Integral Indulgence requested.....

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Based on reading the following brief except from the "foreward" of a book I have been working on, are you moved to read more?

This is a story about “living and dying”; the many “births” and “deaths” that compose a human lifetime, if one lives that long!  It is the story of an evident individual/collective evolution and the mystery of consciousness itself.... it is the story of how meaning is translated and derived from that hidden/esoteric dimension of being that seemingly vanishes from sight or somehow forever recedes, buried by the avalanche of the “ten thousand things”.

In another sense, this story is also what one might call, an “observation”; an observation  of the development of our shared world cultures, and the peculiarities of American culture, including our religious and spiritual views, and the profound influence these perspectives  bring to our daily affairs, despite our ignorance or protests to the contrary.

We are being deluged with the written, spoken, and visually displayed expanse of our communicative technologies, with humanities need for a more complete, or integral understanding or perspective(s) of our actual living condition and the influences and stages that have preceded the “place” in which we now stand staring us in the face: the most critical juncture in our human evolution…. 

It seems apparent, that the voices of those who have understood something about the nature of experience itself are indeed few, and between these voices we are bombarded with the mundane and futile attempts of political, social, and religious reformers (usually of the “old time”, and therefore “old mind” variety) to convince us of the coming New Age; regardless of how that “New Age” is conceived.

Here are four words which we can use to attempt to convey these memeaningful human constructs, through which we seek to acquire or create happiness/meaning in this present life, and beyond this present life: religious, social, political, scientific - the "I" , "We", "iT", and "ITS" of this living reality.... But I wonder, has it not become obvious that the forceful, and often violent attempt to create happiness/meaning is the very cause of our inability to discover happiness/meaning, and possibly that which transcends “meaning”, which is BEING itself? What is more mysterious than “existence” or simply BEING?  Why does anything or anyone exist at all? Is not the very contemplation and feeling essence of this question, sufficient to remind us of our actual present condition?

Now…from BEING it seems to be a short step indeed to paradox, for BEING manifests in a paradoxical form – pairs of “opposites”, which are not really opposites, but complementary recipient conductors of the force of self-existent being; ….empty/fullness, relative/absolute, life/death, being/becoming… So; what of paradox? 

Virtually the entire world has become ‘anti-paradoxical’…. A formula for living is prescribed from every “street-corner” and there is little room left for the paradoxical  “wo-man”.  The fullness of life simply cannot be tolerated except through the image of living or dead archetypal figures, which regardless of their historical validity as “persons of interest”, only live on through us, the “living” ones.

Having said these things, I must also admit that I am painfully aware of the futility of the attempt to “convince” anyone of anything, and in fact it is not my motive to do so in any case, knowing that the profound matters of the depth of one’s being/becoming are left for each to plumb.

To be continued....

And thanks to Bruce who just posted "Being", for motivating me to post this excerpt - this is also a "response" or further contribution to that post.

Justin