Philosophy
Positive Philosophy
—8—
A new beginning means we step here, exactly. Precision involves a removal of all that is unnecessary. As a directed action it carries off the offerings that would otherwise have been held up. Because the beginning comes as fresh and unadorned it stands vulnerable to such assault. Sacrifice however hands out and so acts as a contrary to this taking from – when we lie we are always taking from ourselves in a fundamental sense, especially considering that lying always wants to get something that is not its own, which is to say that we never lie for ourselves, but always on behalf of something else.
When we get to the end we don't start again – no – the end means we have finished up with that direction – we have moved out and have found the limit beyond which we lose ourselves. Because we don't know when this came we keep going until we snap, and fall rootless. So then we know we have gone too far – unfortunately we can't get the point of knowing it has come so it falls, we fall, I fall, everything falls in a jumble that leaves nothing but tears behind it. Saying goodbye becomes a ritual that we repeat without need. Panic strikes and we seek out firm land, the known and secure that might, we tell ourselves repetitively, finally give us the knowledge we press for but in the general state of collapse the walls are shaky and no one knows or can tell – it is as if a secret society has formed with no nucleus and only the vaguest sense of direction to guide it, with all positive indication wiped away, the slate gleaming up at the cold lights that refuse any direct gaze.
Frantically we speed up and up, our wheels spinning madly, convincing us we are screaming ahead when we are going nowhere at all behind clouds of burnt rubber. Jumping into this moment we turn into a game although a game played out over the shivered remnants of dead and dying souls, ours first of all. The messenger who announces these comings we recognize only when we catch a sideways glimpse of ourselves in the mirror, holding that as the us that we never know but which convinces the world that we too are just as real as it.
The end comes not as some completion, wherein whatever had been started is finished, to be held up for scrutiny – no, the end I am looking at is complete disintegration — nothing recognizable is left: a field of rubble, a jumble of corpses, a reminder that nothing remains in the end.
The end announces itself as complete void. Inside this emptiness floats the beginning, although in a way completely inaccessible to us. In fact, to speak of beginning at all here means faith is holding us together – we do not know, but rather believe, and within this belief is a holding on which testifies that the end has not truly breached the walls. Abandoning faith leaves us only emptiness, as a vaporous nothing which can neither be seen nor heard nor touched. As the choices fall away only dread necessity remains, pushing itself primordially out into a shattered world, seeking out completion unable to see that there can arrive none, that that road really has ended. The story is finished, no one says a thing, the flag shifts loosely in the wind. As an ending everything has been first encompassed then simply thrown to the side. Picking up the pieces, which up to now had proved sufficient, empties until only the pattern that puts this out as the best suggestion remains, but since there is nothing for the hands to touch or the senses to follow there are only strings flapping in the wind.
The cut comes so quickly that the connections still seek out their returns while habit enables us to state that they are there, like a soldier moving the toes of his amputated leg. 'It is there, it is' we whisper to ourselves, falling with every repetition into deeper certainty that it is in fact NOT there. Being not there does not even leave a formerly occupied space – the emptiness is complete in every sense: nothing works, nothing does a thing, nothing depends on you while the offerings scatter to the wind. Heaven and hell step aside as possible openings, the gods withdraw – it is as if the deepest winter has fallen, the water stops and joins in a crystallized lattice grid that follows only its own logic, the air grows still, time itself simply stops while the mechanisms lose their essential unity.
Stripped bare we wait – the morning comes, we sit in an anxious manner. Waiting becomes our pastime, the world spins around, the hands follow. Everything rises and falls; collapse points to an imminent journey upwards; 'Where' we ask not remembering that to do so means futility. What easily pours out becomes the actual object of study, while the purpose this carries for us forms the container of what was spilt. Every element of the process of loss, from the lost to the one who has lost, becomes an agent that acts to re-collect, but not in the sense of drawing up the poured but rather of renewing. In renewal we strive once again to find the middle point in which the vessel will sit both half full and half empty. In this median zone balance and temperance find a home. Entering into a state of regulation forces us to transform from a filling only to empty to a careful adding which stops at necessity. Calling out this particular stop means the willingness to listen to what goes unsaid for the simple reason that nothing else makes any sense. How we name this moment becomes less relevant than allowing ourselves the true luxury of stopping halfway, the point where enough is achieved. Error arises when we try to flow outwards from this state of sufficiency, even in the most general sense, and with the apparently purest of intentions.
Reflecting further only misguides us – the trick becomes not knowing when to stop but stopping. Practice can but will not by any inner necessity take us there. Because we surround ourselves with affirmations of who we are we forget how to be ourselves. With our heads always cocked to one side or the other the voices filter in with maddening fury. Locked-in-place becomes for us an actual positive goal while with this locking we reel in death. Opening ourselves like a shy virgin begs the trick to come in with a face born in futility. Offerings are scattered left and right while we stand on the seashore watching the glint of the water lapping at our feet. In-search-of-nature leads to cathedrals so majestic that we almost manage to forget where we are. In the morning we say a silent prayer no longer caring that others might see and perhaps snicker. The loss we investigate is as we have seen an offering, but an offering that cannot go unrecognized. Because we are here as who we are we do not know what sacrifice is any longer, and so fall prey to disembodied voices pushing us to give. Because these gifts cost us nothing they can have only a limited value, which is determined not by a simple factoring of amount or quantity but by what the gift cost us to give.
As given then we are not talking about money but about that which we considered we could not live without. Beneath a cloud of deception we sink into a world that can only be covered by this veil, while never itself growing more or less distant. Cut off from the point that we had held as giving we begin to know what is unknowable. As a secret it goes untold, as is only proper. Afraid to believe what is in front of us but at once recognizing its inherent truth we stop, as if unsure which direction to turn. The echo comes; we listen – it really is better to regret something you have done than something you haven't. As a circumstance we offer up our lives as what they are while where we put them of course is not quite as irrelevant as we have been told; as an exercise this is born in the moment we push ourselves into. No one comments simply because the words are incapable of carrying forth the purpose we have for them.
We reach out our hands to grasp after something that was never there; why we do so remains the question. Rather than go down this road again we stop – the birds bring us a present, the day is bright, the waters will show us the way again, as they always do. Our patience guides us into the word that will never be spoken or heard – as the source of all we must fall down on our knees before rising to start this new day. Rather than move on in forgetfulness we stop here and whisper a few words, to ourselves if no one is there, looking for the spaces we had left ourselves. The word comes, muffled in a long wrap it moves beneath its coverings, giving us back the life that we had once held too dearly in proper proportions this time around.
Maybe faith is more of a letting ourselves fall away from ourselves, a release rather than a jump. Or maybe faith is not such a big thing, but in a sense the smallest thing of all, so small it vanishes completely when we look for it. Maybe, in fact, faith comes when we begin to let things go – our doubts, our fears and all those things never born in the heart of necessity. Learning to hear this simple fact means we have learned to breathe again – our breath does not follow us, we do not follow it – there is only breathing. This is the heart of Zen, which could be reached in a heartbeat if we could only hear. The first thing that blocks our ears is the rage of the voice that screams 'I want!'. We are so used to this that when it is gone we look around worried, feeling very alone, and wanting to fill that solitude with everything we can imagine to ourselves as not there. The beauty that fills the air we take for a thousand girls shying away, the cleansing of the night air demands first justification then a second look.
Everything we have been told we mock, while everything that surrounds us fills us with a completely misplaced sense of our own importance. Just to disconnect a little takes so much effort that we soon have to give up. Everything we do seems to carry us deeper and deeper into the pit, while escape is always a step away, but a step that grows harder to take with each passing breath. That's why we have to stop and just look at the question of breathing – something so completely natural that to even see it as a question really says it all.
What comes naturally calls us but today we don't listen. We won't, because that is, we say, no longer how things are. That remains something we don't talk about in polite company.
By opening the door to insanity we ask ourselves for permission to become human without being willing to pay the price. Sanity comes when we are no longer willing to pay the price of insanity – when we stop chasing after and let ourselves fall. Paying the price means that it is easier to be sane than insane. That is hard to believe today, when it seems easier to take an antidepressant than to change anything.
The first step is to let ourselves breathe. The second is to let ourselves go; the third is to come back to what we are. The fourth is to let ourselves realize that there is a form inside of ourselves that wants us to follow it, only its voice is not as loud as our tv's, nor as pressing as our cars and computers. That voice is so quiet that we only hear the emptiness of its passing – the effect is like getting sucked along by a ship's wake, only the ship has long since gone over the horizon – we barely know we are in a ripple because the sea is full of waves.
In the little spaces we find room to let out a breath whose sound is more a sigh than anything else – in years of searching nothing can be found or labeled but inside the work spins on at a furious pace. In order to better transmit this I leave artificial constructions by the side of the road. One by one their littered carcasses dress the landscape in a shroud of sacrificial corpses. Because the place I'm going has no name I do not worry about how to get there. The only hope comes on a prayer but that usually dies on my lips before it has time to slip out. By careful manipulations I allow myself the pleasure of sinking my hands into the fabric that surrounds me, watching them disappear as they enter it. Holding my head tilted to one side I think I am listening for something but I have things so massively confused that the better understanding would be me sitting inside of a giant ear. Looking back is not an exercise in searching for mirror images but rather for signs of the road we follow.
Taking matters in hand we are left free to push and pull to our hearts content. The knowledge that we will never get anywhere helps keep matters in perspective. In order to preserve the state we find ourselves in, strict attention needs to be paid to detail. Allowing for collapse simply means that we recognize the failures out of which any success that might come will be built. Freedom lies not so much within the verse but within the willingness to forget everything that doesn't work for you. What works or does not work is evidence that will never be used against you unless you are fool enough to try to exploit your failures. Success lies never in your own eyes – all you can do is be yourself, and this riddle is worth repeating since so much comes out of it. This is the secret of the ancients, and this is our secret today. Letting matters slip away from your prying hands is the greatest present you can ever give yourself. Watching them as they float away turns into the closest thing to nirvana most of us will ever experience. Because the actual key is withheld we try to find shapes to explain all of the voids we term absences, but this is just a spinning of words.
Following the music of the spheres allows us a little piece of the freedom we are after. Every day begins, then the world as we know it is a new place again. By holding ourselves against this we grow old and brittle, until finally one day we die. Resisting takes much more effort than going along with. In the end so much effort has been used that there is no more, although this confuses matters slightly. It is not that there is no more but that our access to it is cut off until, like a puddle remaining after the flood waters of the river have receded, the hot sun dries us up and there is no longer a puddle. In order to live we situate ourselves below the fluid we must carry to live. If we raise ourselves above it we dry out. Keeping ourselves lower means avoiding resistances that drain our energies. Drinking from the river takes us back to what we have lost as we are shaped by our world into little boxes that function inside of little boxes which extend inward and out as far as our minds can reach. The logic of the box will never be challenged by arguing from within its confines, nor can the river ever be brought to the attention of those who believe that they stand free and isolated. This is why the entire project of argument can never lead you anywhere. Releasing the obstacles you hold within yourself does not take you where you think because where you think is not a real place anymore than a dream is. Trying to tell someone they are living in a dream is always followed by them demonstrating that they are not by means of the material of the dream itself.
When we finally decide to be alive, though, we don't really know what to do. We move one way then another but finally are left staring at our hands for a clue. The clues don't come; that in itself is the clue we receive. We don't get any other, so we rest satisfied for the moment.
As a thirst there is not much to say; we wander here and there looking for something to quench this relentless pressure, then one day what we fear comes, and we give up. To give up means that we are not willing to fight anymore. We face a situation like surrender, only we do not surrender. We simply stop, then look around. Stopping means not pushing, while going means always too far. Allowing ourselves to fall simply gives us permission to become what we are, while becoming what we are is only another way to stop ourselves. As puzzles these matters are interesting, as a way to live they should be left behind. Waiting for the end of time never gets you anywhere; what you make is the future of your every step. Because there is no fear in the future stepping in that way moves us in a way we had not anticipated. We are not free to make our choices, although we think we are. This paradox has confused us so much that we evolve gigantic systems of thought to explain our inability to clearly perceive. Freedom means falling into your destiny, but it also means failing to do so, which always comes about as a preference for one's desires. Following desires is the attempt to fill in what cannot be filled but which grows with every effort to do so, and thus makes larger and larger demands. The first step of charity is to give of your excess, the second to give out of love and abundance. The last step means nothing at all, but is our highest goal. Freeing ourselves means letting our teachers go. This letting go is something we all must do if we are to ever move about as we were intended. Return removes our own intention from the picture. Because we are animals we can train for this event, or at least we can train to prepare ourselves as well as can be expected, but we don't actually know what we are training for. This is always a problem, but not so large that it cannot be surmounted.
Because we allow ourselves certain luxuries at times we likewise slip back, and thus blame our lack of progress on external factors. There are no real external factors, however, that are of any substantial importance, although our own inability to calculate correctly certainly can take us pretty far afield. Convinced of our ability to even know one thing we block ourselves from ever achieving the progress we believe we are setting out to follow like a trail laid out with little signs to guide us on our way. Meanwhile the real guides are passed by as irrelevant or, worse, unrecognized. Thus we traipse along as carefree as can be not realizing that what we had wanted as we started has not only been passed by but has grown so distant that it goes completely unseen or thought. Then we stand around as if such a standing around will solve anything. As a final recourse we snap back to the ground that supports us, not realizing that that has been where we have been standing all along anyway. The problem is always a lack of perception, but not as a situation where any 'right' perception can be labeled or pinpointed. Lack here means an inability based on a fundamental misalignment of our organism with the matter to be perceived. But because we hold ourselves always within the confines of such a definition we guarantee the continuation of this lack, as well as our endless search. This is why we must stop ourselves. If we fail to stop we simply repeat ourselves like a broken record, skipping back to where we were with every revolution we go through.
While it is not possible to pinpoint a cause or time that began or preceded our current situation we can suspect that our current situation has been experienced before. This is why there is any reason to look back at what has come before us. Such a looking back can provide a key, although of course it can also lock us in. The locking occurs when we fail to recognize the fundamental equivalence of our times with those of the past. This equivalence means that we can extend ourselves back into time and pull out something that is offered to us through the force of tradition. Tradition is the means whereby what matters is preserved. Here it is important to note that what does most definitely not matter is why we do this, how we do it, or any other such speculation. What matters is that we do it. This doing is what gives one generation the ability to move on standing not so much on the shoulders of the last but as one swimmer teaching the next how to swim in an endless re-crossing of the same river. While there can never be any guarantee that such matters will click, none is needed, since the need to cross the river is always the same. Thus there is nothing gained by extending ourselves out over the sphere to find answers when all the answers we will ever need are floating along beside us.
Because we have convinced ourselves that what we are looking for is so incredibly special we likewise have come to believe that it is also incredibly unattainable. This is kind of funny since thousands of years of tradition argue otherwise, but within each and every one of those years floats the same belief that the way that is sought must be somewhere else, anywhere other than the here that is occupied. So we drift outwards, dispersing and dissipating until we grow so refined that there is nothing left of us to gather into an agent that is capable of action. This is merely one of a myriad of dangers that follow behind and alongside us like a pack of dogs sniffing the air to find weakness in its prey.
While the entire list cannot be laid out, simply because it does not exist, we can point here and there as we go on, if only to convince ourselves that we are doing something after all. The point I am trying to get to lies at a distance that grows further and further with each effort we put out to reach it. This is why giving up is the only remedy if you have been caught going down this particular road. Giving up does not mean complete cessation, but rather cessation of trying to get somewhere. This kind of cessation involves procedures which resemble nothing so much as complete inactivity and inertia. And in a sense inertia especially is not so far removed, only the problem with the inertia we find ourselves faced with is that it involves continuing exactly the motion carried by the inertial object whereas here we are more concerned with entering into a very particular kind of motion, one which can be characterized by the attribute of falling. Falling means failure to stand, which means inability to maintain one's position. This inability takes us out of ourselves and lets us float in the river we thought we were supposed to cross. But as a first step there can be no other purpose than letting go and falling in order to float down the river. If we raise a goal for ourselves of crossing the river, then we likewise begin to wonder just what it is that will greet us on the other side – will it be Heaven, or Nirvana, or something else altogether? So this anticipation has to be let go of, since we can't carry such a heavy load while we're floating around like this. The secret that can never be revealed is just this: we can never know any of this. So automatically the whole scientific method is released at the exact same time we release ourselves for this floating journey. Actually, we can't even say we are going downstream, although there are historical precedents that argue in this direction. The problem with such a release is that for all we know we might just go on with nothing happening, our lives spinning around like water going down the drain until one day we die. There just aren't any guarantees, and this lack simply drives us crazy today, more so than in most other times of our history, since we have made such a thick web of controlled substance over our existences here on earth. I have to suspect that in earlier times it was at least a little easier to take this in; things moved along, slowly, from one generation to the next, and you pretty much knew what to expect along the way, and even if you didn't, there were a lot of people out there who could point you in the right direction. Today there are not a lot of people, and the ones that there are generally are not in very good repute, which raises their value all the more.