Emotion-vs-Thinking

THIS EMOTION -vs- THAT THOUGHT

The path to morality is not the territory

~Soph Laugh

"There's an old-fashioned word for the body of skills that emotional intelligence represents: character." (Daniel Goleman) 

George Washington University social theorist Amitai Etzioni describes character as "the psychological muscle that moral conduct requires."

I love to philosophize about the nature of existence and my/our place in it, but when it comes to interacting with people, psychology is my go-to field for emotional balance. The snide philosopher in me would like to claim that there is a difference between thinking and feeling and that psychologists belong to the latter group of individuals (a remark made in derision by one of my professors skilled in striking egotistical cords in young, impressionable students). 

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio blew my professor's theory right out of the water in a groundbreaking study where he discovered that emotions were linked to our ability to make decisions. Apparently there is no rational way to think ourselves through a decision without simultaneously having an emotion. 

So it's,

Off to see the Wizard of Emotions ... 

From here (the place where one receives or can give to oneself good or expert counsel) I can better evaluate the efficacy of actions I wish to take. I can also modify actions that have a less intense but cumulative affecting value which will hopefully result in my making better decisions over time.

Consulting my inner psychologist does not mean that my behavior will radically change without this type of study and reflection, but the thoughts I associate with my behavior will differ. This buffering (the time between reflection and action) buttresses a new stable foundation from which I can better see how the majority of my every day life decisions interact to create a whole. The trajectory our decisions take is directly related to the forms our decisions erect. 

When one's decisions come from a place of self-discipline, emotional intelligence is controlled by human will. When one leaves decisions up to fleeting or *ignored emotions, the corresponding behavior often times lacks what is commonly referred to as good moral character. 

The nature of our existence as it relates to our present bioenergetic form requires our coparticipation with forces that do not always feel harmonious to our own. When this happens, studies in virtue, empathy, compassion, and understanding can temper quick and whimsical emotional reactions that ignore sound emotional reason (which takes time to cultivate) in favor of (unreflected upon) easily adopted biased stereotypes, which breed intolerance and rejection of differences. 

Unreflected upon (and thus unmanaged) emotions can detour human reason from its rational course, resulting in a person's inability to function, to control and channel their urges. Reflecting upon emotions more easily results in our ability to make sound decisions. 

But how does one reflect upon emotions? Do we seek out books on emotional intelligence? Do we consult wisdom literature? Do we look to world leaders and the successful for guidance? Who is the ultimate authority on human idealism, and is there such a thing? 

One could consult a variety of sources, or one could even consult humor for insights into human behavior. One could push the snooze button on all this thinking business and go pour oneself another cup of coffee (one moment, please, I'll be right back). 

(I'm back. Now, where was I? Oh yes, where do we turn for sound advice?)

THIS EMOTION -vs- THAT THOUGHT

THIS EMOTION versus THAT THOUGHT are our two expert sources. The result of the specifics of this engagement become our rationale for acceptance or rejection of a thought or idea. 

There is not one single source of material that can answer our questions on which actions to take, but we are more likely to experience successful outcomes if the material matches our highest goals and desires. 

To determine whether or not the material you consult is aiding your emotionally based decisions look to the results of your actions for answers. If your life closely resembles that of your desires, then the material you are consulting is directly proportional to your innermost hopes. If your life does not resemble that which you desire, then consider exploring new material. 

All material is relevant to a given area of existence or it wouldn't exist. As such it is not about finding the best among all the materials available for human consumption. Success comes from choosing the correct material to aid us in making decisions that feel effortless ('effortless' does not imply the absence of work). When decisions feel sound they usually result in positive outcomes. 

Nature suggests that polar opposites exist. As such a positive outcome for one might indicate a negative one for someone else. This negative outcome could be as innocuous as someone simply not choosing to formulate an opinion on a given material (rejecting stereotypes in favor of purposeful non-judgment) until such time consideration is due. 

Not all information is necessary for human beings to make sound life decisions. So long as the decisions we make relate to our highest goals, ideals, and personal desires - keeping in mind the understanding that everyone has their own version of happiness - we can make decisions that feel like the best choice among the many. 

We cannot consult all material sources in the world (it is physically impossible). We cannot manifest every experience by mere human will given the limitations of nature. BUT if from within this sphere of existence we can manifest the best that our specific experience can offer us, we can be sure that our expert guides (emotion & thought) will be available to guide us so long as we invest equal interest in both their well-being (well, as in health; being, as in existence). 

*late 15th century in the sense 'be ignorant of'from Latin ignorare 'not know, ignore,' from in- 'not' + gno-, a base meaning 'know.'

Playing Along with Nature

Here's the Church figurative (2009)

Kathryn Fincher

The strangest thing about quantum mechanics is how extraordinary these theories are in predicting the observed behavior of physical systems. Apparently Mother Nature wants us to turn old classical theories of the physics of our Universe upside down, if only to get a better look. 

Nearly everything I write about in my blog has an element of quantum theory pulsating through it. Irrespective of where my thoughts land, irrespective of their corresponding sensations, I, like everyone else, am held, suspended like a Big Red Balloon in a quantum like experience and thus subject to coparticipating in the processes by nature of my existence. 

This idea sends my mind off skipping through the many charming allegories of the world. A series of analogies such as Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz, or older classical stories of the gods and goddesses of myth and legend to the modern scientific tales, including the quantum tail, offer my brain a delightful romp through the many forms of perceived or imagined existence. 

I linger in the places that bring me the most pleasure or those whose understandings expand my own. Wherever I land I examine the space I inhibit. A scientist might refer to this space as Quantumland, a mystic as Nirvana, a magi as Source, a pious one as Heaven; however one might refer to the spaces my mind travels in order to share blog post after blog post on seemingly divergent topics, the spaces are there to describe. 

Whether any description, metaphysical or scientific (presuming method or only method differentiates the two), isn't pure fiction and the characters imaginary, one cannot know. The lives we live, the thoughts we formulate, the ideas we hold come together in the sense that all of these experiences take place from within the "real-world" and are thus part of the real world we seek.

What we create varies with our environment and her present elements. Playing along means exploring all possibilities within each realm while that realm is present. The effects of the varying vibrations within any realm continually move those spaces forward, making every realm temporal in nature. 

Whenever we arrive to a realm we are encountering that realm in a specific, not all-defining, moment. The combination of our culminated vibrations and attractions and repulsions combine to erect new edifices which remain for however long nature provides a complimentary environment for their presence. 

This quantum space is in some ways like biological experience insomuch that it is temporary in form, with all forms very much being at the grace of natural elements. This does not diminish the presence of any form, it merely offers a heightened experience outside the realm of what we perceive as its classical (temporal) movements. 

From these forms ripple outward all those amazing relevances we encounter in the world, the significance of any given wave or form encountered are ultimately the stories or adventures we tell ourselves. 

Quantum theory is sometimes nonsensical in how it describes the many worlds we physically, mentally, and energetically inhabit. But nonsense can be good; it can be more than those delightfully funny moments, it can also describe those highly intoxicating and mesmerizing experiences, the ones that leave us in a state of wonderment. 

Little Girl playing in sand on beach

Brenda Hoddinott

Wonderment may have very little to do with the efficacy of a given thought, unless one is seeking a connection to combine elements. Seeking these connections between all our sciences, mythologies and fantastical tales involves our reaching beyond ourselves to peek out over the castles in our lives, including the ones we erect for ourselves. 

Having Fun on the Battleground of Life

Most adults live their lives somewhere between "as if" and "what if" and "if only"... but how often should one employ this Sneak Peek access tool and what should someone do if they find themselves lost somewhere therein?

Language has provided us with an understanding of the use of paradox, suggestions, oxymorons, and so on. But these are all tools and techniques; these are mechanical. Non tangible qualities such as empathy provide us with feedback that fuels, clarifies, and enchants us into higher understandings of self and others.

When deeply reflective type A personality individuals ruminate on language and on the intricacies of the alphabet, the notion of having had lost a bet against stagnant thinking comes to mind. Why must I spend so much time thinking about so many nothings? How does one return to stale, ordinary thinking after one has already thought themselves through labyrinths of paradoxes and nomena out of the phenomena? How does one escape the agon of knowing and not knowing?

The enchantment that arises from having fun feels like a category other than the list of vague and intangible techniques listed above, though this does not distinguish having fun from fascinating an individual.

If we employ a sort of self hypnotherapy as a way of differentiating these Sneak Peek access tools away from their classical forms of dominating our minds, these indirect techniques can empower us to recognize new horizons of significance.

If our self hypnotherapy involves the structure of having fun, we can act out the role of the Magi, Sorcerer, or Goddess from myth and legend (and literature) to induce the state analogous to the sorcerer's magic incantation.

In other words, we can redirect our gaze toward a new object in our self hypnotherapy. We can redirect our gaze toward the object of fun. Most cases of self hypnotherapy send people running into the environing world. More importantly, under what if enchantments. If only I can do this or that, I can experience happiness. In this state whatever is suggested feels like the answer, and thus the motivation for doing all the things that do not produce the desired sensation of having fun or feeling happiness. One can renew their existential meaning of life by ruminating on the results and then feel a sensation akin to happiness, contentment, pride, relief, and so forth, but this is a secondary sensation, one that comes about as a result of what if or if only scenarios playing out as planned.

If one's gaze is directed toward the object of HAVE FUN, then the way in which one plays out the scenarios changes. It becomes more fantasy like. One is not merely painting walls, one is painting a portal to another land or dimension.

Having fun as a final motivation consists of a rather vague notion that some value is to be real-ized. The role of our inner Magi is to create a symbolic horizon that empowers us to achieve this goal. At times the outcomes may be the same, but the experience changes. Think Walter Mitty minus the haplessness.

I would argue that HAVING FUN is a vital part of the essential structure of living a good life. Everyone has some difficulty occur in the course of their lives, but calling upon Athena to fight the good fight while you entertain yourself on the sidelines maintains a healthy barrier between the battlegrounds of our lives and the existential experience of being human.

But what does one do with all the wreckage and emotional carnage that falls on the battleground? The first rule is DON'T PICK IT UP.  Leave it be. Give it a proper burial. Not just a symbolic one. By employing our friend language and the alphabet, we can label it into three piles:

1. Properly Exposed
2. Overexposed
3. Underexposed

Properly exposed emotional wreckage shows the difficulty as is, no filters. This is like looking at an Escher drawing with all its complexities depending upon the angle of one's viewpoint. Here difficulties are less menacing. This is not to say that there are not deep feelings associated with these difficulties, some are transparently tragic; but they are separate from us because we are the ones doing the looking. Thus the tragedy is not entirely within. It is only within when conjured. This properly exposed mental snapshot can then be folded up and placed into an envelope, and set aside. 

Overexposed emotional wreckage highlights those things that life has previously heightened for us, those things for which we are now hyper vigilant or en guarde. We see these things first, and sometimes they are so bright we cannot clearly see what is next to them. Poignant sensations are evoked when our minds see these images. Once our heart rates stabilize, we can fold up the words we used to describe the sensations from these difficulties and place them into a second envelope, setting this aside with the first one. 

Underexposed emotional wreckage keeps us intrigued. It is a perpetual revisiting of that which we think we might have missed. What is that shadow? What does this mean? The underexposed difficulties we experience is what dissipates fears into an eternal oblivion. We simply don't know enough about whatever it is we are considering or seeing in order to know what exactly we should be fearing or doing about it. In this respect, ignorance is bliss. Whatever we missed, surely the universe will find a way to tell us if we really need to know. But the fact that nothing has happened, means there is a higher probability that these difficulties could have manifested but didn't. Forgive my cheekiness, but maybe it is time to move onto new difficulties, giving these ones a rest. Fold these difficulties up (if you can find them), and place them into a third envelope. 

The question here is what do we do with the envelopes? We can keep them, tuck them into our sachets or wallets, place them on top of our desks, tuck them away into a drawer, file them, burn them, blow them up with bottle rockets, turn them into art, etc. 

What we do with the envelopes is a reflection of the transformations we experience while contemplating the difficulties that define what we write on the papers we stuff inside the envelopes in the first place. This turns difficulties into games, which are meant to be fun. 

When we are having FUN we are reflectively aware that our state of consciousness is a hyper-awareness, which is occasioned by the recognized fundamental change in the way we intend our environment. Allowing ourselves to have fun provides the receptivity to a wholly different form-coherence of each overall experience. Some specificity within the environment manifests as the figure against the background we perceive and becomes what Husserl calls the nematic correlate to a noetic core of attention (Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment). In other words, having FUN is the motivator for "having fun" and the sensations of happiness or contentment that follow. 

The fringes of conscious awareness involve the perceived primary environment, which when transformed by our actually HAVING FUN stand out from the suspended horizon of the everyday hum drum signification of the same primary environment. 

2014 Business Climate in Mexico

Even these lamb remain horizontally aware that T-Rex is a little "too close" for comfort. But for now they are choosing team mates in preparation for the upcoming game of 'run for your life'. Turning T-Rex into a player on an opposing team is more fun that being horizontally aware of the consequences from the standpoint of ordinary reality, but the game they are playing is actually a strategic one, potent in that the game allows them to play out the province of meaning in a more creative way. Here the lamb maintains the meaning of the game gained through the fun they allow themselves to experience. On the horizon of mundane consciousness, we can remain aware of the object of fun while reifying the movements one might make were the object of 'run for your life' nothing but a game. This is not to say that all fun happens while huddled in the corner of a toy shelf, but the sensation of being huddled together against a pending doom is not unfamiliar. 

What is unfamiliar is the football huddle. The coming together to formulate a fun new strategy to try out under the mental condition that signifies a this is just a game message to the brain. With FUN as our objective, we create mental scenarios that are interpreted as games. It is a sort of self-enchantment, but the potency is as formidable as that of a foe. 

This new reality context acts as a higher synthetic level of coherence and understanding. It synthesizes the congruencies of the qualitatively new playing field (as opposed to a previously perceived battleground) of intentional experience. It is not merely a fantastical or self-hypnotic state, but rather the successful higher-level synthesis of what the adult brain separated into distinct categories in the first place.

There is no promise for better outcomes with this sort of thinking.  This post merely introduces an efficient motivator that prepares our minds for higher responses by tucking away phobic feelings into three little envelopes. The symbolic meanings of the letters which make up words from our various alphabets written on the sheets of paper inside the envelopes literally become the material content that accommodates our mind's ability to create symbols for the province of meaning and understanding. 

Each person's cognitive style of thinking differs, but incorporating FUN as the object rather than the byproduct increases our finite ability to experience it. The sub-universe of our minds is where we live and the place from which we perceive the world. How we paint it motivates more than our words and our actions, it motivates our feelings and ultimately our experiences through life. 

Every object we think of manifests itself one way or another. It may be sitting plainly next to an overexposed memory, hidden from sight (until one looks for it), it may be barely visible and thus probably less significant than the thoughts or feelings we have ascribed to it, or it may just be there until we tuck it away and move onto new ones. 

All thoughts and feelings are personally chosen propositions, whether attributive or existential, and can be "believed" through the very fact of being conceived, unless they clash with other propositions believed at the same time. "One must be serious to deal with serious matters." 

By affirming our own terms in direct proportion to difficulties that arise in our lives (T-Rex might walk over the huge divisor and eat us, so we should huddle together, come up with some confusing moves, and ultimately run past T-Rex and find homage on another shelf in order to survive vs a phobic driven "he's coming to get us! Run!" response), we can disrupt the correlative province of fear and difficulty with fun and daydreams. 

The results might be the same, or the results may indeed be another viewpoint of what we enacted while under the self hypnotic state of FUN.  Our core attention may not define the entirety of our external environments, but it does motivate transformation into more than an existential gestalt. It motivates new thoughts and actions that sometimes serve to solve difficulties, leading the lambs to safety. 

The horizon of our everyday life-world remains available to our threshold for co-constutive acts of imaginary synthesis. In other words, choosing fun as an objective alters the natural conscious responses our minds deem explicable and turns them into fortuitous ruminations that convert the ordinary, mundane, or unpleasant into fun games of chance and intrigue. 

The qualitative alteration of the tension of T-Rex crossing the plastic barrier does not quantitatively reduce tension, but rather maintains a high tension that enables a player to reach further, run faster, and jump higher. The game offers a radical shift of perspective to symbolic meanings. The synthesis of symbolic significance constitutes our hyper-awareness and ultimately our ability to have fun with difficulties, on what some call the "battlefield of life". 

The transition from one perceptual context to another is not always instantaneous. Sometimes it proceeds through intermediate stages, but the threshold is there should one mentally walk themselves through it. The trick is to jump once one reaches the precipice. The leap is not as far as one might think. It is a simple replacement of the final objective to fun. 

10 Disclaimers: 

1. Choosing FUN as one's final objective is not for those who do not enjoy having FUN. 
2. FUN as a perceivable style of personal experience entails the potentiality for having FUN. 
3. Having FUN requires being receptive to transcendental meanings. 
4. Finding the FUN as a motivator in a difficult situation alters our "orienting mood". 
5. In order to have FUN one must place oneself in a state of readiness for fun. 
6. The material motivators for FUN are not always readily visible (some appear under or over-exposed), one must seek them out. 
7. FUN is known to play games of hide and seek deep within the appearances of irony, or things that seem unbelievable or unthinkable. 
8. Access to FUN requires a shift of coherence from every day forms of symbolic significance.
9. The vision of FUN is entirely subjective, translated into significance by that which is enjoyed by the person imagining the fun. 
10. FUN may be indistinguishable from enchantment. 

Having Fun

The conflation of fantasy and everyday reality that makes my world enchanted argues for the importance of having FUN to an adult's continued development. Having fun offers patterns of existential meaning by which adults make sense of their changing world. 

For adults having FUN is clearly separated from everyday reality in that the fun is recognized as a symbolic representation of important features of life. But in my mind the symbols are literal, and through the intuitive interpretation of the world, I allow myself to live the symbols as quasi-realities. Experiencing the world in this fashion is similar in nature to turning every moment into what we call "first time" perspectives. The trick is to continue seeking novelty, even in the most habitual experiences. 

For me, enchantment is easily managed, and the stories I tell myself FUN. This sense of fun provides patterns for healthy growth and continued development. When development leads an individual to the recognition of the distinction between everyday reality and make-believe, continued development must include an aspect of joining these now separate concepts back together in creative, intriguing, or mesmerizing way. 

The meanings gained from the FUN aspect of our thoughts have already become patterns of experience, that is, the unthematized but horizontal schemata for action. The remembrance of having had FUN is incorporated into the enchanted lifestyle of the healthy adult such that as development continues the influence of joy and happiness that arises from having had FUN instills meaningful patterns that remain operative in the significance of the everyday life-world. 

The adult who retains the capacity to experience fun or create fun experiences out of ordinary ones renews the existential meaning of life in a new, fun, and creative way. For adults, having FUN is not merely the inculcation of archetypal or cultural patterns of meaning and value; it involves the creation of meaning and the discovery of value. 

Aisthetikos and Happiness

Venus with the organ player (Venus mit Orgelspieler, Amor und Hund), 1550

Titian (1490-1576),

Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Germany

While meditating on the natures of aisthetikos and happiness, I remembered a past lived-event that I consider to reveal the relationship between aesthetics and the experience of happiness. Through a phenomenological reflection on this personal account, the primary goal of this post is to ascertain the essential characteristics (eidetic principles) of happiness as an experiential domain. Its treatment in anthropological accounts, broadly speaking, suggests the possibility that "happiness" inappropriately designates or characterizes my personal testimony. But, there is no other more appropriate description for the experienced aesthetic value-complex that is to be described.

Happy Selfie,

taken outside the ballet

But how does one uncover the structure of happiness as a lived process? Someone might have the experience while engaged with another regardless of whether the engagement portrays happiness in its content. Conversely, an experience may portray happiness without an accompanying manifestation of happiness as the experience. 

Happiness is not merely a category employed in the thematic contents of the various fine arts, including within the realm of fine thinking, even though the fantastical and hyperbolic treatments in multiple fields may suggest such. 

Shying away from the superstitious beliefs, dictionaries are biased toward treating happiness as the product of a pleasant emotions or from having lived the good life, which would limit its experiential basis to those who believe in such concepts or would eliminate altogether its basis in intuition, if it were thought to pertain only to fantasy worlds. 

Derivative meanings generally predict that it is somewhere between contentment to intense joy. These meanings do permit "happiness" to designate experiential states. For American culture, happiness inscribes the Declaration of Independence: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" 

Great delight and other such meanings do not necessarily pertain to the veritable experience of happiness, that is, someone can experience great happiness without being happy and something can be valued as providing a great delight without exhibiting the particular value-modality of happiness. 

These biases obscure recognition of the actual experience of happiness, which is a manifest aspect of life in spirt of our cultural divestiture. The eidetic structure of its intuitive basis should inform a description of its treatment in art forms. Without intuitive evidence gained through the actual experience, the empty intention is then only filled by imaginative content of what the experience might be like. 

A Personal Account of Happiness

There is an aesthetic quality to attending a ballet performance. The anticipation of viewing a treasured tale come to life and then procuring it in one's sensate memory, of course, augments the aesthetic aspect of the experience. But my anticipation, which is why it promotes the aesthetic and not merely pleasure, can be more than ordinary act-qualities; it is potentially supervised with a sense of deep symbolism, the mysterious, or the transcendental. Though an Emersonian significance of the aforementioned characteristics of my anticipation has been prepared by the fact that certain experiences have had great impact on my innermost being. The ballet sustains a symbolic potentiality for my destiny. After having been overcome with giddy excitement on more than one occasion, the mere idea of the ballet instills the supervenient anticipation of awakened senses, those for which I have a strong affinity and consequently value highly. 

Certain pre-conditions that ready consciousness for the experience of happiness must be manifest. The readiness for happiness emerges out of the background of ordinary life, the habitual; that is, the basic structural components of the everyday life-world. The cognitive style for accomplishing the pragmatic tasks of the everyday has the character of wide-awakenness. 

Heightened tension in wide-awakenness entails an increased focused attention on an immediate task at hand, or, stated another way, it entails a highly selective intensity of consciousness concerning certain details within experience. Attention to the everyday life-world involves accomplishing tasks, formulating projects, problem solving, and drinking coffee ;)

Good moods heighten our everyday experiences. One of the characteristics of mood is to modify the overall tension of consciousness within the cognitive style of wideawakeness. Martin Heidegger states that mood indicates how Casein is fairing with Being-in-world, or how Casein is carrying off the burden of Being. Boredom lowers the tension, unless one becomes irritable at that state of being bored itself. Insecurity raises the overall tension, but not necessarily in a manner that allows us to be effective in our daily lives, unless it motivates one "to get a grip". The space between mood and the mundane focusing of attention on the everyday cognitive style can be characterized as a hyper-awareness. 

The condition for hyper-awareness consists of suspending biases that the world and its objects are otherwise than just as they appear. When in a state of mundane assumptions, this space remains unquestioned. When this suspension of belief is lifted, the overall of the mundane world becomes fascinating, intriguing, really. We then find ourselves engaged in acts that include the immediate environment. 

There are times when people do this, while daydreaming, for example, when they enter a cognitive state that disengages them from judging their environmental world. The modification is a fundamentally different state than what occurs as a natural component of mood, but the result is often the mood of contentment or happiness.

This state of being could be described as the precursor to happiness. Reducing the tension of consciousness and cognitive thinking in order to allow for an experience to transform itself into the mood of happiness. The unique sensations this state produces transforms a hyper-awareness into happiness, replacing the everyday relation for transcendence through aesthetic readiness. 

Athena's Intervention

The crucial point in the Oresteia is the enchantment worked by the astounding reversal heightened by the reconciling effect of Athena's intervention. In a radical change of heart the Furies or Erinyes accept a new role. Instead of being avengers, they become helpers and protectors of the citizens of Athens, having been assured by Athena and the women of the city that they will be respected and revered for the blessings they will bring. With this reversal of heart we are lifted above pedestrian human misery, above our struggles, fears, and protective measures, toward a brighter sphere of reality conjured within our soul and suspended upon the highest ideas of culture.

The appeal to the judgment of higher forces directing human justice inherent in Aeschylus' tragedies brings us into a state where benevolent mercy and forgiveness can be dispensed. Because humans are not the absolute masters of their fate, they should not be contemned entirely by absolute human justice. If in the affairs of humanity there are unseen interventions, then there is a higher principle of justice. Here lies Athena's Intervention.

Human beings are poignantly schooled by their sufferings, making pure suppliants toward all that might be perceived, even if indivisible from one's own intervention, as belonging to the very nature in which they exist. Be it fate, destiny, or a bringing about of dramatic pattern, human affairs are far more than what are dreamt by Horacio.

I speak not for the rest of the world, but from within the scope of my own human viewpoint where the highest human faculties beckon an already longing heart toward the quest for par excellence in all my thoughts and actions. 'Tis a lofty goal upon which I continuously strive, but existence partakes in and of itself. In other words, how else might one spend eternity?

Bust of Athena (detail), c. 2nd century a.d.

The fine art of gardening one's inner universe is seen as an oasis for the Human Condition, a true and beautiful abode for the human being existing in nature. This theme is the subject of great myths and legends, triumphs and tragedies.

The dependency of the Human Condition on nature and the innermost complicity between nature and the virtualities of our creative soaring is the object of the Oresteia. Fascinated by our own universal harmony, we are forever enchanted by ourselves, others, existence, and enchantment in and of itself. The direction of our enchantment, of our gaze is a return to self.

Rendering our world painted, we project onto the canvas of our mind that which we wish to see. What we see ranges from the dramatic outcome of temptation and the catastrophes that follow upon it  or the enchantment life brings to us from the beauty of the first creation and the intuitive imagination that follows hence.

Elevated to the true condition of the human heart and mind, the combination of human destiny and the intricacies we sculpt in our own gardens serve as allegories of love, experienced by Venus, allegories of wisdom, represented by Pallas, and allegories of virtue, expressed by Juno. Entering these all-absorbing, transporting imaginal realms souls find fulfillment on their endless course, registering each now as eternal and thus timeless. Herein one creates their own sphere, their own oasis in which to dwell.

There are innumerable examples of these themes. The ones that enchant are as beautifully varied as they are inherently beautiful. Drawn into this scheme in which nature appears interwoven throughout our own existence, we glimpse the realities and impressions that our existence experiences. We can stand in rapture before the great works within, represented outward, we can play with our sentient chords under the surface of consciousness, we can find beauty and the sublime in higher fulfillments of our ordinary existence, or we can question all that arises of what accounts for human existence. The handling of our perception is entirely an art form interacted upon with others within the same world on the basis of universally human existential rules. We may pursue extraordinary routes and make extravagant linkages, or we may sit back and allow for the unusual forms to take shape, merely observing and allowing for sensations to affect us with their innumerable sources.

Enter with that considered essential to oneself within a vaster, unlimited realm ... emerge between the incredibly varied sallies toward the infinite using the forces of bios, mind, and soul and the nature imposed by those same forces. And whenever possible, allow for the enchantment of these forces to soften life's unique transformations and transmutations. The crystallization of this enchantment is Athena's intention and hence the natural result of her intervention.

Herein is described the creative forge as the functional locus in which the vital forces of life are encountered. Our passage through represents the significance of life experienced within. The subliminal passions of the soul when accompanied by higher sense-giving forces: intellectual, moral, and aesthetic, galvanize our entire system with reference to our creative imagining, while its formative directive institutes an entire radiating center of subliminal complexes of human sensibility.

Surging from the originality is the phenomenon combining all the circuits of the sphere of the soul and its achievement. Evoking playful creative liberties between literary coherency and freely flowing earthbound necessity, conjure Athena to intervene and replenish the sphere upon which a state of beauty with a desire for the infinite might soar to higher heights.

The Good Life

Aaron Jasinski

Source

The Good Life   according to many is one that honors the "self" while honoring the "selves" of others. When our selves (souls) are honored, symptomatic coping skills need not surface.

It is impossible to define precisely that which honors each individual soul as definition is an intellectual enterprise. Intuitively, we interpret the concept soul as one that has to do with genuineness and depth, as when we say certain music or people are soulful. Imagining soulfulness, we think of life's particulars - good food, satisfying conversation, true friends, and experiences that touch our hearts and remain with us like old friends throughout the rest of our days.

Whatever the soul is or is not is not the focus of this article. Thus for our purpose here we shall simply state that the soul communicates our innermost feelings and the intimacy revealed in our love for and attachment to others. 

Practical Salvation

Today there are a thousand and one - or more - cures for everything that ails us. The unspoken but clear salvational tone is one that puts all weight onto the shoulders of the individual. If one can learn to be more assertive, more loving, less angry, more expressive, thinner, smarter, whatever the goal, one's troubles will vanish. Self-help is the social science weaving through the wires that connect the globe. Each generation has its Abraham Hicks or Eckhart Tolle telling the world how to "be" and thus emerge more complete and transcended than be-fore if only one (1) reads their book; (2) strives toward similar insights and "spiritual" experiences; and (3) follows a scripted path toward enlightenment. 

In the last twenty years I have read hundreds of such extraordinary accounts ranging from Carlos Castaneda's books on The Teachings of Don Juan to Kyriacos C. Markides's Magus of Strovolos, the rich and intricate world of Daskalso the healer whose work is firmly rooted in absolute love, and whose aim is the expansion of reason and spiritual evolution.

This is the aim of all mystics.

It is as if the western mindset believes that with enough self-examination one can emerge whole. Of course one might argue that if wholeness is a response to any such stimuli, that it must have predated the examination. 

Consider these thoughts

When I consider "reality," truth recedes from my grasp. By "truth" I mean that definitive status of evolving reality that satisfies my opinions... for I associate reality with the cognition that gives me access to it - whatever It is.

It is cognition that western minds associate with being truth and reality. The sensory, emotional, mental, and imaginative circuits of our cognition and its powers form the basis by which we associate all things.

If you think about it, realms of reality look an awful lot like self-generated perceptions and their associated projections of stimuli changing form.

Following self-generated projections quenches the being's thirst for fulfillment. Thus implied in the word "fulfillment" is the western mindset associating truth with the unfinished condition of reality.

Truth is associated as being facts, statements, promises, and the sum of things. Inherent in fulfillment to create truth is the notion of separation. The very embodiment of matter results in a perception of separation (I am here and you are there), but if one feels as if one is occupying a specific space within the realm of reality, then inherent in this thought is the belief in a soul-like force or entity, an essence capable of filling the space one is occupying.

No facts, statements, promises, beliefs, opinions, or sums of things can define the enigma of truth. Thus truth is our truth, it is what we claim It to be. The very meaning of reality held in this perspective is that which fulfills our desires and validates the opinions we associate with those things we define as reality.

The Good Life

The ancient Greeks in their earliest existence accounts, epics, and drama, distinguished metaphysical questions of humanity and their answers - which were found to be intrinsic to the experience of living a good life. The core of the experience being one of happiness and mentally conceived, revelatorial recognitions of perceived experiential perceptions.

Truth

The notion of truth stretches our perception of It beyond our grasp. It is for this reason we call It truth, i.e., the unfinished condition of reality.

"I don't know" is then the highest human expression of "truth". If one admits that one does not know, then one instantly knows one is correct in their not-knowing. This is knowledge. 

Similar to how the Sirens enchanted the mariners with their song or how Odysseus exercised a spell on his hearers through his eloquence as a bard1, we ensorcell ourselves into thinking - and thus, believing - that by being sensitive listeners, thinkers, and feelers that we have the means to decipher further horizons of "reality" because of our investigations of this one.

This could be true. Only I would not claim that the patterns of energy and matter in our time/space/location/dimension are identical to manifestations in other time/space/location dimensions simply because they exist here. There could be other forms of reality so far removed from this time/space/location/dimension that all of what we know would be turned inside out.

And then what would we have? Our so-called truth label hanging on the outside of our sweaters looking a bit silly.

Returning to the Good Life

I thus return to the Good Life by nature of my own beguiled enchantment, the speciality associated with human thinking. Striving in the name of truth toward that which is unknown enchants me into thinking that perception flowing from the human condition can illuminate the grandeur of all forms of reality. The crystallization found in cognition and expressed in human discourse is that which keeps me blindly striving outward toward new truths. 

Intriguing is what we encounter along the way. Delightful, even. But those sensations and mentalizations are a result of the mythos we tell ourselves. Here, epiphanies become our most revered experiences; intensities of physical pleasure our most enjoyed experiences. 

The space between experiences and their epiphanies, pleasures or hurts is the space that feels freer. It is in this space that we first conceive of and incline toward those things we associate with living the good life. We may choose to feel compassion and humility through her corresponding stimuli: pain and suffering; or we may choose to feel empowerment through her corresponding stimuli: pushing back. Whatever experience from which we allow ourselves to know is one that was initially inclined toward as a result of an earlier sentiment. 

Whether sentiments flow exclusively from our present manifestation of existence is unknown. But if by nature of our being held within this cosmos means we are "like" this cosmos, the Big Bang that brought us into existence, is similar in nature: at first there was nothing and then it blew up (into us).  

Whatever the nothing was that predates our present existence, It is something that was notably present before we blew up into being. The duration of any such existence thus indicates the possibility of more existences to come, and well as others already having been. 

So the question of how to live a good life isn't about finding "truth" ... 

Living a good life is about finding an authentic space from which to experience many truths ... all truths. Irrespective of whether or not we are pleased with that which we discover is another matter, entirely. The point here is that if the good life (for you or me) means feeling happy, then we simply focus on and explore the complexities associated with the space between happy moments so that when in the "in between spaces" we can incline toward more of these happy moments which allow us to take pause so that we might enjoy them - allowing ourselves to revel in each happy moment prior to heading toward a new happy moment (i.e., "truth") will hopefully bring about more such experiences. 

It would seem that the moments we create are the moments we associate with truth. Since we are simultaneously held in those spaces we define as "in between moments of truth and happiness" we simultaneously define truth and happiness as being unmanifest. Thus the striving for and notion of separation. 

This is easy stuff to consider. What would be tasking for my mind would be to turn this post inside out and consider its opposite form as another form of reality. The question of whether or not A Good Life would be the product of such an examination or experience remains, for now, unanswered. 

1  George B. Walsh, The Varieties of Enchantment. Early Greek Views of the Nature and Function of Poetry (Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.)