I can relate so strongly to addictively listening to a metaphysics that leaves me incredulous, but that my tired mind and wearied will wants to buy into at day’s end. In my case it’s been Howdie Mickoski, author of Exit the Cave, this last year. A vantage point indeed: “there’s no fixing this place.” He’s no word wizard and isn’t claiming to be enlightened in the sense of inhabiting a radically transformed state of being, but he speaks with a degree of down home conviction.
Schopenhauer had a similar effect on me when I was younger. I want to believe it’s all just a trap, all meaningless -vanitas vanitatum - because all my concerns and preoccupations evaporate there, but I can’t really. Not for long. All that dratted accountability you referred to creeps in, and sins of omission and commission, and the feeling that I am meant to grow and maybe play some role in slowing our descent to hell. We want deep rest from the endless striving of life, on many fronts.
I value so much more of what you say than I can respond to. Thanks. Your work matters
Agree completely, might have written as much in our correspondence. Oddly, I belive him, his sincerity, while finding his claims fall short painfully in the lecture.
I take umbrage with his account because it is purely a mental map of existence. Too many unaddressed questions.
It's interesting: in the many years that have intervened since we last interacted (another forum, another time) we've grown in both similar and starkly different directions.
Where we are the same: I agree that the Western nihilistic interpretation of Buddhism (and its analogs) is a spiritual dead end. At the same time, it offers many useful spiritual techniques that aren't part of the classical Western religious tradition. It is plainly self-evident, after sufficient period of meditation and related preparation, that Awareness is large, expansive, transcendent, that the universe is imbued with meaning in every interstice. Christianity (as influenced by Hellenistic philosophy) presents a mythology that facilitates connection with that larger world of meaning; there are other ways, but Christianity offers the best opportunities for community, at least in the West, and this is a critical pillar that is often missed by the alt-spirituality crowd (and where many are led astray in missing it). I do still meditate every morning because it allows the mind to still, so that greater connection becomes possible. But non-dual awareness isn't really on the menu.
Where we differ: I stopped needing to prove any of this to other people. I learned that it is not my calling. It is yours, and I appreciate your ability to dissect the lies and misconceptions in great detail. The views of Norquist have no appeal, hold no temptation for me. They are self-evidently false. Either you see it or you don't, it's that simple. God love you for bearing witness, however. I think there was a time in my life when I believed my vocation was to be some kind of guru, some kind of enlightened teacher, clergy. I now know this not to be true. My function is to support in pragmatic terms. To be a manager. To engage in the world. For me, now, this means service in the pragmatic realities of my church, serving in its ministries, eventually on its vestry. I will never be a priest, and I know myself well enough now to know why.
I think it's easier to let go of all those false dreams of enlightenment and the nihilism that comes with them if you are actually active in a community, a church, the body of Christ. I'm pretty sure you, Jasun, are doing that now (I don't know, I've lost touch with what you're doing personally). However, it seems like your vocation to write about all of this, to do battle with satan in this way. I'm glad it's not mine, because it seems like a Sisyphean task, to engage with those who, for whatever reason, refuse to see.
I would be curious to hear more about a) how Norquist's views are so easy for you to dismiss; b) related, how you blend Buddhism with Christianity. They seem so utterly at odds, the difference between centering the soul and abolishing it altogether (as advaita does, of necessity).
I keep coming back to dualism being essential to human existence because all is one = nihilism. Yet bizarrely and maddeningly, it is really both at once. I reconcile this idea with the thought that there is complementary dualism, as compared to Manicheanism. In this Nature to me seems, far from being the dark trap of Gnosticism, the best, or really only, exemplary of divine order available to us (& inherently dualistic).
The concept of a soul is essentially one of agency. The idea that nothing in the universe has agency (hence meaning) seems self-evidently false. Look around you: there is agency at every level, down to quantum indeterminacy. Yes, there are different levels, which helps explains how, e.g., the cells in your body have some limited level of agency* while, you as a human person and body, also have agency that supersedes that of your cells. It explains how an egregore has its own agency that is distinct from the entities that comprise it (think of a corporation vs. its human managers and employees) and, ultimately, how God has agency while still granting freewill to human souls. Another way to think about it is a play or novel: there is a creator of that drama, yet the characters in that drama have their own agency, and while you might think their agency is ultimately directed by the playwright or author, almost every such creator will tell you that the characters come alive in the artist's mind before they ever get written down.
Our world was created for human souls, see the Anthropic Principle. Some people like to explain away the Anthropic Principle as selection bias, as if there were an uncountably large number of universes, most of which are dead and soulless, and we just happen to notice one of the few universes that permits life because we can only exist in such a universe. This explanation violates the precious Occam's Razor to which materialists are so attached. A simpler theory is that our one and only universe is ensouled by design.
One of the problems is time: it doesn't exist the way humans (in their ordinary consciousness) think it does (and certainly orthodox physicists will have to agree). I think it helps if you can cut through the illusion of time.
As for Buddhism vs. Christianity: I already mentioned that I find the tools of Buddhism useful even while I don't believe in their stated goals. Quieting the mind permits insights, that's all. And it's a tool that helps cut through the illusion of time.
* One mentor of mine, a cancer researcher, once casually remarked, "all the cells in your body are trying to become cancer" - I thought his implication of agency on the part of mammalian cells was interesting and amusing, if dark.
good to hear from you, II; if you listen to Cognitive Dissident # 2 you'll know why I reached out to you at this precise moment; the dream (from 2017) and my recall of something you wrote about back then, viz a viz the black plague & the number of the half-beast, all seemed more burningly pertinent, post-2020-vision.
I only really go after those influences that have lured and snared my own attention, it's a public wrestling with the dark angel/calling God to account; I do it for love (& now money, hooray); of course it would be mad to do it if I didn't enjoy it. But if I didnt have a public calling I might not hold myself to such a stern account. My audience is my father-confessor & judge.
I don't have a religious community, besides this one; a religion of one (or two), always moving, shifting changing, but more & more a kind of natural religion, the practice of which is feed goats, carry water, chainsaw wood, pull up brambles, and try to bless more than I curse the indomitable pressure of Matter as I wait for Spirit to come to term...
I am not aware of the character you refer to but I am aware of the current push towards science at the expense of soul.
In my world, being 'awake' means being aware that we have been taken for a ride. Ironically, including by the likes of Norquist. If the goal is transhumanism, misrepresenting what it means to be human, would be key.
For my sins, I have just finished watching a TV reality show called "Traitors" where the winner, a young man went through the show lying and deceiving the other contestants, pretending he was on their side. Apparently when he was interviewed after the show, his speech was suddenly littered with "innits" and "likes". That made me think that his speech during the show was either scripted and/or edited. When he spoke live, he was not reading a script nor could it be edited. Also, he was no longer playing a role.
I would tend to agree that "non-dual awareness" feels more and more like a cop-out as the battleground between good & evil opens up on every side and dimension around us. OTOH, it's always good to place things in perspective, so I can go either way; or maybe both at once?
Interesting correspondence of observation re verbal tics.
The "Jed McKenna" of the forum turned out to be a Canadian on the run from fraud charges, living in Cambodia. He was using the McKenna brand to get people paying for shoddy spiritual/manifestation courses. He died a couple of years ago.
Thanks. Along the lines of Norquist/McKenna you'll probably get something out of Perfect, Brilliant Stillness by David Carse. Twelve hours, goes deep, and the narration by Terence Stamp is easy on the ear if you need new bedtime listening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR_C2NNB-wI&t=39332s&ab_channel=StillnessSpeaks
I have been listening, and could comment at length. It's both compelling and hard to refute, and somehow at the same time infuriating in its smug absolutism. The passages towards the last part, on how we are objects mistakenly believing we are subjects, is perhaps the best part so far.
I can relate so strongly to addictively listening to a metaphysics that leaves me incredulous, but that my tired mind and wearied will wants to buy into at day’s end. In my case it’s been Howdie Mickoski, author of Exit the Cave, this last year. A vantage point indeed: “there’s no fixing this place.” He’s no word wizard and isn’t claiming to be enlightened in the sense of inhabiting a radically transformed state of being, but he speaks with a degree of down home conviction.
Schopenhauer had a similar effect on me when I was younger. I want to believe it’s all just a trap, all meaningless -vanitas vanitatum - because all my concerns and preoccupations evaporate there, but I can’t really. Not for long. All that dratted accountability you referred to creeps in, and sins of omission and commission, and the feeling that I am meant to grow and maybe play some role in slowing our descent to hell. We want deep rest from the endless striving of life, on many fronts.
I value so much more of what you say than I can respond to. Thanks. Your work matters
Thanks. Well-put and since i said "No to Norquist" the penny continues to drop deeper.
The only response so far at the reddit thread, BTW: "I'm sorry but this is an absolute mess. I'm not surprised at the lack of reply from Norquist."
It's been a while since I went into a honey pot to talk to the flies
Nice to see Norquist finally come up.
Agree completely, might have written as much in our correspondence. Oddly, I belive him, his sincerity, while finding his claims fall short painfully in the lecture.
I take umbrage with his account because it is purely a mental map of existence. Too many unaddressed questions.
All in all, succinctly sublime analysis :)
It's interesting: in the many years that have intervened since we last interacted (another forum, another time) we've grown in both similar and starkly different directions.
Where we are the same: I agree that the Western nihilistic interpretation of Buddhism (and its analogs) is a spiritual dead end. At the same time, it offers many useful spiritual techniques that aren't part of the classical Western religious tradition. It is plainly self-evident, after sufficient period of meditation and related preparation, that Awareness is large, expansive, transcendent, that the universe is imbued with meaning in every interstice. Christianity (as influenced by Hellenistic philosophy) presents a mythology that facilitates connection with that larger world of meaning; there are other ways, but Christianity offers the best opportunities for community, at least in the West, and this is a critical pillar that is often missed by the alt-spirituality crowd (and where many are led astray in missing it). I do still meditate every morning because it allows the mind to still, so that greater connection becomes possible. But non-dual awareness isn't really on the menu.
Where we differ: I stopped needing to prove any of this to other people. I learned that it is not my calling. It is yours, and I appreciate your ability to dissect the lies and misconceptions in great detail. The views of Norquist have no appeal, hold no temptation for me. They are self-evidently false. Either you see it or you don't, it's that simple. God love you for bearing witness, however. I think there was a time in my life when I believed my vocation was to be some kind of guru, some kind of enlightened teacher, clergy. I now know this not to be true. My function is to support in pragmatic terms. To be a manager. To engage in the world. For me, now, this means service in the pragmatic realities of my church, serving in its ministries, eventually on its vestry. I will never be a priest, and I know myself well enough now to know why.
I think it's easier to let go of all those false dreams of enlightenment and the nihilism that comes with them if you are actually active in a community, a church, the body of Christ. I'm pretty sure you, Jasun, are doing that now (I don't know, I've lost touch with what you're doing personally). However, it seems like your vocation to write about all of this, to do battle with satan in this way. I'm glad it's not mine, because it seems like a Sisyphean task, to engage with those who, for whatever reason, refuse to see.
I would be curious to hear more about a) how Norquist's views are so easy for you to dismiss; b) related, how you blend Buddhism with Christianity. They seem so utterly at odds, the difference between centering the soul and abolishing it altogether (as advaita does, of necessity).
I keep coming back to dualism being essential to human existence because all is one = nihilism. Yet bizarrely and maddeningly, it is really both at once. I reconcile this idea with the thought that there is complementary dualism, as compared to Manicheanism. In this Nature to me seems, far from being the dark trap of Gnosticism, the best, or really only, exemplary of divine order available to us (& inherently dualistic).
Yet eternity always trumps biology, finally.
The concept of a soul is essentially one of agency. The idea that nothing in the universe has agency (hence meaning) seems self-evidently false. Look around you: there is agency at every level, down to quantum indeterminacy. Yes, there are different levels, which helps explains how, e.g., the cells in your body have some limited level of agency* while, you as a human person and body, also have agency that supersedes that of your cells. It explains how an egregore has its own agency that is distinct from the entities that comprise it (think of a corporation vs. its human managers and employees) and, ultimately, how God has agency while still granting freewill to human souls. Another way to think about it is a play or novel: there is a creator of that drama, yet the characters in that drama have their own agency, and while you might think their agency is ultimately directed by the playwright or author, almost every such creator will tell you that the characters come alive in the artist's mind before they ever get written down.
Our world was created for human souls, see the Anthropic Principle. Some people like to explain away the Anthropic Principle as selection bias, as if there were an uncountably large number of universes, most of which are dead and soulless, and we just happen to notice one of the few universes that permits life because we can only exist in such a universe. This explanation violates the precious Occam's Razor to which materialists are so attached. A simpler theory is that our one and only universe is ensouled by design.
One of the problems is time: it doesn't exist the way humans (in their ordinary consciousness) think it does (and certainly orthodox physicists will have to agree). I think it helps if you can cut through the illusion of time.
As for Buddhism vs. Christianity: I already mentioned that I find the tools of Buddhism useful even while I don't believe in their stated goals. Quieting the mind permits insights, that's all. And it's a tool that helps cut through the illusion of time.
* One mentor of mine, a cancer researcher, once casually remarked, "all the cells in your body are trying to become cancer" - I thought his implication of agency on the part of mammalian cells was interesting and amusing, if dark.
good to hear from you, II; if you listen to Cognitive Dissident # 2 you'll know why I reached out to you at this precise moment; the dream (from 2017) and my recall of something you wrote about back then, viz a viz the black plague & the number of the half-beast, all seemed more burningly pertinent, post-2020-vision.
I only really go after those influences that have lured and snared my own attention, it's a public wrestling with the dark angel/calling God to account; I do it for love (& now money, hooray); of course it would be mad to do it if I didn't enjoy it. But if I didnt have a public calling I might not hold myself to such a stern account. My audience is my father-confessor & judge.
I don't have a religious community, besides this one; a religion of one (or two), always moving, shifting changing, but more & more a kind of natural religion, the practice of which is feed goats, carry water, chainsaw wood, pull up brambles, and try to bless more than I curse the indomitable pressure of Matter as I wait for Spirit to come to term...
I am not aware of the character you refer to but I am aware of the current push towards science at the expense of soul.
In my world, being 'awake' means being aware that we have been taken for a ride. Ironically, including by the likes of Norquist. If the goal is transhumanism, misrepresenting what it means to be human, would be key.
For my sins, I have just finished watching a TV reality show called "Traitors" where the winner, a young man went through the show lying and deceiving the other contestants, pretending he was on their side. Apparently when he was interviewed after the show, his speech was suddenly littered with "innits" and "likes". That made me think that his speech during the show was either scripted and/or edited. When he spoke live, he was not reading a script nor could it be edited. Also, he was no longer playing a role.
I would tend to agree that "non-dual awareness" feels more and more like a cop-out as the battleground between good & evil opens up on every side and dimension around us. OTOH, it's always good to place things in perspective, so I can go either way; or maybe both at once?
Interesting correspondence of observation re verbal tics.
The "Jed McKenna" of the forum turned out to be a Canadian on the run from fraud charges, living in Cambodia. He was using the McKenna brand to get people paying for shoddy spiritual/manifestation courses. He died a couple of years ago.
Yes I heard; I talked to someone who tracked him: https://auticulture.com/liminalist-136-tano/
Thanks. Along the lines of Norquist/McKenna you'll probably get something out of Perfect, Brilliant Stillness by David Carse. Twelve hours, goes deep, and the narration by Terence Stamp is easy on the ear if you need new bedtime listening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR_C2NNB-wI&t=39332s&ab_channel=StillnessSpeaks
ta; will check it out
hmm, a 12 hour video isnt possible to turn into audio download.... so unless you know if an alt. source, I won't be able to sample.
https://archive.org/details/PerfectBrilliantStillnessAudiobook
That should do the trick. It'll definitely be of some interest to you if you enjoy Norquist.
I have been listening, and could comment at length. It's both compelling and hard to refute, and somehow at the same time infuriating in its smug absolutism. The passages towards the last part, on how we are objects mistakenly believing we are subjects, is perhaps the best part so far.
Some walking thoughts on Martin's recommendation, Perfect Brilliant Stillness, that can double as a response to Iguana's comment: https://media.auticulture.com/wp-content/uploads/on-stillness.mp3
Excuse the panting