live life letter 044 - sentimental totality
dear friends,
I am a sentimental person.
Often, my sentimentality gets in the way. All these memories; through it all, through the lives we have lived, I cannot help but hold on to them: to these emotions, to these passing thoughts, to those lovely melodies. What am I to do?
Sentience over our sentimentality? Is there a sign to our consciousness; is there a reason for it all? Can we control our sentiments, our frames of perceptions? Why are we capable of remembering such feelings and emotions?
We look to the past within our present view to help navigate the future. We carry the resonance within our joys and sufferings. We carry these emotions through symbols, flashes of memories, embedded triggers within our points of view.
"Reinvention fails the people who hide pain."
We reinvent ourselves each day we wake up, carrying the past to the future; sometimes consciously, mostly subconsciously. We learn to let it go. If we don't, the weight of it all would only anchor us down. Yet, we must not forget.
When we arrive to the "vanish point" between what is real and what is imagined, between the past and the future, a new self "actor" navigates between the frames and the symbols of our lived perception.
The new kills the old only to wear the stains of the past on the heart and the soul. The sentimentality of one's self carries on, perhaps even thru the "vanish point" of consciousness. Are you truly capable of cutting off the branches of your past selves?
You cannot hide your pains. You cannot hide your joys. They are embedded within the code of your (un)conscious thought. Why must you try to deceive others? The weight of life itself is already a heavy burden to carry. Why create more to uphold?
Attachment, detachment, reattachment, intact? The reductive expansion of the ever-withering bloom. The Glass Garden continues to grow in its fragility, yet remains resilient thru the cold winds. You see it all, connected and transparent. The colors opaque, the brain contains. Reality disallows us from the overwhelm of the overwhelm, the Open Looped Glass Garden.
your friend(ly),
jakester
P.S. I am no Buddha, no Jesus. Will you love this part of me?
TL;GR (too long; go read)
If you see the Buddha, kill him
is there a moral objective truth?
false compassion and competing emotions
Immersive Music Choice
if you see the Buddha, kill him
Don't take these words so literal! It is not an incitation to actual violence.
Rather, this koan reminds us to not get so attached to our ideas, our views, and our "truths" on life and how we live. It's a wake up call. It leads me to have an undying skepticism of how I see the world. An endless curiosity and wonder.
I am led to an image of the ever-flowing river, our collective stream of consciousness. We cannot contain it, these forms of wisdom; strange truths. It's an absurd struggle to try to climb this windy hill filled with loopy holes and broken turns.
The rules and expectations we hold dear seem to fail us in this realm of thought. Ego death and fire. Ineffable, incomprehensible, inexpressible, unexplainable.
The more I try to reach for it, the farther I am pushed. But without this pursuit, this urge and resolve for wisdom, how may I ever reach "there" if "there" is to exist?
I cannot distinguish between the angel's whisper and the devil's advocate. There are contradictions everywhere. In lies are hidden truths. The inner reckoning. Listen and surrender?
… Obeying the flame is both the easiest and the hardest thing to do. However, it is good for a man to judge himself occasionally. He is alone in being able to do so.
reductio ad absurdum
My mind is slowing, a slow rush. Tame the Dragon. Tame the Cave: "tame it! don't kill it, my friend" whispered the darkness, a foggy little frog.
The principle of reductio ad absurdum (reduction to absurdity): that which applies its own denial is always false. ~ a Western thought?
It’s a classic method of argument in logic and philosophy structured like so:
Assume the opposite of what you want to prove.
Follow the assumption logically to see where it leads.
If it leads to a contradiction or an absurd/impossible conclusion, then the assumption must be false.
Therefore, the original claim (the one opposite to the assumption) must be true.
Friend: “There’s no such thing as truth.”
You: “If that’s true, then your statement ‘there’s no such thing as truth’ is itself not true. That’s absurd. So there must be truth.”
"If it's not X, it must be Y" said every Z.
If we want to "transcend" these logical battles and enter into a realm of meta(non)sense, one could "quine" the phrase by stating:
"If it's not X, it must be Y," said every Z about "‘If it's not X, it must be Y,’ said every Z."
Don't break you brain's back trying to wrap your head around it too long; you'll strain those weird muscles of your metaphorical brain you imagine in your brain. There's an absurdity here. An (in)ness and outness is felt simultaneously. We move from the end to the beginning (Z to A), an Absurdity with a capital A.
Yet, just because it is absurd, does it make it necessarily untrue?
Not necessarily. We are simply jesters playing at the truth.
When we use reductio ad absurdum, we often assume: if a claim leads to an absurd conclusion, it must be false. But “absurd” isn’t the same as “false.”
Absurd = beyond reason, counter to expectation, paradoxical, or nonsensical in appearance.
False = logically inconsistent with reality or self-contradictory in a strict way.
What an absurd world we live in!
To reject the rejection itself, the noneness of noneness. Let it wash and burn.
is there a moral objective truth?
I defer my answer to this question with a story: The Return of Jake's Trolley Cart!
Imagine two tracks. You at the lever. A classic trope little kid philosophers like to play. The puzzle of morality!
On the left track are five past versions of Jake and on the right is one future version of Jake. You at the lever: "you are present Jake!" says the strange voice of the foggy doggy cogs hidden beneath the tracks at your feetsies. You cannot help your mind from feeling the feces of this absurdly dumb situation you have been conditioned to. Some may call it the "human condition"
"Don't mess this up!" slipped those devilish words whispered down from the Angel's above. "How evil!" you thought. "Is there evil?" echoed a distant thought, "or is there just suffering?"
"JAKE PAY ATTENTION!" Pay no mind to that now, a train is coming!
What do you do? What is there to do? You wiggle the lever in hefty little jiggles but you are forced to decide within this quick seconds of notice. Do you listen? Listen to the flashes of intuition? To those hollowing voices?
"The past doesn't matter, only the future!"
"But your sentimentality. It has shaped who you are!"
Who creates these ethical guidelines? Do we just arrive at "moral luck" in our fates? To let fate decide the inescapable truth of moral-decision making.
"Amor fati" I say. I choose it all.
Star Dunes
false compassion and competing emotions
Be wary of false compassion and bad faith.
My fear and hesitation in presence is holding a form of false compassion towards others and to the world. I cannot feign truth and morality. I cannot feign my conflicting emotions, the confusion, the nonsense that lives in my mind thru day and night. If I choose to be ignorant, perhaps I am evil. But, I do not wish evil.
Be kind, not nice.
All I have is my intuition. My earnest and honest intuition. It lies in the heart. My "third eye" of understanding; to hold an intent of compassion with no strings. I try to hold this "third eye" but sometimes I am blind to it. I have no control over it. Sometimes I cannot help but fall into sin and my own bad habits. I don't even know if I possess a third eye, for I may be a simple fool with corrupted thought!
I am a witness.
A witness to my heart. A witness to the heart. A witness to your heart. A witness to my shortcomings. A witness to my competing thoughts. A witness to my broken glass garden. A witness to the howling winds. A witness to the cascading voices. A witness to good and evil. A witness to indifference. A witness to the unutterable.
I am self-determined and self-realizing. I cannot prove to you my intuition. There is a nuance between what is truthful and what is defensible. Science and logic creates the defense to create these solid proofs. But if I am to answer truthfully and honest, I cannot defend this God-stained intuition.
I surrender.
This is the Wager I set ablaze in my Heart. The faith that cannot be explained. The fire that burns everything in its path to ash. A living, overwhelming presence.
I have felt the fire but it likely pales in comparison to what Blaise Pascal was a witness to on November 23, 1654.
They say I possess this FIRE, this WILL, this CARE, this HEART, that I will inevitably arrive THERE. But I have no idea where or what THERE is. Is it attuned with the collective unconscious, I wonder?
A friendly fire?
