Spirituality | davidnrahaim

February 13, 2012

It is human not to Know.

Unknowing comes from both Darkness and Light. In this present realm at least Unknowing is not a sign of Evil but instead is a sign of the Divine Unknowable. A resistance to the Unknown is fear and is a sign of the Void. The Void is where Evil dwells because it cannot stand to abide where mystery abides and so Evil hides away its unknowing, not in darkness but in the absence of darkness and light.

The Light is nothing but full. Sometimes there is so much to see in light that to see it all is to be blinded.

Likewise the Darkness is not empty nor does it pretend to be. Indeed, it fills itself with all the mystery it can muster.

Only the Void pretends to hold nothing and be nothing.

Only the Void closes its doors and sits with a stony face saying,

“No. There is nothing here.”

The sad fact is that the longer a Void postures so the truer his words become.

Once, Light and Dark were one and did not oppose one another but did their own complimentary works. It was then that certain knowledge was introduced to our understanding, the knowledge to split the spheres and remove ourselves from the original order.

The Knowledge of Good and Evil is this; one is not capable of evil till one recognizes the capacity for evil. With the capacity of evil comes the actuality of evil. One is not evil till the moment one knows oneself to be evil.

The fact is this; we cannot continue to operate within the concept of light and dark as right and wrong. It is simply that there will be facts we cannot know and we are not meant to know. We are not wrong for our unknowing. Nor are we wrong for our desire to know. The checkerboard floor is unavoidable. We must always make choices and we will never fully know the impact of those choices we make. But this should not stop our movement. It is not one path across the floor we must all follow and any mortal who claims to know such a path is not to be trusted. Neither is it that we must give up our right for choice to some pragmatic leader promising perfect guidance. I get ahead of myself.

The lie is this; our choices will never keep us from evil and so to accomplish anything we must neglect our sense of good and evil (disguised as the disparity between Light and Dark) and give our actions over to the impulses of some earthly (or even some seemingly other-worldly) master who claims to know the path.

Such a leader will strip away our choices while convincing us our choices lead us astray. Such an absence of choice will turn us to slaves against our will once will has been vilified.

There is a path; the straight and narrow we’ve heard so much about. What is this narrow path? How do we find it? I tell you; it is not one of feet but of faith.

The lie is so close to the truth I can hardly differentiate between the two. There must be some Master who exists beyond the Cosmos to guide us to the Truth. This Master is the Divine Will who guides us even as we feel unguided. This is the Divine Unknown and Unknowable for whom we have always and will always diligently search.

Even with this knowledge I find my faith tested but I must remember all is made possible with faith.

Once more I realize I know nothing about the nature of the universe nor the nature of humanity. However, I no longer fear to admit my ignorance. How else will I learn more of the Truth I seek?

I for one will not abandon what it is to be human even if I must experience the full force of the unknown.

February 5, 2012

When we erect our own ashram poles we fail to see the forest for the ‘trees’.

Everyone needs a god, something they can look up to, model themselves after, pray toward. A god is a direction toward which we cast our collected cosmic energy. We all need them because without them we might realize we are clods of mud on a hunk of rock floating in dark space. A god acts as gravity to plant our feet and our hearts. A god acts as sun and water to help us grow.

Now, do not misinterpret my words. These gods are not the whole of the Divine Nature, they are not the Unnamable and Unnamed G_D. They are simply our imperfect replacement of that Divine Ideal Will. Once a human has this realization either consciously or instinctually s/he looks down at the self and begins to pick out individual and personal gods. This is a most dangerous and difficult process but one that will naturally occur. These gods become our own personal biases and ideals, our dreams and our hopes (a suitable term for these personal deities would be concept-gods).

When we see them within ourselves we see them in others. When we embrace them in ourselves we love others for them. When we try to move past them in ourselves we hate them in others.

The creation of an internalized personal deity initially provides power for its creator to achieve a firm grasp on some aspect of life. It is the condensation and internalization of some desire and is much akin to the theory of attraction and intentionality. It is through this manner that self-fulfilling prophecies are made. Such prophecies are dangerous indeed.

It is very easy to become trapped by these created deities. I look at the minor gods of world-myth and see how each one might have been used first as an idea to limit the uncontrolled power of nature. A god of fire might have helped a human overcome his natural fear of fire so that he could take up a lit torch against the darkness of night and the hungry creatures that inhabited such darkness. A god of the sea might have helped another human overcome his fear of the power of the waves and wind and dark depths where aquatic beasts lurk. A god of love might have convinced a man he loved a woman so strongly as to go through all obstacles to win her affection. This is not to say the concept of a god dispelled all danger from these natural forces. In fact, these concept-gods would have impressed a human wielder with a greater understanding and respect for the inherent dangers. A human could utilize these powers because he knew the danger firsthand. I mean to say he internalized the danger and thus could function despite it.

Now we encounter a deeper danger inherent in a concept-god. It is no longer the simple bodily danger involved. Once a concept-god has been internalized it becomes a natural inclination to internalize the power of the god. However, once this concept of power-internalization begins hubris follows close behind and proves to the wielder that he does not truly hold the power over fire, or water, or love within him. He is still affected by externalized forces. Mistakes can still be made, mistakes that may even cost him his life.

The next step in the process is to transfer the internalized concept of power over the element to the internalized concept-god itself. This acts to move any blame of failure from the human to the concept-god. Once the power has been given over to the concept-god a human must entreat the deity for the power. Once the human makes such entreaties he has entered into servitude for a creation of his own mind. He has enslaved himself to a construct that was built initially to instill him with power over nature. This is why the Israelites were admonished to reject the worship of graven images, images of gods that were claimed to hold a power over natural elements, a power that never existed for humanity to begin with (not considering the almighty power of the Unnamable and Unnamed G_D who does not serve us but whom we cannot help but serve).

It becomes a very short step from concept-god to idol, perhaps no step at all. An idol is a personal limitation. It is some perceived and internalized force to make offering toward. This is the case whether or not that offering reaches its intended target.

Beware every outpouring of personal energy. That energy is real and does touch the fabric of the universe. Every movement you make is an offering. You had better know for sure where goes your offering of energy. By our careless movements we feed our limitations; so much worse when we make our movements intentionally with the recognition of our addictions to such limitations.

We may no longer make offerings to gods of fire or water or love but still our energy pours out from us. Still we believe in our own power over the elements. Still we have faith in our own creations.

What comes to your mind when you stop to consider your own outpourings of energy? What offerings do you make and for whom do you make these offerings?

I say this only because it will first take recognition of these personal gods to then find a way to abandon them. We must move through enemy territory to find the other side. Our concept-gods, imbued with our own power, do not wish to be cast aside. They live within us because of the energy and power we give up to them. Like all living entities they do not wish to die and will fight to live within our minds and within our societies.

Perhaps they would have us fight each other to distract us from their existence. Chances are my own personal gods are not your own and that difference will divide and conquer us if perceived negatively. We humans must find a way embrace our own differences and those of our neighbor if we are to survive. It is not enough to be so soft as to allow all possibilities. Neither is it enough to be so rigid as to allow no possibility but your own. There must be a middle ground. We will not find that space until we begin to give up our personal biases and set out in search of real Truth. It is out there even if we are destined to spend our entire existence following its tracks.

Let us take the first step, cease the sacrifices to our personal god, and instead make sacrifices of our gods themselves.

February 2, 2012

A Brief Thank You and Welcome.

It has taken not a few years to collect myself into a package tight enough as to offer myself back to the society that so long has fostered my growth but now that I recognize certain grace-given skills, interests and principles within myself I find I can do nothing but fully commit myself to you all as you have always done for me.

If perhaps you are at all as I am you wake morning after morning, motivate yourself for the day ahead, drink your coffee, read your news source, worry ever so slightly over bills and prospects, wonder at the state of our country and our world, ponder over or ignore whatever new developments occurred during the night, and then proceed outward to handle the inevitable business of daily life. All the while there sits some unnamed nagging in the back of your mind or your heart.

I myself wonder what it will take to reverse the trends of governmental impotence, economic instability, corporate negligence, and societal erosion. These are not issues far removed from our daily reality; or perhaps they are too removed. They certainly have influence upon our day-to-day even as we cannot qualify or quantify how they do so.

More and more do we find we can no longer ignore what we cannot completely see or understand. A gap widens and continues to widen between what any one person can integrate into daily life and what actually has impact upon their daily life. This is not as it was in the past. This is not due to the natural complexity of the universe we have always found ourselves within. That complexity has and always will be handled by what we call “G_D” or the Divine Nature.

This gap we find ourselves straddling now is entirely upon our own heads and due in large part to the machinations of our minds and wills. It is we who have created the system that now threatens to tear us apart. We have created the concepts of money, state, prestige and globalization. We have created concepts that are too grand, too heavy for any one of us to operate effectively. We have becomes slaves to our own concepts of how the world should be.

Perhaps it is in the DNA of mankind to make his self slave to his creations. We created the myth of the lesser gods to grant ourselves power over the elements but then forgot the nature of our creations only to spend countless generations in subservience to them. Now I ask; have we done so again?

If I desire any one thing for humanity I desire that we again take responsibility for ourselves. I desire to have a hand dismantling the walls between our parts that have been erected over the ages.

As the wall of Berlin fell, as the Iron Curtain tore, as the Bamboo Curtain splintered, as the barbed wire of concentration camps across Europe (and here at home in the US of A for the American Japanese) rolled back, as the hundreds of miles of concrete, chain link and Semitic prejudice should now crumble between the beleaguered Palestinians and their Israeli neighbors and brothers so too do I wish to see the walls fall that stand between our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and our souls. And not only between our parts but from between our whole beings and this vast world around us; that which we have created and that which we have not.

I must add that mutually respected boundaries are good and necessary. We exist as both humanity and as human individuals. These two modes of being, while different, are inseparable. I do not wish to dispel these natural boundaries but rather to uncover the artifices that keep us isolated, afraid and defensive. This is the difference between the concepts of sacred and profane space (a discussion for a later entry).

I have placed a long and arduous project before us and it is one I perhaps will see little progress toward within my lifetime. Perhaps it is a project that is impossible before the ends of time and space but still, I dream of free communication and cooperation. I dream of the end to greed and tyranny and fear and so I must do my small part toward that end.

It is with that goal in mind that I take a first step forward with this blog. I intend it to be a discussion of the interplay between spirituality (the workings of the soul), philosophy (the workings of the mind), and politics (the workings of the body). I intend to find the lines between these spheres; that which defines them as they are and that which unifies them as conceptual realities.

It is for you I do this and without you I cannot hope to accomplish a single thing. I welcome comments, suggestions and opposing view points. I cannot hope to know more without knowing you. I do hope there will be no subject we cannot breach and I plan to assemble as much information and as many ideas as I can upon these digital pages.

Thank you again for your contribution to this life we live. I am excited to see what will come to pass.

~ DNR

Tag: Spirituality

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