Standing at the cusp of a profound point of transition, one becomes mesmerized by the study of eons, of the vast stretch of deep time that contains so many beginnings and ends. There was a good reason for spending so much time earlier trying to tease out what is meant by a beginning or end.
With so many beginnings and ends, or births and deaths over the course of human history, why is it that an individual has the desire to carry on at all, especially as the temporary vessel for one's temporary consciousness is obliterated? We all die eventually. Why is it so important to each of us to build up some sort of life work, and pass it on to later generations? For that matter, from where does the concept of heaven come from, or the concept of reincarnation? In the present, one must come to terms with one's future death.
These are typically spiritual matters: the harmonization of the cycle of the individual with greater cycles and movements, which has to occur not only on the intellectual level, but the emotional as well. If one fights one's eventual end with all of one's heart, even though that end is necessary within a greater movement, then one is suffering. Whether that suffering is needless or necessary is another matter altogether, also up for spiritual evaluation.
It does seem as though one of the most compelling instincts permeating the entire life-purpose of a given individual is that of establishing some sort of continuity in thought, which transcends the individual and even community, but which is nevertheless a continuity partially grounded in the nature of the individual itself. The individual must be psychically and emotionally connected with the life and death of a greater body, whether that body is a community, nation, species, or planet.
Once one gets past the prospect of individual death, one can turn to continuity. Even the practical-nihilistic and death-worshiping Nazi labors for some "master race" or "homeland." But what happens when continuity itself is threatened?
Beginnings and ends, and continuous things for that matter, are strange things. What of the cyanobacteria that flooded the atmosphere with oxygen three billion years ago, thus paving the way for animal life and glaciation? The continuous flow of cyanobacteria came out of the earth and precipitated great change with their flood of oxygen, killing off many of their peers and supporting the rise of others.
It casts our species in a strange light too, its continuous flow coming from the earth and finally making contact with so much buried organic material, setting it free and depositing it into the sky and earth as carbon dioxide and plastic. Whether what emerges is a vast elaboration on the technological formations we've developed, or simply the conditions for the slurping of civilization and its co-evolved living forms into the earth, leaving a new slate for another milieu of life forms, it is fairly certain that all that exists will be radically transformed in one way or another.
Without a doubt, this piercing energy into the continuous plane of the Phanerozoic eon - or whatever lower of tier of geological time that is to end - is causing great suffering for those unaccustomed to the end of such profound stretches of time.
If one is surrounded by suffering, and one suffers as a result, one of the first things should be to inquire after the nature of one's perception and sensibility, so as to harmonize oneself with the greater body one is a part of, regardless of whether that body is embodied destruction itself.
Here I've operated through an intense interrogation of ideology, but there are plenty of other ways to go about it. And indeed, it is the dominant Western spiritual tradition at the moment that gives us so much trouble, with its infinite yearning into the heavens and its refusal of its own mortality, and all of the bellyaching that comes with those drives in the face of a reality where precisely the opposite seems to be taking place. Plenty of other cultures and spiritual systems - and even less dominant ones in the Western body - have figured this out with far more grace and elegance. But anyway.
In the modern world, there is a tendency of a conscious subjectivity to build ideological structures for understanding the dynamic and chaotic natural forces, and this tendency also plays an important part in modern spiritual life.
Ideology itself, that supposedly demonic drive responsible for the great (and unforgivably violent) mass movements in the modern world, has always been with us. It only took its present form - as a self-relating structure of ideas - in the modern era when a greater emphasis was placed on individual thought and rationality, and our energy and attention was focused on the products of these things.
Christianity for example had ideological structures growing out of its early mystical experiences far into the past, only they weren't necessarily experienced as such. We can call it ideology today because of the emergence of ideology in the consciousness as an efficacious force, as it fully develops in force, and we project backwards within the fully developed environment of this thought and language. It is the tool of thought that we currently have most refined, and any sort of re-emergent spirituality may re-emerge within this milieu, while it also may re-emerge in various bare experiences as well.
So we have a classic developmental process in reverse: where an ideology once crystallized out of a connected set of practices and experiences, ideology can now direct some sort of spiritual inquiry. Today in a hyperstimulated world of symbols, it is sometimes difficult to listen to higher spiritual bodies, though they certainly do leak out appearances in many ways, say through visions, hallucinations, dreams, etc.
Out of an ideology and its practices, these leaks in communication can be further developed, perhaps into floods, and new spiritual experiences may be had, which could very well obliterate the housing ideology itself.
It is the fundamental instability of this age that demands a spiritual readiness for change and even obliteration. As a living thing, one may build houses - whether physical or psychic - while still expecting them to be eventually swept away. The life on a flood plain generates in anticipation of flood. And the alpine flower on the slope of the mountain fully blooms even in the face of avalanche.
One must become what one is, but that becoming has now taken on the nature of the passing away. What one is necessarily includes what one will become: in this case, it may be something radically different, or something in a state of disintegration - sooner rather than later.
With so many beginnings and ends, or births and deaths over the course of human history, why is it that an individual has the desire to carry on at all, especially as the temporary vessel for one's temporary consciousness is obliterated? We all die eventually. Why is it so important to each of us to build up some sort of life work, and pass it on to later generations? For that matter, from where does the concept of heaven come from, or the concept of reincarnation? In the present, one must come to terms with one's future death.
These are typically spiritual matters: the harmonization of the cycle of the individual with greater cycles and movements, which has to occur not only on the intellectual level, but the emotional as well. If one fights one's eventual end with all of one's heart, even though that end is necessary within a greater movement, then one is suffering. Whether that suffering is needless or necessary is another matter altogether, also up for spiritual evaluation.
It does seem as though one of the most compelling instincts permeating the entire life-purpose of a given individual is that of establishing some sort of continuity in thought, which transcends the individual and even community, but which is nevertheless a continuity partially grounded in the nature of the individual itself. The individual must be psychically and emotionally connected with the life and death of a greater body, whether that body is a community, nation, species, or planet.
Once one gets past the prospect of individual death, one can turn to continuity. Even the practical-nihilistic and death-worshiping Nazi labors for some "master race" or "homeland." But what happens when continuity itself is threatened?
Beginnings and ends, and continuous things for that matter, are strange things. What of the cyanobacteria that flooded the atmosphere with oxygen three billion years ago, thus paving the way for animal life and glaciation? The continuous flow of cyanobacteria came out of the earth and precipitated great change with their flood of oxygen, killing off many of their peers and supporting the rise of others.
It casts our species in a strange light too, its continuous flow coming from the earth and finally making contact with so much buried organic material, setting it free and depositing it into the sky and earth as carbon dioxide and plastic. Whether what emerges is a vast elaboration on the technological formations we've developed, or simply the conditions for the slurping of civilization and its co-evolved living forms into the earth, leaving a new slate for another milieu of life forms, it is fairly certain that all that exists will be radically transformed in one way or another.
Without a doubt, this piercing energy into the continuous plane of the Phanerozoic eon - or whatever lower of tier of geological time that is to end - is causing great suffering for those unaccustomed to the end of such profound stretches of time.
Surrounded by suffering, one comes face to face with a recurring and ancient understanding: that suffering is as much a function of one's mind as it is a natural function of the universe. Winters come and go, in which energy wanes, as do summers, which can produce too much energy. Things come to end at the moment that other things begin. And there are periods in geological time in which there is a greater concentration of ending, and a greater concentration of beginning for that matter.
Here I've operated through an intense interrogation of ideology, but there are plenty of other ways to go about it. And indeed, it is the dominant Western spiritual tradition at the moment that gives us so much trouble, with its infinite yearning into the heavens and its refusal of its own mortality, and all of the bellyaching that comes with those drives in the face of a reality where precisely the opposite seems to be taking place. Plenty of other cultures and spiritual systems - and even less dominant ones in the Western body - have figured this out with far more grace and elegance. But anyway.
In the modern world, there is a tendency of a conscious subjectivity to build ideological structures for understanding the dynamic and chaotic natural forces, and this tendency also plays an important part in modern spiritual life.
Ideology itself, that supposedly demonic drive responsible for the great (and unforgivably violent) mass movements in the modern world, has always been with us. It only took its present form - as a self-relating structure of ideas - in the modern era when a greater emphasis was placed on individual thought and rationality, and our energy and attention was focused on the products of these things.
Christianity for example had ideological structures growing out of its early mystical experiences far into the past, only they weren't necessarily experienced as such. We can call it ideology today because of the emergence of ideology in the consciousness as an efficacious force, as it fully develops in force, and we project backwards within the fully developed environment of this thought and language. It is the tool of thought that we currently have most refined, and any sort of re-emergent spirituality may re-emerge within this milieu, while it also may re-emerge in various bare experiences as well.
So we have a classic developmental process in reverse: where an ideology once crystallized out of a connected set of practices and experiences, ideology can now direct some sort of spiritual inquiry. Today in a hyperstimulated world of symbols, it is sometimes difficult to listen to higher spiritual bodies, though they certainly do leak out appearances in many ways, say through visions, hallucinations, dreams, etc.
Out of an ideology and its practices, these leaks in communication can be further developed, perhaps into floods, and new spiritual experiences may be had, which could very well obliterate the housing ideology itself.
It is the fundamental instability of this age that demands a spiritual readiness for change and even obliteration. As a living thing, one may build houses - whether physical or psychic - while still expecting them to be eventually swept away. The life on a flood plain generates in anticipation of flood. And the alpine flower on the slope of the mountain fully blooms even in the face of avalanche.
One must become what one is, but that becoming has now taken on the nature of the passing away. What one is necessarily includes what one will become: in this case, it may be something radically different, or something in a state of disintegration - sooner rather than later.
