untangle the self!

dear friends,

I am attempting to disentangle my mind of its own insights and symbols.

Here I am untangling myself before you. I must write a book report on Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. The funneling act, the crux of perception, the compressing of concepts, synthesized into a brief (hopefully) coherent book report. There's much I want to share in the end but I often loop back to the beginning, time and time again, entangled. Am I a strange loop?

How does one untangle the self?

Simply, by writing, documenting, expressing, clarifying, resonating, diagonalizing, conversing, releasing, moving, spiraling, unraveling, sharing, simplifying, expanding, extracting, outlining, organizing, integrating, disintegrating…

… I must release the cognitive load. Yet, the process of disentanglement may never fully release you from entanglement. We are incomplete as our minds may never fully understand itself: the shadow of consciousness and non-existence.

There is a chance at bottom, that all that is, the reality we perceive, could be an illusion created by our consciousness. An illusion born out of our survival needs through evolution and adaptation. Pure awareness of the truth seems far…

So why does it matter?

To me, it matters because it helps me frame and reframe the mind for better understanding. We may never fully understand ourselves perfectly but we can work towards pure awareness which leads to greater compassion and connection. To better navigate this world, even if it is an illusion…

By uncovering the self of its true nature, you become free.

By becoming free, you are capable of taking witness to the collective spirit, take witness to yourself, to ultimately remove the shackles to your soul, your symbol of self. To remove ignorance, to remove amathia, to remove these barriers of your own mind, your own perception.

To break the illusion?

What lies beneath, behind, beyond, befront? What beholds you, do you see?

your friend(ly)

jakester

P.S. a spiral dump prior to my GEB: an eternal golden braid BOOK REPORT

P.S.S. here is a brief conversation on life and consciousness (click me) with my great, wondrously smart friend, mister Andrew Cennicola.

Aim & Intent: prepare for book report; reflect on GEB while disentangling the insights gained from the thoughts that have passed; exploring resonance of words, concepts, and symbols as it relates to the self (and soul)

a priori pursuit; a posteriori awareness

"Mad Hatter, what is the matter?"

In the pursuit of wisdom, I’ve lost awareness. There is this strange occurrence, when I chase after knowledge, my sense of awareness lessens. It’s not all the time, yet, there’s a narrowing that occurs when my eyes are set on obtaining pure awareness. I become less aware in the pursuit of awareness itself.

The senses dull, the flow slows, frustration sets.

This cognitive load, I wish to off-let. To channel and give off to an outlet, a stream. Brute force, I try but vain makes a fool of me. Don’t force it, I know. But I’m drawn to put effort, to prove my worth. But what is there to prove? What evidence must I provide? As if I’m guilty before proven otherwise. What do I have to prove?

Am I behind the 8-ball? Behind my own fate?

I whisper horsly to myself: ‘amor fati, amor fati…’

But the love I carry grows heavy in each step I try to pursue, a target ever-moving. I pursue it nonetheless. The call I aim to answer. What am I chasing?

This sphere of ‘awareness’ and the secret wisdom of incomplete non-existence. The liar’s paradox has put me in a twist. True x false. There’s no path to prove as both paths intertwine, down the möbius strip. Time and time again, my efforts feel vain. Yet, in each time, I still find my spirit, my heart, despite losing my head.

I find shelter in my heart and spirit in times of crisis and of untethered chasing. Don't chase, don't chase, you little beast.

Am I a dog chasing its own tail, trying to prove itself? I am no better than the dog, perhaps the dog is better than me. He carries love, carries no pretense within their emotions, their instinct. DOG spun backwards is GOD, after all. GOD break logic?

"Lamp dog pony" I mutter non-sense to myself in a strange putty. The putty, it falls into my two hands. The putty is of my own flesh, my own image I form. Who is guiding my hands? Am I forming myself, this image I hold? Or is this some pretense, close to crisis, I fall?

. . . . . .

"Roll the dice."

Who are you?

“Roll the dice,” the Jester replies, “odd or even?”

He already knows. He sees it all, paths determined near sight. Tangled hierarchies, competing interests. The chains of possibilities. Fate or free will. Do I decide to roll the dice? What voice do you listen to, my friend?

"Don't think too long," Time passes, "you'll lose your chance at picking your fate."

How jestful this moment has become, a tangled mess: 'what a joke!' I spit out, distorted in time. I hear my future screaming 'three' but I am no white prophet (the wine glass will shatter, teeter tatter). I falsify myself before the Jester of Time with these images of mind. I imagine myself with these images. What does it all symbolize to me?

These memories fall forward, slipping from the past. "Time is a thief!" I laugh at how dull the saying slaps me across the face with the hand of little grace. My hands of grace, my hands of fate?

I roll a six, it hits the glass. My hand accidentally knocks it to a three for a moment, the die froze in pass. I tap it back to six, less than a second, I say to myself: a sleight of hand. The die was chipped, a corner missing. It all led to this.

"How lucky you are," the Jester winced, "you chose a six!"

'How odd,' I thought, this wrinkle in Time, 'I did not decide.'

Did I intend on rolling the die?

"What does it matter, you Mad Hatter?"

. . .

The rain ripples on the surface, disturbance flowing below it. The stream you follow, it’s cold when you walk. The water, it bends and falls.

The Order of Time, does it flow or ripple, distorted: this wrinkle in time?

The many drops onto the puddle, each ripple disturbing the next, competing.

A poet’s nose; a dove of truth. Dovetails dove in. In the interest of time. Compounding interests, to work with the flow of time; what compounds?

The "I" across time, constructed-destructed, symboled signs?

frame + actor = symbol

Can minds be mapped onto each other? What symbols lay dormant and what are currently active; do you see?

To understand and make sense of the world, we need a symbol for self, a reference point that is in relation to all things around it and within. A neutral cursor. This is what births consciousness. An ability to consider itself and to consider its performance with different nodes and symbols.

Yet, I often wonder who is of witness of this self-symbol [meta-self?].

There seems to be an explicit witness (conscious-self) and the implicit witness (unconscious-self). The explicit witness, I imagine to be in positive space (light) while the implicit witness exists within negative space (darkness).

The explicit witness, the conscious-self tends to search out and expand its light and awareness: to make what is unknown known. To minimize, in its pursuit, the implicit witness. To reduce the unconscious self: to make what is unconscious conscious.

Whereas, the implicit witness tails the explicit witness as a shadow, ever allusive and never allowing for the explicit to be complete. Weirdly, the implicit witness may actually be in closer approximation to the truth itself, the Jester of Time, almost seemingly teasing away at the explicit witness while it lays dormant: to make what is conscious unconscious? Closer to pure awareness?

The shadow of self, the non-self, the dormant symbols?

It's the classic game of cat and mouse, except the cat and mouse are constantly changing form, collapsing onto each other, and swapping roles.

An unbounded search. An unbounded recursive loop. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. Henkin's witness?

Henkin says: “Give the shadow a name so it can step into the light.”

A witness collapses potential existence into concrete form.

Be being able to point out what is unknown, you form an object of the mind, a symbol that is no longer unconscious. The implicit made explicit.

I am in search! I fall into the search…

… what search was I on?

Days have passed. The ink has switched. Can't you tell from the smear?

The smear of ink! It's hard to read. Flipping between, syntax and semantics! The scent of the pages. I try to smell the scent of words and meaning in its sequence, of structures and symbols. Take on the poet's nose, who knows? The holy fool!

I am in search; in search of the search. Oh boy! In search of the search?

"You are being disruptive, you are making no sense. You are talking non-sense!"

"What are you searching for?"

Harvest Time! Harvest Time! You must report.

I move the cursor; I was the cursor! You mustn't reach far to find endlessness…

… to the part of the soul that cannot be named?

"Curses!"

"Kagefumi 影踏み; shadow tag!"

"Who is Don Quijote?"

"Self-symbol?"

If I know I am a fool, does that make me a fool?

I am the victim and the victimizer. I am the master and the slave. I am the ego and the shadow. To find union to both, a bridge and interconnection. What am I?

"Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others."

'Why?' I ask (on the twelfth tuesday).

"Because it's the right thing to do."

'What is the right thing to do?'

David Hume and his guillotine stares at you. Ben Franklin's ol' Scottish friend. Friendly penpal of letters across the blue. The two often discussed human nature of the 18th century. What is and what you ought to do: a moral severance between the truth of reality and of moral obligation. Do you roll the die towards moral luck?

"Off with your head" a voice whispers.

Yet, in your soul, in your spirit, you know what you need to do. You have an intuition led by your heart. Take shelter there, when your head goes missing. Take shelter in the heart, when the head loses its way. Take heart.

Entangle, disentangle, integrate it all!