Yesterday and today were spent serving at the Grand Canyon Bahá’í Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. I was security there, which at these conferences means standing at the door and checking for proof of registration. I like doing it because it allows me to meet with the people, and have a moment of connection with some I might otherwise never meet – from old couples speaking nothing but Persian, to young ladies dressed to impress (and succeeding at it).

It was during this time, greeting a stream of Persian and other faces and friendly eyes, that I came to realize something: I was not there serving for the sake of God. That alone does not convey the satisfaction it gave me, or that after fourteen hours of standing, I was exhausted but not wearied. The way to explain it is that I came to see: these people were God. Whenever I did something for them, I was doing it for Him. And whenever they smiled back at me (which most did, often), I saw in their eyes a light as if He were smiling back at me. It was a time of service that became like communion – and exchange of gifts between lover and Beloved. For this reason, when I was done, I felt I’d been done a favor by the chance to be there, and look forward very much to doing it again next year.

I will be away for a little while, off for the holidays to my mother’s house near Irvine, to Phoenix for a Bahá’í conference and then to Tucson for a friend’s wedding, and to see the wonderful people there. And after that, I will be teaching a Persian class at the Bosch Bahá’í School, in Santa Cruz. So the next entry may not come until after January 12.

Meanwhile, as I watch the wet and windy world pass by my windows, driving up and down I-280 to visit my brother and sister, I wonder if all that I see is not the material form of some question: of God’s asking, “Do you love me?” Because the nature of God, as the best and most wonderful of all things, makes me think of those movies where a rich and beautiful woman, trying to find a good and sincere husband, makes herself seem poor and less desirable in order to learn the man’s true motives. Can he love her for who she is, or would he be too dazzled by her qualities, and not himself know why he liked her?

Or perhaps it is like the brilliant genius, whom no one can properly understand because they don’t share a similar mind. In his or her search for friends, he is forced to seek out those willing to love him without demands – because otherwise they would never accept him for who he is, but rather who they think he should be.

In both of these scenarios, the main character wants the fellowship of a true friend: not someone who wants only what they can offer, or is attracted only to how they appear in a certain light. Each uses a kind of “filter” to screen out the false from the true, and to identity those capable of loving despite brilliance, and empathizing without the need to understand.

If our world is such a filter, it would mean that love is the way to step through the veil. Then all that I see, all the variations and extremes of high and low, are but the aspects of a single Light, seen through that veil. All of which ask the question, “Can you love Me as I am?” Because only if I can say “Yes” to all of this, can I say yes to Whomever is behind it.

Which proposes a different meaning for heaven and hell: The one being like the man who learns that the plain but lovely person he fell in love with is in fact the Queen of the land; or the other being the discovery that the one he turned down was, in fact, everything he had assumed she wasn’t. For once the veil is lifted, it is impossible to choose again sincerely.

Happy holidays to everyone! I wish you much joy, and happy times, with your families and friends – wherever and whomever you are!

These three ideas have been on my mind a great deal lately. Let me see if I can summarize:

Faith means to me that life is not dispassionate or inert. Rather, the events of one’s life are animated by a purpose, which is always leading one toward betterment. Thus, there is a “faith” that all events help us on our way, and this builds a confidence that whatever we strike out to do, life will help us to accomplish. Such faith undoes fear, and informs us that no matter what happens, we cannot lose: “The friends of God shall win and profit under all conditions, and shall attain true wealth.”

Perfection is the idea that however life may appear, it is perfect in its being. Although we see only slivers of the present, if we saw the whole picture at once, we would discover that nothing need improve for us to reach our goal. In a way, life is designed for each individual to fit their specific needs. If things appear oddly done, or flawed, it is only because this is what will tweak us in the ways we need. We are immersed in the world, and so we see it as though reading a book one letter at a time. We cannot visualize the whole story, and so things appear flawed in the moment. But perfection is what the eye of faith will see; whenever we see imperfection, we lack faith in what life has presented us with.

Combining these two ideas is the way of Love. Religion teaches that the purpose of life is to educate the soul and develop its spirituality. This primarily refers to developing the capacity to love, since all other virtues stem from this (or so I understand). From the love of God comes the love of His will, and from that comes obedience to His commandments, and fulfillment of the duties that form the basis of society. Even “irreligious” people participate in this, in which case I believe their irreligion has to do more with institutions and beliefs, and not the basic principles that cause the soul to love what is good about goodness.

If the purpose of life is to master love, then faith would say that everything that happens is meant to improve us in this direction: that the world we see is perfectly ordered to allow this improvement.

Such a perfection is a perfection of purpose, not of immediate form. If we look at the world in any given moment, it is easy to point out variations from our imagined perfection, such as the degree of poverty and crime around us. But if the purpose is to develop love, perhaps there is another kind of perfection – one that has nothing to do with what we think is best, but with what really is best for the education of man.

For example, if my friends had no “flaws”, there would be no difficulty in loving them all the time. It would not even really be love, but a kind of automatic response to the perfections of their qualities. But the lover, looking at the world, does not find any need to change it. It is perfect in its being, and does not need improvement. What the lover responds to is what is rather than what could be. And when he loves things as they are, he will ask, “What can I offer, what can I do?” This is how love motivates him to act.

Without such faith, and seeing what appears to be an imperfect world, we feel driven to correct it, to fix it. Since this does not proceed from a motive of love, life (so I believe) will respond in whatever way can teach us about love. This might mean, in some cases, that things would get worse by trying to fix them, until we give up any hope of controlling the world, and learn how to accept it. For whenever we try to “fix” a perfect world, we only cause it to respond in such a way as to maintain its perfection. And if what is perfect is what trains us and educates our souls, then whatever life was doing before, it will continue to do after our attempted fix.

The upshot of this is that appreciating the lessons of life reveals an entirely different basis for action. Rather than viewing all that is imperfect, in ourselves and around us, and setting up a huge task list to fix them all, the object is to accept and love what we see to such an extent that we feel moved to offer something of ourselves. `Abdu’l-Bahá said, “Let your heart burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path.” Is this possible when we are looking at the flaws of the world so we may fix them? If we no longer have any interest in flaws, but in learning to love what is, our entire relationship to life changes. It becomes a matter of faith, not measurement. Whoever the people we meet may be, the goal is to “burn with loving kindness”; and thus their very being, for us, is a lesson to that end.

And if we did “perfect” the world, where would the lessons go? If we imagine and dream of a future with no war, no hatred, no flaws – what would exercise the capacities of man to overcome hatred? If we work toward a world that no longer challenges us, what are we wanting from life? That it leave us alone?

If life is exactly the set of lessons required to prepare us for what comes next – so asks faith – then the life we see today is the life we are called upon to love. In our world of misery, much of that love will take the form of comfort, solace, aid. However, desiring to aid someone from love is a very different motive from wanting only that their pain cease troubling our conscience.

So faith sees a perfect world, whose purpose is to train us how to love. And it will always do so, and always be the same “world” relative to our state. In this sense, the world we see is really a mirror of our state of growth. As we change, it changes; this is the nature of its perfection. In such an adaptable climate, the real question is not how to achieve the perfections we imagine, but how to respond to what we need.

And if life really is perfect, then there is nothing I ever need ask of it myself; for it already provides (and always will) exactly what I’ve been needing all along. “Gain is their lot, whatever the deal.”

This morning I was awoken by a strange phenomenon. At around 9:30am, I suddenly had a feeling of intense, overwhelming excitement. It was not related to any dream. I reflected on it, and thought: there’s nothing I’m waiting for, nothing I want to buy at the moment, no one new I’ve met, no event coming up; just a general, poignant feeling of excitement, as though a curtain were about to lift and reveal a treasure. I even wondered if some other soul, somewhere, had maybe experienced joy in my name, and this feeling was like a confluence of spirits. I still don’t know what it was. Though life has been rather exciting lately, and thoughts from last night lead me back to regarding Quality as a central term. Perhaps it is was simply that…

Out of interest, took the Meyers-Briggs Personality Test today. I remember back in my college days I was pretty strongly INTP. What surprised me is that the test now places me as INFJ (indeed, many of the questions I answered differently now than I would have back then).

I am only 1% away from the midline between Judging (INFJ) and Perceiving (INFP), and found much of myself described by both categories. Also, my introverted and intuitive aspects were rated as 22% from midline, while feeling is 56% away from thinking (which corresponds to my disenchantment in recent years with theory, and a greater desire to get to know things by how they affect me, first-hand).

An interesting test, Meyers-Briggs is based on the same psychological foundation as the book I have been reading by Jung. Whatever its accuracy, what a person reads into it is bound to reveal something about themselves.

Today I picked up Jung’s Psychology of Types and resumed reading where I had left off two years ago. Every time I read this book I am struck anew by how insightful and beautifully written it is. It is a lovely experience just to read through its pages.

As I read about the extraverted and introverted attitudes, I was blown away. Whether it is that two years has given me more to think about, or that this part of the book was especially clear, Jung seemed to be laying the fundamentals of my own behavior right before me eyes. There is so much that makes sense now, I may not be able to write for a few days as I process this new information.

A brief summary: The extraverted attitude is characterized by a devaluing of the self in favor of external objects. Such a person looks outward to find value. As a result, their unconscious is decidely introverted. Thus their daily life is all about the things and people in the world, but their fantasy life is about themselves. If highly extraverted, the unconscious begins to act in a compensatory fashion, seeking to recover the deserved attention which has been taken away from self. This might result in an inordinate love of praise, for example, to the point that it feels electric and powerfully fulfilling. The person might become addicted to what others say about them – precisely because they ignore their own self so much. In the extreme degree, the unconscious ceases to be compensatory and becomes subversive, destructive. In this case, like a tantrum, the unconscious seeks to sabotage the extravert’s ability to focus outwardly, forcing them to come to terms with their neglected needs, desires and self-worth.

The introverted attitude is marked by a devaluing of objects in favor of the self. They look inward to find value. Accordingly, their unconscious is strongly extraverted. This means that while the introvert constantly dwells in his own internal world – and prefers ideas and abstractions, as models of the outside world, to interacting with it directly – the unconscious is fascinated by things outside, as if potent mysteries were to be found somewhere outside the confines of self. If highly introverted, the type of compensation one might see is the promotion of any person or thing to level of wish fulfillment – as if that “other” could restore what the introvert had always been lacking. This might cause an inordinate love of someone or something, a deep fascination that feels as though heaven-sent. The individual might become addicted to whatever this external activity would be, serving as it does to force introvert out of himself and to release the energy he has kept inside. In the extreme degree, this becomes destructive, undermining the introvert’s ability to withdraw into himself, and compelling him to regard the world outside.

Damaging behavior only results in the extreme cases. And very few people can, or should, attempt to equalize the two modes of interaction. For whatever reason – and Jung states that selection of one mode over the other appears to be random – individuals have a preferred way of managing their “psychic economy”, and how energy is divided between the self and others. One will always have a preference of one mode over the other, though it is not uncommon for facets of the personality to function oppositely. (Society, by the way, favors the extravert, and common readings of religion can strengthen this view to the point of mania; thus the introvert often finds himself seeking acceptance from the world, and validation for his mode of being).

When extremities do arise, the compensatory and sabotaging functions are always crude, in direct proportion to the degree of extremity. Hence, a highly introverted person will have unnaturally powerful responses to some objects, and likely will focus on them exclusively, pouring out all his unleashed energy upon it. The extreme extravert would also pursue a restoration of self-value in ways that are abnormal and excessive, turning someone normally obsessed with helping others into a secret ego-maniac, for example.

What this means to me, since I am a strongly introverted type, is that the obsessions I sometimes have with people and things are not to be solved by attempting ever more to master my emotions. This natural reaction of an introvert to the feeling of “losing himself” is exactly the wrong response, according to Jung. By so trying, I exacerbate the situation that gave rise to my fascinations, causing them to grow even stronger, or simply to transfer to another object. The way to restore balance, between my valuation of self and others, is not to overcome this obsessive energy, but to do the very thing I fear most: to give away more of myself to more things, by pursuing value outside of myself and raising the status of objects in my thinking. In this way, the pent up energy which is now mostly unconscious can find expression, and the need to so intently focus on one or a few objects may diminish and become more normal.

This applies equally to the extravert. If one is constantly fraught by emphases on self, the answer is not to try harder to devalue the self and spend more energy on others, but to do exactly the thing most feared: to withdraw some of one’s energy from the world and begin paying more attention to the needs of self. In this way, the frustrated potential of the unconscious is given an outlet, and the valuation of self and others becomes more even and natural.

This has been very profound to me, because, as you can read in several of my past entries, I have been disparaging of the role of duty (which concerns one’s relationship to the world) in favor of desire (relating, of course, to the self). In my search for a true foundation of being, I have been attacking this very foundation, by worsening the rift that initially prompted my need to find an answer! How paradoxical!

I must think of duty and desire over again, no longer in contrastive terms, pitting one against the other, but as equal parts necessary to seeking the Beloved. If I can find these values, both in my self and its contents and in the world and its contents, there should be no further need to overvalue or seek compensation for things ignored.

Quote from science fiction

I like this quote, both because it comprehends feelings I have had so well, and because the author writes as though a brother of my soul. It is from The Broken God, by David Zindell. The scene is the hero, Danlo, first catching sight of a women he sees and falls in love with.

“Losharu shona!” Danlo whispered to himself. “Losharu halla!”

He stared at her, much too openly, and his eyes burned because he could not blink them, and his heart pounded with the thrill of shooting adrenaline. For much too long he remained frozen there, like an animal of the forest watching another. He forgot that he was holding a plate of kurmash in his hand. He let the plate tilt, and little yellow-brown kernels rolled off, fell, and bounced against the marble floor. His hunger – the empty, contracting hunger in his belly for food – was suddenly gone. The loveliness of this young courtesan struck like a lightning bolt to his core and burned him inside. He loved, all in a moment, everything about her: the graceful way she moved her hands when she talked; her easy, natural smile; and, above all, her pure animal vitality. She was tall and voluptuous, and smoothly muscled like an ice dancer. Her face was unique and memorable, though he was dimly aware that no single feature seemed to go very well with any other. Her lips were a shade too red, too full, too sensuous against the creaminess of her skin. She had a long, imperious nose set between high cheekbones, and thick blond hair, and japanesque eyes, intelligent and lively, as dark and liquid as coffee. Her entire face stood out prominently, almost prognathously, an atavism that hinted of something deeply primitive in her. Danlo found this primitive quality instantly compelling. A part of him wondered if he would later see her in a different light, but now other parts were burning with a need far beyond wonder. His chest was hot and tight, and his eyes were afire with the sight of her, and his hands ached to touch her splendid face.

Halla is the woman who shines like the sun, he thought.

She looked at him then. She turned her head and looked past all the bright, chattering people standing between them. She looked straight at him, boldly and openly. Their eyes met and locked together, and there was a shock of instant recognition, as if they had known each other for a billion years. Danlo felt himself falling into her eyes, and the world about him narrowed, intensified, and stopped altogether. He knew he had never seen her before, yet his eyes burned with this electric and ancient connection. His lips burned, and his fingers, and his blood; everything about him was afire with a sudden knowingness that swept his breath away and astonished him.

If (name here) is the soul’s fulfillment, it represents the greatest joy, the true happiness. And if this is so, we’d choose it over everything else – almost without choice.

Thus the way to correct behavior is not to focus on behavior, but to find a goal whose nature will enliven us to make the choices leading to it. It is a backward way to approach self-perfection, but far more likely to succeed because it is inspiring, and never dispiriting.

For example, you can learn how to sail by reading a book; you can learn it from a class. You can even go out on the boat and have someone teach you. But no matter how much you learn, it’s still just knowledge without a goal.

If you fall in love with sailing, however, and feel the taste of the sea in your heart, you might long to go deeper into it. You’d want to learn about the boat and the sea intimately. You would naturally start doing whatever was needed to enrich your connection, not just your knowledge and your skills. (All of which are a means to the goal, but fade away as you near its presence).

In other words: If the heart is dry and ready, find a match. Everything else makes much more sense after that. To do the opposite, to make choices according to an idea of something we haven’t seen, is too difficult. If it does work, it’s the grace of God: Perhaps all that effort can spark love after all – yet even then, what causes the real transformation is when the fire catches, and not the efforts made up to that time.

So the willingness of the heart, it’s yearning: this is the key. Whatever we understand or think about the goal – until we’ve tasted its waters – is only preparation and delay.

This is my doctrine of “no shoulds”: If we bend our lives according to an idea of what should be, and not because we yearn for something higher, what do we have? Without the heat of such love, what can sustain our victory in this wintery night?

And the corollary of the doctrine: What will kindle this spirit is worth every consideration; because light can find its way out from a lantern, whereas a wonderfully wrought lamp, without flame, benefits no one.

After wondering why I have been emphasizing morality so much lately (both in writing and in my thoughts), a realization occurred to me:

As I’ve been thinking about it, quality is not achievable without morals: Morals are the very laws by which quality becomes manifest.

In the case of hospitals, cleanliness is moral: There can be clean hospitals with little quality, but there cannot be dirty hospitals that excel in quality. In architecture, morality concerns proportion and balance, and the utility of spaces. In programming, morality is what is functional and appropriate; to call something “bad code” is to accuse it of lacking morality in the domain of programming.

So morality is simply a quality of form, whereas what I call Quality is a quality of essence. One is the health of the body, while the other is the radiance of the spirit.

Once I made this connection, I discovered why I dwell on morality so much: Because after my awakening to Quality this summer, my psyche had shifted over to giving full preference to unconscious thinking (which relates to Quality, the indefinable). This caused a whiplash such that my conscious thinking became out of balance, and I began devaluing form and procedure excessively. It is not that one or the other is exclusively the best, but that they must work in harmony to achieve full perfection.

Thus all of these thoughts on morality stem from an inward search for balance between two parts of my consciousness: The part that is ineffable, indescribable, and has little contact with this world; and the part that is all about description and refinement, and how my actions relate to the world around me.

I desire to love both, in the end. And do that, in philosophic terms, I’ve needed to plumb their connection, until I can see them as parts of one whole. This realization is a big step in that direction.

Quote from Taoism

Just finished reading Travels, by Michael Crichton – a rather autobiography – and found at the end a quotation that amazed me:

The surest test if a man be sane  
Is if he accepts life whole, as it is,  
Without needing by measure or touch to understand  
The measureless untouchable source  
Of its images...

Since this brief quote nearly encapsulates most of what I have been trying to say in essay over the past several months. For a moment I just had to close my eyes and let it sink in; and then revel in the joy that other souls have trod this road before me. I am not alone.

Based on a conversation I had with my good friend Sina about “The Last Samurai”:

There is a way of acting that involves the doer so utterly he becomes the action itself. The Sufis called this “faná”: the state of the lover who is consumed by his Loved One’s beauty.

One who achieved this was the Japanese warrior-saint, Miyamoto Musashi. He achieved such skill with his sword that he refused to fight using real blades – then refused to engage opponents at all. He retired to the mountains and contemplated the mystery behind his skill, and what had allowed him to reach such a degree of perfection. He took on pupils and tried to teach them what he called “the Way” – which he claimed was equally applicable to all aspects of life. A letter he wrote to one of these pupils is found in the book, “The Way of the Five Rings”.

What was this Way he had found? I cannot say, but I relate his thoughts to two experiences of my life: programming and poetry. If I can understand these, perhaps I can make sense of what Musashi had found.

The Way as I know it, then, is marked by a rightness that defies expression in words. It just feels like the way life should be, as if everything were fitted to its place and there were a “singing” quality to the arrangement. An ecstatic, pure joy goes along with this state. And whenever this point is reached, there is no need to go further. That one does go further – to complete the poem or finish the program – is a consequence of time spent in that state. But the state itself is its own fulfillment: its own reason for starting the activity.

This rightness identifies a moral truth associated with the Way. It is a Way of what is good and right. For example, if a house feels like home and is well arranged, it is a good house; if a tree bears bountiful, delicious fruit, it is a good tree. The Way guides human action to such good results – achievements that radiate quality and provoke humble admiration.

This “good”, however, is not a prescribed good. The Way is not the same as the laws of any particular path along the Way. For instance, there may be rules of grammar for writing a beautiful poem, but grammar does imply beauty. The good is something alive, attracted by the spirit of the person who pursues it. If that soul touches the good, and brings it to being by honoring its moral needs (as if a bird seeking a well-built nest), there is joy in such production more satisfying than what is produced.

In the case of poetry, one sits down to write a poem. There is much to be learned before starting, such as vocabulary, metaphor, alliteration, rhyme. All these arts should be taught to the poet, so he has a wide pallet to choose from. Then he sets down his pen. By listening to his soul, an inspiration comes; he feels the inchoate beauty of this spirit, and desires to honor it through expression. This is when he uses his sense of rightness – the Way – to guide the application of form to the essence his heart has experienced. If he be true to his spirit, and honor the requirements of good poetry, he can produce something great and attain private heights of grandeur by such creation. Poetry is but a medium for communing with that spirit; it is the Way of the poet to lose himself in the Beauty he knows through poetry.

What is good poetry, however, has nothing to do with what is judged to be good. It is good if it fulfills the Way, which means that it is good. That is, good in the sense of being better; good like a cool breeze on a hot day, good like food after hunger, good like the sun as its touches the horizon on a clear day. This quality of rightness cannot be defined or taught, but is intimately familiar to every human being. We instinctively orient our lives toward the discovery of such good – even if we pursue it by following what is said to be good, rather than the quality of goodness itself.

Since what is good is most desirable, purity of desire is the only thing needed to find it. When this purity is reached, what is good can be seen. It defies words, yet is more obvious than words. It is this rightness the Way seeks to bring into being; it is the joy of such an act that thrills the soul and makes life seem inexhaustibly rich.

All that’s been said above can be applied to living itself: which is the highest expression of the Way. As with a particular art-form, life has its own moral truth that allows for a good life. If a good house is one worth living in, a good life is the same. Its success is evidenced by happiness. And in the moment, there is that same, fiery joy experienced when doing anything after the manner of the Way.

Without morality – in any endeavor – life is fundamentally broken, however attractive it may appear in other respects. In the same way, a blade without moral strength suffers a flaw soon to break, or a line of poetry insensibly detracts from the beauty of the whole. Sensitivity to the connection between morality and rightness requires chastity of soul, and freedom of spirit, otherwise it is too easy to believe that what is attractive is also good.

Religion has often called the Way of living rightly, “The Straight Path”, and has associated this Path with happiness, joy, and with a road that leads ultimately to God. This implies that the morality taught by the Messengers of God – if it comes from God – describes the moral truths needed to live a good life. Yet they are still only laws; if conjoined with the living joy that comes from intimacy with the Spirit being sought – then the consequences of morality are its own fruit, and this is that spirit of the Way described earlier.

In all these journeys the traveler must stray not the breadth of a hair from the “Law,” for this is indeed the secret of the “Path” and the fruit of the Tree of “Truth”…

If this is so, it sheds new light on the importance of the Law, because no sooner would a forger allow the least impurity to corrupt his steel, than an individual would commit an action detracting from the Way of his life. For the Way is not the act, but the spirit of the action. If the action is not as pure as the intent that began it, how can it achieve perfection? If the Way lives through the joy of such acting, moral corruption is equal to death. I would compare the good to an ethereal spirit, which humans are capable of attracting to the world; but if our actions do not honor its goodness by rectitude, it will flee and have nothing to do with us.

In sum, the Way is known when acting is such joy as to forget the details of acting. It is the secret of life, the doorway to the inner land. Those who have been there understand it, while everyone can recognize it instantly. It recalls one to the joys of youth, when living was unconscious and the rightness of the day was like sunlight compared to shadow. Only later, when we acquired skills and the need to judge whether we were doing well or not, did assessment take the place of immediate knowing, and definition the place of what has always been indefinable, but is the very soul of reality.

Saw the movie “The Last Samurai” tonight. It transported me. The way it depicted a land of soulful beauty, and people devoted to honoring that beauty in every action of there lives, spoke to me deeply. I have a newfound respect for Tom Cruise now too, and the way he was able to portray someone coming into contact with that world and falling in love with it.

A quiet day, just spent at home writing programs, eating at the Chinese restaurant with a book, and watching “Finding Nemo”. From the day, a few thoughts and a short story:

Beliefs are like footfalls we make into the Unknown. Or they can be a key, turning in the doorway of the mind to open or close it.

Once that door is opened, there is no more conjecture. Light flows in through the windows, mellifluous and warm – and real. Belief is a defense against the despair of the darkness.

In the realm of ideation, belief is anathema. It is concoction without foundation, no better than fairy tales. In the scheme of reality, however, they tell of what we haven’t seen. Without such beliefs, what would impel us to go further?

There is no way to prove that an exit exists, or that some beliefs hold the key while others don’t. In this regard a fundamental belief says: “Seek and ye shall find.”

Desire is the key. The purest of all desires leads along a moral path to a doorway at the heart of being. When this door opens, and we commune with the Beloved in whatever mode fits us best, it’s like drinking from a fountain whose flow grows stronger by the use.

It is a thing of realities, often opposed to ideas: Ideas about how things should be, what we should do, how we should spend our time. A lifetime of should’s and must’s and have-to’s. The puritan ethic of expelling desire has so cut us off from this inborn sense, that adults are willing to devote themselves to a life with little joy.

I think desire is the root, which if expressed in the right channel leads us intuitively, immediately to what we seek. I see religion counseling us to rid ourselves of attachment, rather than acquire knowledge; to become pure rather than perfected. A pure soul, who like a child looks at the world and senses where the Fount of happiness begins, is able to connect to the present in a way that is simple, real, and genuinely satisfying.

Otherwise mysticism is only a collection of pale ideas, too easily consumed in the fire of everyday experience. When lofty ideals seem too hard to apply to the day-to-day. The central fact of the soul’s yearning should make our choices obvious: Of course we would choose one thing over another, based on whatever leads us to the joy of experiencing the Loved One’s presence!

Every Wednesday I meet up with my friend Chris at a local cafe, and we discuss spirituality, existentialism, society and systems. These are some of the thoughts from today’s discussion:

The unknown has long been of philosophic interest to me. This is my first attempt to codify some of those thoughts.

When discussing the unknown, several orders seem to present themselves: The first order of the unknown, the minor unknown, concerns instances of a known system yet to be perceived. An example of this would be chess combinations. Although no one has ever witnessed all possible chess combinations, the system by which such combinations are known is known, and so the unseen combinations, while unknown, are recognizable. These unseen combinations would be of the first order of the unknown.

The second order of the unknown, the major unknown, concerns systems that are unknown. In this case, the instances of such systems are both unknown and unrecognizable. Whenever these new systems are learned, there is a profound experience of awakening to new realities, and a shift in thinking. This type of learning is harder to come by – unless a friend or teacher can identify the systems still unknown to the seeker – but learning these systems can be profoundly satisfying. Once learned, the contents or implications of the system become reduced to the first order of the unknown.

The third order of the unknown, the inaccessible unknown, refers to systems that are both unknown and unknowable, but which remain recognizable in their effects. The differences in life experience between men and women is a good example: A man can learn to appreciate the systems by which a woman understands her life, but he can never directly know that system; as such, the instances of that system are never directly recognizable, but only identifiable by developing an affinity for the traits often characterizing such instances. This implies being aware of something without being able to know it.

The fourth order of the unknown, the great unknown, applies to systems which are both unknowable and unrecognizable. Their contents cannot be recognized in terms of the systems to which they properly belong, although they may be referred to in terms of their likeness to instances of other systems. But since these references are always misapplied, the instances cannot be understood fully. An example of this would be a dog viewing a man’s relationship to money. Since money is an abstract reality inconceivable to the dog, the dog at best will identify the emotions of attachment a man might display for the money. Since this attachment does not truly relate to the foundation of money’s meaning, it is merely a coincidence of money with attachment, and not an understanding of money itself.

The fifth order of the unknown, the perfect unknown, is that which cannot be known by any system, and is knowable only through its own being. There are no examples that come to mind, since an example would imply a system in which to frame the example.

Human beings show a propensity to avoid the unknown in every respect, the moreso the higher the order. Also, those who undertake to enter the unknown – and establish a relationship with those contents, whether by knowledge or perception or faith – experience a degree of revelation and awakening in proportion to the order traversed.

I define “faith” as the faculty that allows man to venture into the unknown. In the first order, this faith consists of the belief that unwitnessed instances described by a system will be found if searched for. Without that faith, a person would believe the search fruitless and would not expend the effort. Archaeologists look for fossils because they have faith that fossils may be found, according to the system of archaeology they have studied.

In the second order, the faith is that new systems will integrate and improve our understanding of the world. Those who seek new systems seek to enrich their view of life. Since new systems also change how previously known systems are viewed, there is a greater aversion to this knowledge. Our “faith” is that the change will have value, and not merely ruin what has been gained so far.

In the third order, faith holds that foreign systems, while describing values that cannot be known, yet describe a genuine value in another context. For example, we hear someone claiming that a reality they experience makes them happy, and we learn by observation that the happiness they experience is genuine and worthwhile. We may never understand why – and the experience may even be detrimental to us – yet by affinity we can appreciate the value-at-a-distance described by the unknowable system. Our faith is that this value is true in that other system, even if we have no personal knowledge of a system for which that value would be true.

Approaching the third unknown is very difficult, as it requires accepting that things are true in unknowable systems that are false in systems that we do know. Trust is needed for this to happen – which is the faith referred to. The enrichment of the individual here is great, however, in that it allows him to relate to foreign systems that would otherwise remain entirely inaccesible by him.

In the fourth order, faith is the only way to approach these systems, in which case the faith is that such systems exist at all. For a system of the fourth order it is always possible to believe that no such system exists, and that whatever instances of that systems are claimed to exist are merely instances of other unknown systems of the second or third order. The after-life falls clearly into the category of the fourth unknown.

Mystics are those who doggedly pursue the fourth unknown, and seek to commune with its mysteries without reference to knowledge. That this is fruitful and worthwhile is the essence of their faith. Without this faith, no concrete reason is possible to suggest that a fourth unknown exists – and this is why these unknowns are placed in the fourth order.

The fifth order may only be approached by identity, since it can only be known immediately through the experience of its own being. Even this knowing is not knowledge in the sense of the preceding orders, since it is not knowledge through a system, and has no instances to refer to. It is the fifth order to which Hallaj may be referring when he says, “I am the Truth”; or the Qur’an when it declares, “He who hath known himself hath known God.”

The five orders of the unknown may be expressed in terms of five correlated orders of the known:

1. The knowledge of instances of a system.
2. The knowledge of systems.
3. The recognition of unknowable yet valid systems.
4. The apprehension through faith of systems both unknowable and unrecognizable.
5. The identity through faith with that which cannot be referenced by any system.

And the five corresponding degrees of faith:

1. Faith that our knowledge of a system accurately predicts the unobserved instances of that system.
2. Faith that our experience of systems implies the existence of further and better systems.
3. Faith that unknowable systems are as valid as knowable systems within their relative context.
4. Faith that unknowable systems whose context cannot be known both exist and pertain to the reality we experience.
5. Faith that an unknowable exists which is above all systems, and is the reason for their coherence.

The enrichment of mankind is found by progressing into the unknown, with the greatest riches found in the highest orders. To proceed, faith must overcome fear and aversion, which is essentially the belief that such a journey will be rewarding in the end, and worth the pain and discomfort it engenders.

How one proceeds in the case of the first and second order is typically the task of education. The third order is forced upon people who want to learn how to relate to those of a different background or life experience. The fourth and fifth are the object of religion, being as well the easiest to dismiss and the most painful to undertake. And not everyone who associates themselves with religion has begun that journey.

The definition of God is particularly a question of the fifth unknown, meaning that its answer must forever remain unknown, even though a union with the source may ultimately be sought. Who is man, if not a creature capable of recognizing that this unknown exists, and of setting out with determination to find it? In our relationship to the unknown is much that defines who we are.

A friend has asked me to include my current streams of thinking, along with the other events that get posted here. Usually I have not shared these thoughts, because they are always raw and often untested – I prefer to let them settle until an essay is born. But here goes the experiment:

At the core of our being there is a point beyond which there is nothing else. This means there is no core. What surrounds the core-of-not-being is every idea or fiction erected to permit this nothingness to survive intact in the endless sea of moments that pass us by.

To remove the fiction is to admit oblivion, and only two types of people can survive such a willful annihilation: those with a will to die and nothing to lose, and those who have faith.

The erecting of barriers between one’s own nothingness and the nothingness beyond it is like images of light which create something for us to watch on an empty screen. An audience full of eyes, fixed on a blank panel, enjoy a wealth of imagery depicting scenes that are not there. Unreal, yes, but also entertaining.

When the images are stopped, there is a vacant hollow, a terminal boredom that creeps up and overtakes the conscious mind. Deeper, deeper, until the last wall cracks and the void without meets the void within.

This is the death of the self, but also the integration of the two parts of one being, since nothingness itself permits no boundaries. And with the reintegration of the psyche, a fulfillment.

It is not a fulfillment from the completion of any idea – having disbanded ideas. Nor does it point toward any conceivable goal. It is instead the feeling of an existent being existing in the mode of its existence. The harder we try to exist after a particular fashion, according to a particular ideal, the more impossible the fact of simply living must seem, and the more secretly terrifying the idea that such a life cannot be.

Letting the walls dissolve, all things are beheld in reference to the self-that-is-not-self. If this were not possible, then after dissolution would come a vanishing. That this does not occur, that those who survive madness go onto something more real without having anything in common to any imagined reality, is sufficient proof there is nothing to be afraid of.

A long drive today (nine hours). And a discovery: In the past year or so, I have been thinking much on the love of God, and how this plays into joy and happiness. In that search, I found a source of feelings which I was able to return to, of such a character as to demonstrate a psychic validity (to use Jung’s terminology).

Later I thought about what we love to do, and how fully engaging in this activity yields an experience with some similar characteristics. Then on Quality (the theme of this summer), and the experience of perceiving Quality in the world.

Afterwards I started using the term “reality” to express another connection to what was beginning to some like a single source. This line of thinking conjoined with thoughts on the “world view” (the Weltanschauung), and how we use that construction to root ourselves within the flow, so to speak.

And afterwards it became the theme of psychic integration: the way the self expresses its disassociated components through the projection of value onto the world perceived – this world-perceived being very much linked to the formulation of world views.

As I was driving along in the car, it occurred to me that the “well-spring” revealed by all of these lines of thoughts tasted the same: the Love of God, full engagement and joy, Quality, experience of reality, what lies beyond the world-view, and the coming together of estranged parts of the psyche.

What this points to, I do not know. The idea of confluence, however, itself produced a euphoria that made me feel as though I were floating home. More thinking on the subject of integration across these various philosophic systems is needed.

feel.of.midnight.wind

I know the feel of the midnight wind;  
I know the touch of another's soul.  
Both pass over, moving, changing  
and feeding the fire within.

At once soft and profound,  
silent and symphonous --  
our wordless exchanges  
touch eye and brow and heart with meaning.

Yesterday became what it should have been.  
And now, the present forming between us --  
I wonder if that late-night spent  
was not the future as it ought to be.