What if there is no unity connecting all and everyone but "polithy"? What if it's not Wholeness but Manifoldness? What if fantasy is more fundamental than reality? What if we aren't here to grow but to bloom? What if we're not here to learn but to deepen?
And the conversation has expanded a bit here http://mushinschilling.posterous.com/cleeengel-im-saying-that-the-one-without-an-o
Yet I'm saying that the One without an outside, the all-inclusive one, is an egoic or heroic invention that dominates our culture. I'm saying that this One is repressive imagination or concept or - and I've experienced it's reality first hand often enough - a dominating myth. This I say because whenever it is present and active the One is positioning itself as the One beneath it all that everything and everyone is rooted in. This is the indubitable conviction it comes with. And I am saying that, really, we live in a Polyverse that does NOT require or have an underlying unity. And that I feel that this is good, beautiful and true. And that this idea of "it is both" is just the One 'in disguise' trying to, again, dominate the polyversal landscape.
The Polyverse is full of beings, entities, situations etc. Full of what we might call 'parts', as long as we don’t fall into the trap of believing them to be parts of some pre-existent whole. Some might or might not be part of some more encompassing whole. This we don't know - so it becomes a matter of belief. And since the belief in the One is always also a carrier of the dominator-spirit (the One as source and 'end' of the manifold etc.; taking into its being or 'territory' everything else) I feel the need to point out that making it a "both" is not only an unnecessary move but a dominating embrace, an embrace that does not respect the embraced. I'd rather say, Lets respect phenomena as they unfold with their 'own' uniqueness; and instead of telling them that they fit into this overarching unity - the Oneness drawer, function or 'reality' - let's commune/icate with them and take them 'serious' just the way they present themselves to us.
Instead of already putting Oneness in place, or a overarching non-dual transcendence or similar, we could be asking of situations, phenomena and beings asking, "Are you a part of something bigger? Do you originate in something bigger?" And we could than actually and seriously listen to what the 'part' has to say.
Of course we can, and I have occasionally, experience or regard beings, parts, phenomena as a unique expression of a single underlying whole - but why do so? Why recur to that? What good is that perspectival move? In my heart, soul and mind I increasingly can move out from under that montheistic stance, that dominator wholeness field, and emerge into a polytheistic field of respect, cherishing and honoring of each being, moment or phenomenon.
I do think that everything is directly and/or indirectly connected to everything else, maybe even so much as a single bird is connected to a whole flock, but that doesn't make the flock the source of a bird nor does it make the flock the goal of a bird; it simply shows that sometimes it's the delight of birds to flock....
You think your invention, view, words, concept, formula is " IT "...Not really modest is it now to set these contrasts.
So funny, people always seeking new formulas in the spirtual world. But where it all comes down to is the suffering. Here is that word again...
Good luck enlightening this by what ever formula, cause, or bla bla your feel most attracted to :-)
3x3= 1, 798+1232=1, 123:12=1, 1+1=1..
You, on the other hand, seem to be equally sure what it all comes down to - suffering. So I guess that when you caricature what I have to say as "bla, bla", you are suffering. Nevertheless I do not feel that it is modest or respectful at all of someone, who might be expressing radically different point of views from yours, to do what you did in your last 2 paragraphs.
I'm sorry for this, I'm very poor with words (=my own bla bla)... and I ques this medium "words" and "internet" has it's huge limitations.
I think we more agree on the matter then disagree. It is more they way you distribute this "thought" I find rather black and white.
I rather choose "both" and always the middle way.
Cheers, (nice wine ;-)
This can be perceived as emotional reaction, as you say, and I have no quarrels with that, as it truly is in opposition to it, and sometimes might be under the influence of Mars - even though I'd think it is predominantly Hermes that is my guide in delivering this message that comes from a multitude of Gods that do feel excluded or disrespectfully made part of some greater God...
The 'smothering embrace' by Oneness that comes so incredibly fast as I embark on a slightly different path than the oneness-way... the immediate reaction of wanting it to be "both" (you are the third person feeling the need to point that option out to me)... the rush to include, embrace, make part of, take back into the 'one fold' is truly astonishing. Before I started to go down this road it wasn't really clear how strong a response this polytheistic perspective brings to the front.
This perspective, of course, on reflection, is bound to bring this up as it says in a way, "Hey One, you are just one among many, you are not supreme and you do NOT include us nor are you able to. Matter of fact, if you want to meet us than please in a non-inclusionary way and only as respected Other on equal footing."
And I can understand that not wanting to be embraced seems to be an affront to the declaring-you-to-be-one-with-me stance.
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Also I do not see how saying that I'm not part of the mono-theos or any other Oneness philosophy or understanding that therefor we are separate, or that therefor the soul is separate. The experience of separation won't be undone by saying that "underneath it all we are one" or alternatively "we can transcend it all and then we are one" or even "in reality we are all one." Sure, this conviction stemming from either having had the experience of all-oneness (as I've had; and talked about elsewhere) or from believing what others believe from having had this experience or from having the faith that "this is so", is comforting at times when the sense of separation hurts us.
A question belonging here is, "How come we understand or talk about our suffering/hurting as 'separation'". Separation, after all, is not really a feeling, it's an explanation!
Just because I sometimes feel lonely - a feeling I can and do sometimes have - does not mean I'm separate. It means I long for all kinds of intimacy, for a 'flow-with'. So I would say that "feeling separation" is actually "longing for union" of one kind or another.
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Oneness and separation are not opposites in the way that, "f not Oneness than Separation." Oneness is just one position/meme among many as is the sense of separation. So I maintain - Oneness is presently a dominant mythologem or meme or archetype with "spiritually sensitive people", whose shadow aspects are big enough to be able to clearly point them out (which is what I'm doing), and I believe that we are much closer to our heart, mind, spirit and soul if we take a polytheistic, polyvalent, polymorphous perspective.
Thank you for teasing this out...
Ah, Mushin, my brother - I love what you're doing, and I don't have any particularly strong need for it to be both. I just smell a paradox, and I wanted to ask you what you thought.
In my recent deconstruction of my own pain, I stumbled across the old primal need to 'belong', and the trauma of exclusion. And my realisation that there is a uniquely "helen-shaped hole in the kosmos" that I can only fit if I reclaim my uniqueness and unkink myself from all the ways in which I have done myself violence in order to 'belong', suggests to me that you are spot on in your championing of the polymorphous aspect of things.
It also seems, from that perspective, though, that there is something singular into which I fit. And my innate quest for meaning feels soothed at the idea of a greater whole that I can serve.
So just as, looking through a microscope, we see chaos alternating with patterns as we zoom in ever smaller (or the reverse, with a telescope), so it is, perhaps with the many and the one.
When I was writing what I wrote above, and today when I was walking, there was a keen sense of being part of (belonging to) an epochal struggle. Like in this amazing poem that has a line in it somewhat like this, "stumbling towards Jerusalem to be born..."
There is a very real persecution of genuine diversion from "onenesses" going on; a deep sense of disquieting as well, as we start to move perpendicular to the clear cut, conscious, willful, understandable, progressive ways and insist on ambivalence, twilight, hands invisible in soil, gut-feelings, and much non-reasonable 'stuff'.
We are emptying the exhibition rooms and don't even have a plan we can show to our contemporaries! In a very real sense we are making it up as we go; and surely most of the difficulties awaiting us on that path and the pain and loneliness there, sometimes, call on everything we've learnt so far, and more. All the systems-think and integral models can't help us here much - except in 'faking' reasonable explanations if they are required from us (and it's quite Ok in my eyes to produce meaningful stories for our friends and acquaintances). It's the real chaos, the unknown abyss that we walk alongside of. And, mind you, I think these are the whereabouts where the "helen-hole" is waiting, to use your metaphor.
Much Love and Joy en route, my dear, I wish...
Does not "many" imply "many"? In other words, I wonder if we kept adding - and - would not that simple little word add dimension to every discussion. Would it not then give manifoldness the expansive view it implies...and oneness, and duality, and form and formless and ..and..and...
Is not our biggest human problem polarization?.. would not the sense of oneness be the way into manifoldness?..life be valued in the maifoldness of its expression?
Mystery is mystery because it is not definable, can not be named, nor known
leaving us in a state of wonder and wondering ever inclusive of yet another imagination of what "might", or could be.
I ask myself as we approach a seemingly "New Year" what is that fearlessness that allows for living on the edge. How can I continue to cultivate unknowing. What within me needs to step back to allow mind mirror's full reflection without the need to grasp or hold on?
Moment to moment standing in fullness of not knowing would be truly BEING.
Wishing you and all the freedom of Being.
So philosophically yes, and from the level of 'soul' it's ambivalent and I cannot answer yes or no. On a deeper gut-level I would say, No!
It was Heraclitus that is supposed to have said, "Conflict is the father of all things." And actually, it would seem to me that polarization is not really a problem, as long as we stick to the non-violent ways of living with conflict. I have learnt quite a few dearly valuable things in my life because someone was passionately differing with my perspective and didn't shun the conflict.
I don't think it's the sense of oneness is a way to respect and see plurality and polyvalent polyverses... a deep, almost gut-level sense of interdependence might do the trick, I don't know.
Maybe being fascinated by the mystery helps; it sure helped me, I think as the "mysterium tremendum et fascinans" has been my motto since at least a decade.
May this young year be full of blissful and deep experiences for you and all of us.
Love, m
