Interstitial 5

Some bon mots to clear the palate

Most of us care more about whether our self functions well than the quality of our pens, but it is a matter of degree. Selves flow this way and that way of their own accord. Sometimes you can get a lot done with a good pen and a barely functional self.

There is no ultimate resolution for conflicting desires anymore than there is peace between cheetahs and impalas. As with wildlife management, one can take conflicting desire as the natural landscape, not in need of intervention, while occasionally intervening artfully.

Three vehicles of spiritual practice: Convergent, with a map progressing towards singular fruit. Divergent, with a landscape of endless varieties of fruits. Radical, or “to the root”, which have no shape or location to either converge or diverge, and so can only be communicated indirectly.

The infinitesimal root of contraction in experience is trying to fix meaning, instead of allowing it to arise and dissolve of its own accord.

Abhorrent points-of-view are generally true; the error isn't in the claims, but rather the belief that the claims are the entire and most important truth.

The greatest flow from a river can be created by building a huge dam, then blowing it up. Peak experiences are often similar, depending on a sudden uncorking of long-blocked life-energy.

"Insight" sees a new constructive possibility of pattern. Seeing the endless possibility of patterning is "achieved" by deconstruction of any particular patterning. Disorientation is a foundational purely deconstructive method, as it does not provide an alternative construction.

The overwhelming experience of being present to innumerable dimensions of sensations, all synesthetically interacting, can be characterized as ‘bliss’.

Each snowflake is endlessly fascinating because it is unique. There is nothing “special”, though, about any snowflake, in the sense of the uniqueness of one being more interesting than the uniqueness of another.

The optimal amount of self-delusion is not zero.

Gather a selection of narratives to create what you need for this moment in your life. And don't forget to compost narratives that are starting to rot.

Exploring ever-more perspectives and contexts leads to less-and-less coherence, and fewer and fewer (abstract) conclusions. Then when faced with a moment of decision, coherence applicable only to that particular circumstance spontaneously coalesces into action.

Awareness can act either as a shear-thickening or Newtonian fluid: does momentary shear (whether pleasure or pain or merely the irruption of apparent irrelevancy) cause a loss of fluidity in the shape of awareness, or does awareness maintain fluidity whatever is experienced?

In every individual we can find the image of a unique, beautiful energy by adding spaciousness to our responsive image of them. Finding the resonance of this image with our own being, we both discover appreciation of the individual and come to inhabit their unique powers.

Great wisdom must be renewed for each generation. What is now obvious must be de-emphasized. What relates only to the past may be dropped. Language needs to be made contemporary again. The inevitable errors, corrected. And these changes paced at a tempo to discover what is a useful rate of change.

There is no culturally-and-temporally-independent way of communicating matters such as this. Every explanation or resonating metaphor will have a peak moment of communicative power, and then weaken again, as culture and context continue their endless transformations and the resonant semantics of language drift.