Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Silly lines on a wall

This is a response to Zach's latest post. I encourage all to read the whole post, but here's the part you'll need to understand my post.

Once someone is at this point, an individual may see that God isn’t really there at all, but just some lines on a wall. What is present is a group of individuals, searching for what they already are. Most people don’t realize it and never will. A few will realize it and go crazy. A few will realize it and embrace it. The individual will realize he or she is free. Everyone is. There aren’t any rules, there’s no morality, just some silly lines on a wall. At this point, there’s no need.


Your second to last paragraph, inasmuch as my experience understands, is dead on, but still, I hope, partial. For myself, I find the freedom aspect to be daunting, as it seems to render existence meaningless. To quote Christopher Durang, "we can look into the abyss together" - I hope but am uncertain that there is more than that to be found. It appears that there's more, but it may be that at the bottom of the rabbit hole is that, again. At least in the interim is the joy of the chase, of discovery. It's something.

I suppose at some point one goes from searching for what one is to, having found it, trying to get a grasp of... it...

8 comments:

V said...

Well, you can let go of God, if you will. But perhaps God will not let go of you. I mean you can't be sure there is no God out there. Emptiness or the void isn't really empty. It is empty of self. But not of it. Whatever it is.
I don't think you can live without morals or morality as a human being or as an animal. Thinking there is no such thing only means you are probably delusional. Because in the end society and people will require or force you to conform, depending on who is in power. If we live under a totalitarian regime you will probably not be allowed to think this way.
In the end, this is nothing but thinking and a personal opinion.
And of course, amorality is some kind of immorality. Whether you think you are enlightened or not.
And perhaps enlightenment if there is such a thing, is nothing but the end of searching or personal seeking. And to try to explain it is probably impossible.
Of course, pretense and bluffing are possibilities. How good you are at it depends on how much you have read or understood in what others have thought or have written.
Moreover, enlightenment doesn't mean the end of thinking.
Some opinions.

V said...

Trying to figure it out probably means you are wasting your time and energy. Which you could have used or should be using in living your life to the fullest. Based on what society requires you to do. To be a good member of it. How it is done depends on the individual self or ego.
Theory versus practice.
Empty is not necessarily empty. It's actually of full.

greenfrog said...

julie,

I don't think I disagree with zack, but I do think that there's something there even after everything is clearly seen as lines on the wall.

Perhaps it's my own inexperience speaking, but the deeper I go, the more convinced I am that what continues even after everything else (including ego) is stripped away is not nothing, but, rather simple compassion and love. If that's right (rather than just evidence that I've got farther to go) then perhaps zack's perception of separation and individuality isn't the right place to stop.

I've been trying for a couple of weeks to find the right way to articulate the thought, but it seems to me that to reach the mindstate zack articulates, I have to take my awareness outside of my experience and view it as an object, rather than taking it deeper into that subjective experience. (I know, that doesn't make sense. I'm still trying to find a way to say it in properly dualistic terminology.)

Anyway, I share your hope.

sean

Jon said...

Greenfrog has it about right, IMHO.
Yes, there's nothing.
Yes, nothing's something.

I'll post about this soon. Promise.

z said...

Oh isn't there's always something else. There's always another layer, even if it seems there could never be.

I think Paul was probably onto something when he said "Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love." (1 Cor. 13:13 NLT) So while there's nothing, there is something, and these attributes are reflective of it.

Rather than something negative like an abyss, I prefer to think of it as floating in beautiful nothingness.

anonymous julie said...

Siegfried, I'm not sure why you responded as you did. I'm not sure I care to agree or disagree with you - and you're right, it's nothing but thinking. The post is meant to point to the distinction between what is - just is - and what is a human construction, a system of thought, &c. Doesn't make these things less existant, but to see them as artificial constructions is an important distinction.

The quote about working out one's salvation with fear and something-or-other comes to mind. The question of the nature of existance isn't one that's picked or prodded at with though; it robustly resists such approaches and ties the thinker in knots. That's not to say that the question can't be answered; the answer is, too, and lived through and discovered, such as it is... it is approachable and answerable, just not by the usual or expected means.

I hope the obliqueness of my post isn't confusing. I made the leap between is and constructed some time ago, but you may not have been reading then.

Good line, this: Empty is not necessarily empty. It's actually of full.

Sean / Greenfrog Well, there is always the wall. :) "Simple" is a good descriptor. It is simple. I get a sense of where your thought's going. I think I wrote about beyond-the-wall sometime.

Jon Something like that. I don't care much to write academically or with much certainty about "what is". Shall be curious to see what you write.

Zach I think you're onto something so long as you don't think too hard at it. Your first paragraph is nice (though I read some cheerful exasperation into it). Paul was onto something, but in trying to zero in on that something I think you overshoot it entirely - it's more immediate than that, before the words. And I like your last image as well. Experience is what it is, and sometimes it is like that.

Larry Clayton said...

Nice to hear from you, Julie, and especially to see you're still in touch with some of our old friends.

Re your subject: here's the Quaker response. There is that of God in everyone, and Blake's: everything possible to believe is an image of truth. God is within: you and me; and Tillich's: our highest value, what we've commited our lives to. I suppose some people have no highest value, but that must be thir highest value.

Jim said...

Psychologically, you do individuate as God, however, responsibility comes with the growth and assumption. To shirk that, retards the reality and regresses the human aspect that God is the epitome of. C'est la vie, most refuse the maturity because of the pay not being physical.