Tuesday, October 02, 2007

A BRIDGE OVER NO DIVIDE


Back to man’s need to believe.

A modest premise I offer, belief not required or recommended, but certainly not prohibited — you can’t curb nature without distorting experience

The cosmology of the universe
Is a continuum in flux
Within and without ones skin
Whose change we perceive
As evidence of its and our existence.

Nothing too outrageous there, none but the most rigid toes trod upon so far.

Let’s call the nature of existence the tao
The path, the way of all things
The megametaphor for the Big Mamu of Nature
The truth, the reality, the essence of all conceivable and inconceivable entities that exist.
What freely remains existent in plain sight after the best words,
the best theories, the capture of which fall short .

Okay, I’m feeling the rumblings of rebuke from the no-objective-reality crowd with that one. As you may gather, I think various viewpoints are healthy, so long as they are not trying to enforce uniform allegiance. So far there’s no call for believing anything — its just a theory.

The teflon nature of the tao
Is the nature too of glue
The wisest, well lit line of words
Aimed nighest to be true
Yet enlightens only kindred ears
While enraging those who kindle fears
That truth is changed by sayings
Wearing out their knees with prayings
On the off chance they are right.
They might spread their fright
Recruit you to their might
If you survive their night.

Now we’re into it — I have crossed into the territory of belief, wherein I tromp on all believer’s toes — not because I want to, but because the mere existence of people happy without belief upsets those whose belief is so tenuously fragile that everyone else’s agreement, nay, tacit conversion is required for its maintenance. Like so many aspects of western civilization, I find the parallel between church and state so fitting I have to remind myself of the supposed difference, as blurred as that between the two parties in this neocon merger of military/industrial complexification beyond the ken of lay or latin.

The process of belief, as I gather from those who profess to be unable to live without it, involves a kind of leap into the unknown tethered by faith in the trust in the belief in the perfect hope or perfect fear that the promises of righteous authority from pulpit or podium are true!?! Okay, fine, whatever floats your boat. I’m just kinda wondering what is the reason and where lies the responsibility for either choosing to weave for oneself such a web of dependence or to move into one ready made in the "Easier Than Thinking" mental retirement village, Nailed to the Cross Arms, complete with an owner’s manual for all morality and appliance questions.

If the answer is a version of, “god spoke to me,” we’re done here. I can’t converse with one who cannot recognize one’s own voices. Shoo!

If the answer is a version of, “I fell in love with the _______,” I can only ask if the belief is required to make _______ real or to distance oneself from ones own love by creating a bridge that separates by conditional dependency?

If the answer is a version of “I am afraid not to, Santa and God are watching everything I do,” I can only say, get over yourself. Any higher consciousness you may imagine is informed by a body of which you are a part the same as you are informed by each of your cells in the gestalt of your wisdom. Such belief could be a sop against indifference found in searching the stars for someone who cares.

Then there is that far too common, less holy or legally binding, negotiable type belief system where wedding vows and handshakes are backed by prenuptials and contracts necessitated by the simple fact that none see that no one can promise anything about the future, even the continuation of their most ardently held beliefs in the present. In fact, it would seem that the most rash of such promises, if kept to the letter of the promise made in the past through time, warp what might have been a natural, healthy lifetime friendship into one both parties resent for their own faithfulness and loyalty to the other's trust, too stubborn to admit what both know about belief.

I am a complete entity informed by the genetic memory inherited and sensations instantly reported by the cells of a body responsible for its own continued existence. With such equipment and the good sense to see the far reaching compassion in the golden rule there is no unknown I fear, for I know only that I know nothing conclusively. Belief in anything more remote or supreme than my own responsibility for my own existence is like driving a wedge between consciousness and conscientiousness, splitting mind from morality, blasting a rift betwixt intelligence and integrity through some mythical flaw of original sin, that price everyone is supposed to have where they pimp themselves to a savior, be it a supreme being or just a sugar daddy. Bah, humbug. Humans begin life much better than any price they may be persuaded to settle for, but ——— everybody’s doin’ it, doin' it, takin' their life and screwin' it, screwin' it.

It feels perfectly natural to have more than one soul mate.

19 comments:

karoline in the morning said...

If the answer is a version of, “god spoke to me,” we’re done here. I can’t converse with one who cannot recognize one’s own voices. Shoo!

lololol!! b-b-but!

we're a funny lot...one would have thought we'd have grown in a millenia..but then, there's racism..we don't like your skin your hair your shade of eyes..sexism...you're the wrong sex, agism, the wrong age from the wrong part of town..all physical entities of their own...and now..we reject your beliefs or lack of them..even though we can't prove or disprove i'm telling you... (watching the lemmings run) jump jump jump for peace in the hereafter!!...

i'll hang back thankyou...and enjoy today..for that i'm living my life now, i'm blessed...

k:)))

Yodood said...

Indeed you are blessed, not by some outside agency, but by the good sense to realize that a life lived in fear of loosing access to a preferable hereafter makes it's endurance the hell they imagine exists as a punishment for failure. What a knot of sheepish thoughtlessness.

karoline in the morning said...

ahhhhhhyess...but its *their* sheepish thoughtlessness...and so, we shall step back and clear the runway for flying lemmings..yes???

david mcmahon said...

Came here from Karoline's blog. You cetainly made us think about this post!

Keep smiling

David

Garth said...

Is it sheepish thoughtlessness or thoughtless sheepishness?
A mind blowing ramble through a god's mind - nice!

Unknown said...

Being sheeple is generally so much easier. Pushing the conditioned boundaries is just too scary for those who don't trust themselves and their own minds and reality - which of course, is always relative.

RubyShooZ said...

Wow, what a way to start my day. I've been a bit absent in the blogging world in the past few days - I really needed to just stop for a bit.

I'm here via Karoline's blog as well and I thank you for your honesty and for your approach to this topic as well. (applause!)

Peace today.

~ RubyShooZ ~

Unknown said...

Fear is the shepherd here. It is far easier for most to run with the flock than to stand alone and try to define the self and where it is in the world.
A crutch? We all need that - an inbuilt requirement of being human. Being at peace with one's thoughts, no matter what they are, is all that is needed.

And me? The Gods of Small Surprises have just gifted me with a large cream cake - it must be magick.

karoline in the morning said...

only those with the least to say wield their swords over the heads of those with the least will to believe.....

missing you mr g..come out come out where ever you are...

k:))))

Yodood said...

Welcome David and Rubyshooz, and welcome back all with your varied takes on a powerful subject.

Karoline, I appreciate your missing me (been makin' money and composing a post about just that), I would also appreciate a paraphrase of your last comment, I have no idea what to make of your intentions by the order of your words. Black hole of meaning? Cognitive eclipse? Very interesting.

BTW I cannot hear those words, "Come, out, come out …" without thinking of them spoken by Robert De Niro in Cape Fear.

karoline in the morning said...

live, love, grow,

this is the only life you need concern yourself with today..

Anonymous said...

what if the premise is simply:

I choose to believe.

?

Yodood said...

What if?

As open ended as such a question seems it is all hanging on the smallest word, I.

From there it would depend on who I thinks they are? If they think they would die, or not want to live if something were not true, belief becomes the only way to stay alive. The hard part is remembering that it was a personal choice rather than a natural fact. Loosing the ability to keep the premises we entertain from slipping into assumed conclusive evidence we can pigeoun hole makes bigots of us all.

Anonymous said...

hmmmmmm

It appears to me that the word that holds the statement together is not I but rather choose.

Reading all of these comments is like reading a veritable library of differing choices.

Each choice is truth to its owner. Perceptions are as varied as our genetic codes: no two are alike in the universe.

That is the sublimity of it all.

Yodood said...

Ah, Red, now yer gittin' down to't.
In my process of searching for who it is beneath the baggage of acculturation accumulated over an all too gullible lifetime I find that choices only appear when they are between paths of least resistance. Whence my resistance is a primary source of all my discomfort at being faced with having to deal with the artificiality of culture, whereas when my path is directed by my attraction, by my innate sense of well being, there is no appearance of choice involved. It's just what "I" am without choosing what I do about it.

Choice and earning money are the prime dynamic I am wrestling with in my next post. Your interest is breaking loose a few knots in my exposition muscles, thanks for the massaging messages. Always appreciated.

Yodood said...

The fact that each comment is from a different perspective, whether they chose it or is one they cannot deny is also part of the variation we all are on the theme of human. But the comments are not a matter of choice to me, they are information about a bunch of folks I take great interest in, but whether they are expressing their deepest feelings or a facile fib is only a distraction from the fact it is only information about someone for whom I have no basis for choice. I guess it is a choice not to feel compelled to believe or disbelieve information. It is one I made unconsciously out of the attraction for freedom from belief.

karoline in the morning said...

just adding a quick footnote to the request for a paraphrase of which i didn't do with that last posting..

my thought was that perhaps..if people strived more to be the best that they could be by releasing their prejudices and truly loving their neighbour, instead of behaving hypocritically all week, without restraint, because they *believe* that by just confessing their weaknesses, they'll be forgiven and saved a spot in heaven, then perhaps this world would be the heaven they are so striving to acheive in the hereafter...

today is the only day you need concern yourself with...

ok..now i feel better..

:))))))))))

it drives me nuts when i can't catch all my thoughts and get them in one box..

Yodood said...

Karoline, now I feel better too. I have always felt (not believed, mind you) that this planet is eden, the closest to physical heaven humans are heir to, being made to seem like Christians who insist on making it hell with unnatural righteousness.

Anonymous said...

G&G

It's not often I get to massage a wordsmith such as yourself ....

my pleasure, indeed. And if those knots start feeling tangled again, well you know who to call .... ha.