Ich Liebe!
Ich Liebe!
Ich Liebe!

Good and Evil

As dark music rings out pretentiously it waits, pretending to know pain, yearning to make itself authentic with such inauthentic desperation. Ravakos takes us to a place that is ourselves. We make ourselves the devil, out of boredom perhaps? Or fear? Or desire? We long to feel such intensity that we are possessed and out of our minds.

Masava makes us the king of our inner hierarchies, and so gives us more power than the greatest earthly king. When we become masters of ourselves we reign supreme, even in the midst of submission to Him Most Holy. Ravakos cries for a loss of control, for ecstasies and sublimnities which dissolve into us and make us other, which push and pull upon us and carry us on their tides. Ravakos is the enemy of solitudes and of the differentiated man.

All things in awareness are justified. This is the meaning of sovereignty. When we take full responsibility for all the consequences of our being and in our being we are pure, then we cannot be condemned. Even Masava cannot take from us our deeds or the truth that rings out from us like the purest light when we know and are. When we truly know what it is we have done and when we do what we do under the burning, piercing, cold light of that awareness, then there can be no wrong, there can be no shame – because if there is wrong, all is wrong. If there is shame, then all is shame. In totality there is only what is, to proclaim how totality should be is an affront to Masava, a claim that you can better his creation.

Yet we should not allow this to make us callous to suffering. Our anguish in the face of the pains of others is as much a part of truth as the beauty of the sun on dew. Our terrors and hatreds are as much a force for good as our loves and joys. Masava would have us struggle and strive in this world, not lay down content and complacent. Masava would have us seek to forge ourselves in his example and gather our power to make dominions on this earth beautiful and strong.

Strength is no shame, but the righteous love of strength should also be no excuse for contempt for weakness. Weakness is not to be imitated, but it is a fact and it is possessed of us all, though in unequal quantities. None of us have the power, knowledge and self possession of Masava: though all should strive for as much. Weakness is not to be despised, but recognised and accounted for. Not to be exploited for evil but exploited for good. No-one frets at the idea of exploiting their strength, but who would exploit their weaknesses? Yet to do so is a profound step on the path to sovereignty.

On this earth we are possessed with a magnificent creative power and a terrible destructive one and unlike what we have been taught by the false god Ravakos both are good in their place. What is evil, and the only evil, is ignorance and ecstasy: not knowing and not being.

Today I am struck by... the sense of nothingness in life.
I mean, that all this, is not important. But pretending its important, getting worked up about some grand plan, some idea, something that you pretend really really matters, makes life more fun.
Also, the idea that, the people who will win the game of life, are the people who are most adamant its not a game, because they will never be tempted to just flop down on the bed and giggle at the absurdity of it all, they will be driven with a fury because to them it is vital.
So it is more prudent to, most of the time, allow yourself to "take life seriously". A lot of people don't get me on this topic, I seem very serious somehow, and very passionate and even fanatical about some things. Its all just a game to me though really, I find the whole life thing utterly amusing. We all play our roles, none of which is better than the other. The killer and the killed are both getting to play a part. I know I say this from a privileged position, that I risk insensitivity to others pain, when they are in the thick of it taking it seriously.
I know and understand the risk there. I want to make sure to remain compassionate. Even so, I think ultimately, its alright, all of it.

Eternally Temporal

Kiss your death mask:
Drying your lips on absorbent clay,
Draws your lifewater out.
Crumbly your visage of eternity,
With your moistening it's
Temporally fixed.

Fire and Ice

I am forever torn between the ideals of on the one hand stillness and beauty watching all the frenzied motion of decay with a sympathetic dispassionate wisdom and the ideal of the vicious cauterizing implement that cuts out decay without fear of the stench of burning flesh or fear of the wrath of a body that could not accept it had to lose a limb. Brave violence which cares not for itself or for reputation but only to do what is honourable, thoughtless bright action.

peace is tyranny and neither war nor tyrrany are wholy bad.

You know when you feel a sort of sad numbness. Like sadness is water in an estuary, and you are the beach as it washes over you, reseeds, washes over you again, like the tides. And as it washes you it soaks pebbles which glisten in a melancholy way and there is a sense of eternity and a sense of being a part of something so much greater than you that you are nothing at all and something so much greater than you that if it cared about anything at all you could never understand. Even so you play your part, unable to do otherwise, but also, not concerned to. The waves lap over you, colouring your sands and leaving salt behind evaporating in cold winter sun.
And there, despite the wholeness of it, the sense of utter wholeness in eternity there is at the same time the sense of utter solitude, both in eternity and temporally. Feeling like a rock in space surrounded by emptiness but fixed in your orbit.
With a cold warmth.

Death to the Demoness Allegra Geller

I like the film eXistenZ. Ok. It's a bit cheesy. Ok, the ending... well its not that surprising. Despite this I think its a great film. Basically its about a biotechnological virtual reality game and the difficulties effective VR involve. Not a new concept, but done well.
It reminds me of a series I watched lately - Serial Experiments Lain, an anime series about the effects of the internet on ones sense of reality. I find it chilling because by taking the commonplace to the extreme (a tried and true method of storytelling) it demonstrates very well the dilemmas of modern information technology.

In eXistenZ there are people fighting against this technology, because of the damage they think it will do to peoples idea of reality, what reality is, the harm they think that will do. It struck me though, I don't think that would ever really happen. We are gradually creating such a huge bubble of constant - inescapable - propaganda for ourselves as well as for others - and no-one is shooting anyone over it. No-one is taking anyone to account. No-one is even outraged, though a small few may be saddened. The internet may be the latest thing in this process, but it started long ago. Ironically the "rural idiocy of peasant life" was actually a good defense against the process. Urbanisation and mass education were not liberators but homogenisers, making people conform to singular standards and people conformed to singular standards were easier to control. Now don't get me wrong, I am no luddite, but I can't help but feel uneasy about the route we go down with this. We replace real satisfaction more and more with simulated - or if not - with removed and alienated satisfaction. We replace real experience with experience from behind glass. Instead of picking up signals from our eyes and processing them in our minds we are picking up signals with our phones/computers/televisions and then picking them up with our eyes - its more removed and so there is more room for error and distortion and on a two dimensional screen - it looks the same from every angle - but even in 3D-VR, its still the same experience for everyone who plays the game.
The better it gets the worse it gets too because the more realistic it seems, the less we feel a sense of dissatisfaction that its not real, the more it simulates the fulfillment of our complex needs, the less we seek real fulfillment of those needs.
My dad would say "so? if we can simulate perfect fulfillment why get fulfillment from the physical rather than the digital world" - well, its because we don't just crave fulfillment to be fulfilled. We crave it because we over generations adapted to survive - our feelings of need all come from something that helped us survive and we adapted to a world where gadgets that could make us feel good weren't distorting things. Its like that "Second Life" thing. I went in there once, walked around, and saw that there were people who had put genuine work into creating homes and spaces for themselves there. Games within games, games that simulate life but with a bit more buzz because people don't have that in their real lives anymore because even ordinary life is a bit of a game, alienated from the real process of life. But online, in all kinds of MMORPG's and Multiplayer Sims and the like - there are people living out these lives, building homes, farming, earning imaginary money and buying imaginary weapons who's attributes are not decided by their innate nature but because a programmer has chosen them to have attributes - houses made of pixles - am I the only one who finds it horrifying, people invest time and energy and get satisfaction building a technically valueless house (that people pay real hard earned money for!) that exists only in the form of data? That data could be anything. Its no achievement to make it into something. It's not like building real things.

I am not sure even what it is that disturbs me about it.

In awareness all things are united. In will all things are differentiated.

I am not a Christian.

I am growing a little too attracted to eastern orthodoxy, for one I am not a Christian, for two I have to be careful that I might be attracted to it because it is exotic rather than because it seems to present an articulation of truth.
Let us be honest, I only know about it from what's written in English, I am sure Protestantism looks very noble and interesting to people for whom there are not the motive of large bodies of criticism against it in their native languages. So I must do more research.
And also really get my head round the idea of what a Christian is.

I know some people who NEED to read

I know more than a few people who desperately need to read the section Dissolution of Consciousness and Relativism in Ride the Tiger.
Especially the chapter's "the procedures of science" and "covering up nature".