to sharpen the mind?

dear friends,

The inquiry of self is to break the illusion through further understanding and wisdom of what is.

We are but sand and dust.
Our souls, we aim to crush.

I had a dream last year, February 26th, 2025 where I had to carry my Grandma Cora out of the sand. She was stuck in this deep pit. She couldn't walk, her legs weak. I had to carry her and pick her up out the sand, my feet sinking. I carried her like a cross, the crux I willingly took on.

In desperation, I carried my Lola out of the crevice, but the sand kept moving, downwards, to no end. The memory of my dream is slipping away, like the sand in the palm of my hand as I clawed away. A futile endeavor I rebelled towards. Was I preventing the inevitable?

The sand reversed and pulled back to the grip of my fingers. I start to recall in flashes a different part of my dream. A different part of my self, of mind, of soul?

I had skipped a class for the whole year or semester.

I remember watching some crappy presentation put together in scrap that had possessed my name but I had done no work for. The faces of the people in the presentation are blurring but I recognized them. One of the girls was, of course, not happy with me. For good reason. Yet, it was a shitty presentation that I did not want credit for. This was not my work.

I skipped the class for the whole year. Rather, they took me out of the class, so the logic doesn't make sense. I cannot even recall the subject of the class as I was so disinterested. I only went to classes I found intriguing, that aroused my curiosity.

I was led by desire.

Curiosity is the greatest catalytic force, second only to compound interest and gravity. Curiosity leads to compassion; kind skepticism towards true understanding. This is the gravity of self in which the sand falls. The hourglass of time and space is love.

Love is madness.

your friend(ly)
jakester

P.S. thinking of grandpa roger as I was in pangasinan, his home island (I will return!)

Aim: master the self; humble the self; play of self, dialect.

The failure to communicate is a failure to love.

Love does not come easy. It's hard to communicate well; to connect with others, with the world, and with thy self. The way you speak towards your self-image determines the intention, the direction, the drive, the flow of how you connect. How well are you able to connect with these entities?

How well do you converse with your own soul?
The failure to communicate is the failure to love.

If we are to love, we must learn to communicate well, without attachment and with brutal honesty. It is not to be devoid of emotion; we are to be full of compassion. Do not be led by passion; be led by love. What is love?

My lolo and lola are amazing grandparents. They have instilled in us the work ethic of golden horses with an unquenchable fire. They have granted us opportunities and dreams unrealizable to the many. Yet, they have their vices, as we all.

I witness the longwinded breakdown between my lola and lolo. They are so disconnected and distant that do not recognize one another as husband and wife. The love between them has died. They are roommates and have been this way for quite some time. Decades in counting, tied only by their fervent faith and societal conveniences thru the Navy. There are many issue that we can inquire on from the infidelities, the lies, the rumors. Yet, it all stems from one failure...

... The failure to communicate.

Many years ago, way before I was born, there was a point of no return between these two. There was a crucial moment where any communication between them was deemed impossible. I do not know where this crucial point was, yet, I can see the breakpoint quite clearly from their eyes and of their behavior. Stubborn, we are.

There was a point where walls were built. There was a point where understanding was blocked. There was a point where all particles of love could no longer pass. Love no longer flowed in their words. It is caught in their heart with no where to go.

Lolo was a private man. A simple man who worked hard for his dollar. He did his best to provide to his family in the United States and to survive in a new world. Lola was an expressive woman. A simple lady who worked hard for her dollar. She did her best to provide for her family and to grant them a future not yet imaginable. They had to focus on surviving. They had little space for one another; little space to let love flow within their acts and their words. There was no time for the love that once was.

How simple the solution was if only they were able to have the time to talk?Caught in their own ways, within their own stubbornness. The ego survives, but at what cost?

These barriers of self, barriers of mind, barriers against love prevent vulnerability. Trust was lost. Lolo was not an expressive man. Lola was not a private woman. They could not meet eye to eye. Yet, this breakdown between them did not have to occur if only they had the courage to be vulnerable and honest with one another.

Words were not said. Love was not heard. Stubbornness ruled and assumptions were born. Stagnate in stubbornness, their love could not grow. They no longer were curious of one another. They gave up, tempted by ease and of their own ways, a hurtful pleasure and pitiful acceptance. It saddens me because I know they are so capable of love, yet, they themselves cannot free themselves from their pride and love for oneself.

A conversation never occurred, locked away, unheard.

Love is kind skepticism.
Love is courage to be a fool!
Pagsoko; surrender. How slippery!

Do you let love slip?
Do you let love loose?
Do you let love breathe?

Love is surrender.
Love is in the air.
Love is mad.

"All sins are an attempt to fill a void."

Learn from the past of what is witnessed; allow love to flow in your words.

The failure to communicate is the failure to love.

We exist in the conflict of our desires; we live in the conflict of our desires.
No man errs willingly. No man truly desires sin. Yet, why is sin so pleasurable; is joy the devil? Is love beyond us?

A moral high ground forms. A high ground against the youth who have not grown mature towards the world. The young prince whom prepares to blossom is humbled by the wise king who is blinded by the cruelty of man's self-defeating nature. The pruning of the flower occurs too early in the spring. The flame of love lames us all to tomfoolery!

How could the meaning of life be youth and play?
How do we play in a world so set on boring us of cold justice?
How do we satisfy this devil of joy without falling into temptation?

Does a true morality exist if our desires are so easily muddled in fog?

Such a morality is beyond us; we are no gods. How are we to decide if our own pride and self-righteousness is so easily tangled and construed? When the revolution itself becomes the tyrannic rule we set to be free from?

We desire freedom. Yet, it is nonsense to have a revolution against a revolution; freedom from freedom itself?

What virtues of man truly set us free?

We ultimately desires Love.

Love is the ultimate desire, the ultimate substrate of the human experience (of the universe's experience). Love is so pleasurable. We are greedy towards this Love. We want it all. We want to own the entire essence of Love within another, a soul partner. How greedy we are to want the entirety and feel entitled to it all!

Are we merchants and mercenaries towards this utility of Love?

For Love, we grow sharp.
For Love, we relax and dull.
For Love, we seek freedom and release.
For Love, we relinquish our own freedoms.
For Love, we find pleasure and we sacrifice in pain.
For Love, we are blinded yet we see the world with more color.
For Love, we bend our morality, of what is good and of what is evil.

True Love; an Unconditional One. The ultimate desire within a pure awareness. It is a tricky business to play with Love. Love lames us and enlightens us. Love is with us yet beyond us. We know Love within our driven hunger towards life. We possess an intuition towards what is. Yet, as we grow closer to the flame, we are blinded like bugs to a lamp!

A fervent flame, a wound, a knife.

I am both wound and knife.

When mind becomes sharp, the danger doubles. The efficiency to cut deep is elevated and amplified. There is greater risk, greater exposure. Do you take on the risk to sharpen the mind?

Some say with an astounding 'yes' justifying their belief with fine actions; a bias towards activity. Those busy bees and beavers who could not give two damns. They say it's for the sake of others and for the world. Why can they not be honest and say it's for the sake of themselves?

To sharpen the mind is an autotelic endeavor in nature. There is virtue in selfishness to a degree. A Darwinistic tendency. "No man errs willingly." Within the preservation of self, man aims to be sharp as a whip. Yet, to maintain this order of self, do they whip others to shape? Do they hurt the ones they love most? Who do they bend their will to, to survive?

"I am master."
'Who is slave?'

I am a jester, challenging what is practical, asking:
'What is efficient, what is useful? What is filled with utility and worth?!'

I fear the slithy Machiavellian hero and I am worried that we are solely our own cold desires. A moral utilitarian, idealizing mere functions, lacking muddied agency, vying for the mechanization of mind. There is power to cold desire and motion. There is control in design, in systems, in engineering, and fine architecture. A minimal aesthetic clean of idiosyncratic foolery!

We wish to pass on this responsibility towards something beyond ourselves. We find the machines as a worthy scape goat to relinquish our guilt and shame. We do not desire to be the one to blame. We want love without the baggage and the idiocracy!

'What foolery it is to defy such fine machinery!'
'Get off the tracks, the train is coming!'

There is beauty to this coldness, I will admit. For a complex machine to showcase it's own use is a mechanic's dream. Yet, I miss the warmness of soul. Whether it be blue or orange, I hunger for the hues of color. I do not desire a cold, bitter end. I wish for a warm explanation, yet I am skeptical. Are we better off trusting in love, of the human mind?

A kind skeptic, I am. A fool filled with romance of a fair civilization. An idealist. An intuitionist. An imaginist, too trusting of human nature, of the will of man. What is their intention?

Kant's shopkeeper desires to sell his candy, no matter the cost. Does he sell this candy to those children with rotten teeth running about in the streets to prevent himself from falling back down?

In time, you will be tested. Your maxim put onto trial. 'Alice, what proof have you brought to the royal court?' inquires the King of Hearts.

"Alice, there's no time."
'Oh Alice, what is true?'
"Alice, you must decide!"

Are you but a child, with childish ideals?
'I simply refuse to extinguish one's wonder!'
'If I must remain childish, so I will it!'

How immature, are you?

'I serve no masters. I fear only God.'
"Is God not your master?"
'He is quite the humbling mechanism.'
"Is God merely a mechanism?'
'God is the gap we cannot fathom to fill.'
"How convenient..."
'I sense you are not satisfied.'
"Must I be?"
'What are you satisfied towards?'
"Adventure, I must be!"
'Do you believe in Good and Evil?'
"I seek the highest good."
'Neither good nor evil shall be my master.'
"What do you mean by that?"
'You may live long enough to see your goodness turned to rot.'
"I do not follow."

'There comes a time when goodness turns to evil to set itself right. The unity of opposites, it cycles and continues, with no regard to your own morals or ethics. Pride and hubris, it gets the best of you. You desire for goodness. You desire for greatness. Yet, almost inevitably, those good intentions plummet down to the depths of Hell. You become twisted. You become blind. Blinded by your own self-righteousness. Blinded by what is. Ever incomplete, we are. Never satisfying our own hedonic adaptations. Always looking for more. Always looking for better. Always striving. You strive for good, yet, you are blind to what occurs.'

"What is occurring?"
'Nohbdy knows.'

The Cyclops speaking of a primal sense of justice is blind to your cunning wit, Odysseus Ουτισ. You blind the ol' man-eating Cyclops with your trickery justified by your longing for Ithaka. The Cyclops may be primitive but they do not desire evil. You flaunt you moral compass towards home.

Your desire, your dreams, your longing; is this true love?

"Everything is falling into divine alignment."

What is true altruism; can it exist?
Must it be free of any sort of self-pleasure?
What must be examined; what must be (dis)integrated?

In the rise to inquiry, how far do you sharpen your awareness?
By the sharpening of your awareness, how sharp is your love?

Do you decide in good faith to sharpen the mind?