Mr. P's Words
A Series of
Mostly One-Page Essays
SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2012
A) Gods' Grades
God does not give out grades. We give those to ourselves. As Gods we quantify and classify and establish hierarchies and laud, applaud, judge and condemn. One might get past the flatland sense of an evidently unfair equality and integrate everything into an existential soup of different tastes and different ingredients, allowing room and roam within some conceived whole of the universe, but, like it or not, we have rank and order, phylum and data. And we love to wrangle over who belongs where.
In any given model of the stratification of mankind I search for one integral concept that is that 'a person is everything'. However apportioned. At issue is the predominate degree to which a given habituation is practiced, subconsciously, consciously, unconsciously, or intentionally. Habit defines us. We are culturally, linguistically, nationally, and habitually driven. It's our set. And we generally contest within it. We can intend to and then acquire a new habit; repetition makes it not new. Good or bad. And depending on what an observer states, or perhaps from what we feel, some behavior of ours is labelled on a continuum of labels. Thing is, to say I'm a cook can mean a whole lot of different things to very many people; or is that 'kook'? Levels of attainment imbue our lives. The gradations are defined by others, mostly, and very much so by ourselves.
So I advance The Theory of Gods Grades. No need for an apostrophe. We all are One.
Like grade school to graduate school, we appear apportioned into classes in the curriculum of life. Both a natural order as well as a man-made order predicates as much. We are startled by anomalies. The prodigy. The crazed. The outlier. Generally we are most comfortable within the class of our peers, our colleagues, our friends, our culture, our beliefs, our field of knowledge. Esemplasticity is not a natural proclivity. So we prefer to keep things, usually, simple. And though recognizing ourselves as being contained within a grade level, as in, "I'm in Grade Six; next lifetime I shall be in Grade Seven!" it is rather limiting of us to judge anyone, let alone ourselves by so simple a categorization. Some of my understanding is decidedly still in grade six, and even some more remains at pre-school level, yet other understandings are at a post graduate level. Like you, I am everything. My life's curriculum is as individualized and as differentiated by the comprehensions and lessons and passage of my lifetime, as is yours, and though I certainly can say I passed standard one, or even grade two, I for sure can tell you that I did not do so with 100%. Ever watched 'Who is smarter than a fifth grader?'
No body of knowledge will of itself give qualification to be acclaimed into a given grade; character may. No personality will of itself give acclamation to a given grade; character may. And even then no one person is so complete in character and personality as not to ever feel angry, hurt, mis-aligned. If personality be described as psycho-geometric (that is as a square, circle, triangle, squiggly line, rectangle or even a trapezoid) then one's character is hereby defined as that which we do. Personality is the manner by which we do things; character is the means. And if we generally bring our sparkling personality to a given party and persuade others to vote for a certain character we but perform the marriage ceremony of that which imbues us all; we hardly can separate yin and yang, male and female, positive and negative, enlightenment and obscurity, though we try. Some of us even refuse to accept shades of grey! But we do, evidently, dish out grades!
TUESDAY, JULY 24, 2012
Prior to school has essential merit. Essential. Yet we may dismiss those
who appear to stay in it predominantly. "I don't suffer fools" is the
phrase. You moron. Retard. Ignoramus.
First lessons are crucial. In most models of mankind they appear as the
survival level, equating historically with man at his most primitive, most
likely to be mostly self-serving, entirely dependent on getting his immediate
needs met. At any age we may observe in ourselves such continuity. I would
needs disturb a whole Opera audience were there a sudden alarm in my bowels.
But sophistication has me thinking ahead about how long the flight from Denver
to Vancouver will take; how long the lecture; how long the drive; how long the
opera. And my developed inhibitors will help me when my utter selfishness
desires the biggest slice of the cheesecake. The sheer randomness of life
provides test upon test for the mastery of pre-school. Beyond potty training
there is the awareness of others to take into account. And consideration of
others, ideally, is the lesson we may learn that stops us from fiddling with
ourselves in public, not shame. Inhibitors are not necessarily about shame;
they become variously exercised implicitly or explicitly in consciousness or
consideration of our effect. But while we are in the initial stages of life we
by birthright are naturally uninhibited, unashamed, unaware that we make
demands on others or are primarily dependent on our survival needs. We just
want what we want.
Before school provides the foundation of attachment. We learn what we
like, whom we feel good about, to whom we are primarily affiliated, and we
learn the essential concept of ourselves as a recognizable name. My label is
Richard, son, kid, or worse, Back-Seat-Brat. The one I might perceive as
delivered with love, the others with shame. And were I now still mostly to
remain in those moments of utter selfishness as to NEED my food at a certain
temperature, my voice heard, my contentions un-argued, or my garbage-bin
foraging, my stealing from another with no real consideration as to how it may
affect others, I'd be given some grade for my pre-schooling by the Gods. Week
one; month two; adaptation three; almost ready for Kindergarten; ahead of his
time! And so we see our comparisons to others. We begin to take ownership in
becoming ourselves. We may feel a sense of inadequacy that dearest Penelope
always appears better, or take on a sense of pride that we are faster,
stronger, brighter, louder. Or worse, if we alone are to survive amongst the
thousands of tests ahead of us, we might just decide not to give a damn. Does
it matter if I leave my family, betray my loved ones, don't bother with my
education, don't try for financial independence (let alone a contribution to
society), don't care about my addiction, don't think of my effect upon others,
poo in my pants? In those first stages of preschool my ego is not yet developed
to handle the sophistication of the consequences of being in Kindergarten. And
that's why, generally, I must wait until I am four or five years old,
chronologically speaking, before I may be given 'accountable' grades by a
teacher, who will (until I one day am truly able to comprehend where she too
may be coming from) affect my sense of me for the rest of my life. "He is
not as clever as he thinks he is," she actually wrote. In Kindergarten we
receive our stars by comparisons, or not. We find that we're favored, or
over-looked, or even not liked. We get more often to think about the
consequences of our actions. Easier to stay in preschool?
If only one did not
have to read so much! To work so hard. To be tested. To care. Can't we just
stop the lessons already? Huh?
WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2012
Conditioning is natural. Crows caw at instructing their young; leopards
and lions and elephants and crocodiles have ways too. We see cuddly and cute
and oh snap and petite all being raised to become in our image. And we get
taken by surprise when the lion lays down with the lamb. Birds of a feather
flock together. If a fish and a bird marry, where will they live? But let us
not get ahead of ourselves. Teach your children well.
Naturally, we are societal, somewhat if not very much gregarious, and
each and every one of us conditioned. Pavlovian, even before Kindergarten,
neural pathways were established by which we are identifying ourselves. Even as
babies we can be observed to display those archetypes of being sanguine, colic,
phlegmatic, or just downright belligerent. Already, even before most of us
begin talking we entrench our preference for psycho-geometric shapes of personality.
Character is not yet defined; it being an accretion of the things we do. But
personality comes very early on, and as a tool by which we engage our world we
squarely face it, squiggle our way through it, embrace our circle, or poke and
prod and prick in a triangularity of needing wants met. To be entirely
indecisive is not natural to us. We innately exercise likes and dislikes, and
our personality shapes our world for us. Kindergarten creates a social pathway.
It is the first stage at which we are generally no longer under the protection
of family and are lumped in with others more or less of our own chronology to
find our own way.
But already some of us have been abused. Great fear and deep shame can
scar the psyche. Others may know great love and deep attachment. Nice. In
either instance being in Kindergarten among like-aged Gods is an experiment in
homogeneity. Simple dichotomies confound; personal complexity is developing,
let alone universality. But like a sixth grader in the Graves' Spiral Dynamics
model (a later curriculum; I peeked!), we are expected to display an equality
of ability, intelligence, and outlook. Yet already the differentiation is
multilayered. I was never going to reveal what my crippled uncle did to me.
Penelope was disbelieving that her wonderful parents could actually leave her
at the school gate. Tony was already feeling displaced. Mike was already
conscious of being impoverished. Justin was already conscious of being bored by
simplistic expectations. Rob found it unfair that the others were already older
than he. Simon....
The differentiation is inescapable. And the layering upon layering has
begun. Nowadays we are racially and culturally more mixed than our histories.
Thanks to 'before-school' kids being bombarded with imagery in T.V. raised
countries, we no longer need stare at strangers. Racial, or handicapped. That
segment of our integration has begun. But we have the universal hyperbole of a
kazillion prepositions yet to interlace; our relationship to and with and in
and of and above and under and near and far is on its way. Ontology
recapitulates phylogeny. Education is dependent on culture, conditioning,
circumstance, innate interest, and the authority of the system. We are
vulnerable, like comprachicos, to the makings of
man; long before the fountainhead. Our unique authenticity is a plasticity to
be moulded by the conditioning of that which our parents modeled, our immediate
familial society reflected, and is about to become graduated by degrees within
the first congregated classroom of conceptions inculcated in us by
Kindergarten.
Would then that its teachers be the wisest of beings!
THURSDAY, JULY 26, 2012
Wisdom conceived by Grade One is interesting. Wise
old Solomon's division of the baby can intrigue even a five year old. Yet now
we may see ourselves at the bottom of the rung with a long uncertain ladder to
finish school, let alone the certainty of attending a universe(ity). Elementary
school, with Gradations to Six, makes for the separation of wheat from the
chaff (an ugly term) full of the push and shove of potentialities colliding and
fickleness of friendships being retested as we yet may make our way groundless
as weights on lilly pads of expectations. But some are butterflies already
emerged from the pupae, flitting from flower to flower in the gardens of
potentiality. We call such, even as adults, angels. For others enduring foci
may emerge; decisions not to like marmite, broccoli, or Penelope. I hate her
comes trippingly off the tongue. Pathological lying can find foundation here
too; it is easier to avoid truth when truth gets one beaten. Fear or Favor (an
oversimplified dichotomy) reacts more and more steadily within us. Fight or
flight. Left or right choices dictate our suffering or enjoying the
consequences. Or not.
Consequentiality drives us. Even unto right now. In a Kohlberg
stratification we can stay like babies, so unaffected by consequence as again
to damage, steal and rape and lie and betray all over again once the jail of
the crib, the leash, the lash, the imprisonment is removed. Self-centricity
would equate this very first stage of undeveloped potentiality in adults with
habitual models of mankind across the chalk boards of classrooms every where.
Such a self-centric first stage is a very different behavior, Meme, or modality
than the self-efficacy of civil disobedience. Plato would have it that many
only see shadows for reality. Thoreau would rather that we sit face to face
with authenticity. And awareness of our effect on others becomes our
ego-centricity, that necessary trait in order for us to be commensurate, to
commiserate, and to dance with society. But some of us (teachers like Kohlberg,
Dabrowski, or Clare Graves will say) never may get past these layerings of the
Elementary grades. We endemically predominantly practice left or right choices.
Even our very morality is predicated on such. We do what we do because we
believe in those who've taught us that this is the way to think, to do, to
believe, to see, to feel, to marry, to judge, to condemn, to love, to listen,
to entrench, to war. And we can hardly believe that Grade One through Six has
so very many computations and permutations (a most academic sounding phrase to
convince an apprehensive clarity).
"In Grade One we were arranged in rows, according to how 'bright'
we were. There were the Turtles, the Sparrows, the Squirrels and the Bluebirds!
Oh, to be a Bluebird, but I think I was a Squirrel. Only later did it dawn on
me how sad it was for those poor kids in the Turtle row. There was no moving up
for them. How long did that label stick to them?" writes Jessie.
Our very beings,
predicated on the body-culture of our perceptions of ourselves as gleaned from
the reactions we habituate ourselves toward in the perpetual classroom of life,
can set us up into adulthood with a conceptual belief that who we are and what
we acquire in Elementary school is sufficient for our needs. Who needs more?
And thereby psychically, spiritually, and potentially, we no longer evolve much
past the fundamental premises inculcated in us by the elementary lessons we
perceive always to be around us. Who needs more? Being meta-cognitive requires
too much comfort with perpetual uncertainty. And anyway, your thoughts are too
dense! Can you not just say it simply?
SATURDAY, JULY 28, 2012
Intelligence is not predicated on knowledge; at least, not necessarily.
Literacy is not a measure of insightfulness. Linguistic fluency is not a
measure of mindfulness. Math is not a prerequisite for spirituality. (Many a
potential English teacher did not become one for lack of qualifying Math
grades.) Dictates can hobble. Autonomous Synthesis is not easily achieved. Even
within the strands of any given curriculum, in any given grade, a natural
separation ensues. Our timetables are the order and divisions of attention. We
put on or doff off the required roles of science, biology, art, drama, English,
French, Spanish, home economics or even Math students at other (older) Gods'
demands. Fragmentation is endemic, even in the classroom. Recall grades being
posted? Recall names for detention on the board? One teacher creatively called
it, 'The Banner of Shame'; were the motives perhaps misunderstood? Junior High
can have the dubious or salubrious effect of further dividing and stratifying
ego-bound potential. Paradoxically, being 'bound' denotes plus or minus. A
grade! Stasis, wont, or want of mobility is implicit or explicit; one is made
aware that there is more, and the fear is that one may never be good enough, or
arrogance becomes such that one intends to better everyone else, or the fun is
that there are lots of friends to party and go places with. We herein are happy
to drop some prepositions in relations. Decidedly. Others we adhere to with
captive identity. In, or out? Recall the phrase, non-u? We may even adopt a
political stance. Or?
Grade Seven through Nine captures children of uncertain maturation and
segments them into streams and field-days and collusions and competition. At
Elementary, sports day may be fun. At Junior High it may be much more serious.
You represent the school.
"Why, why are we archaically still subjecting students to an age
equals grade school orientation?" writes Angela. Indeed, depending on
being identified, we are so defined.
Even as adults we may retain the habits of Junior High as invigorating
or enervating as is our wont. Grades! Sophisticated judgement abounds. Cliques
and badges and clubs and groups and causes and try-outs make or break us. We
find succor in the eyes of others, or we may be crushed by a glance. And some
of us, individual, undeveloped in caring, lead with our ego. Strength of energy
and of being and of dominance is not the same as strength of character. We
experiment with who we are; some adjust unwittingly to the expected. Or we
entrench who we think we are; damn the consequences. The angry young man draws
his own portrait. Penelope further develops her faithfulness. A star is born.
The bully is 'always' a jerk. Change is like a congealing soup; we become more
certain that we fit, or not, and we gravitate toward like-minded ingredients.
Or not.
Indeed, we might inculcate ongoing judgements. Rather than be evaluative
(a single pie is unpalatable, not the entire cook) we are naturally bound
to competition, grades, our chronology, and fairness. A moment in the past is
more better than right Now; or if it's a good 'now' then an even better time is
in the future. We find it most difficult to accept the given moment,
completely. Always there is a was and a next. And that Penelope might be
accelerated or should be ousted or even more decidedly, failed, is by
comparisons.
Junior High searches for who we are. We vacillate mostly in being
defined by others. Senior High establishes or confounds us. Intelligence is
controlled by knowledge; or not.
MONDAY, JULY 30, 2012
To be 'senior' in High School may be understood as false. Focus on what
one is going to be takes precedence over who one actually is. At any age. A
future, how to develop one's potential, to best the interview, to get ahead,
and how to prove one's worth predominates. Yet while in Grades Ten, Eleven and
Twelve (that freeing grade that declares the end of the dependence plateau from
which we, in a formal ceremony, leap into the insecurities of self-reliance)
there is a generalized gelling of the fundamentals of being one's 'self' that
gets firmed by comparisons, judgements, and one's habituations.
Some Senior Highs have Grade Nine through Thirteen. We are apportioned
according to the culture. We are grouped according to age. We are ranked
according to ability. We are graded accorded to product. We are befriended
according to circumstance or the chance of similarities observed, stated, or
implied. And we are supported most unfairly based on the opinions and grades
given by parents, family, teachers, friends. Penelope hates Miss X and Mr. Y,
but Percy likes both of them. Penelope loves Percy, she thinks, but Percy is
sure he doesn't like her. And as such, adults or still youngsters, we Gods in
Senior High, at any age, keep extending and retracting and advancing and
withholding the many gradations of our concepts, our intentions, our values and
morals and ethics. Accretion of our accomplishments or of awards or of wealth
or even of focus and purpose and direction entrenches our growing resume of
character, serves to augment our personality, and sets us up to be autonomously
accountable, though we may continue to reach perpetually for our support
systems. It is judgement and grades that easily continues to divide us. How
else can Penelope vie for Medical School? How else does Percy hope to get into
Oxford? And commercialism, that necessary commodity of the commune between all
sentient creatures, becomes the altar to which most of us are drawn, albeit
ineluctably or not, since we deem those with 'more' to have more value as a
human being, more power, more prestige, more worth; despicable of character or
royal by pronouncement. Attitudes predominate. We are clearly conscious of
variables, and rather than integration and compassion and acceptance and
tolerance and inclusion, generally and collectively, we are concerned with
ensuring that we ourselves get ahead. Even as a Group, whether with grades or
on the sports field, we hope to kick butt. Or the individual does not care, and
the apathetic, the iconoclast, the rebel, the underachiever, the non-complaint,
the selfish, the arrogant, the... The differentiation becomes more marked. One
develops or experiments with fields of sameness; the school has clubs for the
gays (nowadays), the smokers, the Mormons, the Jews. And we even may accept or
rejoice or grumble that no longer do we say the Lords' Prayer. Groups will
parade and promulgate and litter the walls with posters of their contentions.
Many individuals will sublimate and hide and work alone and think what they
think, but being in the school's Collective Memes, albeit unwittingly, is
hardly one's own fault. The grades of our apportionment prior to graduating
toward true autonomy (into a yet more complex society,) is due to our
enculturation and others' legal and societal and familial expectations. Even
our friends and teachers are there to urge at us: Stay with us now!
Recognizing ourselves in life's perpetual curriculum, as adults, is not
lightly seen. Our consciousness of the grades given to each other, if not to
ourselves perpetuates the stress of comparisons, the business of checking out
the Jones, and of attachment to values. Gods' grades may be suspect, but they
can become stepping stones to more.
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WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1, 2012
Damn! Idiots and fools and crooks and bastards and angels are
everywhere. Perception in the moment, or worse, reputation, will define them.
We are given to calling behaviors by name, and we can tend to paint the canvas,
the entire person, with one color. We are not readily persuaded that a person
can change, that only one square inch of the many square yards of a person's
life does not color, contaminate, make or mark the person for life. Because he
once thieved he will do it again. Because he once betrayed, she learns not to
trust anyone. Because I once killed, i fear I could kill again. Because I once
loved, I have learnt never to give my heart away again. Never! And so on. Very
many of us like the idea of going somewhere and starting all over again, where
no one knows us; others of us do not entertain the notion at all. I am who I
am, Popeye the sailor man! Morons!
Disintegration requires, in order for us to be at ease with it, a
willingness to adapt. We are given to discomfort with the process when we climb
a peak to get a better view; we know that the outcome may be worth it, if only
the weather will be clear. But should the change expected or foisted upon us be
perceived as negative, as in fired from a job, or the victim of an accident, or
being forced to relocate, the disintegration from what was is difficult to accept as positive.
Dabrowski's Positive Disintegration Theory is an actuality.
Kohlberg has it that we are differentiated according to a moral or
ethical sensibility to the habits we engender from sensibilities around us.
Eight stages enliven his challenge.
Erikson has it that eight chronological and psychosocial developments
need 'mastery', as contained by the habituations within each. Undeveloped
virtues remain challenges.
Clare Graves envisions Nine Memes of progression, enlivened by
non-integrative and integrative predominances, the first six Memes of First
Tier, the next three Second Tier.
Maslow and Bloom and Gregoric and JoHari and Delinger and de Bono and
Anagram Theory too will add to the meanings of mankind, provide tools to check
into our thinking, our habits, our wonts and wants. Or not. The vast majority
of us are too preoccupied with the misfortunes of surviving, or involved in the
struggles of succeeding (however we may see those terms) for us to be engaged
in being consistently aware of degrees of integration. Easier to react and to
predicate immediate behavior on precedence afore thought. The paradox of
letting go in order more entirely to accept all of everything just As IS is not
readily managed. We are creatures affected by the effects of mankind, of
nature, of The Gods, and of ourselves. Then again, my dear, as the saying goes
when it gets inordinately tough, who gives a damn? Really? Well, who do you
think you are?
THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 2012
Indecision can be very unsettling. Yet it can save us from being
precipitous, from being harmfully spontaneous, from being reactionary rather
than responsive. But indecision, as a prolonged habit, can be debilitating. We
generally tend to be making up our minds.
In the plethora of choices (especially once we free ourselves, at any
age, from a predicated set of Expected Memes to that of searching for our own
fields of autonomy) we are called upon to practice self-reliance, which becomes
new habits of non-reliance upon the provision of others, financial, familial,
obliged, or even wanted, or not. Yet most of us, the research would have it,
retrench into the known rather than voyage overlong in the seas of chance and
exploration. We want our perceptions verified. We want our knowledge
substantiated. We want our contentions affirmed. We make our decision to adhere
to a given set of paradigms the which our parentage has prepared us for. And so
we may become affiliated with a political, religious, philosophical, economic,
educated, national, or contentious group, or not. Who do we think we are so to
feel different from the norm, the average, the regular, the expected? How dare
we declare our individuality so strongly as to leave behind the familiar, the
avowed, the regulated, the conditioned?
Before we adopt the next predominate meme, at any habituation, we feel
disintegration, yet we can become successively comfortable as we acquire the
now new paradigm, individually or collectively, or else discomfort retrenches
us to the old Meme and we do not evolve, change, advance potential.
Historically it is easily observed. We carry within the atavistic impulses of Cro-Magnon
man, yet are simultaneously as sophisticated as the current year, or not. Clare
Graves would have it that we collectively or individually move from Survival
through Family, through Ego-Centric, through Socio-centric, through
National-centricity, then Global-centricity, toward Universality (to hereby
bastardized his correct concept, ha!) Getting things right is our fundamental
problem. We innately feel that unless others think as we do they are getting it
wrong. And hence our perpetual strife with each other, if not with ourselves.
We like to feel secure. Yes? Get it right!
Correctness is essential for a whole lot of rational reasons. To cross a
bridge with one's heavy payload takes great trust in the precision of the
makers. Some just do it, specially if having been that way before; others want
every detail verified before commencing the traverse. Paradigm shifts do not
necessarily crack open the shell of potentiality; we may peck away at the
enclosure of our metaphorical birthing a long-long time, and even try retreats
back into the metaphorical womb, depending upon the innate potentiality as well
as circumstances of nature, nurture and entelechy (our innate-drive). Trouble
is, the bridges of our neuronal activity, repeatedly habituated, are scarcely
checked for ongoing veracity once we've established them as our preferred
pathways. The research would have it that we are generally very slow to change
our routes of thinking, and that those of us caught overlong in the uncertainty
of new roadways, new signals, new maps of contentions, can be suicidal with
insecurity about who we think we are, especially if we feel alone, vulnerable,
unprotected, unsubstantiated, and crazy. Who do you think...?
Many a career was as facetiously chosen as by the flip of a coin. Many a
destination too. To be or not to be, to think or not to think for oneself,
herein lies the rub. How can I possibly deny God and include all the
others, or vice versa? Who are you to play God?
FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 2012
Independence may not be selfish or selfless. A predominance of
absorbing, including, accreting, and gathering yet more information, however
independently of large groups, of family obligations, or of another's expectations
is a passage by which the product of knowing more, seeing more, and
comprehending more, however, is not necessarily to 'be' more. Oh my! That sense
of not being, understanding, or achieving more, with self-reflection, evolves
one autonomously. Knowledge is not wisdom. Instinctually, one is
meta-cognitive. (In my own vernacular) Dabrowski has it that we limit potential
when not autonomously habituating ourselves in dynamic aspirations toward
greater integration. Non-autonomously, we grow wider, not higher.
Independently, we may gain knowledge, not more wisdom. We may be concerned with
a sense of 'my growth', independently, spiritually, and not necessarily as a
predominant contribution to the health of the whole.
Autonomy may not yet quite see others as Full-God-Potential; others may
be seen as unrealized bits of God, developing. Compassion is felt for the
messed up, confused, clownish, idiotic, mad, crazed, angelic, and bemused.
Autonomy is unlikely to scoff at a Universal God concept; it is too integrative
for arbitrary dismissal. Yet like other Memes, respective in degrees and grades
of wisdom, Autonomy may wish that others would hurry up and 'get it'. Different
from the First Six Memes (contained by the arrogance-judgements of negative
attitudes) however, is the growing evaluative-choice of greater degrees of
sustained inclusion, acceptance, and perceptual integrations of the stratified
layers amongst the impoverished, uneducated, misled, the righteous, the
fanatical, and the oh-so disparate. Autonomy seeks to include; instinctually
wanting itself as yet more.
Independence of God (a Religion's God) is an autonomous thing. In the
spectrums, bell curves, hierarchies, contentions, perceptions, and the human
ontology of mankind we are evidently not comfortable with No-God at all.
Atheism is a rank. Yet Total Integration would have it that if All is
Everything and Everything is All; which part of Everything is not? Humans
naturally are given to being aligned with a given body of thought, belief,
moral-exemplar, and habitual paradigm. Not all. To conceive of oneself as a
part of 'God' (a ubiquitous term) is 'acceptable' when we see absolutely ALL
and everything else as part of that Infinite Totality. Hitler too? If not
pantheistic Autonomy may even be given toward apportioning degrees and grades
of 'god consciousness'. A rock is not the frequency of the cat, though the cat
may be painted on the rock. Autonomy may believe 'things are meant to be';
individuals are blessed, cared for, by a named Overlord. My god! Others don't
believe in prayer. Some see God as conjecture. But Autonomy allows.
To be lumped into a group, given a grade, judged, pigeon-holed,
relegated, stamped, addressed and posted by another to some address, known or
not, is tantamount to being abrogated from everything else, and subliminally if
not overtly Autonomy does not enjoy the sense of so being culled into a club or
defined. Non-autonomy, at the other extreme, likes labels. Of course, there are
gradations in-between. Absolutes (nowadays) are unlikely. The chief, the
apostle, the priest, the doctor, the minister are as conditioned and
preferential as are the angels, the barkeeps, or even the whores.
Existentially. We neither deserve nor do not deserve. We are neither by
accident nor by design. And happenstance, that great collusion of time and
location, is the purveyor of our ongoing successes or failures, or not. Such
may be some thoughts of an Autonomous. Not all.
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SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 2012
Enlightenment is not a product, it's a process. There is no absolute
other than the absoluteness of utter inclusion. Which part of Everything is
not? The apportionments of each Meme preference within such freedom from
arrogant-judgements predominantly grows toward the inclusion of every thought,
perception, feeling, action, thing, being, everything and all to exist in a
flow of energy beyond one's conception; and so some name it Universal
Awareness. Within such an Integral Holon is apportioned the sacred and the
profound and the real and the imagined and the blessed include the
damned. Some create great Chains of Being, and others find The Way,
others conjoin Heaven and Hell, and yet others Sin and Nobility. Yet instincts will
pluck from a Time Past in the voices of forefathers not to forget the ways of
ancestors, not to dismiss the collective teachings, not to betray a past that
brought each of us to this very present, even as you now read this period. You
are a God? Blasphemy! We spiral or dance or vacillate or gyrate or breathe or
think or feel or act from the entire basis of all that which we were, are, and
hope to be. Past and present and future simultaneously imbues each of us, aware
or not. It is the degree to which we accept Utterly Everything that we realize
our potentiality, as a process, not a product. Everything is as was, is, and may by choice be.
Evaluative-Choice is preferential. Arrogant-Judgement is attitudinal.
Choice-Evaluation is compassionate toward the murderer, proactive.
Arrogant-Judgement, if not vengeful, is pejoratively attitudinal, condemning.
Evaluation may concur that the proven murderer be given consequence that serves
us all, judgement may declare that such murderer, if not to be hanged, be
incarcerated without reprieve and punished and penalized and despised. Yet
neither evaluative-choice nor arrogant-judgement may condone, let pass,
promote, or excuse the actions of evil, of intentional harm. Evaluative-Choice
will seek to understand. Arrogant-Judgement will, at best, seek to be
pragmatic. And choices in evaluation may be deemed to be soft; judgement's
choice be seen to be strong. Clearly!
Integrationists may seemingly be weak. Their instincts for preservation
and of nurturing and protecting and accepting everything can appear
wishy-washy. They apparently lack the passion and verve of the protestor, the
righteously outraged, the angered, the lusty, the needy and even the drive for
necessities. They can seem bland. And in moments of their displaying hurt or
want or intensity of interest, they may be seen as quite evidently suspect of
being so integrative in the first place. Who do you think you are? You
are not as clever or spiritual as you think! I see you ogling that second piece
of cheesecake!
We are everything. The smallest child. The oldest adult. The beggar, the
liar, the thief. The magistrate, the courtier, the king the pawn, the rook.
Which of us is exempt? By variable realization (and more especially in the
habituations to which we are given since we are not autonomous and absolutely
independent of all others) we are able to have our enlightenment realized such
that we are relatively free from reaction, and more readily responsive. It is
our attachment to grades, to grades of thinking, of arrogance in judgement,
even so of evaluation, that layers in our pathways of perception become our
habit, even as I write. Fish and birds may marry; but... Who do you think you
are?
We are ourselves. Individual. Progressing individually, albeit
collectively. We naturally compare. We naturally judge. We naturally prefer. We
do things by habit. Absolutely!
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