Allowing the Cookie to Crumble

Tim writes:

"I guess in a lot of ways, this is what I’m looking for out of a religion or other story-system. One that somehow has it built into itself that you should move beyond it, that you should set it down. One that removes the scaffolding as you get higher and higher in it. One that self-destructs on you, leaving you by yourself again, but richer for the experience. [...] I guess what I’m looking for though is a practical application of this idea. How to use structure to overcome structure. Any ideas?"

To Tim's post, Fell added a "comment" which is really an essay unto itself, touching on a lot of important points.

These questions are both liberating and debilitating to me; they cast a light on my own little ongoing existential crisis. Sometimes I feel I've been having an existential crisis since I was about three years old. I remember being seated at a table at preschool, cutting and pasting construction paper, when I suddenly found myself having a very strange thought. I thought to myself, "I am very young. There is something precious about the state that I am in right now, and I'm going to lose touch with it as I get older." This isn't a metaphor -- this is an actual memory. The next such milestone occured on my 10th birthday as I was walking out of the house with my parents, when I realized with a sudden little pang of melancholy that I had reached the double digits. I was no longer a baby; the purity was escaping me with every tick of the clock.

I think that I was born with an awareness of this constant, almost viral occlusion of gnosis. So much of my life is centered around the desire to sweep out the excess, the information that muddles and misleads. This is reflected, I think, in my decision to pursue animation and a life in the arts and my unwillingness to go deep into mathematical or other highly structured languages or systems of thought. I think, in fact, that my ecstasy over Gnosticism and PKD's work comes largely from the fact that it DOES in some ways seem to be a self-destructing system -- it's complex and fascinating, and yet I don't feel so threatened by it, I don't feel I'm going to get LOST in it, because ultimately it always points me back toward myself, toward the clarity and the light. It's like I've finally found a matrix within which my brain can run around and play and explore, but I don't have to worry AS MUCH about my mind getting separated from my soul. It's a hard thing to articulate.

It reminds me of that PKD quote about building universes that fall apart -- I think that's exactly what he's talking about -- about a system that doesn't hold up, because ultimately it seems like systems that hold up are the systems that really threaten to keep you trapped. Maybe the real freedom comes in the ability to see that anything that doesn't crumble is a lie. Everything SHOULD crumble, except for God. Everything comprehensible is structurally unsound.

I know that I speak with my intuition more often than I speak with my mind. When I use words, I'm usually just trying to fashion some kind of clumsy representation of this very deep and experientially articulate feeling. People, myself included, talk so much about emotional ups and downs, about changing and transforming and forgetting and remembering. We're so caught up in these processes of doing and undoing, we think there's so much HAPPENING... but when I really get down to it, when I really step back from it, I feel pretty much the same all the time, and I have for as long as I can remember. At the deepest level, it's just me and this awareness of God, this awareness of the "I am" that lives inside of me. I just want to keep the "I am" engaged -- I want to stay aware of it, and I want it to keep paying attention to me, keep talking to me. Maybe that's what I was picking up on that time when I was 3.

In VALIS, I think something that's really important is the fact that PKD chooses to depict this embodiment of God as a small child. Jesus and Krishna too are often represented as little ones. To me, kids don't get stuck in ideas and systems the same way grownups do. Kids are more fluid and they seem to better comprehend the fluidity of ideas and information. They're great at maneuvering -- that's why they're always climbing trees and hiding in closets and stuff. They're constantly putting themselves PHYSICALLY into spaces where grownups don't go -- not because grownups don't fit or aren't strong enough (though in some cases this can be true), but MOSTLY because grownups have all these crazy ideas about where people should and shouldn't be. Grownups don't think they belong in a tree or under a kitchen table, so they stop visiting those spaces and they forget what those spaces are like. I know I'm all over the map here, but I really FEEL it, right now, writing this, I can really FEEL the "I am" -- I feel good and synched-up and happy.

Maybe if all the grownups in the world had kept climbing trees they wouldn't be so weak and brittle! Gnosticism and sci-fi and PKD and fairy tales and all this other stuff, it all appeals to the 3 year old in me. It's not so serious and full of rules, it just delves right the fuck into the joy and wonder and scariness of existing. In conclusion, I have no conclusion! I've had a lot of coffee though and I think I need to go eat something.

Ahh.

Comments

[Ekstasis23]

I really like the point you made at the end:

"Grownups don't think they belong in a tree or under a kitchen table, so they stop visiting those spaces and they forget what those spaces are like"

My 6 year old loves to hide...behind the chairs, in the basement, in closets, it's his favorite game. And your post just gave me a really great insight into why that is. Those places are his own little private parts of the house, parts that The Grownups would or could never go.

It's important for us Grownups to explore those hidden places more...both the physical and the mental ones!

[P-Tar]

"Maybe the real freedom comes in the ability to see that anything that doesn't crumble is a lie. Everything SHOULD crumble, except for God."

Well, technically, the orbit of the Earth is a slowly decaying one... but it's decaying so slowly that Sol will nova before it becomes a problem for our descendants. So the solar system will crumble, thus, it is not a lie.

I recognize the issue of the "slow corruption"; I've dealt with that before, though I'm not sure if I was just mentally fucking myself up with the borrowed techniques of Chaos magic(k): time will tell. But Neti-Neti worked for me.

Concept: meditate with pranayama (circular) breathing, in the nose, out the mouth, pausing for a couple seconds to hold in or out. When you start feeling a buzz from the pranayama, and you feel the focus, that's when you work.

The idea is the annihilation of fixed dualistic concepts, like "Good and Evil" for instance, or "Order and Chaos". So, while in your focused state, consider one of the pairs of opposites, and then the other... and then consider how both could be present in the same place and time, and then consider that they DON'T EXIST. You should feel an annihilation/emptiness feeling, and a feeling of return of energy, freedom, delight. The Chaotes I learned this from refer to the energy returned as "Freedom of Belief", and supposedly, it's precisely what (most) little kids have a "full tank" of, while adults are sometimes running on empty.

Hope that helps!

"Reality" is probably somewhere between the hard stuff that you stub your toe on and the ethereal transcendent Source we all aspire to rejoin to a greater degree. Keep your feet on the ground and your head in the clouds.

PS: Sometimes, my mouth runs faster than my brain, and sometimes the other way round. Typing can help regulate it, but for more effective communication I prefer analogies and metaphors to get across concepts; they're quite versatile. If all else fails, NLP.

[laura jane]

yeah, metaphors are great. i don't know what i'd do without them.

that sounds like a nice meditation -- i'll try it out. thanks!