I am no scientist, but I am amazed
at the cosmos, the potential of infinite universes representing a common
expanse. I read, but a lot of it makes
me feel like a five year old trying to explain how electricity works. I dwell on the atomic, the elemental, fate,
consciousness, the vibration between a dying stars’ light and my gut. I think of space-time and wormholes for the
potential of a sustainable Einstein-Rosen bridge held by anti-matter to carry
particles to parallel universes.
The whole makes me ponder the
irrelevance of time, the weight the human mind puts on the idea of a hundred
years compared to the transposing atomic reality of neutered individuality in a
theater of the eternal around us. I
think of quasars, black holes, and clocks whispering time like a mathematical
common language of God interpreting what we are beckoning us to consider the
ramifications of a spiritual interplay.
I think of the ideas of charges
repeating patterns destined to be pulled on a spiritual level like that of an
electromagnetic coil. One is compelled
towards that which it is attracted. Is there
a plan; purpose; these are not as important to me as asking, “What choices are
available in the crucible of volition as we phase between being more or less
aware of the swarming universe?”
I often see human life through this
lens. It distances me from the
surface. It makes me see the superficial
aerobics people engage. To attempt to
swim in the shallows scalds a throbbing layer of dermis flushing my soul with
hot blood. I feel the inner as the
pathway to the universe in conversations, sights, and contemplations. It is difficult for me to prioritize the
epidermis.
I often see existence in a
nontraditional trinity of science, thought, and spirit. One could compare to the traditional
Christian trinity. Science is like God
the father, a set of rules that govern existence whether humans are capable of
perceiving that existence in the limitations of our physical self or not. Thought is like God the son, human or a
“higher functioning” living being’s perception of volition in a combination of
election and instinct. Spirit is like
God the holy spirit differing in that it is the interconnection of existence
beyond the physical that links into a one everything.
In my studies of history,
philosophy, psychology sociology, and economics I see human thought covering
our species in an exoskeleton of why and what we choose to do like ants in a
hill. The way we govern our countries,
go to war, wield power, punish, reward, etc. are important to understand the
arbitrary nature of most of what we do as a species. We spend almost all our time avoiding that
which we cannot directly interface in order to approach the science and spirit
indirectly.
A tiny minority of our species
sounds the scientific and economic alarms of what the future holds. Growth and consumption rates show a
relatively quick extinction for our species driven primarily by anthropogenic
effects of over-population by humans running out of food by raising global
temperatures, disturbing the nutrient balance of agreeable land into fallow fields,
and most importantly by a lack of empathy recognizing the crucial nature of our
interdependence on a tiny planet in a gigantic indifferent universe.
We could be gone in less than three
hundred years. The Californian droughts,
the Louisiana hurricanes are as much to me about humanity’s challenge to work
together as our planet’s place amongst the stars. The skyrocketing populations in Africa, Asia,
and South America are correlated to low standards of living exploited by North
America, Europe, and Australia. As
global trade patterns shift, we risk heightened human resource demands the
planet is too depleted to meet. Oil is
nothing compared to water.
Human existence is entirely
optional. In my studies of global
capital, accounting, and economic growth rates as a business student and
professional, combined with human thought processes in psychology and the
discipline to analyze them in a spiritual discipline as a poet, I feel this
intense connection with what I was put in this life to do. I feel like part of why I have been given
this relatively solitary life diving into such divergent topics is intended to
synthesize these varied spheres of science, thought, and spirit and contribute
my seed to humanity.
I have written on these subjects at
length and feel like I am nowhere near done.
I am no savior or genius. I do
have a yearning, a monk-like discipline to dwell in the analytical and
communicate in the written word. I am
not hoping for trouble, but I see the extrapolation of our behavior as a
species and I cannot help but see ways to postpone our inevitable extinction
through understanding of the political, economic, religious, and social systems
that humans from top to bottom choose to spread our dysfunction denying our
animal nature and the vulnerabilities that come with it.
I see a human’s pain like a living
poem affecting her family. I see the
economics that lead the hospital and the workplace to process her mother’s
illness. I see patent laws, the supply
chains. I see why one man blames her for
not having the correct medical coverage.
I see the prayers she utters to find solace. I see the light bulb flickering from the
coal. I see the Wal-Mart t-shirt and the
wage chain of modern slavery trickling through Latin America and South East
Asia to put it on her back. I see this
human dance and under all of that noise I see what we truly are.
I see the common spirit operating in
a mammoth universe beseeching us to pause and pay attention. The calling for our lives is in how we respond
in these moments. It is not if the
mother survives or why she became ill.
It is how we notice and respond.
Here is an excerpt from the end of
my first novel which may add to what I am trying to convey:
594
I felt the connection in my writing and in my country. I may have lived in some little nowhere American
town. My path may be non-eventful,
boring and full of mistakes, but I imagine a lot of people feel that way. Like Bukowski, I saw myself as a flawed flesh
bag, drinking the moment, but inside I wanted to be able to relate with
something greater. I pondered the
choice, like Kierkegaard’s either / or.
I recognized the ideas of those that came before me and took the task of
possibly adding something to the pile.
I felt duty can only exist in the temple of the individual, for duty
requires choice. Choice requires free
will. Only individuals have free
will. Therefore all duty is to the self
embedded inside the choice. The choice
forms culpability to the self for consideration of the universal to which the
individual belongs. So it is in the
concentric paradox of this reality existing on the platform of time, which is a
constant exchange between the universal and the self.
Many individuals claim duty to a government, a religion, a law, a genetic
relation, a sense of morality born in the external. Often this ultimate duty is labeled as God,
but once we see God in ourselves the act of self-duty ceases to be misconstrued
as a narcissistic act or a hedonistic massage of our ego, but one that addresses
the very meaning of our existence by recognizing the only manner in which
universal responsibility can exist is by acknowledging our membership in a
common whole that is what so many refer to as God. We see ourselves as part of God, rather than
betrothed in obligation to an external arbitrator. Only then does the exclusivity of duty as an
internal property become apparent.
When the idea of external duty is deconstructed in its essence there
can only be duty to the self; for only a self can choose. The choice is everything; the individual is
the party which benefits and suffers universally through the consequences born
onto the individual.
Forgiveness is our highest duty, for only inside the individual can
the genuine nature of forgiveness be determined. When requested, only the wrong doer knows the
intensity of the recognition of the void one has created. When granting forgiveness, only the forgiver
knows the intensity of the selflessness one utilizes to forgive. These are internal measures that refuel the
whole. The intensity of each component
of the duality forging forgiveness stabilizes the system.
When we exchange in war, murder, hatred and the notable great evils we
are living on the surface of the bland extremes: darkness and lightness. When we divest ourselves from merely the
obvious and interject ourselves into the arena of non-choice we are infected
with personal culpability for our duty to ourselves to foster an environment
which perpetuates the antithesis of darkness; we see a duty to ourselves to
foster lightness through ourselves to manifest in the universal. Without this introspection we are partial
beings eclipsed by our limitation to move beyond possibility into task.
Once we see our beings as part of this ocean of deep still waters, the
agitation of the waves of craven demands for justice, blood, and excessive
personal profit (for external duty) will subside and allow us to see the
infinitude of leagues below our body in an ever unfolding expanse of how the
choice made within ourselves affects the universal, yet holds court only within
ourselves to become active in task.
Imagine a circular plane flat on a surface supporting a triangle like
a pyramid. The circle is the
universal. The triangle is the
self. The aesthetic profits of choice
ascend the pyramid towards a more narrow volume. The balance of aesthetic prosperity must be
exponentially limiting to create the gravity defying nature of work to erect
such structures. For without the work of
the individual the triangle collapses onto the circle, shattering each the
triangle and the circle into nothingness.
For this system of circle and triangle is simultaneously inside each
individual. It constructs a universal
whole. So imagine a bounty of stick
figure bodies holding circular plates inside their figurative bellies,
supporting triangular pyramids on top of those circular plates inside their
beings. The stick figures are stacked in
infinite abundance inside the greater circle and inside the greater pyramid,
allocated by the infinite randomness of historical free will and the chaotic
forces of nature.
The motion of what rises to the peak of each pyramid and wades humbly
in the tide of the oceanic circle is choice.
One is constantly monitoring the duty to the circle and pyramid inside
one’s being, and also the circle and pyramid one’s being resides inside. If too many individuals raise their
individual desires to the extreme, the top of the pyramid will shatter, if not
enough, the circular plate will overflow.
In each extreme the balance is destroyed and existence collapses into
nothingness.
This is the paradox of free will.
This paradox is everything. It is
what makes us one, while also an infinitude of replicated individuals beholden
to a recycling internal culpability that is interconnected to the all. We coexist because we are part of what so
many would default to as calling God.
The omnipotent component of God exists outside of physical existence, always
existing before nothingness. We always existed
outside of existence into nothingness severed from our self-granted ability to
choose (our free will.) Once we burdened
/ granted our free will, we were granted the either /or; to see that we are
simultaneously individual and universal in existence and in nonexistence,
constant and timeless, yet beholden to time in this stage, in this form. We reflect the timeliness of our gift of
choice that grants us the arena and bounties of life along with the duty that
embodies our beings as individuals.
Kierkegaard intimated that we are in a way our own father. We have an internal duty to raise ourselves,
to have neutered gender intercourse within ourselves, to birth ourselves as
child through the course of our life.
Some may never begin this task, and thus they will never break through
to an end, to unearth the beginning of defining an internal duty.
Most parents can comprehend an external duty to the wellbeing of their
offspring, exacerbated by the selfish compulsion of genetics. So in the same vein, with self-actualization
we can wield a similar motivating energy to rear the child born inside
ourselves to be an adult with a resolute and mature intense sense of inner
duty. In this growth we find the
universal and our true selves; in this we find the meaning of all.
I have seen the modern confluence of scientific technologies and
economic barter play out in the stock market exchanges. The dominion of the individual has defaulted
into the hive of the corporation evolving self-exoneration by defining largess
to one’s self as a necessity for the greater good.
When we rationalize an external duty of a corporation to maximize
profit as the singular external duty, we have gouged the eyes of our inner
duty, yet despite our blindness, inner duty is constant. The balance between the arena of work toiled
by the individual to harvest a crop sufficient to ensure his own perpetuating
nourishment (including an honest measure of pleasantry in excess of that which
is minimally required to ensure the next day’s continuation of labor) and the
counterweight of what is only possible due to the platform of the universal on
which the individual stands to conduct his business, is the definition of what
is owed to the universal.
Thinkers like Ayn Rand at war with altruism have the gall to use
language to construct a polemic against such considerations of the universal as
detrimental to the universal by arguing that energies diverted to the universal
diminish the individual from becoming exemplary and benefiting the whole by a greater
measure.
Without the universal what words would an individual speak, but ones
of indistinguishable prattle? One
discovers fire, one discovers a heart valve, another a microchip and so we are
infinitely savagely lost without such stepping stones manifested in the
connected palms of the deceased offering their life’s work to exist as a root
living into infinity to bloom the branch of a common plant.
We are interdependent from inception.
Rand was blinded by the Bolsheviks who raided her father’s wealth. The Bolsheviks were blinded in the other
extreme by taking more than what was owed back to the universal and
extinguishing the will of the individual to work. The extremes of absolute altruism and
absolute self-interest are equally malignant.
Absolute altruism floods the oceanic circle. Absolute self-interest bursts the roof of the
pyramid. Each results to surfeit
calamity.
The war between these absolutes births the intransigence of modern American
Democrats and Republicans worshiping temples of liberal and conservative. This lack of assimilation to a comingled norm
executes practical ideas on the altar of turning internal duty to an exercise
of moral conviction. The complete duty
is ignored for a faith in a costumed parody of what is good in order to combat
what is a costumed parody of what is evil.
This pantomime turns democratic elections into a baleful farce.
These prancing marionettes battle on our televisions, on our radio
waves, and from bully pulpits all the while strung to hands of the same
monster. Imagine a man with two hands
right and left free to shake, but forming fists smashing into each other. What has been injured a subset of fingers or
a body? This is our body at war with
itself.
This is the cult of the evangelized individual flung to either the
extreme of absolute altruism or absolute self-interest bearing the hazy ache of
a concussion. This individual cannot
see. This individual cannot hear.
This individual is fraught with fear.
There is fear of the other, fear that the other will not help the
universal unless forced and fear of the other that the individual will be
forced, rather than trusted under the auspices of his own free-will. This is where fear must be shed and trust
must flourish to find a healthy medium for the individual to fulfill his
concentric duty to his self and the universal.
Our greatest unction is forgiveness.
The tenants of objectivism exclude the presence of the platform of the
universal as a mandatory subcomponent of the individual. Objectivism only sees the pyramid and is
blind to the circle. This internal
duality of universal and individual enveloped inside our consciousness is a
perfunctory dynamic of free-willed existence.
To ignore this dynamic is to fall in love with one’s self. It is to attribute all well-doing to one’s
self, while standing on the shoulders of the universal bleeding from our eye
sockets still blind to our inner duty.
This blindness is a non-choice to search for the deeper dynamic. It is not the choice of evil, but the
non-choice to begin the task of searching.
The individual yoked to this handicap often believes that the acts
perpetuated under such lack of vision are good.
For in reality, like each of us, the act is part good and part
evil. The toil of work, the expulsion of
energy to climb the pyramid, the contribution is good. The failure to recognize the platform of the
universal (to see the circle) making that work possible is the evil, which in
the individual’s blindness he misconstrues as his own good. In this confusion is where the greater evils
of demands for justice, blood, and the possession of what one deems their
entitled share of profit arise.
Only in acknowledging our duty to begin this task of sight for the
first time, will we ever mature into our authentic actualized selves. To see this way is the beautiful
struggle. This is the struggle of
existence. This is why we called
ourselves into free-willed existence.
This is the melody of balancing forgiveness.
We see the beauty around us popping exuberantly on each face, on each
individual as part of a common one on this planet or any dwelling in all of
universal existence. We see beyond time,
beyond the shortsightedness of traditional prayer, of war, of justice, of petty
jealousies, into a ubiquitous faith innate to what is life, what is art, what
is nature; growing swarming, singing in a harmonic resonance without words, in
tone understood like Mozart aesthetically beautiful without the constriction of
human tongue, but breaking the barriers of us as an individual expounding our
oneness in the common beauty of everywhere, of everything, of ourselves. This is the meaning of life. This is God to me.
We are never alone in this. The
people we see all around the perimeters of our lives; these humans in
innumerable infinite parallel lines; we are all just one big line.
Einstein could fathom that energy and mass were transmutable. Time dilates with gravity. My human brain finds it difficult to even
begin to contemplate the ramifications of the fourth dimension of time or
infinite universes beyond our own on my frail miniscule body. For God, time and physical space are both
independent of God’s paradigm. God has no
time and no physical matter to constitute a mass. These four dimensions: length, width, height
and time are just us. In the merging of
all these paths we are but one stream.
These choices we make everyday are a matter of our limited human
perspective. We must transcend our
definition of a human paradigm to ask questions. Will I feed my fellow man? Will I ask for help? Will I accept love? Do you hear me? Do you see me? Will I accept the task of choice?
Living hand to mouth, tied to cuffs of debt, unlivable wages, fingers
stretched: Kroger, rent, children’s faces, there is nothing left. No 1980’s utopia. We are the Somali refugee in Nike’s eating
our own body to sustain respiration. Our
paradoxical belly bulges. Two negatives
collide, not for nourishment, but consciousness.
How we do what we do matters, because we are all connected in such
ways. In every religion masquerading as
its own form of flawed and beautiful politic, every face, every skin tone,
every unborn life, every stricken cancerous body, every immigrant, every alien,
every planet, every song; we are but one.
Why are we here: love or fear?
Our flaws, our weaknesses are but opportunities for
others to curve into the angle of that puzzle piece like a light beam bending
on the gravitational force within our being and converge to blur their single
parallel line into our collective united path.
**** End of excerpt
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