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from first to second…

Posted December 30th, 2011 by Charles Bowling in notes from a sign reader

 

Happy Friday All,
 
The groove carved or laid down by human consciousness is long and deep. And if I muse about its very beginnings I'm intrigued by the notion that its earliest imprinting was in response to the alternation between day and night. Night of course was likely to be scary, because things do tend to go bump in the night, or worse -think sabertooth tigers, or marauding humanoids, etc.
 
This line of thought makes it easy to see where the seeds of antagonism had their germination. This means that at some very deep place in the collective and individual psyche is a tendency to ‘rail against the night’. In tracing the path of unfolding consciousness forward in time we eventually reach a place where antagonism is reconsidered.
 
It takes a considerable leap, as well as some understanding of what is called the play of the opposites to view this long-held antagonism in a completely different way; to see the opposites not as antagonistic but as complementary.
 
It's not much of a stretch to compare this leap (in consciousness) to that between first-tier and second-tier levels/stages.
 
And to bring this idea forward to our time in this space, if we sense within us a tilt towards antagonism we can be confident that it is at least a remnant of first-tier consciousness. This idea fits well with Maslow's notion of (first-tier) being primarily concerned with deficiency needs and a great leap into being needs; where deficiency is replaced by overflow, by magnanimity; and where the opposites are seen and felt to be complementary.
 
-Charles    
 
 

 

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Integral Nocturne

Posted December 30th, 2011 by Layman Pascal
It has been said that classical philosophers regarded the Ground of Being as a great realm of Daylight (as in Plato's cave), while those moody post-Hegel sages of early-modern Germany began a path of profound metaphysical doubt in which they addressed the "Night of the World." 
 
Courageous, rigorous souls, these chaps, willing to sink into the unfathomable, de-natured, poetic abyss of the Groundless Ground.  But was this existential night haunting us all along?  Were were too timid to embrace it? Too desperate for even a rumor of sunlight?  
 
Is it finally this embrace of Night that permits us to cross that heart-sore chasm of unknowing toward a new realm of Light, a Light Beyond Darkness?
 
I agree, Charles.  The ultra-modern (or "post" modern") attitude is still struggling against a sense of lurking darkness but across the next threshold begins a period of profound, even -- at times -- absurdly pointless fullness.  An uncaused and utterly unjustifed Light.  The key insight becomes the fact that our struggle to escape the night -- like some pious Egyptian initiate waiting fearfully in the pyramid temple for the remote solar deity to shine down the stone shaft and bless us with Truth -- has been a kind of error.  For we are ourselves such celestial orbs of golden fire.  Value is not apart from us.  Goodness is not waiting.  The dawn breaks perpetually in our breast.  An excessive, surplus dimension of value-light exists to be perpetually presently re-discovered.  
 
May the too-much-ness of the Good cease to cause our instincts to question its goodness.!
 
 

Thanks, I've been...

Layman Pascal

 

(to receive other "Weekly Harangues" write to: pretendtomeditate@gmail.com)

 

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OK

Posted December 31st, 2011 by G Campbell

Hi Charles.

I think I owe you an apology.

I apologise for being an asshole.

And I would like to wipe the slate clean, if you will allow me, and invite you to join me in a chorus of auld lang syne.

But before we commence.  One question, if you will....

How does a person go from 1st tier to 2nd tier?

Best New Year Wishes

Campbell

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Sorry

Posted December 31st, 2011 by G Campbell

What is the opposite to 'you are a bald cunt?'

serious question.

does that compliment, 'you are an orange posh git?'

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ah

Posted January 1st, 2012 by G Campbell

prob not power.

more likely abandonment : (