Just thought I’d link to >this< again. I refuse to participate in any rituals that are just bullshit simulacra substituted for real democracy. I thought about voting Barr-Sheehan as a symbolic fuck-you to the establishment, but honestly, that was mostly because I thought the Peace & Freedom Party could potentially become the (very rough) analog of SYRIZA if it got the grassroots organized into coherent enough entities. I think Stein is great, don’t get me wrong, but there’s just no way I’m going to lend even a shred of tacit credibility to the system unless I can clearly be exploiting that system for Marxist-revolutionary purposes. As always I remain open to arguments, i.e. I remain open to changing my mind (as I have many times since January). Anyway, here’s a quote from my personal heroine:
“Thereby the Bolsheviks solved the famous problem of “winning a majority of the people,” which problem has ever weighed on the German Social-Democracy like a nightmare. As bred-in-the-bone disciples of parliamentary cretinism, these German Social-Democrats have sought to apply to revolutions the home-made wisdom of the parliamentary nursery: in order to carry anything, you must first have a majority. The same, they say, applies to a revolution: first let’s become a “majority.” The true dialectic of revolutions, however, stands this wisdom of parliamentary moles on its head: not through a majority, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority – that’s the way the road runs.”
I feel it will be best for me to write about this here. Over the past couple days, meditation has intensified for me. It’s my belief that I’m reaching states deeper than I have previously; I have only read about these states.
I have several times mentioned that I am consciously, deliberately reforming my psychology. I felt a lot of discomfort around the fact that even my beneficial actions and my deliberate ‘staying-in-alignment’ had an exhausting tension mixed in the phenomenal quality.
During the first of these meditation experiences, I identified what I hated about my motivational patterning, the cause of the exhaustion. I came to fully realize the full phenomenal nature of the ‘tension’: a vague physical and emotional pain around the heart radiating out through my upper left chest.
Deeper into the meditation, I chose for the pains to stop and to no longer precede my decisions to act/to consciously begin thinking a certain way.
Somewhere (deeper?) in the meditation experience, waves of a deep physical-emotional relief overtook that area of my chest. I then began to recall the person/places/things/situations under which I understood them to arise: I had the wave of relief wash over each at each recollection; I did this very deliberately in an attempt to ‘wash’ away this painful tension-patterning. It worked.
But the relief-waves stopped, and I suppose this is due to the fact that I was focusing intently on the negative tensions in my effort to expunge it. However, they now are not a definite part of my experience, except when my focus lowers to that experiential vicinity.
And this brings me to the other event. I commute 2-3 hours a day, and I use that time to reflect. This morning I used the time to meditate. This was the first time I could actually assume a distal perspective relative to ego. I was able to truly observe egoic reaction, emotion, and sensation—and then let it fade away to release.
These tensions are gone and I have complete control over them if they arise.
Without getting too heavily into Jungian woo-woo, I’ll say I have been meditating on how to moment-by-moment get myself back into positive focus in a way better than before and this includes, I think, how to more beneficially live out and express my dominate archetype(s).
I have made a mind-boggling amount of progress since I started this whole process.
But, despite a fuck ton of good things and the whoa-that’s-definite-progress, I feel myself flittering around like a fucking half dead mosquito trying to regain the positive focus I had almost (I thought) thoroughly inculcated into myself.
Doing better. Getting better. Feeling some relief at writing this. I know when climbing, reaching a new higher point sometimes means you have to take a moment to regain balance. That’s okay.
to my readers & for myself my own and this blog’s steadfast advocacy of a reasonable and robust spirit of nonviolence. I subscribe to an ethic of nonviolence, and for me this also includes both not-endorsing violent means and not-advocating violence. I do not, however, project my personal ethic onto anyone as situations are diverse and understandings of the term are many.
By ‘violent’ I mean any action(s) causally essential to direct bodily harm not within an application of a moderately construed notion of self-defense. I extend the term in my own usage to include those actions which reliably and empirically lead to bodily harm (e.g. arson).
A nearby approximation of how I understand nonviolence can be found in the words and writings of Martin Luther King Jr.
I can tell this week is going to be, um, searching for a positive word, interesting. I look forward to and fully embrace every opportunity for growth. I set my intention now to ‘stay in alignment’ as all the cool new age kids are saying nowadays. Means to achieve this end include but are not limited to:
stretching after working out
indiscriminate consumption of garlic (yes, I’ll eat raw garlic whenever my body starts feeling overwhelmed…seriously, it will cure everything)
meditation
moar meditation
sleep (going to bed right after I write this post)
‘pure positive focus’
moar teal scott (my go-to youtube guru, i’m seriously in love)
My “dessert” tonight after I complete all my work will be re-formatting my blog, reblogging a bunch of awesome links, and finally writing that introduction post I promised awhile back
Verse is dangerous, whether koan or in meter, because the mind tries to decipher what the heart already knew.
I know enough only to know what I do not know.
The wick is spent only with the oil, we know the Lord works miracles, He is our shamash when we decide to serve Him.
Listen to me, teacher, in the cries of a young child there are lessons no instruction can impart.
The light of the moon is now dim, but it will be full very soon.
Tonight is the eve of the feast of Assunta, ya walidata-l-ilah
I yell, am brash, angry and impertinent, arrogant as I prance in public, but in this is only the tantrum of a child, shielding himself from the dangers of ignorant precocity. Psychics and sages, men of art and women of science, prophets for our time, kings of commoners and lords of the elite, all greeted me as I began my journey. I value openness; but I hide everything in complete transparency.
In anguish I grow, in hope I proceed.
I know (now) poets are philosophers, so not knowing I wait, I ponder, I listen.
Still I am trying to hear Yunus:
“A single word can brighten the face of one who knows the value of words. Ripened in silence, a single word acquires a great energy for work.
War is cut short by a word, and a word heals the wounds, and there’s a word that changes poison into butter and honey.
Let a word mature inside yourself. Withhold the unripened thought. Come and understand the kind of word that reduces money and riches to dust.
Know when to speak a word and when not to speak at all. A single word turns the universe of hell into eight paradises.
Follow the Way. Don’t be fooled by what you already know. Be watchful. Reflect before you speak. A foolish mouth can brand your soul.
Yunus, say one last thing about the power of words — Only the word “I” divides me from God.”
I cannot save the world. But the Ummah of love, of Allah, of light grows!— there is nothing to save within the Ummah: in our Union similar hearts bring Jannah to the world, together we will make the Sangha catholic. We brought Heaven with us when we were placed on earth, so that we may continue to plant The Garden
Do not fatigue of the mundane, because only there are the miracles. Only in the child’s naiveté can a wise teacher be tempted to hope,
Be tempted! Assunta rises on the morrow, do not mistake the dormition for death! She wishes to make love to you, lust for her
I wish for you only your Assunta, whether she accompanies you in the desert’s wind or in the companionship of your bed. In either, the ecstasy will be yours (and hers)
Remember that God granted Adam the joy of Eve only after he tended The Garden. Be not the barren fig tree; fruits bursting with divinity & love manifest desires Jannah within we must cultivate, could the just man let his wife go hungry?
I wondered once whether you were mad, but only in the way I wonder if I myself am now mad
I am male and I am female As a woman, I embrace you As a man, I understand you
In the torpor of the barely crescent moon you shot at me roses. They made the sunlight glint with an aura of perspicacity, reflections of a hazy bliss, the ether of the divine
I have never touched you, seen you, spoken to you, or laughed with you yet these are the coefficients multiplying my love for you! If I see you, I will embrace you, To hold you would be to weep with joy As precious as wisdom you are to me
Long have I sobbed thinking no one could hear me The ascent of Sinai tempts one to bitterness for the loneliness of its path makes the desires all the stronger but disinterest clouds the sight of satisfaction. Only a chalice of divinity could satisfy our thirst, we must sense that intense blush before companionship can grow, did not the others turn away from the face of Moses?
I do not always understand what you say, when making love not every groan is noticed, (The wick is spent only with the oil, we know the Lord works miracles, He is our shamash when we decide to serve Him.) but we do not burn in this life in vain, our flame radiates in hues of purple or blue in anguish we grow, in hope Allah will cultivate Bursting pomegranates will be our fruit, withered figs of the past long forgotten—
JOY is our birthright! If Allah does not surprise with delight, you are not listening! I am young now I was placed on this earth with a searing image of beauty, (our hearts may be similar, but our pain is The same) to make mistakes now, to be foolish now. Everything has a price in this world, and sometimes the price is to give up forgetfulness of what Allah can do… (be tempted)
My heart quickens at the thought of you, brother, whom I love, manifest the image of beauty few are witness to continue in love, strive in hope periods of anguish will frequent you but their intensity and duration will rapidly diminish -joy will abound! (be tempted)
We labor in the creation of a Sangha of Roses, Assunta sleeps there, waiting for you to make love to her (be tempted) do not mistake her dormition for death!
May your prayers arise to Allah as incense, and the scent of her Rose assume you into heaven. Listen to me, teacher, Assunta draws near to you I know this because she whispered to me once,
To be an analytic philosophy student post-radicalization…
I am on a roller coaster in radical-left theory land…
….I have no idea where I could end up at this point
My favorite author by far is Rosa Luxemburg (big post on her coming soon)
her arguments convinced me to be a (revolutionary) socialist
naturally, I explored her ideas first. Her criticisms of Lenin seemed to me quite persuasive, now I’m determined to get the essential literature re: Leninism under my belt.
I’ve been trying to at the same time read a lot of eastern philosophy—this will sound strange but I’m kinda frantically trying to get as much radical left and eastern philosophy read before I go back to the labor camps school…
In the Dharmic traditions, the core notion of dharma seems, to me, almost directly analogous to Aristotelian notions of teleology. Moreover, I’m finding literature where I damn near suspect the authors are letting a western, classical education deeply influence their presentation of these decidedly eastern ideas. So to what extent (if any) the similarities I’m finding are accidents or corruptions is unclear to me.
I wanted to do more reading of secondary literature re: Averroes too, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Also, in my head I had sketched out a whole mini research project for myself after I went to the logic/linguistics/philosophy conference earlier in the summer. I don’t know if I’m going to have time for that either….
Honestly, there can’t be much else more important than figuring out where I am politically, especially now that revolutionary fever is sweeping the entire planet.
I won’t say too much about where I am in my political thought just yet (other than the fact that I’m a Luxemburg fanboy at the moment) because I assume it will all morph as I catch up on all my reading.
Now is the time for fluidity and evolution, we are living in exciting days! That’s what I’m telling myself at least, because honestly under this pile of Marxist literature I feel like….this….
a love note/letter, the very first one I ever received, received in an actual romance that is. Too strange. And funny. It feels like past life regression except the only startling realization is that those memories are from this life. Holy Lord Krishna, we were dumb. I consider him my best friend and a de facto member of my family now.
