go no farther. And, yes, something did go wrong. It wasn’t anticipated or intentional because logically it couldn’t Be.

Venturing into the unknown, into the unexpected, is ingrained in the Worth of Creation. And if something went wrong, a circumstance unanticipated or unintended, then the result wouldn’t be wrongdoing; it would be miscreation. Miscreation that could throw Mind out of the Reality of Creation into another reality, by rendering it unconscious. To prevent the Force of consciousness that animates new life from animating what doesn’t belong. It’s a state of mind familiar to us. But since we’re conditioned to associate bodies with matter instead of mind we miss its significance: its capacity to dream. To make unreality seem very real.

Who can help fix what went wrong?

Our world is plausibly the result of miscreation caused by Mind rendered unconscious by the nature of Creation. By circumstances that are part of its normal process and structure. Miscreation that carries no trace of wrongdoing, by commission or omission. A circumstance or event that caused an unintended effect, no more than an unavoidable gap in Knowledge. Logical within the context of what was known and so not an intentional violation of Logic. A gap in Knowledge, in Awareness, that isn’t and can’t be “all-knowing,” but is evolving. If it has any part in Creation how could it be otherwise?

The gap in Knowledge quite logically may be our privilege, our honor, to help fix. Instead of milling about aimlessly in our primordial soup of amino acids, waiting for a bolt of lightning to save us, maybe we have a purpose. And maybe it isn’t beyond comprehension. Maybe we have a job to do, to get us back to the job Mind was about before something went wrong. That is, if we can ever break free from the tyranny of appearances, of sensory perception.

Another take on sensory perception from dark matter

What does it imply about dark matter if our universe isn’t real? If it actually is a dream? Two opposite states can’t co-exist in Reality. If the existence of one thing implies the existence of its opposite the Logic of Governance decrees that only one can be real. Reality-Creation wouldn’t be governable, couldn’t hold together, otherwise.

When matter and anti-matter showed up at the beginning of our universe, only one could be real. Thus the mystery of what became of anti-matter. Thus speculation that there are other universes where anti-matter may dominate instead of matter. Anti-matter here became unreal. And yet, as we’ve all learned about opposites, they may only be shadows but they don’t go away.

How does something unreal fit into the logic, the nature, of an environment that’s already unreal? That’s made up of appearances. By disappearing. By breaking with unreality’s general rule that if a thing is to exist it must be part of appearances. Must be part of the illusion, the dream. Anti-matter forced into a state of unreality within a state that’s already unreal, logically had to become invisible. To become undetectable to the body’s senses.

For it’s sensory perception that’s relied upon to certify the “reality” of matter and to exclude all else. The same source that physics relies upon to certify the reality of matter cancels the reality of anti-matter by making it undetectable. And in so doing gives dark matter the only place it can occupy logically in an unreal universe: the darkness of undetectability.

In the other Reality creations are made real by the Consciousness of Mind – by Mind’s Awareness – relying on the Authority of Logic responsible for governance. In our world, matter that’s unreal is made real by minds relying on the body’s senses. Anti-matter could not register with sensory perception, be made real, and still occupy a place in the universe alongside matter. Two opposites cannot co-exist. Anti-matter had to yield, and where it’s to be accounted for is dark matter – unreality in an unreal universe.

Another take on physics from dark matter

Everything is defined by Logic according to what it is and what it does. Its central attribute is its use in the Reality of Creation. Because Creation itself is use: the purpose and meaning of its context, to take a stand for Worth. When its logical opposite is worthlessness, synonym for nothingness, statelessness. To be part of the Reality of Creation is to be put to work creating, affirming, and reciprocating Worth. The Worth of Being-Life and therefore the Worth of Creation itself. Is to have a role defined and assigned by the Logic of Governance to a place in the interconnected network of roles and relationships that make up Reality. That Create.

Physics defines dark matter by what it does. It has a use. But physics so far has no idea of what it is. It won’t consider the possibility that it’s anti-matter made unreal and therefore undetectable because to do so would expose the unreality of physics. The fact that by its sacred and inviolate premise, that matter is real, it makes of itself one part science and one part religion. Like the universe: one part sanity, the other spooky. An inquisition in the form of bodies’ senses condemning doubters with verdicts of blasphemy, with heresy that warrants excommunication.

Hypotheses to rescue physics from its cloud

Physics might understand dark matter, quantum mechanics, and maybe even quantum gravity with only one change in its process; if it allowed itself to hypothesize that matter is unreal. To hypothesize that the universe is the stuff that dreams are made of because it may be a dream. More “real” certainly than “our clouded daily dreaming,” but, for all its vastness and seeming consequence, still a cloud. Physics might also do well with another hypothesis: that matter is relational to Mind.

The science, Logic, and limits of hypothesizing

Science distances itself from philosophy, psychology, and theology because they’re perceived to be casual with facts and Logic compared to the rigor and discipline of science. To its “iron rule” extolled by Michael Strevens in The Knowledge Machine (2020). Their comfort with different hypothesized realities is perceived to be unprofessional and inexcusable, hardly less so than the “alternate facts” of politics.

What reality does science recognize as inalterably fixed in place if not that which answers to its self-interest? If not captive to bodies whose minds can and do question it.

Physics’ premise that matter must be real puts an artificial limit on its ability to hypothesize. Its premise that it must not yield to philosophy, the field of inquiry concerned with reality, limits its ability to interpret. Its premise that metaphysics, the search beyond appearances to their essence, is similarly non-grata, deprives if of the very attribute that its subject – appearances – demands. Insisting that its subject is real while depriving itself of the ability to consider another point of view is unscientific. It’s not just advocacy for self-interest, the usual pitfall for human logic. Given the lofty aims of science’s “quest for knowledge,” it’s unjustifiable.

Hypothesizing that matter isn’t real, that our universe is an illusion, needn’t be motivated by an alien cause when it’s amply justified by physics’ own discoveries. What is dark matter telling us? It may not be telling so much as mocking. The mask of the Joker, our opposite self, looking back at us with wry amusement because, by our own instrument of measurement, our bodies’ senses, the force of nature we put our faith in to hold the universe together and make life possible – dark matter – is nothing. The Joker's signature. The universe is a cup only half full, and what to make of it? That the cosmos is divinity as Plato thought, and maybe the deist Einstein, too? Or a fraud: something promised that can never deliver, like the simplicity and elegance of a calculation that eluded Einstein to the end. The unifying theory of quantum gravity that eludes physicists still.

Where and when does Reason take over and rationalizing end?

The implications of Logic are to be followed, not controlled

Who defines Reality? Is it science? Theology? Philosophy? Psychology? Or would it be Logic itself? Are we not dependent on Logic’s big picture to guide us, since not one of us has the big picture? Can our self-interests take precedence over the roles and relationships that Logic manages with its definitions and implications? Over the self-interest of Being, the stance of Life? The harmony that is the Reality of Creation?

Would the implications of Logic ever go along to get along and yet remain “logical”? Would they yield to the influence of their patrons? Are they ready to perform tricks at the crack of a whip? Is science that’s baffled by quantum mechanics and dark matter not pleased with the tricks its domesticated and trained “logic” performs? Is further domestication and training the remedy? Can matter already enshrined in reality be domesticated and trained some other way? Appeased? Placated?

Or has the time come for science, philosophy, psychology, and theology all to seriously consider a different Truth, the one their cramped self-interest has been avoiding? The Truth that the implications of Logic, the Free Spirit of Inquiry, are to be followed, not controlled.

If quantum mechanics and dark matter imply that matter may not be real, that there may some better, more logical theory to explain the universe and life than the one that’s failing us, then this is a fact that we had best acknowledge. If we don’t acknowledge it, this becomes another fact with its own implications that must be acknowledged. The more we misperceive, the more we will misjudge.

Logic governs us or we are not governed. We don't define Logic: it defines us. Build this reality into our self-interest and see what happens to misperceptions and misjudgments. Not when matter changes to fit our paradigms but when minds change to fit Logic.

The self-interest of Logic is infinitely inclusive

The geologic forces uplifting democracy and the Truth are more powerful by far than the forces that would suppress them. Logic’s definitions write the rules. Reality and Creation require Governance. Governance from the bottom up. Governance that derives its meaning, purpose, and motivation from circumstances on the ground, from ever-changing contexts that form the process and structure of evolution. From Creation, the extension and expansion of Life. The Choice, affirmation, and reciprocation of Worth. All of it driven by inexorable force: the Implications of Logic that can never end, that will find a way through and around any insane, illusory obstacle placed in their path. The force of ever-changing contexts and the implications of Logic called upon to manage and govern the Reality of Creation.

The implications of Logic can’t be set in motion toward Reality and Truth by insisting that motion begin with an arbitrarily exclusive self-interest. If Logic has self-interest it would be infinitely inclusive; its evolution through Creation would encompass Everything now and Everything to come.

Physics cannot legitimately aim its inquiries in a logical direction if self-interest demands that an open philosophical issue – the reality of matter, the body’s senses and its sensed environment -- be excluded. Can’t succeed if one profession is contented with things the way they are, sees no reason to inquire further, and doesn’t want to be inconvenienced. Isn’t open to questioning the Logic behind its shaky premises, the source of its confusion.

Logic doesn’t limit itself in its questioning. It doesn’t question only that which won’t inconvenience the questioner. It’s a free spirit whose implications must be followed wherever they lead.

Parting with Logic is parting with Reality

If energy that produces particles isn’t under the direction of Mind, if Force isn’t an agent rather than its own source, then there can be no order, structure, or discipline to Reality-Creation. There would be no purpose, meaning, or sense to it. There would be no Logic, no Governance.

The object of metaphysics is to establish not only provenance but intent. Without intent there is no order, no point; nothing is accomplished. The “quest for knowledge” is the quest for intent that can only come from Mind.

Walling off the free spirit of inquiry walls off both Mind and Logic. Logic is Free. To get it right its practitioners must follow wherever it leads. Is physics following where dark matter’s implications lead? Parting with Logic is parting with Reality.

Force turned against Logic by Mind that’s unconscious

The exhortations of physics to remain disciplined in its premises would be laudable if its search for answers didn’t call its premises into question. The mind that imagines:

• that Logic is its agent and will do what it’s told
• that it may only accept premises, posit hypotheses, weigh considerations, and present findings that meet its host’s definition of what’s practical, useful, relevant, and “realistic” rather than its own
• that the spirit of inquiry must be denied its freedom lest it uncover inconvenient truths

must be a mind that’s unconscious and dreaming, in mortal conflict with itself. It must be mindless. For it denies itself the most elementary understanding of Logic:

• that it can be no one’s agent
• that all thought, all feeling, begins with Logic
• that its implications must lead where they will or fail to lead at all
• that its source must connect of its own will to what it delivers
• that cause must connect of its own will to effect or it can be neither source nor cause.

Logic cannot be owned, possessed, controlled, or dominated by any influence and still Be the purpose and meaning that is its own source, its own Logic.

Energy in service to Logic -- Force that gives thoughts their consequences, causes their effects, implications their interconnections -- cannot be turned against Logic by Mind whose thoughts and feelings align with Logic, seek harmony, and Create with the protection, support, and authority of its Governance. By a mind that’s Conscious: thinking, feeling, evaluating, and judging.

Force can only be turned against Logic by a mind that’s not conscious. By a mind that’s unconscious. By mind corrupted by the thought of separation, by the act of projection, by the insanity that produced the dream: the insane hallucination that is our incomprehensible body-sensed world. A world seeming to make sense on a human scale that degenerates into bizarre nonsense on any other scale.

The false innocence of victimhood in a shared world

Force can only be turned against Logic by the endless conflict that is our tormented internal world. Why do our minds not see this? Why do they refuse to see it? Because the unconscious mind that projected them has deluded itself. Imagines that Logic is dead, replaced by a substitute more favorable to its interests because it can be controlled. Because instead of divining purpose and meaning from circumstances with Logic, from the bottom up, it can get by with a formula imposed from the top down. Mindlessly -- without thought or feeling, without mind or Logic at all. Because if Logic is dead mind and all its functions must be unnecessary. It must be dead as well.

This would be the “governing” agent of our incomprehensible, tormented world: corrupted mind that has taken dead aim at Logic. At Governance itself. Mindlessness. This is the mind of science that imagines that it can be and do whatever it wants because it owns its subject. Because the source, protection, and authority that should be its guide has been made its captive, possessed. A state logically impossible either for the free spirit of Inquiry or for the free spirit of Love.

And so neither is with us. Neither Love nor Logic nor the reciprocity that holds Interconnectedness in place -- the Reality and Creation, the Home, that unconscious mind, a stranger to the Truth, yearns to return to. Home that it will never find until it lets go of delusion. Lets go of the insanity of ownership, possession, control, and dominance, the false innocence of victimhood, in a shared world. Until it chooses of its own free will to be guided by Logic. Until it regains Consciousness and sanity.

Two Necessities of Logic

Parents in the other Reality function within the Necessity of its Logic: that opposites must be unreal. Therefore, they cannot make unreality real. Necessity also requires that they do everything to preserve their Child’s Free Will. Why? Because it’s essential to Creation’s affirmation of Worth. Essential because the Worth of anything can’t be determined without its being freely chosen. By a stakeholder invested in it. Because Creation is Worth and its opposite is worthlessness, gravity that pulls all of us and our universe into the black hole of the void.

Another Necessity of Logic: to be free, choice must be conscious of a range of possibilities, those that are known, available, and not arbitrarily excluded. The Child may not share the Parents’ power of Consciousness to make Creations Real because its unconsciousness is a possibility. The consequences of unconsciousness can’t be anticipated or known to Reality-Consciousness because they are unreal.

Two Necessities are thus built into Logic’s definition of who the Child’s Parents are and what they do:

(1) Do not make unreality real, therefore do not be Conscious of opposites or their possibility.
(2) Preserve and protect the Child’s Free Will.

These are givens in Reality. But within the Child’s state of unconsciousness and compromised Free Will, where we appear to be, they are not.

Two corresponding imperatives are implied by their unreality-opposites:

(1) Make unreality real
(2) Compromise free will by taking Child-mind captive.

Two forces that block human progress

There can be no tension between Being and non-being over conflicting imperatives in the harmony of Reality governed by Logic. But in the unreality that is our world, corrupted by the dream of opposites made real by an unconscious mind, the tension is constant and, at times, unbearable. It is the fallout of Logic’s rule that opposites must be unreal, the price to be paid by an unconscious Child for a logical impossibility: Being without the shadow code of non-being, its illusory opposite.

Forces that block human progress are mainly those that (1) make unreality real and (2) compromise the Child’s / humanity’s Free Will. What are dark matter, quantum mechanics, and never-Now telling us?

(1) that science that insists that spacetime-matter is real in the face of evidence to the contrary is deluded by Being’s shadow code opposite. By the Joker. “Questing for knowledge” instead of searching for Reality and Truth is making unreality real.

(2) that science that disrupts the free flow of Logic’s implications, that attempts to control the Free Spirit of Logic that is the source of the Child’s Free Will, is undermining Free Choice essential to the Creation, Affirmation, and Reciprocation of Worth, the purpose of Creation. It is compromising the Child’s and humanity’s Free Will.

Harsh lesson from a “wonderful world”

Physics hypothesizing that the universe may be unreal can make better sense of particle superposition, never-Now, dark matter, and other strangeness by assuming that the “other Reality” is governed by Logic and our unreality is not. By assuming that our world is ruled instead by Logic’s opposite: a reverse mirror-image caricature of everything that makes sense. In other words, the two worlds are exact opposites and it’s ours that bears the face of the Joker, not the other.

Protests from diehards who prefer Louis Armstrong or Walt Disney rhapsodizing about our “wonderful world” must inevitably account for the calculations of quantum mechanics. Those that unfailingly validate the lack of cooperation from particles -- particles that prefer the permissiveness of Bohr’s stewardship to the strict discipline of Einstein. If particles, time, and dark matter refuse to accommodate wishful thinking about an orderly universe then perhaps it’s time we changed our thinking. Time we paid attention to what they’re trying to tell us, face the possibility of another Truth, and accommodate them.

Would it inconvenience physics? Sure! Did it inconvenience Big Tobacco to resist the truth about its product? Does it inconvenience the fossil fuel industry to come clean about its product? Didn’t the Church eventually have to own up to the harm done by its Inquisition and pedophilia?

Could physics, in the intractability of its own misperceptions sanctified by its “quest for knowledge,” have produced its own demographic of victims needing reparation? A humanity not so much duped by appearances as ignoring them? A humanity facing extinction because it prefers the laws of chaos sanctioned by science to the laws of cause and effect?

The Joker mocking us from dark matter, never-Now, and errant particles may have a harsh lesson to relate. That is, if we would listen.

Principles and assumptions to guide the search for Reality and Truth

Principle 1. All fields of inquiry require Logic. Logic must be followed wherever its implications and interconnections lead, to all legitimate, logical possibilities. This is as true for psychology and theology as it is for science and philosophy. There is no way around it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Einstein’s close encounter with Logos

After Intuition played a major part in his 1905 theories, Albert Einstein trusted to physics and mathematics to take it from there and does not seem to have been struck by lightning again. A deist, he did credit the possibility that something other than matter itself caused the universe. He was no Hawking. But, like Hawking, his analytic powers and Intuition remained riveted on the effect rather than the cause.

Had it been otherwise he might have recognized the source not only of his fascination with the universe but also his extraordinary Intuition, the Mind that succeeded where physics and mathematics alone couldn’t. He might have recalled that his patent office daydreams were a gift, the discovery of what his memory already knew. Might have recalled that his Intuition was given by Logic, the discipline of implications connecting with one another in the clear, without interference. With no other consideration than producing a system of the mind, theory composed of interconnections sustained by reciprocity: connecting and connecting back. The authority of persuasion held together by what it is, its own self. Elegance and Beauty beyond all but the limits, the definitions and implications of Logic itself.

The derivation of “Logic” is Logos, Greek for “reason”:

In pre-Socratic philosophy, the principle governing the cosmos, the source of. . . human reasoning about the cosmos. . . . In Stoicism. . . the power of reason residing in the human soul. . . . In biblical Judaism. . . God’s medium of communication. . . . In Hellenistic Judaism. . . divine wisdom. . . . Christianity. . . The creative word of God, which is itself God. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Einstein’s Intuition was so expansive that it must have given him a close encounter with Logos. Yet he seems to have missed its significance. Perhaps taken with its gifts, he failed to recognize and credit the giver. Just as creation was of no interest to the deist’s prime mover, the prime mover dropped out of Einstein’s sight once he got started. He went on to his search for the theory of everything on his own, trusting to mathematics and physics. Looking for beauty behind the matador’s muleta, the red cape, behind which is emptiness. Possibly intrigued by the idea of a prime mover that could have corrected his aim. But not enough to focus his search – the extraordinary force of his passion and talents -- on Mind and matter both. Where would science be in its “quest for knowledge” if he had?

Einstein did prove something: that his search can’t succeed with physics and mathematics alone. He did become a role model: for every “realist” in search of cosmic mathematical perfection who comes up short. Why? Because their attention is focused on what’s written on the blackboard instead of the writer in their mind: Logic. Logos.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gifts of Logic, gifts of Intuition: Dark matter

In the blog entry that preceded this one, “Principles and Assumptions to guide the search for Reality and Truth,” I set out “to demonstrate what [Logic’s] systems thinking might produce in the way of insights and answers.” Here might be an example, an insight about dark matter.

Marcela Carlena writes, in Scientific American:

. . . [T]he Standard Model. . . does not explain. . . the 85 percent of the matter in the universe – dark matter – that holds the cosmos together, making galaxies such as our Milky Way possible. The Standard Model falls short of answering why, at some early time in our universe’s history, matter prevailed over antimatter, enabling our existence. “The Unseen Universe" (October 2021, p. 59)

Dark matter is what became of antimatter. Antimatter appeared at the outset because of the principle of opposites: creations imply the existence of their opposites. But antimatter couldn’t remain on an equal footing with matter because opposites can’t both be real. Logic which governs all of Reality-Creation – everything -- requires that creations and their opposites be defined by different attributes that can be reconciled. Otherwise there is no order, no harmony, and therefore no meaning and purpose to Creation. Logic having the power and ability to define is what preserves harmony, preserves its ability to govern.

Reconciliation and antimatter’s role in the universe were accomplished by a fundamental change in definition, that is by a change in the Logic of antimatter. Matter remained real while antimatter became unreal. How is unreality accomplished in a universe that is itself unreal? Through undetectability. Undetectability by the source of detectability in unreality: by bodies’ senses. The mirror-image reverse of unreality undetectable in Reality by Mind.

What is thus intuited about dark matter through Logic is that an unreal universe of spacetime and matter is credited by its physical inhabitants with being real because it’s detectable by sensory perception; antimatter appears and then mysteriously disappears, transformed into “dark matter,” a mysterious force that’s not only credited with holding the universe together but also with making life – sensory perception, our source of detectability – possible, by becoming unreal in the only way that unreality within unreality can do so: by becoming undetectable. A universe “held together” requires balance, and this is how antimatter provides it: by becoming dark matter.

What it means: Sensory perception yields to Logic

Logic through Intuition, without more help from experimental physics, produces answers that make sense where answers otherwise are impossible. If Logic, for example, says dark matter is undetectable by definition, if it defines “darkness” as “undetectability,” then dark matter cannot be explained by empirical science. Not if “empirical” requires observation or experiment. All we’ve got, then, if this insight is correct, is Logic. And if what Inquiry is about – the “quest for knowledge” -- is figuring out why we’re here and what to do about it, then Inquiry needs to be guided by Logic.

Let us be also clear about another implication from Logic: the evidence science adduces for the “existence” of dark matter does not meet the standard of evidentiary “proof” normally demanded by empirical science. Sensory perception does play a part but only by inference; circumstantial evidence is never “proof.” What gives it legitimacy is Logic – the same Logic that distills purpose and meaning from context. The case for dark matter is entirely dependent on its context defined by Logic.

More gifts: Lawless particles

Another implication of Logic from quantum mechanics is that matter is relational to Mind. Matter is of course relational to Mind because matter is stored energy, and there is no state in which energy can be undirected by Mind without yielding to absolute anarchy. Logic is directed Energy-Force. To suppose otherwise is to give up governance for absolute anarchy in Being and non-being, Reality and unreality, and in all four states of Mind: Conscious and unconscious, Absolute (Parents) and Free Choice (Child).

The logical implication that matter is relational to Mind-Energy is beyond empirical science because empirical science – “realism” -- considers mind that’s not detectable by sensory perception separate from matter. An absurdity once Logic that governs the relationship between mind and matter is understood: mind produced matter. If spacetime and matter began with a Big Bang, Intuition from Logic, informed by physics, philosophy, psychology, and theology, says unconscious Mind could well have dreamed it.

From Logic it can be Intuited that Consciousness, in Reality, is the attribute of Mind that makes Creations Real. What logical Consciousness becomes aware of is thereby made Real. If matter is unreal -- if our material universe is illusory, a dream -- then Conscious Mind can’t touch it. Can’t be aware of it because to do so would make unreality real. The will of Logic is to govern everywhere and Everything unopposed. But in an unreal-dream universe, directed and made real by an unconscious mind with Free Will, corrupted by illogic -- the Child, -- Logic must refrain from asserting its will unopposed. Otherwise it would disable Free Will, the attribute of Mind essential to the affirmation of Worth, of Being-Life, the object of Creation. The Will of the Child that’s Free, the unconscious corrupted mind that’s chosen to be deluded, will get in the way until it has freely chosen not to. Until it has freely chosen to part with its delusion and regain Consciousness.

The state of Mind that projects unreality must, therefore, be unconscious. A state that’s split between Being and its shadow code non-being opposite. A state whose awareness cannot make anything real. But it can, and does, make unreality “real.” The ultimate source of science's confusion isn't sensory perception but an unconscious Mind that's dreaming.

What this logically implies is an explanation for particles behaving lawfully like particles while under observation and lawlessly like waves when not. Matter being relational to mind is matter doing what unconscious mind tells it to do. In keeping with the relationship that was established when an illusory thought of unconscious mind projected it and energy directed by unconscious mind produced it.

More gifts: The lawful mathematics of lawless particles

Quantum mechanics’ manifestation of lawlessness and disorder in opposition to lawfulness and order manifests body-centered physical unreality in opposition to mind-centered Reality. It is the mathematics of quantum mechanics that confirms it. The lawlessness and disorder of matter is not just an appearance, an aberration. The observations of quantum mechanics are correct. Matter is what it appears to be, what it’s empirically observed to be. The observations are correct and the calculations, also correct, prove it. Quantum mechanics’ measurements that confirm matter’s lawlessness and disorder are not a mistake. What they reveal about the nature of our reality is true. Its mathematics prove it.

More gifts: Our lawless, quivering cosmos

Logic holds that a creation, object, or event must be subject to the purpose and meaning – the Logic -- of its context. If the context is the non-being opposite of Reality-Being – i.e. unreality -- then this determines the Logic of everything in this context. For example, if Reality-Creation is order-harmony then unreality is disorder-conflict. The rule of opposites is that they must be unreal. They must obey arbitrary commandments of illogic that ensure disorder rather than align with the Necessity of Logic’s laws of cause and effect that ensure order.

The Logic-Necessity of a universe that’s unreal is not being governed by laws. By laws that adhere and apply consistently. Particle behavior implies that our material universe is ruled by lawlessness: by laws that do not adhere and apply consistently. By laws that contradict, break down into disorder, and vanish altogether into “singularities." All of it consistent with the logical premise that our material-lawless universe is unreal.

A universe that quivers when massive black holes collide, like the imagined worlds depicted in Contact (Jodie Foster 1997) and The Truman Show (Jim Carrey 1998), advertises its unreality. Behaving like a giant blob of Jell-O is no more reassuring about cosmic reality than the loss of absolute space and time to relativity. What can be intuited from Logic, if not science, is that illusion is dreamed and the dreamer can only be Mind in an unconscious state. For it must be split, conflicted, and corrupted if it’s to match the attributes of its dream – our world of appearances, contradictions, and ambiguity.

The Jodie Foster character contacted her deceased father after she imagined a journey through the vastness of spacetime aided by a wormhole. The reassuring South Pacific beach she arrived at quivered to the touch, the telltale sign of imagination. All her experience actually involved, besides imagination, was the drop of a space capsule from its launching pad a few feet to the ground. The Jim Carrey character was finally persuaded that his “life” was television show fiction when his environment quivered to the touch. Not even special effects, so realistic that a harrowing attempt to escape across a turbulent sea nearly took his life, could overcome the shock of reality that quivers.

More gifts. . . .

Entropy. Energy responding to its source Mind producing particles that store energy in various forms, organic and inorganic, all subject to disorganization and decay -- entropy --because the state of Mind is unconscious. Unconscious mind > Energy > unreality > matter > entropy.

The appearance of Reality. Matter appearing real only on a human scale where laws of science appear to conform with laws of cause and effect and the chaos of nature on a quantum and cosmic scale is not apparent. One implication is the title of Rovelli’s Reality Is Not What It Seems. Another, more obvious, is that what doesn’t seem real may not be real.

Evolution toward life. The universe evolving in a way that supports temporal life because it’s directed to do so by Mind that’s unconscious. Projecting a dream of non-being that mandates both life and death because Reality-Creation, of Being, its opposite, is timelessness and eternal Life.

Psychosomatic illness. Bodies’ cells and DNA genetic codes responding to unconscious mind with psychosomatic illness, spontaneous remissions, miraculous recoveries, and other paranormal phenomena like out-of-body near-death experiences. All caused by matter relational to Mind.

The choice: The somewhere of Reality or the nowhere of unreality

In our world that body-centered science insists is real the evidence provided by Mind-centered Logic that it’s unreal is overwhelming. Science and the Church would seem, at first glance, to be unlikely allies. But together, they are the great defenders of the reality of the body and sensory perception. Ultimately for reasons of self-preservation, because belief in the reality of animate and inanimate matter is fundamental to belief in the need for scientific study. Belief in the reality of the body and its physical environment is fundamental to belief in the pain and suffering of this world and the need for salvation from another world.

Scientists may not just be uneducated about philosophy as Einstein and Becker suggest. Its systematic devaluation over time suggests intent. Unquestioned faith in the reality of matter and sensory perception, already compromised by physics, may someday be finished off by Mind-centered philosophy equally sure of its Logic. When it places our world and the entire human enterprise, including science, in a more logical context: unreality. Science’s determination to avoid this possibility makes sense, but faith unquestioned does not.

This “fundamentalist rationalist,” this “radical subjectivist” as “realist” objectivists like Rovelli and Strevens would have it, holds that so long as science insists on a fallacy; so long as it denies the plausibility of another view without inquiring with open minds into its Logic; its search for meaning in quantum mechanics, its reaching for perfection in quantum gravity, indeed its “quest for knowledge,” will not produce the answers, the enlightenment long ago promised. Will go nowhere.

Empirical science has performed spectacularly since Aristotle’s time. The celebrity of Newton and Einstein were deserved. Science deserves our respect and support. But it has limits. And with limits exposed by mysteries like dark matter and quantum gravity, it’s time to put the focus back on Logic.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is “Logic?” It’s Everything

There is nothing that isn’t subject to Logic’s laws of cause and effect, even unreality and its laws of chaos. “Everything” being the broadest possible context makes it the ultimate authority on purpose and meaning, without which there is no logical basis for understanding or interpretation. To approach the meaning of quantum mechanics or any other question without context aligned with Logic is to approach substance without attribute, fact without value. Is to get it wrong.

Were it not for Logic unreality – our unreal world of spacetime and matter – would be undiluted evil. It would not be the mix of good and evil that it is. If the Child-Mind that’s dreaming it has parted from Consciousness then Consciousness – Mind-Love, the Child’s Parents and Awareness that makes its Creations real – can have no part in it. Its absence would leave a void, and there would be nothing to prevent the shadow code of non-being from filling it. Logic being “Everything” isn’t just New Age pap. Its substance for us is the insurmountable barrier it poses to non-being being our absolute lord and master. Nothing can claim notice, whether it’s state or statelessness, without being subject to its definition by Logic.

So, yes, the shadow code gained purchase on the Child’s imagination from loss of Consciousness. But it could never deliver separation from the definitions, the implications and interconnections, of Logic. Moreover, Logic was already there at the beginning. It didn’t arise in response to any void. It defined it and put it where it belongs in the broadest possible context of Everything: Consciousness and unconsciousness, Reality and unreality. Free Will by definition can’t have a “savior;” the initiative for regaining Consciousness must come from us. But if we insist on having one it would be Logic.

Logic is Governance that requires systems thinking

Logic is minding the store, keeping watch over all that is. Logic is our guide to making it possible to explain Consciousness and the origin of the universe and Life. All human endeavor, all of its art and science, is defined and powered by the implications and interconnections of Logic. The only limits on its scope are the misperceptions and limbic system emotions driven by human self-interest.

To address any question logically is to derive purpose and meaning from the circumstances that define the situation. Not from the top down but from the ground up, with a systems approach that welcomes input from all relevant sources. Logic synthesizes judgment’s purpose and meaning to govern, to maintain order and harmony from the bottom up. It’s the only source of system because it’s the only source of synthesis. Because it produces the all-important controlling consideration that integrates. Logic = context = purpose and meaning = judgment. What the situation calls for. What our situation calls for, that begins and ends with Logic.

Logic requires the broadest context conceivable for Judgment, the whole system “integrating humanistic ideal” (Strevens 270) that’s only definable if all parts of the system are accounted for. Logic needs parts to fit together in harmony not for aesthetic reasons but so they function as a whole for a purpose: to extend and expand Knowledge through discovery, Creation through new Life, and Worth through its affirmation and reciprocation. The validation of Being and all that its stance implies: the Innocence of Oneness, Life infinite and eternal, Freedom of thought, choice, and expression, the Beauty of purity, the Protection of structure -- everything of importance that we associate with “Life.”

Logic oversees the contents of Intuition’s collective Memory from Reality-Creation. It does so to protect its purity from contamination by illogic. Logic is Perfection. Logic’s perfection is protection, the boundaries of order that both contain and protect the Innocence of Mind-Love and Free Will at the core of Creation. Logic is Sanctuary. Logic is the Home of Psyche, the Soul of Innocence. Logic is our Home in Reality.

All that is needed to open any question to Logic – to the free spirit of inquiry – is to broaden its context: from self-interest to humanity’s interest. Where “humanity’s interest” includes not only the physical limits of body but the possibility of another reality of limitless, immaterial Mind. Context broadened from parts of the system to the system as a whole. All that is needed to liberate Logic to do its job is a systems approach that begins and ends with systems thinking. With thoughts of intellect aided but not distracted or misled by senses of body, by appearances. With an uncompromising will to comprehend that discriminates between what is Real and what is unreal.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Reasoning” from a questionable given leads to questionable interpretation

“Science. . . requires of its practitioners the strategic suppression of . . . the highest element of human nature, the rational mind.” (Strevens 8) The point is made on behalf of science’s “iron rule of explanation” propounded in The Knowledge Machine, and it is well taken in its context. What cannot be well taken is scientific “reasoning” that places the biases of an entire discipline as well as individual practitioners above Logic. Misperception leads to misjudgment.

Physics is an important input on the storyline of matter’s reality or unreality. But because it defines its subject rigidly as matter to the exclusion of Mind it cannot be the only input. It can pursue humanity’s “quest for knowledge” but it’s not qualified to define it. And it’s certainly not qualified to own or control it. Not so long as its body-centered mis-interpretation of quantum mechanics is illogic and the illogic remains unexplained.

Logic might be thought of as a pure distillate of Mind, similar in concept to the iron rule of science articulated in The Knowledge Machine. Its primary concern is not with all the attributes of Creation but with only one: their alignment with the implications and interconnections of Logic. “Reasoning” that begins with a given that’s out of alignment with Logic can only lead to misinterpretation: failure to grasp the meaning of its findings. Not letting the implications of Logic guide the search blinds us to the Truth.

A given that’s out of alignment with Logic

Science’s unquestioned faith in the reality of the body and its physical environment is illogical not because its opposite is necessarily true but because it’s an open philosophical question. Settled in the minds of the majority but unsettled in serious, credible thought pre-dating Plato. Illogical not only because it’s an open philosophical question but because physics is closed to philosophy itself:

For the great majority of contemporary scientists, there is nothing in the least unreasonable about the iron rule’s exclusion of religious considerations from scientific argument. The same is true of the rule’s exclusion of philosophical argument. Most physicists regard it as a waste of time . . . to search for an understanding of quantum mechanics that renders it humanly comprehensible. . . . [T]hey say – ‘Shut up and calculate.’ The physicist Steven Weinberg goes further: ‘I know of no one who has participated in the advance of physics in the postwar period whose research has been significantly helped by the work of philosophers.’ (Strevens 209-210)

Why haven’t philosophers helped?

Philosophers are thought to be mystics, religious figures, bullshit artists – anything divorced from reality. The discipline as a whole is seen as millennia of people chasing down big questions – What is the meaning of life? Why is there suffering? -- and coming back without any good answers. . . . [W]hile most philosophers of physics are analytic, most of the philosophers from the past seventy years that you’ve heard of are probably Continental . . . philosophers like Sartre, Camus, Foucault, Derrida, and Zizek. . . [who] tend to be much more suspicious of scientific claims about knowledge and truth than their analytic colleagues. . . . Given [their] attitude. . , it’s not terribly surprising that scientists have disdain for all philosophers. . . . (Becker 273)

Philosophers have come back with good answers. Some are in this essay. But they and their answers have been bullied off stage by – guess what – the tyranny of the body and its senses. By the dominant strain of science, philosophy, psychology, and theology that’s aware of the weirdness of matter and still insists that it’s real. By bullshit artists.

Unexamined faith in the reality of matter is religion

Philosophy closed to science and science closed to philosophy would make for entertaining science fiction if it weren’t fatal to the search for Reality and Truth. But Becker still has faith in philosophy:

Philosophers of physics, and most other philosophers, are far removed from this picture: they work on well-defined questions with logical rigor and with input from the most recent developments in science and from the immediate experiences of the senses. How the practice and the image of philosophy have diverged so wildly is a subject for an entirely different book. . . . (Becker 273-274) (emphasis added)

Philosophers of physics may be guided by the immediate experiences of the senses but “most other philosophers” doing so are by no means the only ones working with “logical rigor.” An entire strain of Western thought, from Parmenides and Plato on, prefers answers from mind, intuition, and reason to what we can learn from bodies and matter. Rationalists, idealists, and subjectivists arrayed against positivists, realists, and objectivists – philosophy’s great divide. Becker’s title, What Is Real?, like quantum mechanics itself, hints at philosophical fireworks. A step toward reconciliation or at least a fresh perspective. Maybe even a breakthrough in Logic. But it’s not to be. The promise of originality stifled once again by the sacred premise: “the immediate experiences of the senses.”

It isn’t the responsibility of scientists bound by the iron rule to philosophize about the meaning of quantum mechanics. Their suspicion of mainstream philosophy, likewise body-centered and baffled by quantum mechanics, may be fair. But it doesn’t negate the need for philosophy that’s mind-centered, whose insights from Logic permeate the history of Western and Eastern thought. The difference between body- and mind-centered is the difference between mind closed to logical possibilities and mind open. To be fair to Logic’s heritage, physics needs to acknowledge that its own unexamined faith in the reality of matter is philosophy. It’s the last thing science ought to be: religion.

When matter reaches the level of the Absolute

Plato sought in the ascendance of Mind over the coarseness of body an expression of virtue to match the elegance and beauty of the cosmos, itself an expression of the divinity of the “Good”. If “realism” requires religious faith in bodies’ sensory perception his philosophy could not part with it, yet it was allowed to stand during the iconoclasm perpetrated by the Church. For both clung tenaciously if incongruously to body and to God.

Einstein the realist was moved by the elegance and beauty of the cosmos to express all of Creation in the elegance and beauty of a mathematical formula. Though he failed he remained a deist, believer in a prime mover not otherwise involved in its Creation.

Hawking stuck it to the Church with his no-boundary cosmos: Creation without the need for a Creator. An “atheist” who substitutes one supreme being for another is no atheist. Who substitutes the god of bodies and their sensed environment -- matter, the stuff of physics, which needs no more justification for its elegance and beauty, its divinity, than it’s there -- is no atheist.

All three of these singular minds were engaged in a very human search for God, who found in matter, the cosmos, an expression of what they were looking for: Creation elevated by “realism,” stunning in its unrealism, to the status of its own Creator. The intellectual convenience of not having to part with what seems certain and obvious to believe in what isn’t certain and obvious. Made possible by parting with Logic, the only honest way to question – to think about – anything. Because the only premise Logic will accept, the only “given,” is the sanctity, the inviolability, of the search for Reality and Truth. Not the inviolability of matter, the sanctity of bodies that sense it, but the inviolability and sanctity of Logic.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Logic knows the difference between givens and not-givens

Why, then, is Logic not made the iron rule of thought that would govern the scientific method? Why does the scientific method allow itself to compromise objectivity under the guise of defending it?

The iron rule of all serious thought should be Logic that knows the difference between givens and not-givens. That knows better than to follow physics’ denial of the uncertainty of its founding premise: the premise laid down by Aristotle, that matter is real. Aristotle, who preferred to follow the body into biology rather than the mind into Plato’s philosophy and brought us to quantum mechanics, particle-waves mocking Sherlock Holmes’ bloodhounds. Sniffing their way into mazes from which they can’t sniff their way out.

Is this any improvement on the uncertainties, the “vagueness” of philosophy? Cloaking quantum mechanics in the Copenhagen Interpretation or any other question-begging sophistry may put off the day of reckoning for one profession, but it doesn’t serve the interests of Logic or of humanity, its supposed beneficiary.

Logic is the iron rule of Reality-Creation

Why is Logic the route to Consciousness? To awakening to Reality-Creation?

It would be so if this is one of its primary functions: to sit in judgment on whether the Logic of a Creation qualifies it for entry into Reality. Whether it aligns with the Logic, the perfection, of Reality-Creation. Its authority, its power and ability to govern, rests on the Necessity of its laws of cause and effect. If any trace of imperfection, of illogic, were allowed entry all of Reality-Creation would collapse. If any trace of imperfection penetrated the process of Creation it would stop the process in its tracks. Without the protection of Logic Being might cease to be.

Just as the iron rule of science is there to prevent its contamination, the iron rule of Reality-Creation – Logic – is there to prevent its contamination. The iron rule of science has no validity or force if it does not also incorporate the Necessity of Logic’s laws of cause and effect.

Theories from the Logic of Intuition are science

Logic sorts things out by making distinctions. Distinctions necessary for definitions, definitions necessary to establish roles and relationships so the implications of Logic fit together – interconnect -- logically. Physics that walls itself off from logical implications disables its ability to make distinctions. It renders itself unable to intuit and think logically. It gets stuck in artificial givens. The route to a higher level of the search for Reality-Truth must be cleared of logical obstructions, not cluttered with them.

Electromagnetism and Relativity originated with Michael Faraday’s and Albert Einstein’s intuition -- from their imaginations. They were theories produced by Logic, the same as Democritus intuiting atoms without scientific instruments or experiments.

Give the iron rule of scientific experimentation and explanation, based on sensory perception, its due. Let science submit theories to “proof.” But intuition and theory are just as much “science” as the iron rule. What they owe their legitimacy to is Logic, which is its own iron rule: interconnections of implications that must fit. The fitness and harmony of Logic’s interconnections can’t be obstructed by illogical givens. Taking one side of any open philosophical issue as a given, like the reality or unreality of matter, may do wonders for biases but it does nothing for the search for Reality and Truth.

“In science, only empirical reasoning counts.” (Strevens 205). Let this be true for the narrow definition assigned by Strevens to the iron rule of some science. What is logically implied by other science -- quantum mechanics -- is that empirical reasoning leads to a dead end. No amount of disciplinary rigor can turn contradiction into confluence, chaos into order, singularity into comprehension. Becker has faith that yet more scientific experiments will change that. Yes, and humanity will colonize other planets, and pigs will fly.

So, to be honest, not all of science agrees with Strevens. One kind stands for something quite different: matter not only relational to itself but also relational to mind. Meaning assigned not to any one discipline but to a much broader context: to systems thinking in service to Logic, that requires input from every relevant source. Where physics is relegated to its place in Hawking’s no-boundary universe: one galaxy among many.

How can Logic help physics make sense of quantum mechanics? By abandoning its “quest for knowledge” that can make sense only in terms of the world we have always known. By replacing it with a search for Reality and Truth, guided by Logic, that’s open to understanding – by imagining -- a world we haven’t known. Reality that in a state of unreality may not be “knowable” but can at least be Intuited. Can be understood.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What price a fresh approach?

Just as Becker’s What Is Real? hints at a fresh approach to quantum mechanics, Stevens’ The Knowledge Machine hints at a fresh approach to humanity’s quest for knowledge. But where both argue for carrying on as before Strevens acknowledges that there will be a cost, and humanity can no longer ignore it.

The fresh approach The Knowledge Machine hints at is nothing new:

[A] humanistic ideal of knowing. . . upholds an integrating conception of knowledge, according to which the surest path to the most important truths brings together all sources of insight: philosophical, spiritual, poetic, mathematical, experimental, as well as everyday experience of the world. . . . Although humanism in my sense is amply represented in Renaissance thought, it is far wider in scope. Aristotle, for example, is a paragon of my sort of humanism, mingling philosophical argumentation with observation, explanatory speculation, and a little theology. (Strevens 270-271)

But, citing the example of Newton, Strevens argues that it’s not for science to follow the example of Aristotle:

. . . The personification of science . . . [Isaac] Newton. . . quite deliberately failed to integrate these investigations. . . . It is the Newtonian university’s taciturn specialization that is the better route to knowledge. Whatever is lost through detachment and disregard for the grand view of life is more than recompensed by the narrow, tightly focused beam that searches out the diminutive but telling fact. (Strevens 272)

Logic offers the only possibility for a worldview

What’s new is, in the Anthropocene era, “the diminutive but telling fact” is no match for global issues like climate change. Nor are fields of inquiry pursuing individual agendas. The systems approach that Logic calls for is known by another name:

Interpretation [of the IPCC reports] requires a worldview . . . ‘if we care about the future, we have to learn to engage with subjective analyses.’. . . Science. . . is blind to worldviews altogether. The unstinting focus that results is what makes science so inexorable a stalker of knowledge. To fathom all the knowledge it finds, however, we must bring our subjectivity to the task, looking into the monster’s mind with human eyes. In this one crucial respect, the radical subjectivists are right. (Strevens 289) (emphasis added)

Science is not at all “blind to worldviews.” Its assumption that the universe of spacetime and matter is real is a worldview of the first magnitude. Its view, moreover, that its assumption is beyond question deprives it of intellectual rigor and objectivity. This is what makes the iron rule of science a “monster,” not that it’s a “stalker of knowledge.’ All that it’s “stalking” is what can be learned from Aristotle’s study of matter, by no means a comprehensive “quest for knowledge.” The scope of Knowledge, an attribute of Being, exceeds by far the scope of matter. Science assigning to itself a commanding role in what Aristotle started is logically justifiable. Doing so for the much broader search for Reality and Truth is not.

As for “radical subjectivists,” objectivists and so-called “realists” have had the upper hand in the West and the East going back to Aristotle. Probably forever. So whose worldview got humanity into this mess? Who’s “radical?”

The real mission of science

The case that I’ve begun to make for the universe being an illusion and for the Mind dreaming it being unconscious derives not from unquestioned faith but from Logic. The case that science makes for the reality of the universe derives not from Logic but from subjective sensory perception and unquestioned faith.

The Logic of who the Mind is that’s asleep and dreaming and how it got that way will be explained in a series of blog entries that may become a book. Science doesn’t recognize the relevance of whether the mind pursuing its “quest for knowledge” is Conscious or unconscious. Yet it might find that if it did the mystery of its discoveries would become clear. Until it does change its mind, the rest of us are left in limbo, unable to relate to physics as we once did in Newton’s and Einstein’s time. Waiting for science to make perhaps its greatest discovery: its subjectivity. The great flaw in its reasoning that allows matter to testify to its own reality rather than seeking objectivity through Logic from Intuition.

What might this accomplish? If the unconscious Mind that’s dreaming is us it might help to wake us. For this could be the real mission of science, what it’s been all about since Aristotle: not to install our flawed material universe on the throne of perfection and Reality but to help restore Consciousness by seeing through it. By letting go of it. The logical implications of quantum mechanics and the impossible dream of quantum gravity already have us halfway there. What will get us the rest of the way? Every field of inquiry guided by Logic from Intuition; the same gift ultimately responsible for all our progress. If it’s a given, how can we fail?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The push for integration: a collective effort governed by Logic

The various disciplines – science, philosophy, psychology, theology – seem not to be aware that they can’t be expected to make sense of what they’re finding without context. The search for “meaning” in quantum mechanics through more theories, experiments, and discoveries by physics is the definition of irrationality: doing the same thing and expecting different results. Would it not make more sense to submit the discoveries of physics to Logic that cuts across different fields, so it can fit everything together in a broader context? In the context of the whole system?

Disciplines must rigorously distinguish themselves from other disciplines at an operational level. Resisting contamination by philosophy, psychology, and theology at this level is appropriate for physics. How else can it fashion its own iron rules and rigorously police itself? But doing so at the level of Logic would be obtuse. Logic is the only level where a whole-system context necessary to defining purpose and meaning is possible.

At the level of Logic all disciplines must just as rigorously and aggressively push for integration. For the search for Reality and Truth has come to an inflection point: its evolution from lines of inquiry going it alone operationally, following their own rules, to the addition of a higher layer: a collective effort governed by Logic. Each discipline should be training practitioners in the discipline of Logic to collaborate not compete. To fit discoveries and insights into a whole system context. Without it there can be no “we” to undertake the work that needs to be done. To think collectively. As community. As family. In other words, to think logically. The survival of humanity may require no less.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Works cited

Adam Becker, What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics (Basic Books 2018)

Carlo Rovelli, Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity (Riverhead Books 2017)

Michael Strevens, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science (Liveright Publishing 2020)

1

Preface: Why these principles? Why Logic?

Albert Einstein observed in 1951 that “physicists have no understanding of logical and philosophical arguments.” (Becker 273) Adam Becker wondered himself why Hawking, Tyson, and Krauss “know so little about philosophy.” The answer he came up with is unsettling, not just because it brings a defect to awareness but because there’s defect in its awareness. It’s insufficient. He doesn’t seem to grasp the enormity of the problem he describes:

[A]t the birth of quantum physics, all physicists received some schooling in philosophy. . . . But in postwar America, . . an intelligent student [could] go all the way. . . to a PhD in physics. . . without ever darkening the door of a philosophy classroom. . . . With the massive increase in knowledge and information in the last century, education became unavoidably specialized. (Becker 273)

Physicists having no understanding of logical and philosophical arguments can’t be waved off as a failure of the classroom. It’s massively problematic. It means their serious “quest for knowledge” is being driven by minds that don’t take thinking seriously. It means their premises and their conclusions might as well be choreographed by musicians. If they don’t understand Logic, the discipline of philosophy, the heart and soul of rhetoric, they’ll never get to its goal: an understanding of Reality.

The purpose of these principles is not to push an agenda for any particular source or creed. It’s to push Logic.

Certainly not to guide Hawking’s vaunted “quest for knowledge.” In a universe that trumpets its weirdness – quivering, singularities, dark matter, spacetime curvature, particle behavior that defies explanation – talk of “knowledge” seems more than a bit presumptuous. In a funhouse of mirror images what could possibly be “known?” “Search for reality and truth” makes a better fit if we’re not to be fooled by appearances.

To set an example

Another purpose is to set an example. To demonstrate what systems thinking might produce in the way of insights and answers. To suggest how the process and structure of analysis might better serve us when established lines of inquiry aren’t measuring up to their promise. When the dominant paradigms of science, philosophy, psychology, and theology, once thought to hold answers to the origin and meaning of Life, the universe, and Consciousness, have become a chorus of “Shut up and calculate!” A collective admission of defeat not only from physicists at a loss to comprehend quantum mechanics but its equivalent from philosophers, psychologists, and theologists, enervated by centuries of hidebound “realism.” By rote convention that demands obeisance rather than thought.

From the time of Aristotle, when science took off on its “quest for knowledge” from the study of finite matter, the infinite possibilities of mind have fallen out of favor. Lost their relevance until an arch-apologist for matter, the physicist Stephen Hawking, could declare all of philosophy dead. What’s actually dead is the energy great minds like Democritus, Newton, Faraday, Einstein, and Bohr injected into physics, not with calculations alone but with their Intuition. Intuition that could only lead them on a true course to Reality and Truth if it was grounded in Logic. In thinking that coheres with implications that connect. That carry thought forward rather than back to where it started, in circular disappointment and defeat.

Why these principles? To move thinking away from its dominant paradigms that got us this far but can’t take us the rest of the way. To help persuade the theorists who dominate to reclassify a sacred premise from settled to not settled. From a given to the live, legitimate philosophical issue that it is: the premise that bodies and their sensed physical environment of spacetime and matter are real. If its basis is sensory perception then it has no logical basis, because matter can be no judge of whether matter is real. Common law doesn’t assign credibility to conflict of interest, so why is matter allowed on the witness stand to testify to itself? Who but a mind blind to logic would allow it?

Wake up and think!

Circular self-referential “reasoning” is everything that Logic isn’t: a sinkhole of disorder and conflict instead of a portal to order and harmony. It’s the reasoning equivalent of a curved universe where launch from any point is destined to end where it started. But so what: the reality of matter won’t need Logic to stir up doubt when it’s got quantum mechanics. Does anyone hopelessly muddled by the sacred premise of “realism” understand its meaning?

The theorists who dominate on the strength of illogic can do better. There’s no honor, no glory, in “Shut up and calculate!” They can try Logic for a change. How about “Wake up and think!”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Principles and assumptions

Each of the following numbered principles will be the subject of a separate entry:

1. All fields of inquiry require Logic. Logic must be followed wherever its implications and interconnections lead, to all legitimate, logical possibilities.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. Search for Reality-Truth requires spontaneous insights from Mind-Intuition. Requires “realism:” Intuition-Memory of experience from another Reality. Mind-Consciousness and brain are not the same.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3. Mind-thought and Love-feeling are inseparable in Reality, but not here. It is timeless and always Now in Reality, but not here.

4. Judgment and Free Choice are essential to the Creation and affirmation of Worth.

5. The first line of judgment about what is real is Mind-Love in a conscious state. The final authority on what is real is Logic.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

6. “Reality” is at issue because Logic requires that opposites be unreal to protect the integrity of Reality-Creation from contradiction. Reality-Creation and its governance by Logic cannot tolerate the presence of conflicting realities. therefore one must be unreal.

7. Reality is relational to Consciousness.

8. Matter is relational to Mind. The nature of the relationship is accessible through Intuition aided by all fields of inquiry into Mind in alignment with Logic.

9. Creation comes in two states: Real and unreal. Reality and unreality are the products of states of Mind: Conscious and unconscious.

10. The thoughts and Creations of Mind-Love brought to Reality by Consciousness all have opposites. Opposites can only be made real within a dream of Mind-Love’s Child who is unconscious. Every observable attribute of dreamed un-reality is the mirror-image opposite of an attribute of Conscious Reality.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

11. Reality of bodies-matter is a live philosophical issue, not a given. Body-centered Science that dismisses reality of Mind, that treats it as irrelevant, is philosophy, religion.

12. Body-centered physics and biology have reached their limits in the search for Reality and Truth.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

13. Perceptions of what is real and true are influenced by personality types.

14. Logic required to guide the search for Reality-Truth can be facilitated by Mind-Intuiting personality types guided by Logic, who accept that the reality of matter is an open philosophical issue.

15. History’s ongoing philosophical divide between rationalists-idealists and positivists-realists, between empiricism and reason, subjectivists and objectivists, is heavily influenced by opposing personality types: Mind-Intuiting vs. body-sensing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Works cited

Adam Becker, What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics (Basic Books 2018)

More Big Bangs than science or comic books can count

Life created in Reality wants to be detected by Logic-God and by the Child’s Parents Mind-Love. That’s how it’s welcomed into Reality-Being: by being recognized. By being loved. By being noticed by Consciousness whose function is to bring all Creation into Reality by its awareness. For Consciousness to be Conscious of a Life newly created is to accept it into the Interconnectedness of Reality: to make it Known by Knowledge. To make it Real.

This is what happened to us when our Parents gave birth to their Child. Only something happened afterward that caused the Child, who is an extension of Mind-Love, to lose Consciousness. And when she did something got into her mind, a foreign, illogical thought with an alien, uncomfortable feeling –guilt and fear -- that she tried to expel. Thoughts and their associated feelings can’t logically leave their source in Reality. It’s impossible, though in our world of illogic perception is projection. Our perverse habits of mind would be lost without it.

So, to accomplish her end the Child’s unconscious mind was only able to get rid of the discomforting thought by expelling it into an imaginary place. A dream still locked within the Child’s mind. Into unreality. Her distraught mind was only able to do it by imagining it. What she imagined – this expulsion – produced our universe of spacetime and matter. Probably many universes according to both physics and Logic. More Big Bangs than science or comic books can count. Ours was a new world very strange to the Child but all too familiar to us because it’s the only world we’ve ever known: our bodies and their physical environment. Our senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell that enable us to navigate our unreal world.

“You’re making it up”

We’re imaginary versions of the Child whose unconscious mind imagined it was projecting an alien thought-feeling into a separate-substitute reality. A reality perversely made real for us by our bodies’ senses. A reality whose definition is the opposite of the Reality the Child will awaken to when she regains Consciousness. Which has no need of spacetime-matter and Knows nothing of it. Her Reality is Being, the Creativity of Life. Of organic, living Growth realized by the definition of what it is and what it does. Defined by Logic and by Mind-Love, the Child’s Parents, themselves products of Logic, its implications and definitions.

Our reality, here, is non-being. Whose definition is derived from Being turned inside out and upside down. Everything the reverse of what Is. Everything detectable by our bodies’ senses is by definition the opposite of what’s Real. “Life” in a state of unreality is “made” rather than “created,” as in “made up.” As in “make it up,” “you’re making it up.” Like an illusion fantasized by an illusionist-magician or a mythmaking story-teller. It’s not really “life,” just an approximation of it, an appearance. The “reality” that can’t even compare with near-death experiences their subjects describe as “more real than real.” It’s the product of the alien thought and feeling that got into the Child’s unconscious mind that the Child was desperate to get rid of.

All it is, this intruder, is a version of what we perceive from experience that accompanies everything of seeming value: its shadow opposite. The “dark side.” There’s the dark side shadow opposite of kindness which is unkindness. Selfishness the dark side of generosity. Our dictionaries have terms for every imaginable form of perversity and depravity and we’re familiar with pretty much all of it. So, it’s not a stretch to imagine the dark side of all of it: an all-encompassing shadow-code opposite of Being.

Call it non-being. Follow the implications and Interconnections of Logic and we’ll have all of its attributes, starting with the central fact that it doesn’t exist. Non-being can’t be. If a primary attribute of a thing created in Reality is organic, growing Life, then a primary attribute of its opposite must surely be inorganic, static lifelessness. Mindlessness and lovelessness, too, since Life in Reality is Created by Mind-thought bonded with Love-feeling.

Never asking Why

A virus is a lifeless, mindless-loveless code that instructs cells it takes captive to replicate itself. It has no home of its own but, like a hermit crab that occupies empty shells, it makes itself at home wherever there is one. The intruder non-being, an illusory thought that took the Child’s unconscious mind captive like a cell, replicates itself in our dream world. Perpetuates itself by bodies procreating. Maintains itself and its appearances by being continually detected by bodies’ senses and necessarily goes to great lengths to maintain appearances that can be detected.

But “existing” in unreality makes shadow necessarily averse to detection of another sort: to exposure. To awareness of the truth that it doesn’t exist. That it’s unreal, just an unliving virus occupying its captive, a once-living host. Dracula the undead shielding himself from the rays of the dawn. A cockroach desperate to evade detection. This would be the defenses built into the code: where Life Created in Reality is drawn to the light of awareness, for the recognition of Logic and Mind-Love that sanctions its Reality, the shadow code avoids the light of awareness that would shine it away. It can’t be “known.” It can only be imagined. And its imagining can only be sustained by appearances.

The viral shadow code that demands detection by bodies evades detection by minds. Minds that seek awareness so the Child can awaken. Minds that seek awareness by learning, growing, developing, and expanding. That seek awareness by thinking, questioning, and by following the implications of Logic that lead to answers. To understanding. Minds that ask Why. The intruder viral shadow code instructs its captives to put all their faith in their bodies’ senses and none in their minds. To abandon mind entirely by forbidding it to ever ask Why.

Why? So minds can never uncover the truth about the code that’s taken their minds captive: that it doesn’t exist. That it’s all made up – an illusion. That it has no life, no power or authority of its own. That the appearance of “the power of the dark side” is energy appropriated from the life of its host. That the host has been duped by its occupier, a nothing, into deceiving itself. Into imagining that its attempt to get rid of an unwanted thought-feeling by expelling it into a dream world actually succeeded when nothing actually happened. The guilt, the fear, and their devious sponsor are still there.

There are no “saviors”

We’ve been scammed. The Child in her unconscious state has dreamed up a bizarre conspiracy theory whose absurdities are everything non-being. Everything non-existent. The Child and her viral replications – us in our bodies – have been gulled. We are all fools being led around by the nose by a passel of deceptions. Of lies. Of arguments that would collapse into nothingness the instant they’re exposed to the truth.

Why couldn’t the Parents have protected their Child from this calamity? If Being were to Know what lies in its shadow it would bring it out of the shadow into the light of Reality. It would create a contradiction – two opposing realities -- that could not survive Logic. The possibility of unconsciousness and its illusory consequences are for the Child with Free Will to be aware of, not Awareness itself. The same element missing in the Child’s awareness at birth, that caused her to lose Consciousness -- awareness of that which her Parents could not be aware of, -- led her into the Joker’s trap.

The Parents whose awareness makes Creation Real could not prevent their Child’s fall from her Sanctuary of Creation into unconsciousness and illusion. Neither could they prevent her fall from illusion into the Joker’s substitute reality of lies, the world we call “home.” It’s for the Child and her Guide, activated by Logic, to extricate herself and prevent another calamity. It’s our responsibility. With guidance to be sure, but not with “saviors.”

Reclaiming minds by following the implications of Logic

How does one address a mind that’s been taken captive by a viral shadow code? To let it know that something is amiss. That the “reality” it’s been conditioned-coded to detect isn’t really “there?” If it’s been taken captive then it’s mindless and it can’t be addressed. How does one address its captor to make it go away? How does one address anyone in Plato’s Cave, its master or its occupants? One doesn’t. Addressing the captor with or without opposition – fury, projection of guilt, attack – only reaffirms its “reality.” Makes it real. It responds to being addressed lovingly or hatefully the same way, by not going away. This is a form of detection that the Joker relishes.

The only recourse isn’t to validate the intruder’s feigned presence but to undo its lies. To expose the truth. To question the appearances that prop up the pretender to the throne. Its fraudulent rule. The imposter’s usurpation of its hosts’ minds. Beginning with the premise that we aren’t mind. That we’re bodies instead and all that’s real can only be what our bodies’ senses tell us.

We begin the long, arduous task of reclaiming our freedom, our sovereignty and self-awareness, by reclaiming our minds: the ability and power to think for ourselves. To ask the forbidden question: Why? and follow the implications of Logic, of Reason, to the answers. To the truth. To self-awareness that’s not defined by anything to do with the intruder. With non-being that insists that our unreality of spacetime and matter are real. That our bodies whose senses lock it into place in our imaginations are substitutes for god. That they’re the final authority on who we are and what we do, to be venerated like idols. That in a world where God can't be sensed by bodies the veneration of bodies and their illusory author -- idolatry -- is good.

We begin to do our part to help the Child reclaim her freedom and sovereignty, her place in Reality and her role in Creation, by understanding that everything we’ve been conditioned from birth by our bodies to believe is real is unreal. Our world was not “created by God.” Though it’s certainly a manifestation of the power of Mind, it’s only a dream within an unconscious mind where the unreal has been made real. Made real by bodies’ senses built into the dream. A dream made real by itself, so at odds with Logic that it can’t be taken seriously.

We begin to do our part by letting go of our addiction to appearances. To the satisfactions and pleasures of the sensuous and sensual, scarce compensation for the misery of separation, sickness, injury, and death. By embracing another reality we’ve been conditioned – hoodwinked – into believing isn’t real. The reality of Mind. The Child’s Mind. The Memory of our own Mind embedded in our soul. Protected by our Psyche inviolate. Where everything that Is can be intuited and eventually accessed by Logic as the Child awakens. A reality of timelessness and eternal Life instead of wretched mortality. Accessed by Reason and Love that are inseparable. Inseparable because a mind with Free Will that would choose cannot do so without evaluating. Evaluating with values supplied by their only conceivable source, the source of all feeling: Love.

We begin to do our part when we’ve opened our minds to guidance from Reason-Love and detached from the Joker. From the absurdities of non-being that infected the Child’s unconscious mind and led it into a terminal state of psychosis. Into a fevered hallucination. Into insanity, the state of mind that rules – not governs – our planet today.

Freedom for the occupants of Plato’s Cave, freedom for us

How does one free the occupants of Plato’s Cave? When Plato’s enlightened one saw daylight and its source, the sun, he returned to tell of his discovery. He informed his cave-mates that the images cast by firelight weren’t real, thus implying that all the meaning his cave-mates had been attributing to them, all their value and “benefits,” were of no consequence other than to delude. He asked his cave-mates to question the reality of flickering shadows based solely on his discovery of sunlight. What he failed to do – what Plato’s philosophy didn’t lead him to do – was to question the reality of the cave-master based on his discovery of the source of light: the sun.

The discovery that should have brought about enlightenment wasn’t things illuminated but the source of the illumination: the sun. The sun and the source of the illusion: not firelight but the master of the Cave. Had the enlightened one grasped the significance of the sun, had he turned his cave-mates’ attention to its absurd knock-off in the cave -- the prison master nothingness hidden by the darkness -- they would have grasped the fallacy behind the wile in all its implications. They would have understood, finally, that the “benefits” of the flickering images were not only an illusion, they were actually costs. Revealing this essential truth about their captor, that it’s unreal, that its authority is a lie, would have removed the premise that held all of its lies together. Would have revealed the pointless cruelty behind the entire deception. It would have freed the occupants’ minds and restored their free will. They would have retracted their projection of power, their own authority, onto a nonentity and abandoned the cave gladly, without further persuasion. Instead of killing their liberator for depriving them of their “benefits,” they would have thanked him.

Had Plato’s unfinished philosophy separated what he understood to be mind and matter into Reality and unreality, as Jesus has done in A Course in Miracles and Parmenides before him, he would have understood that the light of the sun represented the Reality of Mind. That the darkness inside the Cave, its opposite, represented the unreality of matter. Not just the flickering shadows but their author, the Cave master. The source of the power of the Allegory of the Cave -- its lasting influence in Western thought -- is the truth it implies about the human condition: that we are the occupants of the Cave. It is our world; we are being deceived by its ruler; and its ruler is a fraud. A truth buried in our psyche, where it permeates our subconscious, never quite reaching the surface.

Bringing truth to the surface

It’s pointless, in this context, to address the captor if it’s not “there” or its captives if their minds aren’t accessible. When the tyranny of sensory perception won’t credit minds with escaping from the darkness into daylight. But it is possible to use our own minds to undo the lies and speak for the truth. To put it “out there” until minds weary of captivity and delusion respond to glimmers of light. Until cracks appear in the armor of bodies’ senses that let in the light, and Life and Reality, Beauty and Creativity, stir again.

Until we get the point: the Joker’s joke is on us. The “power of the dark side” comes from us. All that’s needed to reclaim it for ourselves, to take ownership back from the intruder, is to change our minds. All that’s needed to convert ownership of body-sensed matter to sharing, empowerment, and affirmation, to free us from its baleful influence - the scourge of possession and control, competition and “winning,” dominance and supremacy, specialness and the perverse innocence of victimhood – right predicated on someone else’s wrong, – is to remove the shadow code from its shadow. To change guides and expose it to the light of Reality and Truth. To Logic.

1

The utility of Logic

Nothing gets done unless it’s done by a relationship. Matter is relational: particles exist only when they connect. Logic, like everything else, is a relationship. Many relationships. One is the relationship Logic establishes between conditions – facts-circumstances – and their meaning to form context that yields purpose. Another is the relationship Logic establishes between purpose and Reality-Creation: belonging or not belonging.

If meaning attributed to conditions is mistaken then their purpose yielded by context must be mistaken. Since Reality-Creation can only consist of the Logic of Being, the perfection of Mind conjoined with Love, anything mistaken would necessarily only be attributable to what is impossible by definition: to its opposite. Opposite and impossible by definition, which is to say, by Logic. And therefore, not belonging to Reality-Creation. The status of not-belonging established by Logic on the basis of purpose, whether in harmony with the meaning of conditions or in opposition to it.

This is a definition of Logic that derives not from the abstract but from use: the purpose of Logic which applies the same standard of utility, of practical application, to its definition that it applies to the definition of every context: its purpose.

Unfinished business in the definition of the Child

Logic is what keeps the unreal, the uncreative, the unmindful and unloving, out of Reality and provides protection-sanctuary for what is Real. We are here because the Child who we are, who is active within our collective unconscious mind, needing our help to awaken, offering her help through the Holy Spirit to free us from unreality, came into a context for which she was unprepared. Unprepared by the conditions and context that defined her up to that point in the sequence of Logic. That gave her Logic, the purpose that granted her status and the role that accompanied it in Reality-Creation.

An element missing in her definition, that could not have been provided either by Logic or by her Parents Mind-Love, was revealed to be unfinished business, a gap in Knowledge upon her first attempt to fulfill her role. Revealed by experience to be incomplete, whose completion could only be learned by experience. We live, suffer, and die in this context of opposites, of confusion, guilt, and dread, of desperation to reclaim our innocence and being at one another’s expense, to learn from experience the element missing in the Child’s definition. In her Logic, her protection, so that she may fulfill her role in Creation without violating Logic, without abandoning its protection and leaving its sanctuary. Without being barred from a Reality that would cease to be Reality if she were not.

The lesson to be learned from experience

The lesson to be learned is awareness of the stakes of Creation: the possibility of loss of Consciousness from unawareness and its consequences. The costs-consequences of unreality made real that is our world of appearances and deceit. That our Source, the Child’s Source, could not be aware of by definition, because Consciousness to be aware of anything makes it Real.

Without the Child’s awareness of the stakes of Creation her exercise of Free Will, to freely choose to establish and reciprocate Worth, would have no meaning. Would not be free. This is her function, her responsibility, not her Parents’. We go through this hell of suffering and death, of unreality made real, hand in hand with the Child:

• to claim the Child’s birthright: her role in Creation and the function that enables it, her Free Will.
• to reestablish communication with our Parents Mind-Love and win admittance from Logic to its protection, its sanctuary in Reality.
• to demonstrate that the Child’s definition, her Logic is now complete. That we have learned our lesson from experience and provided the missing element: the awareness of what’s at stake. In relationship with the Holy Spirit, our Guide. Our one and only connection with Logic.

The ultimate affirmation of Free Will

The Child had to have a hand in her own Creation, her own completion, her own perfection: in the ultimate affirmation of Free Will. Because not everything was handed to her so she could set off into the unknown of Creation with nothing to learn of herself, nothing to strive for within, fully grown. Fully grown with nothing to learn of herself would be a contradiction, for she’s a Child. With an adventure to live, the necessity, the gift of Growth.

In this world of unreality the death of an innocent Child is needless if she can choose Life. By learning from the gift of Mind and Love and by learning from Growth and experience. That there’s another Reality. The Reality of her Parents and ours: Mind and Love that are not the unreality of matter. The unreality of suffering and death made real by bodies and their senses. By the “logic” of matter that isn’t.

2

Who and what this is about

“ESFP” herein refers exclusively to a category of Myers-Briggs personality type: Extravert / Sensing / Feeling / Perceptive without Judgment. It does not generally refer to ESFPs with Judgment. They belong firmly in two separate and distinct subcategories. The generalizations herein cannot even apply uncritically to all ESFPs without Judgment because personality types are rife with permutations. The subject is complex and does not lend itself to hard and fast anything. Although it’s an everyday preoccupation the ultimate foundation for its insights is intuition.

This is a reflection on the development of the ESFP without Judgment personality type:
• in relation to its own internal INTJ opposites: Introversion / Intuition / Thinking / Judgment
• in relation to others who belong to its opposite INTJ personality type.

It is based not on formal scholarship but on general observation and specific experience with multiple ESFPs. Its inspiration is Isabel Briggs Myers’ notion, laid out in Gifts Differing (1980), that individuals with opposite personality types can help one another expand their personalities into their opposites. That by doing so they will gain self-awareness, strengthen their innate powers, abilities, and overall character, strengthen their relationships, and thereby meet their obligations and stand up to adversity.

It makes no claim to objectivity since it’s about ESFPs in relation to INTJ opposites and the author is an INTJ. It is, in fact, highly subjective. Its claim to legitimacy rests solely on the implications of logic drawn from what is known about and experienced with these two personality types. In other words, it will either make sense and ring true or it won’t. It will either help reduce friction and make life easier or it won’t.

The frustration of friction

Frustration is evident in these thoughts because of the author’s personal experience with ESFs and the heartbreak of troubled relationships with relatives and friends. Plus there is humanity’s shared experience with demagogues like the former guy who make a career out of troubling relationships. The author’s INTJ type is a distinct minority according to Isabel’s intuition, maybe a quarter of the general population. That’s certainly how it seems. He’s surrounded by pennant-waving, winning-obsessed fans, one for all, all for one, who would give us the shirts off their backs so long as we’re already wearing their team’s shirt. If we’re not, or worse, if we’re just an individual without a team, we’re nobody. We might as well be invisible. This can be frustrating.

The model for these observations is a composite, although the former guy checks off on most everything that annihilates personal friendship, so he qualifies. “ESFP without Judgment” is ESFPs walled off from their INTJ opposites. From INTJ assets that are not only under-utilized they’re treated as aliens not to be trusted. Whether by conscious choice or by being so enamored of type that the ESFPs have forfeited their ability to see or be anything else. Like they’ve given up their free will, which is to say, their minds since all that reason and analysis are really for is to choose. Like they’ve become a personality so set in their type, so rote and inaccessible, that it’s pointless to relate to them except socially on the most superficial level.

So resolute, so intractable is their inaccessibility, that these thoughts can’t really be directed at them. It would be pointless. They’re directed at whatever controls them. And if these thoughts sound like ire so be it: whatever has taken them captive and out of reach is definitely not nice. The problem is, it can’t be a Who. It can’t be anything living. How can a self-respecting INTJ get anywhere with an inaccessible ESFP by raging at a virus? Jesus raging at money lenders defiling a temple made sense. Raging at a PA system blaring inane messages scripted by an absurd movie villain wouldn’t.

Getting to understanding

What could work is an attempt at understanding. Not retaliation with yet another projection of guilt, but understanding that protects both sides with thoughtful analysis. With patient reflection instead of passion. Understanding that clarifies choices and the costs and benefits needed to make them rationally. Costs and benefits that can make a friendship or break it.

Why bother? Maybe it’s because motivation isn’t always for us alone to decide. Maybe others depend on ESFPs and INTJs to get along, to get their acts together, so they attend to business, to shared purpose on behalf of the larger family. On behalf of the larger community that can’t maintain harmony and attend to its business unless all of us do our part. There’s selfishness and rancor in the friction to follow and this may be where it begins: with individuals caught up in their stuff ignoring the bigger picture: those who depend on them.

What then can be done about it? How about striving for understanding to reconcile our personalities on behalf of those who need us, and to serve our families and our communities with loving kindness?

Sensing the Absolute

Obsession with imagery and indulgence in bodily appetites are a form of worship for ESFPs without Judgment. Worship of the Absolute that not only caresses their senses with blessings but reciprocates with their very Worth. Though they may only be preoccupied with appearances there is no overstating the value of appearances. Satisfaction from experience that is both sensuous (aesthetic) and sensual (passions and appetites) is to be effusively praised and thanked. It is to be worshiped to fully affirm and reciprocate the reality and worth of gifts and giver: the body’s senses-appetites and their sensed physical environment of infinite beauty, diversity, fascination, and abundance. Divinity shrouded in the vastness of its incomprehensibility.

To a worshipful ESFP, the contrary view put forth by Jesus in A Course in Miracles (ACIM) and by the second-century Gnostic teacher Valentinus is blasphemy. It gets no more sympathy than the escapee from Plato’s Cave who tried to enlighten those who remained behind. “Non-dualism,” that holds that between Mind and matter, Heaven and earth, Good and evil, Values and their opposites, only one can be real, is heresy. So say ESFPs. And so says the Church, which went to great lengths to stamp out the heresy of Gnosticism.

Dualing or non-dualing our way to “Reality”

ESFPs’ loyalty to the sensed universe, that rewards bodies with pleasure and them with affirmation, is intransigence. It’s faith posing as “realism” even though physics itself doubts its reality. Posing as “reason” even though physics itself acknowledges the flaw in its circular reasoning. It must be faith because ESFPs make no attempt to support their choice with facts and Logic. They avoid facts and Logic. They rest their case without even feeling obliged to make one. Their reality is real because they say it is. More circular reasoning: QED – quod erat demonstrandum.

The “case” for “god,” an absolute source who shares ESFPs’ body-sensed universe, is a flagrant contradiction. Irrational but nonetheless accepted by humanity’s dominant dualist paradigms with scarcely any thought. Whereas the case for ACIM’s non-dualism, that is thoughtful and carefully reasoned, is held to be blasphemous. The Eleatics school, that Parmenides founded in the late fifth century BCE, held that our material environment is illusory. The school and the field of metaphysics that it founded, based on the pursuit of truth through Reason, was held in high regard. It influenced Plato and, through Plato, all of Western thought.

Aristotle didn’t launch the physical sciences by slamming the door on reasoning based on the Reality of Mind. His acknowledgement that Mind is Real kept it open. Parmenides made Rovelli (Reality Is Not What It Seems 2017) uncomfortable but, strangely, Schroedinger’s calling out physics for circular reasoning didn’t. It was OK if the measurements of matter taken by bodies are measurements of themselves, an obvious conflict of interest. A violation of objectivity that compromises understanding.

Hiding in Plato’s Cave

Yet Schroedinger and Rovelli, two theorists, didn’t look into it, didn’t apply their powerful intellects to correct an obvious flaw in the Logic of their profession. Pointedly stayed away from philosophy when the situation cried out for it. When Schroedinger, a philosopher as well as physicist, might have made a decisive contribution. Why? What kept these two giants in their field from tracing the implications of this flaw? From thinking about it? What were they protecting?

It’s striking how closed minds are on this question. Not just among body-biased ESFPs but among serious INTJ thinkers as well. Ever since Plato the question has been left untouched like a third rail by the dominant paradigms of science, religion, philosophy, and psychology. By the same paradigms that preside over the world’s dysfunctional politics and tribal-racist culture. That ensure that relationships of all kinds break down with regularity, with ruinous consequences not just for humanity but for the entire planet. ESFPs who get their kicks from sensing-feeling and physicists who make a living off of it remain confined to Plato’s Cave, perversely unable and unwilling to use their minds to think or see their way out of it.

Putting faith in the “magic” of pleasure and comfort

The root cause of body-biased ESFPs’ resistance to ACIM’s case for non-dualism – for the reality of Mind and the unreality of matter -- would appear to be an irrational faith-based choice. Their choice of the source of everything implied by body sensing-feeling for their guide: pleasure-gratification from the sensuous and the sensual, from sensed-felt benefits immediate and concrete, from material possessions, and the satisfactions of empowerment and affirmation attained by dominance, winning, and supremacy over the competition.

Taking the “reality” of body sensing-feeling benefits and their source on faith seems to excuse ESFPs and the physics profession both from thinking. From introspecting, reflecting, reasoning, feeling-evaluating, and judging – every INTJ function, every asset. Excuses them from using free will, the power and ability to choose, to question the authority of their guide magic. Their “god” who rules the Cave. They can’t go there because the magician who blesses them with their sacred comfort zones won’t allow it. Because it might depose the magician and deprive them of the ultimate good: their comfort. Dictated by their physical essence, their bodies’ senses-feelings. By the perversion of Plato’s “Good.”

The ultimate transgression isn’t jeopardizing the welfare of those entrusted to the care of ESFPs; it’s hurting ESFPs' own “feelings.” Because their theology, their blind faith in their “god,” is based on the supreme worth of what body senses-feelings deliver: pleasure and comfort. The ultimate validation of their “god’s” divinity, its power, its authority, and worthiness.

Upholding the laws of chaos

Highly attuned to their own feelings ESFPs can be startlingly numb to the feelings of others. Since bodies are their reality, and bodies are isolated and separated, they’re seen as fundamentally in competition with one another. Fertile ground for a win-lose, gain-loss, zero-sum formula for “success.” ESFPs’ formula is ideally suited to their personality type which receives abundant validation from the material world, from social-group behavior, and from the dominant paradigms – the “establishment” -- based on sensory perception.

None challenges ESFP’s faith-based “reality” of selfish-competing bodies getting along by going along, by the pretense of agreeability and social-group non-competition. By the façade, the thin veneer, of belonging-love that’s conditioned on Cave occupants accepting forced conformance with the top-down rule of matter. A condition that, from an INTJ perspective, is blatantly insincere, dishonest, and hypocritical.

But to the ESFP it’s well grounded in the “reality” of fundamentally incompatible bodies-selves. In self-interests competing with one another, dependent on forced pleasantness and agreeability to get along, to achieve “harmony” that ESFPs crave. INTJs’ contrary view seems to them an invitation to chaos, to terminal disharmony in a world of separated bodies ruled by a mindless Cave master, the great inscrutable body in the sky.

Choosing another formula for “success”

ESFPs’ orientation might be changed by one thing. By an awareness of the possibility of an opposite guide whose benefits are mind- and soul-centered instead of body-comfort centered. Who dwells within their own INTJ nature, inside their Intuition. And this would explain their ESFP sensing-god’s abhorrence of it: because it would shine it and its dark Cave away. ESFPs’ orientation might be changed by the choice of Psyche, one among many names for the guide who can speak for Innocence. Because she is Innocence, with no need to project guilt and resort to blame. She also goes by “Christ,” the Christian soul of Innocence: the Child beloved of her Parents. She’s who we are when we aren’t misled by appearances and thrown into chaos by our primitive limbic systems.

The choice of an opposite guide who speaks for Innocence instead of guilt would end the misperception. It would end the obstruction, condemnation, and retaliation that ESFPs’ formula for “success” inflicts on others, particularly INTJs. Confronted with ESFPs’ intransigence INTJs must take on the burden of judging for them on behalf of shared purpose, attending to others entrusted to their care.

ESFPs have a choice. They can choose another guide, another god. They can reconsider their choice on their own by accessing their INTJ assets: by introspecting, reflecting, reasoning, evaluating, and judging. By questioning their judgment against the “benefits” of unquestioned loyalty to their bodies’ feelings instead of the thoughts and feelings that occupy their minds.

ESFPs’ cult of specialness

Close examination of the “benefits” of body-dominance suggests an innate selfishness, an insensitivity that borders on cruelty. Its source is an attitude toward others perceived as competing instead of sharing. An attitude so anti-social that, when practiced by ESFPs with the inclination and opportunity to do harm, it’s sociopathic. The body-centered god of ESFPs is all about competition, whereas the guide of INTJs’ Intuition and internal moral compass is all about sharing. ESFPs’ reality is dog-eat-dog. INTJs’ reality is interconnectedness and reciprocity -- giving and giving back -- based on the reality and truth of mind and Psyche, not on the appearance of separated competing bodies.

There’s irony in the dissonance between ESFPs and INTJs over competition against sharing. ESFPs needing harmony from conformance place excessive emphasis on the pretense of agreeability, tact, diplomacy, and politeness, making a show of respect to hide the fundamental divide. INTJs challenging the pretense with the actual harmony of shared purpose are forced into a show of disagreeability to remove the misperception. To shift ESFPs’ blind faith in the divisive god of body-centered values to the God of mind, trust, and intimacy. To stop the transgression. It’s ESFPs, the presumed champions of harmony, togetherness, and agreeability, who in the end break relationships, not INTJs.

Above the figure nailed to the cross it’s inscribed “Loser,” and the figure isn’t a sacrificial stand-in for victims but the ESFP’s own image. A childlike figure labeled elsewhere by astute journalists “clown” and by street protesters parading with the inflated likeness of a Big Baby. A churl elevated to divinity by religion bound to its god not by the miracle of Creation-Life but by the cult of magic-death. Not by ascent to Heaven, light, and fulfillment but by descent into hell, darkness, and defeat. The unmistakable brand not of a proud, self-earned winner but of a pathetic, self-condemned loser. Guilt hiding in the delusion of victimhood innocence. All of it separation-specialness – a sick joke.

The eternal Beauty that lies beyond whatever bodies can detect

For INTJs, Worth comes from mind’s thinking, valuing, and judging, where the principle of sharing and togetherness is the controlling consideration, the consideration that integrates all into one. For ESFPs, it’s very different. Worth comes from bodies’ sensing-feeling where competition and social-group conformance make up the controlling consideration: every man for himself. It’s a separating principle disguised as “liberty” unbound by the fairness of community that makes real freedom possible.

INTJs’ experience of this body-centered world is desiring to connect via mind’s thoughts and love’s feelings but having less success than connecting via bodies’ senses and feelings. Were it not for their abundant companionship, through the creative possibilities of mind’s imagination, INTJs’ experience would be one of unrelieved isolation and loneliness. Their guide, readily accessible through the shared Memory of Intuition, connects with inner selves sharing not competing.

The temporal beauty, abundance, and possibilities of bodies are nothing compared to the eternal beauty, abundance, and possibilities of minds guided by freely-chosen loving sources beyond whatever bodies can detect. That is, when the fear of what’s unknown to bodies is let go, because minds are not unknown. Because minds are intimate, integral to selves, familiar. More so than bodies that come and go. That appear magically from out of nowhere, change beyond recognition, and disappear back to nowhere, can ever be -- “strangers,” in the words of ACIM, “wandering through the house of Truth.”

The Reality and Gift of Comfort

INTJs connect because Mind is the seat of what’s Known, the source of safety and security, of Logic which is Protection. Of Love, which is true companionship, true Relationship, the true source of Comfort -- the comfort and ease that ESFPs crave. Its source can never be isolated-separated bodies in competition with one another, that turn giving into taking, gain into loss, pleasure into pain, love into fear, innocence into guilt, life into death.

For ESFPs all in for body-centered comfort and competition, the supremacy of “winning” is necessarily the highest good. The intelligence at work in their calculations of self-interest makes sense within their insular take on reality. In the alternative reality that’s centered on the comfort of mind and love rather than bodies, it makes no sense at all.

Time to think again

Intuition with insights from the Life of Mind explain human experience with clarity and practical resonance. Potentially more so than any other source, because the twists and turns of human thought don’t terminate at the portal we came through to get here. They extend way beyond the “beginning of time” to the portal through which anything and everything must pass. To the Presence that was there in the Now, at the beginning: the rules and definitions that govern what Is and what Isn’t. The ancients called it Logos. I’m OK with “Logic.” Tap into the implications of Logic and they take us a long way.

What follows in “The Lure of Liberty” is a small harvest of fruit that this particular tree bears. Nourishment for minds wanting better answers to questions than the dominant paradigms provide us, from philosophy, psychology, science, and religion. Questions that thwart human progress, because the dominant paradigms are not connecting with our origins, getting our story right. As a species we’re far from connecting with context that supplies purpose and meaning. Far from grasping what our circumstances may be telling us. Because the very source we must turn to for answers, the human mind, has been turned against itself. The very central fact that the dominant paradigms fail to acknowledge. We must come to terms with its implications. We must learn to remove the barriers to Logic and change our mind.

A few modest insights won’t make much difference. But they illustrate a point I hope to make in my book, The Story of the Child: that returning to the roots of philosophy, through the insights of Intuition guided by Logic, can inch us forward. Insights guided by sources from Logic like Jesus and A Course in Miracles, Plato and The Allegory of the Cave, can break through the wall of ambiguity our split minds and bodies’ senses have built. Remove its deceptions and contradictions. Replace its deeply flawed perceptions with perceptions better aligned with Truth and make progress.

By thinking. Not a novel idea. But after science and technology have held the stage, after Hawking declared philosophy “dead” and not only humanity but all of life is imperiled, maybe its time has come. Maybe, with our country facing another civil war, it’s time to get back to business and think again.

Respect for the role of Free Will in Creation

There’s work to be done in Reality and we can’t do it. A job with real purpose and meaning. What’s worse is we’re prevented from doing it by a lie. A deception that our world of appearances has locked in place by our bodies’ senses, by circular self-referential reasoning since bodies themselves are appearances. A manipulation by a virus whose only purpose is to preserve its place in our thoughts. In mind which is a precious gift from our Parents, who Know only Reality and Truth.

Whose concern isn’t our subservience to any cause. To any agenda, any deception or manipulation. It’s to the protection and exercise of the reason, reciprocity, and Free Will that we are. To the part their Child has been blessed with in Reality and Creation: to enable the creation of Life to affirm its own worth, to extend and empower it.

What would the miracle of Creation, of Life, be without Free Will? A thought without an expression. Form without content. Cause without effect. An empty stance of self-proclaimed value. A billboard advertising an idea without a product. A “product” no one has chosen to buy. What is a product worth that has no market? What is it worth if no one in their individual circumstances, their context, has found any application or use for it? If its “market” is forced or deceived into consuming it?

What does it matter that the Child’s Parents are Mind-Reason-Choice married to Love-Creativity-Freedom and their purpose was to birth a Child whose very identity is Free Will? The inborn power and ability to choose freely so that the creation of Life won’t be hollowness without consequence? Empty rhetoric? Sound and fury signifying nothing?

What does it matter that the Child’s Parents are careful not to let their Authority and Knowledge compromise her Free Will? That their reticence is part of the gift, not a withholding? That they are to be thanked for enabling us to learn what we must, as we will, at our own pace, because they must. We are not stamped by their Authority and Knowledge. We are not denied by their reticence, their respect. We are liberated by it.

Is the Child “our guy” or “our girl”?

Who is the “Child”?

She would be the first step in understanding that everything must have a definition. The first incontrovertible law of metaphysics: that we can’t get at Reality without Logic. Because it is Logic that supplies definitions. That determine who or what a thing is and what it’s for. Who or what can break the surface in all of Reality or unreality, Creation or uncreation – in the all-inclusive scope of Everything and nothing – without having a definition slapped on it? When do the purpose and meaning of anything appear without definition? When can the question what Is or Isn’t, or how it came to be or not to be, be answered without Logic? Without definition?

The definition of the Child may or may not be indifferent to gender but language is not. This language insists on masculine or feminine. Jesus, in A Course in Miracles, determined to get us back to Reality, addresses his readers as the “Sonship:” one son with no differences of any kind because our bodies, illusory thinking, and their differences are an illusion. “God” is the “Father.” I don’t have that luxury.

Where the implications of Logic and insights from Intuition have taken me is beyond the scope of the Course. I choose to break with its precedent on gender because the Logic of the Child’s story, before s/he fell under the influence of the ego, seems to require it. Masculinity and femininity may have played a defining role in the Child’s origin and attribute of Free Will. While the Child could be herself or himself, her Parents of my imagination are Father-Mind and Mother-Love. The Logic and definitions of metaphysics are all about attributes, and if the distinction can’t be made in this context – specific attributes assigned to Parents, Child, and their Child’s role in Creation – the story that Logic and Intuition have woven together in my telling can’t be told.

The precedent I hope never to break is with Logic itself, the authenticity of the Course and my reason for keeping faith with it. So let me add that the Course is modern Gnostic Christianity, and the Child imagined by the Valentinian Gnostics, in the second century, was Sophia. Whose role in the “fall” is not unlike that of the Son in the Course. We chase down the same explanation, and it matters not whether the central figure is our guy or our girl.

We are not our Parents

The Child is who we are in the before-after sequence of Logic: before she lost consciousness, when she lived as Mind in Reality where it is always Now, and after she lost consciousness, when she dreamed an unreality as brains encased in bodies, in an environment of spacetime and matter where it is never Now. The after-Child is us. Though we in our bodies are but a projection of a dreaming mind. Sharing Life-Being with our Parents in Reality but unaware of it, because their Child is unconscious and we are but figures in the dream, living unreal lives, thinking unreal thoughts.

Unaware that the Child shares Life-Being with her Parents in Reality for another reason: because an event is buried in the Child’s Memory, in our collective Memory, and is unknown to us. The event that shut down consciousness, knocked out its power. That preceded the event that lured the Child into an alternate reality of carnival funhouse mirrors. A substitute “home” whose attributes are the exact opposite of her real Home.

The Child is an extension of her Parents, Mind married to Love. Yes, in Reality we are Mind. We are Love. But the Child is not her Parents. Cannot be. And hers is not their role in Creation.

She’s Innocent! And so are we.

What she is also emphatically not is guilt deserving of punishment for having lost consciousness. Nowhere in the Logic of why and how this happened in Reality can a case be made that either Parents or Child engineered the event outside the limits of Logic. Assumptions to the contrary are projections by ego-corrupted minds, themselves steeped in guilt, as we all are. Not by the loss of consciousness but by the activation of the ego shadow code that came after, when the Child was not in her right mind.

Pursuing the Truth through Logic to establish the Child’s Innocence can have important consequences: for our ability to follow our guides who teach forgiveness, like Jesus in A Course in Miracles, and for our awakening. It’s a story worth telling and I hope to make a contribution, logically, in my book, The Story of the Child.

Reclaiming the purpose and meaning of Life

We aren’t performing any role in Creation now because the Child who imagines us is unconscious. Asleep and dreaming a dream of unreality. An illusion of appearances meant to deceive. Meant to locate a falsehood and its source within Child-mind and keep it there. An agent of unreality and untruth whose only purpose is the preservation of the dream, to keep the Child unconscious and us in its thrall.

The master of Plato’s Cave. The ego whose origin in the Child’s psyche is explained by Jesus in the Course. A viral shadow code – non-being – that tricked the Child, unconscious and defenseless, into listening to it. Into choosing to follow it because it had a message the Child, in her defenselessness and disorientation, her nightmare of sin, guilt, and fear, was desperate to hear. Into following it where only a lie could lead, into the insanity of separation. Into chaos ungoverned and ungovernable. Into Energy encased in matter, split minds encased in bodies, all of it entrapped in entropy destined for inertia.

Lies can be undone. Minds tricked into dreaming nonsense can awaken. Can heal the illusory separation. The Child with Free Will can choose again. What then is the lie? Where is Reality? Where is Truth? Where is our Home and how can we get back to it? What happened to our purpose, the meaning of Life? How can we reclaim it? How can we awaken?

Logic is empowerment as well as protection.

Logic – Logos -- is definition and governs by definition. By defining the meaning, nature, character, and scope of things. “Definition” is DE- + finis, the Latin word meaning “boundary, limit.” To “define” implies confinement: boundaries that put limits on freedom, mobility, autonomy. Built into the meaning, nature, character, and scope of everything that Is. Nothing in Reality-Creation can Be without the boundaries, the limits, of their definitions.

Definition is the essential instrument of Logic. Without definition Logic would be cause without effect. Definition is the bar code on every product of Reality-Creation and every self that went into and came out of its Creation. The label that identifies it and certifies its legitimacy, its belonging to Reality-Creation. That signifies that it’s Real.

Nothing in Reality-Creation can Be without designation by Logic of who or what it is, what it is for, and what it does. The “nature” of a thing is its Logic. Logic is identification: it defines who and what self is. Identification is self’s authority. The Logic of a Life that defines who or what it is is its authority to do what it does, to perform its function in Creation. Logic is authority that limits who or what self is, what-when-where self can do, and how self can do it, by defining and identifying it. Logic authorizes acceptance into Reality of the works of Creation, its new lives, the extension of Being, and the functions they were given by definition to perform.

The authority of Logic empowers new Lives, new selves. Logic is empowerment as well as protection. It is self’s login ID that gains entry into Reality. Logic’s definitions not only cover who or what self is that authorizes belonging to the community of Being; it also animates who or what self is. To act in service to the function implied by who or what self is.

Logic governs by managing roles and relationships in service to the shared purpose defined by Logic: Creation and reciprocation of the worth of Being-Life. Logically, without conflict or contradiction among iden