Hegel, Moksha Yoga, Perception and Rollins

Bear with me while I take all of the above and attempt to cohesively unite them into a single, solid point. Maybe not a fully solid point, but they're all things I would like to elucidate on, so I'm assuming that they all have some sort of commonality.
Firstly, Hegel and yoga. The connection between the two isn't really anything to do with anything Hegel said and what is common in Yogi spiritualism, but rather the approach I take to both, specifically, my ability to understand how well I grasp either.
Today I was reading an overview of Hegel, and one of his points was that truth is subjective, and my first thoughts were "Well, either that's an objective statement, and inherently self-contradictory, or that point is also subjective and therefore doesn't actually have lasting merit, ergo it's not really worth worrying about." They weren't that concise, but that was the general thought process (I feel a need to point out how long the thought process took, as though the efficiency with which my brain connects ideas has some sort of merit, or is anything to take pride in. Silly me.).
After I had that, I felt a little bit uncomfortable with it. If I, an informal student of philosophy, can read the viewpoint of a fully recognized philosopher and find a flaw in it, it is much more likely that I don't understand it, than that the argument is in fact invalid. This reminded me of yoga, which is quite challenging. A lot of the poses are quite strenuous and moderately 'painful,' but one that I preferred was 'downward facing dog' because it was simple and a good resting place. As it turns out, I was doing it wrong (my butt was improperly positioned), and when I actually do it correctly, it's as stretching as all the other poses. As such, I realized that I can troubleshoot my way into most of the poses by just finding a way to get to the maximum amount of stretching. If it's difficult to maintain, it's probably correct.
I think my understanding of philosophy is correlative: if I can easily dismantle it, it's because I'm not dismantling the real thing. So I'm just dismantling my version of it, not the actual thing. So, if I can push myself into a position where I can defend and criticize a philosophical school with expertise and ease, then I'd say I have a much fuller grasp than simply criticizing.
An issue with Christianity these days is that it's desperate. It has a lot of criticism, because, well, it sucks. It's archaic and it's been twisted so thoroughly from the biblical basis that it's unrecognisable (or, conversely, the basis has been so twisted that finding it is like burning a house down then constructing the attic from the ashes; possible, just takes very interesting, non-linear thinking). Because it's so desperate for validation, a lot of Christianity seems predisposed to entertaining new notions and idea's to two ends: either so that it can support Christianity, or it can be disproved in a way that supports Christianity. Since other things exist to prove Christianity as right and valid and such, the actual point of these other works gets lost, and it all becomes a matter of appeasing an ideology. I'm not sure if this is something that most people would recognize or agree with, but it was certainly something I was implicitly taught to do.
Enter Rollins. In his book The Orthodox Heretic, he goes after the hypocrisy of the church right in the first chapter, and he does so very, very concisely. A lot of his work however, is incredibly academic, and his language matches it. So, for people who spend their lives doing other things (such as engineering or nuclear mechanics), his writing really isn't the easiest to get through. So, in summary, amazing points, heady language. Not verbose, simply thick.
However, in reading criticisms online, people don't go after his direct idea's about what Jesus was really advocating and how the church should be. They go after his theistic beliefs (and how unconcerned he is with advocating an absolute existence of god, or the resurrection as a historic event) or his use of language. Never the bits that are the actual point of his work. The critics have sought to understand only to the point where they can argue, and as such have missed the heart of his work.
I feel as though Rollins is cumulative, but to attempt to summarize I would say his basic message is more or less "Following Jesus makes a lot of sense, however, the majority of people who say they follow him don't, but it doesn't really matter what you say, it's how you act."
I have of course, skimmed over a lot (A LOT) of his theology and philosophy, but that seems to be an underlying theme through-out his work. But people ignore it, and go for the things that can be criticised (things, that with a proper understanding of Rollins, stop mattering, and as such, he doesn't bother to correct the critics).
I'm being presumptious, but I feel as though it's because his actual idea's are too uncomfortable for western Christianity to openly deal with; hence why 'celebrity' pastors like Mark Driscol and his ilk haven't publicly defamed him, because to do so would give him a wider audience. With Bell, a wider audience is fine because the paradigm he operates under is similar enough to Piper et al that Bell can be criticised and people can sleep comfortably.
Rollins though.
To simply say he is wrong is to miss the point, and to say he is wrong is to give him exposure to people who might agree with him and start acting off their convictions. A scary thought to those in power. A scary thought to anyone really. Imagine if we all lived not only in perfect alignment with our convictions, but if our convictions were in perfect alignment with what was right.
Sensational.

respectively i don't

Blue sky feel like maybe there’s something

Something not smothering, maybe slightly covering,

Like a burial cloth, or a blue sky at night

When there’s depth between the stars, but not too much

I don’t want to fall forever

Never would I have, nor have you

Understood what you have said, nor have i

Respectively

These words leave my mouth and travel through the byzantine

But it would seem they never make it through all the way

Is there a minotaur in your ear?

Following these dead waves as they pass from sound into silence heard only by neuron receptors that shoot off sparks in ways that I simply don’t understand

I don’t

And you don’t

See:

We’re all so scared that on some level we’re going to resemble the other next to us

And if a similarity breaks through and bleeds to the eyes of all around,

We’ll lose a piece of the esteem we beg for, starve for

There’s an art in becoming yourself, do it well enough they’ll want an encore

But what we fail to see:

In the words of whichever said it first, and whoever has yet to sing themselves to sleep by it:

I am me and you are

So can we admit that lonely exists?

It exists in a way that brings us together,

it exists in a way that rips us so far apart that Altar and Vega will feel consoled

Can we admit that somewhere in trying to define ‘me’ we lost ‘us,’

And that sometimes we’re too afraid of nothing to do anything about it,

I heard about a man who carried fear on his back, and mystically did something with it

I don’t believe it, but I love the idea

I don’t believe many things anymore, but I love the ideas

Concision and Verbosity

OF LATE, I've found myself thinking myself into paradoxical corners. Things like "there are no absolutes" and such pop up in my head, then it's sheer existence shoots itself down. I desire to arrive at conclusions that are clearly correct, yet I'm finding flaws in everything I think. Maybe because I'm too involved, but some people can give opinions and views on things, and when I mull them over in my head, they seem fool proof.
What am I missing that keeps me from being a god of ideas? Why can I not let brilliance flow from me like carbon dioxide.
I'm also noticing a divide between the people I know. It seems to be age related. I think those that are older have stopped, in spite of how much they will claim otherwise, searching. They have arrived. In many ways, their journey is over and now they are simply exploring where their minds have landed. But for me and my kind, my age at least, there is some desperation to our searching: not because we are longing for a place to stop, but because we are terrified there is one.
I understand it's impractical, but I want my thoughts to be infinite. I hate the idea of settling, of having a fixed thought process. I want to be able to shuffle between various philosophies, dance with the Greeks, laugh in Italian, banter in French, be drunk in German, soak all of the knowledge in.
But things seem to be so binary, and it's disheartening. As infinite as things are, they seem to be dualistic inherently. I want not the middle space, but the area away from the tension. I want to play the tension.
I want to never stop learning.
I want to write without resorting to pretty sounding sentences to mask the point that this is no longer neccesarily supportable, but simply enjoyable. Hopefully.

I desire concision, but the freedom to be verbose.

Metaperception

The idea of 'meta' is something that's been a mainstay in my brain for the last 8 months or so. More or less, it's the next degree of something within itself, so meta-conversation would be talking about talking, and meta-emotion would be how you feel about how you feel. A more common example is metadata, which is data about data (which could be the information about a song that is attached to it, such as artist, album, genre, etc).


I know a guy, and he is fascinating because of the apparent disconnect between how I view him, and how I think he views himself. Last week I was writing, and a friend offered that I write about someone I consider weaker than myself. Here's an excerpt of said writing exercise:

It was as though all of the things that most people consider helpful were inherently awful. His eyes would seem to show some sort of interest, and indeed his ears were perched in your direction, but they were not listening to the big picture. The grand scope of what was being said would be blotted out as he listened directly to the syntax, searching for that loophole that would allow him to take and de-construct what it was you had been saying. Inasmuch as he enjoyed this thoroughly, he had never stepped outside of his head since his first year of post-secondary education. He had never grown to realize that people do not, in fact, want to be proven wrong all the time; indeed, they usually hated him for it. Being so self-absorbed did not leave him times for those musings, and he contented himself by remembering all the brilliance that had spewed from his mouth, a roaring flood of sewer water. 
 Currently, a friend was trying to explain to him why the girl he had been so enamoured with for the last two months was, in fact, not the correct girl for him. He latched onto the word correct, and went on a very verbose, but substance lacking tirade about how ‘correct’ implied that there was an ‘incorrect’ girl for him, but that all relationships had the opportunity to work, if only those involved in the relationship would actively work towards it. He had, of course, ignored his own advice in the last three relationships he had been in, and had ended things as soon as the initial thrill was gone. “It’s just not worth working on if you don’t feel anything, you know?” He had shared with a friend at the bar after his latest relationship had dumped him and he tried desperately to rationalize it as something he wanted.


He was the kind of attractive that had to learn to be content with existing very heavily in the ‘cute’ arena. While there was a certain, slim degree of rugged sexiness in him, it emanated more from his smile, and orbited around the idea of something fun, as opposed to the powerhouse of raw, masculine sexuality that he considered himself. His height placed him squarely as slightly below average, and as such he had spent far too much time reading things he didn’t understand, trying to bulk up his brain to make up for the lack of physical strength he thought someone of his level of gorgeous should have. Not only did he not understand the texts he perused, he did not understand that he did not understand. Indeed, he thought he had an expert, natural grasp of transcendentalism, existentialism and a host of other ism’s that had far too many subtle nuances for someone as obtuse as him to grasp.
He was, however, perfectly amiable, and because he considered himself to be a scholar, he thought his words of wisdom would be beneficial for those going through issues, and so he listened attentively to people’s problems. People thought he was interested in them, not in expressing his self-assumed brilliance, and so they would often come to him with their struggles; this was only when these peoples real friends were predisposed with things such as performing CPR or climbing Vesuvius. He was not aware of this, and assumed that everyone loved his sage like advice (which he rarely gave, because after listening for thirty minutes about someone’s life, he was usually far too lost in thoughts of how excellent his response would be that he usually forgot to respond). People were unaware of this, and assumed he had a genuine interest, so the cycle persisted.

I'm aware my view of him isn't correct, in the same way that any view of anyone isn't correct. It can be grossly incorrect, but never perfectly correct (a paradox, but such is life). I like to think the disconnect between how I view him viewing himself and how he views himself and how he views me viewing him is where our relational awkwardness comes from. In my head, he views himself as some learned scholar who is a well of wisdom and advice, whereas I actually view him as a self-inflated pompous ass who doesn't know that he doesn't know too much. I feel as though he views me as an ignorant kid who thinks he knows too much, and has much to learn from him, and indeed, he probably could teach me things. Whether or not I care about them is a different story. 


Between heavily different metaperceptions of each other is such an interesting place to be. Not necessarily with him, but rather with people who have a bearing on my life, like parents and friends.This whole mess of perception, and how we perceive others perception of us is such an interesting realm. In all honesty, I find myself comfortable with people who I think think that I can help them, that I am interesting. If I think that someone thinks that I am boring, or silly, or over-thought, I don't have much of a desire to rectify their perception or prove myself to them. This isn't an absolute rule, but a generalization. I can think of a few relationships that don't operate from this paradigm, but also a lot that do. 


I suppose I could try operating under his presumed perception of me, and ask him for advice and wisdom, but I've heard his advice to others, and its not my cup o' tea. To have a relationship with him would involve a huge expenditure of patience. If I need a frustrating challenge, I'll pursue something with him. For now, there are other people to foster (see what I did there?). 


 There is no real thesis to this, but that's alright. I'm discovering that I use this blog mostly as a public journal that I can reread and use a reference for things that I was thinking and idea's I was working through. So, if someone else did read this, welcome to my mind (also, if you did read this, you are not the person I was talking about. I'm not someone he looks to for affirmation, so there's no reason for him to want me to want him, so he wouldn't have read this).

All This Time, I've Been Learning How To Die

It seems things are now so different for you and I Sometimes I sit and stare at you and wonder what the hell was going on last year And I wonder how the syntax of our motions ever aligned theres my waking and my resting mind, and maybe we rested together, but i can't imagine us working in harmony, no, our keys never match, or maybe we're both so locked to the perspectives we hold that the thought of ripping ourselves out of this angle hurts too much it hurts too much to follow through to reset this compass, find a new north and find a new 180 degrees so we stay in each others peripherals, unaware of who is where in each other do I rest where in you where you rest in me? Yesterday I was driving with a friend, going on about some quasi-meta-one-more-prefix-philosophical approach to spirituality, and she interrupted me with the comment that she loved how my walk with G-d was so focused on the intellectual side. I bristled. For two reasons. I responded that it wasn't a walk, it was a wrestling match. And then I didn't go into the emotional doubts that often masquerade themselves as intellectual issues, and are expressed as such, but in reality are anything but. Later on that night, I was talking to the husband over some surprisingly tasty McCafe products, and I extended the metaphor slightly; I realized I'm not wrestling with G-d per se: it's more of an intricately choreographed post-modern self-referential dance. At time's our steps seem out of place to the music, and the dancers tackle each other and fumble their way through simple steps. But these are planned to give more beauty and impact to whent the symphony swells and everything fits for a fleeting moment of sensory perfection. Then the chaos begins anew. Something else I enjoy about this metaphor is the difference between dancing and walking. In a walk, there is a destination, an external goal, and a measurable way of tracking success: we started here, we are going here, we are going this speed. In a dance, it's more of an internal journey for those watching, with no real discernibility towards success aside from general feelings or moods given off by the audience. The dancers express, and the watchers are moved (or unmoved) depending on the motions of those on the stage. I often feel like the things I deal with are only fully realized as overcome or worthwhile when they are shared with someone who responds. If I come up with a theory, or struggle with a concept and arrive at a workable end, but I don't share it with anyone, the entire process is incomplete. There is a certain catharsis and enjoyability to the struggle, but it's the sharing that gives it completion and meaning. Much like dance. A dancer may enjoy the freedom that seclusion affords, but the stage is where the magic happens, and the real soul is bared. And as such, that is how I feel I interact with G-d: a violent, twirling, dizzying, chaotic, beautiful, artistic, sensual yet measured mode of infinite expression and definition.

mewithoutYou - Every Thought A Thought Of You

My best friend recorded a cover of mwY's song Every Thought A Thought Of You. It's quite chill and fantastic. I definately recommend clicking the link below and checking it out:

http://bandplayscaleb.tumblr.com/post/8857019452/so-my-best-friend-recorded-a

Last Night

I got a job as a music reviewer, and last night when I was supposed to be reviewing an EP by Forest Swords (quite good, if you like ambient music), I wrote this instead:


I am never quite sure how to start a novel. I’ve tried, many times, but the words can only flow for so long before I realize I don’t have a plot. I get so lost in joy of the medium that I totally forget that there needs to be a meaning as well. Even now, in these self-aware meta ponderings, I have lost a sense of direction and meaning.

I want to create. Put forth something beautiful, something staggering. Something that will nudge a column that holds up your idea of self, and suddenly you’ll be unstable, ever so slightly. Not because it’s unnerving, or shocking, or disconcerting, because these days that’s the easy way out. No. I want to write something that will leave you lost simply because it is so beautiful the only way it can be experienced is through a loss of self, a death of what you know, and a rebirth of the way you view the world.

That is what I would like to do. But, while I am not at a loss for words, I am at a loss for what those words should be about. I have often heard it said that things are often heard to have been said, but I feel as though the idiom is a dying breed. These things we hear said, we’ve only read them; echoes of a decade that has moved into offices and cubicles. And us, this new generation, inheriting their figures of speech, their ideas on figure, their ideas on our ideas; often the power of a generation is spoken about, the potential, the ability to affect such change that the children us children give birth to will tell their children to be like us. We imagine ourselves to be models of the future: the superman. As did those before us, as will those after.

I’ve often heard it said that to the victor goes, not only the spoils, but also the history. But what of in the battle of self? You will inevitably win, and remember the war of becoming so very differently than it really was. And what of our rebellion against time? Nothing stops the hands of the clock, they massage their face in an endless cycle, and we are terrified voyeurs to it’s autoerotic leanings. Like children drinking rum, we’re all just toying with things we’re not old enough for. First substance, now ideas: We hold justice on such a lofty pedestal, but that’s all we seem to do. Hold it. Look at it. Sometimes we pick it up to see how it feels, but it usually just sits there.

Morality is the new adolescent. Everywhere, clustered, but entirely misunderstood.

I’ve decided into crafting adages. Writing is masturbation. Everything is masturbation.