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Diaryland
How an Irrational Existence can be a Good Thing 2005-01-08 @ 10:59 a.m.
It is strange, but I have felt tired often these last few weeks. I haven't done anything that physical to warrant the feeling; perhaps I have been oversleeping. I'd like to think I've been doing a lot in my mind and heart and soul, but maybe I am just flattering myself. This whole break, I have been moved in a way to try and heal some very old wounds. I think I have gotten enough experience in my life now to realize that I am the kind of person who learns, grows and heals gradually. Breakthroughs are a rare thing for me; I tend to have to surround myself with something positive for a long time until I've absorbed enough of it to really make it a part of me. On occasion though, I've done that with negative things too, because on some level I thought they were positive.
The biggest example of this is probably the erratic way I treat religious teachings in my life. I've done it with all the teachings I have been exposed to; the good ones and the bad ones. Deep down I get really scared about subjects of eternity and absolute truth and such. Always afraid I won't measure up I guess. Even in Christianity, which teaches that "Papa does not judge; all judgement is given unto the Son," I still find room to worry. Even if that Son is me, what standards should I judge myself by? Even if there's no condemnation awaiting me after I die, how could I face God knowing I did something that hurt him? Conversely, even given principles like forgiveness and unconditional love, what should we strive to do given that we never can really succeed or fail?
I read something very interesting last night by a Jewish philosopher named Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza was very into enlightenment thought and although it appears he did have some kind of conception and belief in God, his views were heterodox enough to get him excommunicated from the Amsterdam community (surprise - Jews excommunicate too). What really got me in this piece I was reading was the point Spinoza was making about how people try to conceive and explain God and Its works by human standards. Even though he was a strong advocate of reason and science, Spinoza talked a lot about how silly it is for humans to think that God does things based on human reasons. God isn't based on a begining or an end, an object and a desire. God doesn't need anything, so why do we assume that God thinks in terms of goals and objectives like we do? We judge the world with principles like justice, beauty and utility. Yet, why do we assume that the way we see things and how we relate to the universe is necessarily the universal standard?
This really got me thinking, because I have been trying to figure God and life in such a linear way for so long. When I see things in the world I can't cope with - natural disasters and human suffering, like in SE Asia for example - I do what a lot of people are prone to do: I ask "Why, God?" There's an assumption implicit in this question: that God has a purpose in mind as humans conceive of purpose, that this is supposed to make sense on a timeline. Now as Spinoza recalled, many theologians half-answer such questions by saying that we cannot conceive of God's reasons. In this line of thinking, God has good reasons for everything he does - we just don't know all the facts, or our brains can't hold enough to see how some giant cosmic equation works out. But that's just it! That's the mistake: to think that reason as humans conceive of it has anything to do with it!
See, a lot of people get scared because they fear that God might be cruel or life meaningless or things are otherwise hopeless -- but we're still thinking in the wrong way. Life may very well be completely meaningless and irrational, but not in a bad way like we've traditionally thought. Existence as we know it is meaningless and irrational in the sense that its value is not based on reasoning, as humans undestand it. God and creation are superational. Now, I've heard this term before, but I made the same mistake those theologians mentioned earlier did - I thought superational just meant bigger reasons; a rationale I just wasn't or couldn't be aware of. But superational means not based on rationale. The superational is based on something that is greater than reason as humans know it.
Anything we can wrap our minds around and encase with reason is limited in some fashion, so doesn't it follow that reason cannot be the ultimate truth? As humans, we can never fully measure the universe, not because we're weak or the universe is somehow flawed, but because on the ultimate scales, concepts and measurements fade away.
What could be greater than reason? We cannot conceive of it, but we can be inspired by it. God does not have to give us gifts we can understand through a vehicle we can explain in order to bless us. This is why it is more important now than ever in human history to validate and utilize the creative, the intuitive and the mystical aspects of things. Nature was ordained with laws, both mundane and spiritual. The Greeks understood this. But we also have capacities in us to reach out and receive from something we can never grasp. And I suspect that not only will that give us more than reason ever could by itself, but that such a capacity connects us to a sphere and level of life and existence higher than reason could ever fly.
Unconditional love is a Divine truth that was revealed to us in this fashion. Yet, people have struggled with this truth for so long because we can't explain it. How stupid! Its apples and oranges! Its men and women! Night and Day! God can judge our actions, but why do we assume It would be limited to that? I've read before that "we are not human doings, we are human BEINGS". We may never "measure up" on a rational level. Satan has been arguing this since God first created people. But God loves us for who we are, regardless of what we do. We all have worth because God recognizes a worth in us that is deeper than anything we could ever do or not do. We have inherent worth that is beyond the concept of reason.
Unconditional love is a hard thing to practice when you've limited yourself to looking at the world through the eyes of seperation. This is natural; its our lot for having eaten of the forbidden tree to see the world through the eyes of a knowledge of good vs. evil. People have trouble with that story, because they don't understand why God would want to keep something like that from us. Eve looked at the fruit and saw that is was desirable for wisdom. But the thing is, that wisdom is incomplete by itself. There's something greater at work in the world than just good and evil. On some level, they are not fighting it out. And if we ever want to eat of the Tree of Life, we have to realize this and open ourselves to something beyond good and evil and any reasoning we could ever do.
I think this is where mysticism comes in and has a really important role. Because from what a lot of people have told me, Love and Light and all things Beyond Reason can be experienced. And in such a realm where everything is interconnected and the illusion of seperation is gone, to experience something is to become it. I think the best way to appreciate unconditional love is not to reason it, because you'll always second guess it. Its to experience it yourself, and thus become it.
Ah, what a relief that we DON'T have to know it all. The secret of Gnosticism isn't information or rituals or magic words or gestures. Its that our understanding of understanding itself is in error.
"Details in the Fabric" - May 31, 2009
Not So Quick Questions - April 6, 2009
The Morning Stars - Lords of the 15 - April 9, 2009
Sincerity and Faith in Magic - April 10, 2009
Not So Quick Questions (2) - April 14, 2009
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