click this doll house for more detail

click this doll house for more detail
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

the self's encounter with time

Where does one place the truth of time? Is the continuous flow a part of the objective world of nature, or does it belong to the logic and a priori understanding of the conscious subject. The existence "in" the world, and the motions of matter, creates the domain we experience as phenomena. The share in the All and the world-soul... are we not subjectively percieving the moment from one perspective?

The self draws back into a place of no time - a meeting place for the beings willing to journey beyond the cave of darkness. At once we see the thinkers contemplating the truth to "this" eternity that transcends both space and time.

The self cannot distinguish at times whether the experience and perceptions are a manifestation - "a phenomena" - created by the subjective mind, or whether the objective nature exists as a continuum beyond the self. This is not a negation of the existence of the world... it is a questioning of how and what logical association the subjectivity of the self has with the cosmic narrative as a whole. This questioning includes questioning perception itself.

The non linear-ality of the flow of time, and our "personal" views on the interpretation of consciousness in relation to existence.

The self is not the All, but only a minute glimpse, a drop of water in the sea of the eternality of process. From this place, interpretation of phenomena and the coming to "know" in an intuitive way the pure moment of the nakedness of nature... "truth?"

Who am I?
Isolation, a natural outcome of the dis-enchanted modern world. The self realizes that it has, to a degree, assimilated the self nature of previous worlds. Is this not the post-modern process? The merging of and seeing the world from a premodern perspective - the making of a new system, a change in the relationship of "identity". Consciousness does not live in only "one" system of beliefs, but can learn the how of the intuitive process of "coming to be" - a being that is both of the past and future of existence.

It is a, reverting back, to the unity of its essential nature. "Existential meaning" and "post-modern meaning" becomes a reconstruction of the premodern world with the variables of a disunified and "in the dark" modern system that is falling short of its ideals.

The self sits and stills the mind, allowing itself to reconnect to the divine, "emanating" source - a meditation on its own essential nature in a non-a posteriori direction towards truth. 

Being emerges not as a will-to-power but as a will-to-contemplate - a process of opening itself to the possibility of coming to feel the presence of the eternal thou. Time no longer is a logical measure of duration, but a necessary part of the experience of phenomena. From one interpretive lens to the next, consciousness realizes the diversity of views appearing on the back drop - the space of the eternity of the All.

"Identity" becomes something that has transcended time in its functionality. Yet, the question remains what is "essence"? The light of the inner self burns to understand...

"Truth"
Truth becomes the destination for the self that is in the process of identifying with the essence. In this way, "truth" and "essence"  is intimately linked through the will-to-be. Being re-emerges out of the confines of time as the clarity of the moment takes hold.

But is this process leading to Essence and Truth? The ever expansive diversity, unified by the mind that contemplates its place in the cosmic whole. The All emerges and the order of existence makes itself known to the self, in thought. From this perspective, the unity of the All manifests itself in the mind as truth of a thinker contemplating the question of identity and existence.

Existence becomes both a practical skill and an artistic/aesthetic expression of the coming-to-"know" one's own being in its most intimate moments.


Monday, May 7, 2012

reflections on the weekend in SF

A whirl-wind of a journey, as the self encounters the multiplicity of worlds, a unified diversity. At times as a transcendent intellect living as a being devoid of its corporeal features, at other times life-living as a will-to-identity. The seduction of a city  that lives and breaths the air of its multitudes of phenomenal environments. The sensibility of the self, learns to assimilate the values of an individual beyond the foreign-ness of the situation. The coming to "know", an intimate process of unity with the city of light and darkness.

We encounter the All - "the oneness of the universe" - from the subjectivity of personal experience. The moment when the totality of existence is comprehended, however impartial, by our conscious minds, we sense a wonder and an awareness that transcends language. Yet, philosophy and the art of expression tries in its earnestness to express in language, the experience of life-living as a being in pure thought of the meaning of existence in the universe, the one uni-verse that envelops us all.

The separation between animate and inanimate, living-souls and material objects, consciousness and the empirical world, provides us with the frame work for the mind's ability to understand our very own "nature". We exist in the different domains of space, as extension in the material world, and as thought/consciousness in the world of the Mind... like an eternal river flowing through time... "Time" is the medium, the eternal continuum that the will and life-living takes center stage, as the moment of awareness becomes an unification of subjective thought with the workings of the natural world.

The mysterious comes to the fore of conscious thought, as the stillness of the mind, makes the empirical world a phenomena of appearances. We learn from logical inference, that our perceptions of the world is purely "personal" without a perspective of seeing/experiencing/thinking beyond our own consciousness. It is this isolation that the artist, through the medium of philosophy has any reason to create its art work - its momentary landscape, a brushstroke of perception - so that "we" can experience the All of the world from the perspective of the mind's eye.

Our identities emerge a confluence of narratives take shape in the grand narrative of the objective All. Meaning becomes a subjective matter, as the "I" emerges out of the necessity to understand the essence behind the link between the self and the phenomena that it encounters. The self creates an identity that transcends its body, by identifying with the world of the mind and the linguistic structures to a reality of thought. Although the "I" is by necessity a body interacting in the objective and natural world, its identity is a construct of its own narrative in harmony with the narrative of the All.


Somewhere in the depth of consciousness lies the structures of the transcendent world. The "we" of the community, affirms itself in the individuality of the self. The "I" becomes a "reflection" of the essence of the community of light, giving the harmonious whole a telos beyond the darkness of the cave. The unity of the "I" with the "We", and the unity of the human community with the ideals of harmony, moves the present onward to the future of Being.

Self-nature becomes, not a question of identity, but a search into the depths of the Mind and Soul. The striving to "bring-down" or "bring-to-the-present" the transcendent character through the will... a representation of a being that has unified itself to the essence of the "we" of transcendence. Meditation becomes the medium to self contemplate its place in the hierarchy of beings, only to find itself "in" the social-world of dis unified nature. The order, yet to appear, with an awareness for self-nature to realize its isolation from... but also its unity with... the community of transcendent thought. The self spiritualizes itself to form a pure idea of the Platonic "Good" - the essence of identity.

The sense of taste, envelops the world, as the soul momentarily experiences sweetness, while realizing the wisdom of an old and distinguished "other". As the taste of "Life" moves the moment... is it not unification of the self to the Will of the All of nature. A complexity of tastes, unified into the oneness of the source. The emanation of the heavenly aroma brings the self into contact with a foreign and mysterious world. The feeling and intuition that the self is intimately interconnected to the past and future of its own being. With this, the self enters a space where discovery follows necessarily as the rhythms of the moment takes the soul into the desert night.

The self's relationship with its phenomena, at times a wonder, at other times a detachment. The diversity of the world and the forms that are contained in the All, an experience that transcends the medium of language. The creatures that we are, choosing our place in the hierarchy of beings... ascending and descending on the ladder of perfection. A contradiction of sorts, as the representation of the world and the environment that surrounds the self impresses a diversity of ideas onto the mind. The narrative of the All and the knowing of particulars, becomes a task never fully complete. The most that the self can "know" are the structures of reality and the logic behind the diversity of the particulars. Yet, "the other" that impresses its image onto the self, makes known the difference of subjectivity.

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Life in the social world necessitates the need to identify with the world-soul as a Being of authenticity. The will-to-be, finding its actions to be complex. Simplification of the self's narrative, a slowing down of the self to the rhythms of Nature. To begin again as the spring transitions into the summer days, the self learns to be.
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The natural world and the creatures of habit, occupy a space that allows for habitation in a way of survival and "existence". Society has grown and withered and with this growth and corruption, the rise and fall of culture - the diversification of forms that has dis-enchanted the world that was once a unity of sorts. No longer attached to the natural world, we have become creatures that have descended into the realm of "modernity". Souls with consciousness no longer acknowledge one another in the openness of the other, busied by the media-generated content devoid of any meaning. In the heap of diversity in a world in which unnatural creatures semi-conscious of the forms only familiar to themselves are living a life that lacks the content of Being as a mind contemplating the eternal truths about the natural world.

Aesthetics becomes a difficult word to assimilate as the authenticity of character tries to emerge in the will-to-write. In "this" world, the self in thought, constructs the structures of phenomena in a sensible way, placing the souls as a process and transition from one state to another. It is a return or re-discovery of a platonic cosmology with overtones of the an Aristotelian process. While the self learns to refine its being, to be in harmony with both the natural world and society at large, the goals and endeavours - the telos - "the light that paves the path", appears to the soul that believes in the essence of its identity.