Either/Or

[Matt Gregory]

Kelly wrote:

A child is arrogant, because truth is still raw and righteousness easy. Children have grand and ostentatious plans. The young are the best hackers, not yet nauseated by long failure. They're selfish enough to want to do it all for themselves. But such a child eventually crosses over into the shell-like adult. Selfishness leads only to death ! What to do then?

The way things are packaged ready into functional objects, is a feature of shell-like-living. The useful becomes the right, but there is no deep thought about the basis of what is right.

That's my biggest problem with Kierkegaard, that his books aren't "packaged ready". They're more of a careful preparation, slow simmering type of experience. Delectable, but trying on my patience.

Yet without these things having developed such uses, the functionality wouldn't arrive. Intellectualising is a progression. Maybe it ends as useless, while still continuing ?

Yeah, I think of intellectual speculation as being set into motion by desire and it eventually proves to be useless, yet the desire is still in motion with nowhere to go. The object turned out to be nonexistent.

It's desire for something, the childish dream of something, that is hell. It's impossible to return, that's why it's difficult. You just can't get back there, ever.

Because that desire to return is the desire for something. It is impossible to drop it all, "to drop it all" is an action, reflecting on "it all"...separate.

So he couldn't stop still before, he could only drop it all after reflecting on being it all. Isn't that only possible through having experienced intense and ongoing existential crises?

No, I don't think any crisis is necessary. Maybe for stubborn souls who think it is, but apparently he didn't need to experience every existential crisis in order to come to a spiritual understanding of them. He reflected on them, followed them to their logical conclusions, but that's not the same thing as living it out, so I don't think it can really be considered experience.

Lately, I've realised how essential it is not to give up. It is easy to. There is much against becoming properly functional. It is very complicated when one feels like giving up, because pessimism turns the mind into dull sod. But one must report back, every moment, to existence. There's no departure or stasis possible.

I've been thinking lately about how passion for something can be ignited, since I know from experience that passion can overcome anything. I think a big part of it is having faith in yourself. You have to convince yourself that success in imminent. Or as Kierkegaard put it, faith always expects victory.

Take girls for example. Why is there such a huge difference between a popular girl and a girl who never was popular? Why does the popular girl always seem to have a boyfriend while the unpopular one can't find a single one? I think it's because the unpopular one doesn't think success is possible, so she doesn't have the passion to make any effort and nothing happens for her.

It seems a little different, though, with spirituality. With worldly pursuits you can always look at the failures around you to gain confidence, but with spirituality it has the opposite effect. There's really no point in looking around for anything. I think we just need to realize that God will give us everything we need and that we have the ability to take it from him.

Surely suicide ends a momentary suffering, but it doesn't end it at all, really. It just makes it harder for some other being, who hasn't got some inspiring (or any) examples to see. He or she becomes fatalistic, defeatist, shell-like, and has no inkling of it, let alone how simple it really is. Even if one suffers, and has a terrible and terrifying existence, and especially so compared to the contented and happy sheep, there is at least a foothold for someone else.

The miracle is just there, somewhere. A memento mori is a good way to remember how urgently one should keep hacking away. A hanging-rope tied in the form of a noose, it invokes a more subjective, reflective mindstate.

Maybe. I kind of think of any kind of suicide as more of a public statement than a personal mission, so that doesn't really do it for me. It seems like a wholly worldly act to me, like the result of wanting to communicate anger, but not being able to find an outward expression for it, so it mutates into depression or something.

[kjones]

That's my biggest problem with Kierkegaard, that his books aren't "packaged ready". They're more of a careful preparation, slow simmering type of experience. Delectable, but trying on my patience.

I get impatient when I want something, "not this".

I think of intellectual speculation as being set into motion by desire and it eventually proves to be useless, yet the desire is still in motion with nowhere to go. The object turned out to be nonexistent.

Reminds me of Dave's Chuang Tzu pieces. The dark, dim, witless Great Clod.

No, I don't think any crisis is necessary. Maybe for stubborn souls who think it is, but apparently he didn't need to experience every existential crisis in order to come to a spiritual understanding of them. He reflected on them, followed them to their logical conclusions, but that's not the same thing as living it out, so I don't think it can really be considered experience.

Yessss, stupid souls who keep relying on fear to motivate. That's from lacking any real intimacy with reason. So there is some kind of movement, I suppose from delusion (from stupidity, to passion, to reason) to awareness.

I've been thinking lately about how passion for something can be ignited, since I know from experience that passion can overcome anything. I think a big part of it is having faith in yourself. You have to convince yourself that success in imminent. Or as Kierkegaard put it, faith always expects victory.

No, I don't want to be confident in that way. Or should I say, it's not helpful. It's too much of a mind-bender when emotion is already clogging up the brainpores. I'd rather just reason about awareness, whenever I'm aware of it. Leave the ego out of it.

Take girls for example. Why is there such a huge difference between a popular girl and a girl who never was popular? Why does the popular girl always seem to have a boyfriend while the unpopular one can't find a single one? I think it's because the unpopular one doesn't think success is possible, so she doesn't have the passion to make any effort and nothing happens for her.

It seems a little different, though, with spirituality. With worldly pursuits you can always look at the failures around you to gain confidence, but with spirituality it has the opposite effect. There's really no point in looking around for anything. I think we just need to realize that God will give us everything we need and that we have the ability to take it from him.

Right, don't bother with the passion, or fear-motivation, or have any goal-mindedness at all. Just go along.

I've had this analogy work for me over the last week: the female trying to get a grip - a FAST HOLD - on the Way, is like a Linux hacker trying to make a winmodem work. The male is WindowsXPPro, packaged ready, a bit of tweaking, but much easier. The thing is, if she ever makes it through the extremely complicated process (too many bugs), she's set a pattern for some other, who might have a similar bug-model.

So, all the Linux hacker needs to do is work out what the problem is, and eliminate any egotistical distortions that make it unclear.

The miracle is just there, somewhere. A memento mori is a good way to remember how urgently one should keep hacking away. A hanging-rope tied in the form of a noose, it invokes a more subjective, reflective mindstate.

Maybe. I kind of think of any kind of suicide as more of a public statement than a personal mission, so that doesn't really do it for me. It seems like a wholly worldly act to me, like the result of wanting to communicate anger, but not being able to find an outward expression for it, so it mutates into depression or something.

The noose was just a personal symbol, like having a flashback painted on your bedroom wall. A death-wish can come as suddenly as a falling piano. Both of them come from nowhere. It can be almost instinctive, thought-cycles suddenly being triggered, and off they go.... So, being reminded of it often can groove in a better mindstate. Like cows running into an electric fence often enough.


KJ

[Matt Gregory]

MG: No, I don't think any crisis is necessary. Maybe for stubborn souls who think it is, but apparently he didn't need to experience every existential crisis in order to come to a spiritual understanding of them. He reflected on them, followed them to their logical conclusions, but that's not the same thing as living it out, so I don't think it can really be considered experience.

KJ: Yessss, stupid souls who keep relying on fear to motivate. That's from lacking any real intimacy with reason. So there is some kind of movement, I suppose from delusion (from stupidity, to passion, to reason) to awareness.

Hmm, I've always been partial to the beat-my-head-with-a-rock-until-I-get-sick-of-the-pain-and-decide-to-stop method.

MG: I've been thinking lately about how passion for something can be ignited, since I know from experience that passion can overcome anything. I think a big part of it is having faith in yourself. You have to convince yourself that success in imminent. Or as Kierkegaard put it, faith always expects victory.

KJ: No, I don't want to be confident in that way. Or should I say, it's not helpful. It's too much of a mind-bender when emotion is already clogging up the brainpores.

Well, yeah, it's easier said than done. But still, it's doable. I operated under the impression that God was a necessity for a long time. But I don't think that's the best attitude to have. It's kind of a "yeah...okay" when your mom tells you to clean your room. You're still against it at that point, just tolerant of it. But if you see the benefit of a clean room, she would never have to tell you because it would always be clean. All I'm saying is I think it's helpful to put God in a positive light in your mind.

I'd rather just reason about awareness, whenever I'm aware of it. Leave the ego out of it.

Well, it's like raising a kid. Yeah, you want the kid to grow into an adult, so you do want to get rid of the kid in a sense, but you can't get rid of it by getting rid of it! So it's not a question of getting rid of it, but how to raise it. I think one thing you have to do is give the kid something to look forward to in adulthood. Something decidedly non-childish.

MG: Take girls for example. Why is there such a huge difference between a popular girl and a girl who never was popular? Why does the popular girl always seem to have a boyfriend while the unpopular one can't find a single one? I think it's because the unpopular one doesn't think success is possible, so she doesn't have the passion to make any effort and nothing happens for her.

It seems a little different, though, with spirituality. With worldly pursuits you can always look at the failures around you to gain confidence, but with spirituality it has the opposite effect. There's really no point in looking around for anything. I think we just need to realize that God will give us everything we need and that we have the ability to take it from him.

KJ: Right, don't bother with the passion, or fear-motivation, or have any goal-mindedness at all. Just go along.

Not.

I've had this analogy work for me over the last week: the female trying to get a grip - a FAST HOLD - on the Way, is like a Linux hacker trying to make a winmodem work. The male is WindowsXPPro, packaged ready, a bit of tweaking, but much easier. The thing is, if she ever makes it through the extremely complicated process (too many bugs), she's set a pattern for some other, who might have a similar bug-model.

So, all the Linux hacker needs to do is work out what the problem is, and eliminate any egotistical distortions that make it unclear.

Ok. So, they both got the modem working, they both can use the modem and it's works exactly the same in both cases. What difference does it make how long it took? The result is what matters, not the process. You can approach the process with one of two attitudes: by thinking about how badly the process sucks, or how great the result will be. It's a matter of emphasis. The more you think about something, the bigger it becomes.

The attitude on this forum is real negative. I don't know how that affects you, but I don't see it as being directed at people like us. We're not the ones who need an onslaught of negativity. That's for people who find positivity in the negative. Once you can see the negativity of something, you can just calmly move away from it. You can either dwell on how bad it is and try to push yourself away from it, or dwell on something positive and move towards it. I've spent a lot of time in the past dwelling on negative shit without developing any positive relationship with the Infinite, but now that I look back on it, I can't figure out why I walled myself in like that. I think I wasted a lot of time doing that.

[kjones]

MG: Hmm, I've always been partial to the beat-my-head-with-a-rock-until-I-get -sick-of-the-pain-and-decide-to-stop method.

I think it comes down to Think Big (Masculine Way) Vs. Think Little (Feminine Way).

Man pictures big visions, gets excited, adrenaline rushes, goes leaping around actively (imaginatively). He controls, organises, orders. He's powerful, energetic. He's happy, so any adversary is a miserable small thing by comparison.

Woman pictures huge visions, gets frightened, hides, freezes, scrabbles into the soil to find oblivion. She subsides, disappears, pushes things away. She clings to little clothes to cover and pin things down, makes it all dull and finite.

So he gets big things done, where she goes "backwards".

Somewhere I recall that the word for death, in a race of mountain-climbers, was "cling to the rockface".

MG: You have to convince yourself that success in imminent. Or as Kierkegaard put it, faith always expects victory.

KJ: No, I don't want to be confident in that way. Or should I say, it's not helpful. It's too much of a mind-bender when emotion is already clogging up the brainpores.

MG: All I'm saying is I think it's helpful to put God in a positive light in your mind.

Alright, that must be like waking up in the morning (whenever one wakes up) and thinking, "Everything is going to be ok." And then that "lie" creates something very big, a logical step towards the BIG ONENESS.

If instead I kept thinking, "I am too small, I am very small, I am invisible, nothing, inadequate" then I am in an infinite vortex of sadness. A shrinking-delusion.

The difference is: one gets hyperactive biological instincts going at a powerful rate, the other gets depressive, sedative instincts going, also powerful. But to be rational takes more kilojoules, it's attacking, rather than conserving energy.

It builds energy.

So, I suppose there must be some movement to be able to see there's none.

It is a measure of untruth, but it's better than lying-down-lying!

I think one thing you have to do is give the kid something to look forward to in adulthood. Something decidedly non-childish.

That must be why Chuang Tzu is so inspiring at the moment, childish in a gentle and sobering way. I wouldn't be able to cope with Nietzsche, his "anti-gravity spirit" is too heavy.

MG: Take girls for example. Why is there such a huge difference between a popular girl and a girl who never was popular? Why does the popular girl always seem to have a boyfriend while the unpopular one can't find a single one? I think it's because the unpopular one doesn't think success is possible, so she doesn't have the passion to make any effort and nothing happens for her.

It seems a little different, though, with spirituality. With worldly pursuits you can always look at the failures around you to gain confidence, but with spirituality it has the opposite effect. There's really no point in looking around for anything. I think we just need to realize that God will give us everything we need and that we have the ability to take it from him.

KJ: Right, don't bother with the passion, or fear-motivation, or have any goal-mindedness at all. Just go along.

MG: Not.

Well, going along is better than not wanting to go along. Not wanting to go along comes from feeling forced to go all over the place. So, if one just does what actually comes to mind, in a simple way, step-by-step, then it's much easier.

I just don't think being "passionate" works for me at the moment, it's too destructive, backwards-looking. The masculine, big-vision stuff is more open-mindedness, it's quite calm.

What difference does it make how long it took? The result is what matters, not the process. You can approach the process with one of two attitudes: by thinking about how badly the process sucks, or how great the result will be. It's a matter of emphasis. The more you think about something, the bigger it becomes.

To have to learn the same mistake over and over again, that drains energy. I guess I've been blocked by seeing every thing doable as a philosophical error.

That's why I freeze up: what am I doing? What am I supposed to, how am I supposed to, do? How can I drop this bundle - do I pretend it isn't there? What is it that I'm trying to do, or be? Do I just go along doing the same old stuff, and tell myself it's all a joke? I have to think - otherwise what am I doing ?!

The attitude on this forum is real negative. I don't know how that affects you, but I don't see it as being directed at people like us. We're not the ones who need an onslaught of negativity. That's for people who find positivity in the negative.

I suppose what you're saying, is that people who are full of self-centred energy and contentedness need to be taken apart. And the ones that are withering need some refreshment, and building up.

I attacked someone who never deserved such an onslaught, this week, and it was quite humiliating. In a weird way, making amends towards this person was really to myself, to my higher self. Even though it was a bad experience, it uplifted my mind.

I'd like to be mentally stronger, so I guess I'll have to work out how to get myself going.

Once you can see the negativity of something, you can just calmly move away from it. You can either dwell on how bad it is and try to push yourself away from it, or dwell on something positive and move towards it. I've spent a lot of time in the past dwelling on negative shit without developing any positive relationship with the Infinite, but now that I look back on it, I can't figure out why I walled myself in like that. I think I wasted a lot of time doing that.

I worked it out this week. For me, it is fear of what society is going to do to me - society as some massive aggregate of Kelly-madness, the doppelganger that is more shrewd and cunning and destructive than anything I can imagine. Coming acropper on this terrible "society" is like meeting the Higher Men, while being in the worst state imaginable - extremely vulnerable. That's what I've been terrified of, and therefore put myself in a victimised mentality. I didn't imagine society as created human by human, with straightforward illogical intellectual causes.

Again, if I spend more time getting stronger mentally, I can calmly get through these imaginings, put them in their correct light.

Partly, my current weakness has been built up through the decision to wean myself from reading and studying various teachings. I wanted to think things through quietly, get better acquainted with the tangled habits of my mind. But I've sunk into it very deeply, like the shot duck diving into reeds that can't rise again.

So perhaps it's time for a break, try something different, then go back down again when I'm stronger.


Kelly

[alex]

This might be a bit less high minded than some others, but I see one point K is making: stop thinking that there is one right way to live, a prescription, what you 'should' do in this or that situation. Then when it doesn't turn out as you envisioned, you get all pissed about it, and you think, oh, well I should not have trusted the girl, and I will never do so again! relinquish the notion that you can control and predict. Or that you ought to try. You can't. and if things go sour, it isn't because your prescription was wrong and you should no do the other. Quit being a baby expecting the bottle to come on schedule. Stop having opinions and beliefs. they're crap anyway. keep your mind free of them.

[kjones]

No, that isn't why I was having difficulties. I was treating enlightenment egotistically: as a thing to be gained, meaning I was focussing on success and therefore reaped failure.

[alex]

kjones-

Oh, my K meant Kierkkegaard!
But yer point is good.

[kjones]

Do you think it is the same point as what Kierkegaard meant?

[alex]

I'm not sure. In which post? I haven't read through them all.

[Matt Gregory]

I just don't think being "passionate" works for me at the moment, it's too destructive, backwards-looking. The masculine, big-vision stuff is more open-mindedness, it's quite calm.

I can tell I haven't been communicating very well lately, but I thought since I'm on a Kierkegaard kick I would quote this passage from Philosophical Fragments to hopefully clarify a thing or two about what I'm trying to say:

Although Socrates did his very best to gain knowledge of human nature and to know himself--yes, even though he has been eulogized for centuries as the person who certainly knew man best--he nevertheless admitted that the reason he was disinclined to ponder the nature of such creatures as Pegasus and the Gorgons was that he still was not quite clear about himself... . This seems to be a paradox. But one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow. But the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is also the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision, although in one way or another the collision must become its downfall. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think. This passion of thought is fundamentally present everywhere in thought, also in the single individual's thought insofar as he, thinking, is not merely himself. But because of habit we do not discover this.

K is putting it in terms of the downfall of the understanding, and I think that concept can be applied to a winmodem. You don't want to be dependent on knowing how the modem is configured, like if you couldn't configure it properly and had to tweak something every time you wanted to use it. You want the thing configured so you don't, on a daily basis, have to depend on the understanding of how to configure it. Obviously, it's more all-encompassing with understanding the Infinite, but as a loose analogy it's close enough, I think.

But I think this passage more or less expresses what I'm trying to say. By "passion" I don't mean emotional passion, I mean intellectual passion. Like the will to finish configuring a winmodem in Linux or something.

[kjones]

Stop trying to work out infinite ways to debug the modem program, just accept it works in one way, and dial out. The potential was there all the time, so really, dialout was happening, but there was some disarray of thoughts ...

The problem:
= how to think about "what" one really is, but not as a thing
= passion is the attentiveness to this "what", but not a desire to gain it

One isn't holding to reasoning, because it's not necessary anymore, so one can say it's "ended" - but nevertheless, one is reasoning about this and that.

Does emptiness get deeper, or does one's mind get less shallow?

---

[Matt Gregory]

This might be a bit less high minded than some others, but I see one point K is making: stop thinking that there is one right way to live, a prescription, what you 'should' do in this or that situation. Then when it doesn't turn out as you envisioned, you get all pissed about it, and you think, oh, well I should not have trusted the girl, and I will never do so again! relinquish the notion that you can control and predict. Or that you ought to try. You can't. and if things go sour, it isn't because your prescription was wrong and you should no do the other. Quit being a baby expecting the bottle to come on schedule. Stop having opinions and beliefs. they're crap anyway. keep your mind free of them.

No, I don't think that's what he trying to say. He always approached things very philosophically, so it would be just too strange for him to pontificate on life lessons in that aphorism. I'm pretty sure he was trying to summarize the book, since the title of it matches the title of the book, and the book really has nothing to do with how to live or anything like that. It's more of an overview of the principles of life or something. And another thing is that his whole writing career was very religious and devoted to elucidating the nature of Truth and God, and it wouldn't make sense for him to tell people not to hold opinions because he was very opinionated on everything. All of the opinions in his books were used as arrows that pointed to God (at least, the books of his that I've read.)

[alex]

But the holding of opinions, and the attempt at control which tries to analyse how you 'ought' to act in this or that situation, prevents you from coming to a mature understanding of God.

People are always trying to find the right formula. They think if they can just know the right formula. So they pick one leg of the coices, they regret it, and they also regret that they didn't choose the other. A double regret and a waste of time.

That is foolishness.

[kjones]

Alex,

As you've expressed an opinion, and I assume you think it's the right opinion, you are at odds with what you've just said.

In my opinion, it's best to know and express the ultimately right opinion.



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