Is Your Life Mediated or Unmediated?
Insulated and Isolated or Fearlessly with a wide open heart?
Are You a Second Hand Person?
There is no true learning or knowing anything
outside of the context of direct experience and relationships.
"We cannot live in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not [one of] hope. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening. To use our own voice. To see our own light." (Hildegard of Bingen 1098-1179)
Living as close to the jagged edge of reality as possible cuts and wounds, burns and scars. It’ll break your heart wide open.
And yet when I live safely up and away from those jagged rocks, where it is safe and secure, comfortable and cushiony, I slip into a state of being comfortably numb; missing the real stuff of life. Missing life’s essence. Missing that which is real.
Mediated meaning and purpose: Life, truth, reality come from an external source, spoon fed. You settle for being a second hand person. This is a form of philosophical suicide.
Unmediated meaning and purpose: Life, truth, reality come from an internal source, we are original, experiencing life directly; living without appeal, without excuse, without blame.
My progression was from fundamentalism (total mediation, spoon fed dogma) to Quaker (quite unmediated, direct experience in silence, inner voice, inner teacher, no creed) and yet there is still a Christian framework embedded within these theologies, which are human constructs.
Living without appeal is by definition living without co-dependence on meaning and purpose from another, without appealing to the gods and their religions. Not even appealing to life having some self defined, revealed purpose. No framework. No agenda. No dogma. No theology. No creed.
We are story-telling beasts and we use this ability to give meaning and purpose. We create or adopt stories in our heads, myths, that give us a grounding upon which to build our lives. In the story we choose our truth, our reality. We often call this story adoption our foundation upon which we build our house on rock or solid ground rather than sand or shifting, unstable ground. Meaning can only come from the stories we are told and then, in turn, tell ourselves.
Like a moth to the flame, we must choose how close to reality our stories come. We can create meaning from a story that is not true at all but is a story that has been handed down through generations without any verification and any concrete connection to reality.
Or we can create meaning from a story that is as close to reality as we can get without getting mortally burned. This is the nature of the human condition, the nature of the myth, and the nature of language and thought.
All religions and belief systems are human constructs that are based in thought and language. We imagine. We think. We create images and stories in our heads. We use language to tell these stories. But words are not reality. Words cannot be reality, ever. All they can do is point to reality, i.e. MEDIATE REALITY. That is the natural limitation of language. This is the world we have been given. We can imagine what we think is reality. We can describe what we believe about reality. But these are all stories and images that remain trapped in our minds. No one can take reality or truth and stick it in their head. When we mediate reality, we end up with stories and images. So the question is:
How real do we want it??? Ask the moth.
My raison d’etre and my reason for writing is to live as close to the flame of reality as I can and yet stay alive. This takes awareness and intelligence in order to not fall off the cliff or burn in the fire. In this blog post, I am exploring for my own understanding and meaning the philosophy of The Absurd, which seems to me to be as close to reality as I can get (so far at least).
What am I left with at the very bottom of my descent into reality?
A Quest to ask better questions,
through inquiry, mystery, wonder, awe.
I’m left with
No one to tell me who I am.
No one to tell me what to do.
No one to tell me where to go.
No one to tell me what life is all about.
No one to tell me my identity.
No one to tell me my purpose
No one to tell me what a meaningful life is.
I’m left with freedom to be me and to create a life that in the end, I can say, “It is good.”
Or not!
It doesn’t get much more simple than this.
In each present moment, we have before us two choices. Death or Life. And there isn’t even anyone telling me to choose life. We can encourage each other to choose life or death. But no one can tell us because, “Whose life is it anyway???”
For me, the most profound answer is the most clear and simple. It comes from Albert Camus.
He says that between these two powerful realities of me and life, mankind and the universe are two powerful, undeniable, yet irreconcilable stances.
Mankind cries out, demanding to know the meaning and purpose of life.
And life and the universe responds with the indifference of nothingness.
It is not that the human race is absurd in and of itself.
and it is not that the universe is absurd in and of itself.
It is the juxtaposition of these two opposing stances that is totally absurd.
A believer’s cry out to their god is met with two and only two attributes:
silence and invisibility resonating throughout the abyss.
So what is our response to the inevitability of The Absurd?
Is life worth living or should I end it and commit suicide?
Do I commit philosophical suicide by handing over my freedom to live life as it is? Do I become a second hand person by living life according to the beliefs that I have been told; whether political, religious, cultural conditioning, or another other outside authority?
Or do I refuse to give in and give up by living life without appeal, without excuse, without deference? To be original? To be me? To live life at the edge of the flame of reality?
Question: If one lives free of such vices as the use of alcohol and tobacco and follows a strictly vegetarian diet, can this not be a great factor in helping one to understand your teachings?
Krishnamurti: Please, it is not what you put into your mouth that gives you understanding. (Laughter) What gives you understanding is facing life directly, simply and truly. But by merely giving up meat, alcohol or tobacco you are not going to understand reality. A great many people have given up these things, hoping for happiness. Fulfilment lies not in giving up but in understanding. Mind cannot be a slave to fear and to illusions. Discover first the impediments, the limitations which cripple the mind and heart, and when you liberate yourself from them, then there will be intelligent and natural existence.
- J. Krishnamurti, SANTIAGO 3RD PUBLIC TALK 8TH SEPTEMBER, 1935, What is Right Action? (The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti -1934-1935 Book 2)
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