I cleave to the delusional belief that without alcohol and disordered eating I cannot be cool -> beautiful -> desirable -> entertaining. That I cannot fit the costume that makes men want me and other women want to be me. I still have my final pinky nail lodged in this one.
You're such a brilliant writer and thinker. 💛 I'm celebrating that last pinky nail releasing. I know it will, and I celebrate the beautiful letting go you've done already.
#1. ‘Cloven together’ is elegant and smooth like silk. #2. Jules from Pulp Fiction defines what miracles are. #3. Your familiar feeling of ‘I’ is a sensatory illusion that most humans can recognize as such in an instant. The issue is with holding on to this awareness. The perception of duality is addictive precisely because it is self-serving.
Take the philosophically driven Matrix film and its ‘there is no spoon’ cribbing of the Sanskrit Advaita, or ‘non-secondness’. The perceived world as merely a misunderstood ‘Secondness’. The ultimate reality is unborn, unchanging, and entirely without parts- is not only you, but is the fabric of all. As the Aether or the Void, it is pure energy in a ‘not off and not on’ state.
One can achieve a conscious understanding of the oneness of existence via a recognition of the illusoriness of the phenomenal world. The 4th episode of Joseph Campbell & the Power of Myth: Sacrifice and Bliss (1988) puts it more elegantly than I could ever, so watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEqR73j_oMY
It starts at 28 minutes 47 seconds- Actually one could watch all six of the hour long episodes and not have wasted any time at all. Or simply read below:
“In Hawaii, some four or five years ago, there was an extraordinary adventure that represents this problem. There’s a place there called the Pali, where the winds from the north, the trade winds from the north, come breaking through a great ridge of rocks and of mountain, and they come through with a great blast of wind. The people like to go up there to get their hair blown around and so forth, or to commit suicide, you know, like jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Well, a police car was on its way up early, a little road that used to go up there, and they saw just beyond the railing that keeps cars from rolling over, a young man actually clearly about to jump and prepare himself to jump. The police car stopped. The policeman on the right jumps out to grab the boy and grabs him just as he jumped and was himself being pulled over and would have gone over if the second cop hadn’t gotten around, grabbed him and [pulled] the two of them back. There was a long description of this, it was a marvelous thing, in the newspapers at that time.
And the policeman was asked, “Why didn’t you let go? I mean, you would have lost your life?” And you see what had happened to that man, this is what’s known as one pointed meditation, everything else in his life dropped off. His duty to his family, his duty to his job, his duty to his own career, all of his wishes and hopes for life, just disappeared and he was about to go. And his answer was, “I couldn’t let go. If I had,” and I’m quoting almost word for word, “if I’d let that young man go, I could not have lived another day of my life.”
“How come? Schopenhauer’s answer is that this is the breakthrough of a metaphysical realization that you and the other are one. And that the separateness is only an effect of the temporal forms of sensibility of time and space. And a true reality is in that unity with all life.”
Wow, Phil, I love how much your comment made me think and how this piece got your mind expanding and exploring. The story about the man on the Pali is meaningful - it speaks to a breaking through of the delineation of "Self" and "Other," as does the lack of spoons.
I was looking to explore the illusory nature of our thoughts and these things we cleave to + from, and you nailed it on all the ways in which language, pop culture, religion, and humanity itself explores these complex ideas over and over, mulling them about, adding their own kinds of claw marks. Thank you for sharing.
As a fellow clinger, I love it.
I cleave to the delusional belief that without alcohol and disordered eating I cannot be cool -> beautiful -> desirable -> entertaining. That I cannot fit the costume that makes men want me and other women want to be me. I still have my final pinky nail lodged in this one.
You're such a brilliant writer and thinker. 💛 I'm celebrating that last pinky nail releasing. I know it will, and I celebrate the beautiful letting go you've done already.
Love you!
#1. ‘Cloven together’ is elegant and smooth like silk. #2. Jules from Pulp Fiction defines what miracles are. #3. Your familiar feeling of ‘I’ is a sensatory illusion that most humans can recognize as such in an instant. The issue is with holding on to this awareness. The perception of duality is addictive precisely because it is self-serving.
Take the philosophically driven Matrix film and its ‘there is no spoon’ cribbing of the Sanskrit Advaita, or ‘non-secondness’. The perceived world as merely a misunderstood ‘Secondness’. The ultimate reality is unborn, unchanging, and entirely without parts- is not only you, but is the fabric of all. As the Aether or the Void, it is pure energy in a ‘not off and not on’ state.
One can achieve a conscious understanding of the oneness of existence via a recognition of the illusoriness of the phenomenal world. The 4th episode of Joseph Campbell & the Power of Myth: Sacrifice and Bliss (1988) puts it more elegantly than I could ever, so watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEqR73j_oMY
It starts at 28 minutes 47 seconds- Actually one could watch all six of the hour long episodes and not have wasted any time at all. Or simply read below:
“In Hawaii, some four or five years ago, there was an extraordinary adventure that represents this problem. There’s a place there called the Pali, where the winds from the north, the trade winds from the north, come breaking through a great ridge of rocks and of mountain, and they come through with a great blast of wind. The people like to go up there to get their hair blown around and so forth, or to commit suicide, you know, like jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Well, a police car was on its way up early, a little road that used to go up there, and they saw just beyond the railing that keeps cars from rolling over, a young man actually clearly about to jump and prepare himself to jump. The police car stopped. The policeman on the right jumps out to grab the boy and grabs him just as he jumped and was himself being pulled over and would have gone over if the second cop hadn’t gotten around, grabbed him and [pulled] the two of them back. There was a long description of this, it was a marvelous thing, in the newspapers at that time.
And the policeman was asked, “Why didn’t you let go? I mean, you would have lost your life?” And you see what had happened to that man, this is what’s known as one pointed meditation, everything else in his life dropped off. His duty to his family, his duty to his job, his duty to his own career, all of his wishes and hopes for life, just disappeared and he was about to go. And his answer was, “I couldn’t let go. If I had,” and I’m quoting almost word for word, “if I’d let that young man go, I could not have lived another day of my life.”
“How come? Schopenhauer’s answer is that this is the breakthrough of a metaphysical realization that you and the other are one. And that the separateness is only an effect of the temporal forms of sensibility of time and space. And a true reality is in that unity with all life.”
There is no Spoon.
Wow, Phil, I love how much your comment made me think and how this piece got your mind expanding and exploring. The story about the man on the Pali is meaningful - it speaks to a breaking through of the delineation of "Self" and "Other," as does the lack of spoons.
I was looking to explore the illusory nature of our thoughts and these things we cleave to + from, and you nailed it on all the ways in which language, pop culture, religion, and humanity itself explores these complex ideas over and over, mulling them about, adding their own kinds of claw marks. Thank you for sharing.