The silence is broken by the continual quest for solace and clarity from the traumas of living. While I’d love nothing more than to offer some insight into wisdom, I cannot make such a presumption. The most I can do is explore the characteristics of self-awareness in a way that makes the experience of being human perhaps more bearable; dare I say, gentle.
I rarely, if ever, suffer from societal pressures. My mind resides elsewhere. The aims of this period interest me not, with the exception of exploring the quantum world, which I believe may withstand the scrutiny of the most sedulous critic. There’s something inherently beautiful in physics. Nature and reality merge, truth hovers, and wisdom bows. Canonical law seems inane and fails to enlighten or comfort in the midst of accurate and authoritative encounters with the physical pinnings of the universe. Despite its transparent modesty and perspicuous explanations, it is not without rival. It reveals form, fit and function, even purpose, but it fails to enlighten and provide a concrete glimpse as why. Irrespective of the path, each invoke a hidden lore that when encounters explanation, can result in nothing less than preference and judgment - bound by a finite mind, limited by sensory interpretation, fed by a myriad of wisdom writings from those who came before us in their search and ultimate acceptance of notions they felt would withstand scrutiny, and alas, supplemented by our own experiences or encounters with an external world. While many of these notions provide me with cognitive strength and a deeper appreciation for aesthetics, I find myself at a loss as to how I may govern my thoughts and actions accordingly to any principle beyond the arbitrarily accepted subjective preferences. I attempt, therefore, to persuade myself to remain en guarde; to be mindful of my thoughts, their resulting internal sentiments, and to accept what comforts these experiences bring to mind and body. While I, by predisposition, am not inclined toward the more wistful or anguished moral precepts inherent in doctrinal teachings, I do indeed keep many of them easily allied. In exploring these concepts, I must separate myself from a more comforting laconic expression in order to, however attenuated, gather perchance the wisest notions in order to make some sense of them.
In Psalm 22, King David begins by lamenting, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?” it is our collective outcry. We, as a species, seem to possess an innate need for authority and structure in order to accept our existence.
My first exposure to wisdom writings were those of the Bible. The structure in this gathering of self-awareness explorations is such that we repeatedly make comparison of our daily lives to the imagined reality of an ultimate creator. Perfection destroys.
This experience propels me back to the notion, “I am, I exist.” Different from Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.” Perhaps nothing more than rhetoric, still, I cannot make the presumption that I think. If we are nothing other than energetic mirrors resonating from interactions with varying degrees or frequencies of other energetic resonances, the subjective experience of that may not have the capacity to define any higher truth than the sentiments derived from each encounter. Forever dwelling in Plato’s allegorical cave of cast shadows, seeing and hearing nothing other than echoes of diffused encounters.
Are we prisoners in our own reality mistaking shadowy appearances for truth? Could any manmade construct, religious or scientific, stoop to claim in any reductive way that their prepositions encompass the whole of reality, the potential myriad of component truths? Connotations have shifted with the passing of history coupled with scientific and technological advances. The invidious distinctions between the various schools of thought, with all their followers, yield, too, in the face of ultimate humility - namely, we cannot know.
We remain forever in an incomprehensible paradox.
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