Love at a Reasonable Price

I will tell you, children, a true account
of Santa Claus and Prometheus.

The Thunder-throwing King of Gods is Zeus.

When humans tricked Great Zeus into choosing bones
instead of meat (which is why still today
we give the gods the bones and eat the meat
ourselves), Zeus got mad and took fire away.
Without fire, people collapsed in defeat
and cried and rolled around like babies.
Prometheus felt bad and said “Maybe,
I should steal fire back for them.
They need it more than Zeus, who bends
all time and space at will, who moves all things
with the shake of his thoughts.” So Pro then brings
back fire to humankind.
And we were grateful, at the time.

But Zeus wasn’t grateful. He was angry.
So Zeus tossed Prometheus up against
a high and jagged cliff, where he dangled —
his wrists and ankles tied to that tall stone fence.

And then, as if hanging a thousand feet up
in baking sun and freezing rain weren’t enough,
Prometheus had to watch every day
as an eagle ate his liver away!

That’s right! Every day an eagle — symbol
of Zeus, wise ruler of the blessed immortals —
will peck Pro’s liver thimble by thimble
until all gone, while spiteful Zeus chortles
and says, “That’s what you get for crossing me!”
!Each night Pro’s liver grows back and the eagle gets hungry!

Now Santa’s a giant and jolly elf
who flies through the sky in a reindeer sleigh.
One blessed morning, Santa Claus himself
Saw poor Prometheus chained all the way
up on the steep mountainside. He pulled the reins
and told the reindeers, “Hold, this man’s in pain.”

Santa shooed the eagle off and began
to hammer adamantine chains. But Pro
said, “You mustn’t! Zeus will surely ram
a hundred thunderbolts through me and you
if you defy his will and set me free.”
The Claus paused and said, “your Zeus can’t be
a god of much degree if kindness he
would punish.”

The gods live on Mount Olympus. They drink
ambrosia and chat and giggle and waste
one century after another. Think
about that! But now they’re face to face
with Prometheus and Santa Claus
and Jesus and the Buddha and all
these other religious reformers,
these bright-eyed, heavenly party stormers.

“Hey Zeus, don’t you know that Love’s the only God?
Don’t cry! Don’t be sad! Be glad that God is not
like you or me or like anything except
an infinite generous joy of kind delight
that guides us all to what is good and right.”

But Zeus kept bawling. He wanted to be God!
It wasn’t fair! He had worked hard to win!
He should be allowed the scepter and the rod!
He should decide who was out and who was in!

But then he stopped, and he wiped the snot
off his perfectly divine nose,
and he said, well, at least we’ve still got
restaurants, live music, and TV shows.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

real and not real
never could
keep the hazes apart

real and not real
never could
reliably

real and not real
not really
clear here

real and not real
the promise
of liars

real and not real
somewhere past
the rainbow

real and not real
burning in the sun
and
in the sparkler
waved by a small child
on a great lawn
he should wear safety goggles
he should not be allowed to have fire crackers, nor even sparklers

Stuck in my throat
real or not real?
Caught on my tongue
real or not real?

and Real?
Where you at?

Abe: Hello dear, I’ve returned from death.

Sara: Hello dear, I’ll fix you a bite to eat.

Abe: Never mind dear, I’m not hungry.

Sara: You look so thin and tired.

Abe: Put me to bed and let me drift away.
Maybe my mind and body will rewrite themselves
while I sleep off all the
evil

Sara: You left me a sick man and have returned
a ghost, a flickering shadow on a cool cavern wall

Abe: Put me to bed and let me float
between substance and spirit.
I’ve learned to live forever
by always falling down
the deep dark well

Sara: I always just wanted a nice life,
a nice life with you.

Abe: You can be a ghost with me
We can haunt the meadows
You can be a reflection with me
We can ripple with the pond
You can be the moment between life and death with me
We can share heaven on earth
a moment hanging forever
like a dewdrop on a grass blade wobbling about to
fall
forever
splash and sink
into the dirt
below

Established but failed Pure Love salesman seeks partner/miracle.
Well-versed in theory and practice of Pure Love.
A good editor, energy/inside-out healer, and girl.
Project is to go into the mystic, heal what’s broken in and around, salvationate government for by and of the people, and nudge one another towards the better and away from the worse.
Salary commiserate with the decree of the Fates and the bounce of various grounders.

If we can be well, free,
a
fam
i
ly

Please send resume to the stars, where they will be incinerated and their essential information melted down into a pixie song, which will be performed by an ogre with green rhino-skin, a heavy brow and features, cauliflower ears, a delicate touch, and uncanny timing.

Please send resume to The God, who will break it to him gently.
Please send condolences to the roses, lilies, carnations, and violets donated in loving memory of
that time when
it seemed like
we had a successful business model
and the wind at our back
and forever within a nice safe snug democracy
and bodies that could never lose their verve;
way back when
all those nice cozy bedtimes and lazy mornings felt
fully guaranteed, bonded

From the inside out
feeling yourself aglow all through up to and even past your edges
To heal body, mind, heart, soul
To heal body politic, community, and shared love
To find
a way home

Note December 21, 2024: Hmmm

the demagogue

he thinks he leads the way
but he rides the beast
where it goes

he thinks he holds sway
but he’s just dirty yeast
through the goo

Let him
Let him be a pawn
of the boring tempertantrum
he opened

Let him
Let him be the tool
of the half-ass crime-boss fantasy
he plagiarized

Let him
Let him burn through the willing victims
So eager to serve the meanness
So happy to be in the club
anything
to get your name
on the big-man wall (not really; but you get to pretend it’s there and they’re proud of you and love you and share their fries with you)

It’s not my fault
It really isn’t
The fault lies with those
who chose the evil
Let them see themselves
for once

a bunch of babies
a nation of babies
a nation of wimps
a nation of gimmes

rather win
than do what is right
rather be safe
than be good
rather be loved
than loving

learn yourselves
why don’t you?
or can’t you?

Scene 1: Hospital room, nighttime

Abe: I lie in hospital bed. All too soon
to surely die. I never wished to be
a mighty nation, but only to boost
the cause of joy, of people standing tall
all overflowing all exploding Godlight
all over the place all the time
.
God: Alive or dead, your ass is surely mine
You rise you fall, still you will always find
just Me: I Am Who I Am. You can’t escape
the Love that’s All, Great God beneath the Fates.

Abe: Let’s play a game. Each night I drift to sleep.
I dissolve and disappear within the deep.
Perhaps that’s death already, and every night.
I then awake and feel alive. But I think I might
mistake wooden, hollow open-eyed dreams
for living. What?, I wonder; What?, I scheme,
if I were to name my next sleep the end
of my earthy life — no longer to pretend
that morning light means new day, means more life.
Next morn, my ghost will float above the strife
of breathing breeding bleeding ’til one’s lost the plot.
A phantom’s not afraid to die. He knows he’s caught
‘tween realms of flesh and soul. He can enjoy
the general illusion, yet be no toy
to it,
no desperate addict of our shared daydream.
What do you think?

God: I think you may wean
yourself of life if you vacation there
while living death like a ghost who who’s seen through himself.
I’m not sure if I’d name that wisdom
or just another artful dodge.
You humans are so good at those duck-outs
from the Truth

Abe: We shall see, giant creator of all things
We’ll soon discover what this my game will bring.

God: Your game’s not the main of the action.
The question’s still only, will you be wise?
Will you live Love or will you live lies?

Note December 21, 2024: Need to read the below and edit the spleen and try to understand what is worth noting and what is just bitter herbs

The overlap of MAGA propaganda and anti-US propaganda from the dictatorships of China and Russia
A nation of babies
pouting their way from one election to the next
A nation of fools
asking what their leaders can do for them and never what they can do for their nation
A nation of ingrates
seeing only the cracks in the stone and never trying it for substance for depth for durability for reinvention
And the democrats failed them
And the democrats let them down
And the democrats are to blame
And the democrats must find a way to appease them
Or maybe they need to admit to themselves that they had a route forward and ready allies
and instead they chose the blow-up button
and they did this because they are a bunch of babies
and they are to blame for what they have chosen
for the dark paths they have trod
for the dark certainties they have whined and moaned and bellyached into being
for believing a cherry-picked and dopily-spun narrative
created by organizations calling themselves conservative news outlets
but being actually just orchestrators of pouts whines whimpers and bellyaches designed to keep self-indulgent couch potatoes from experiencing so much as two seconds of cognitive dissonance, so much as two seconds of reality

and what’s funniest is how easily Donald Trump would’ve won if we had kept to the old traditions of white males holding all the votes. They turn out to be the most gullible, the most eager to believe in their own pouty minds
oh but the democrats have let them down
oh but the liberal elite have left them out in the cold
ah but we saw quite plainly Biden’s turn away from liberal economic policies
in a nation where the people take responsibility for their own futures, the Biden administration’s decision to dismantled monopolies and create robust job programs would’ve been applauded, lifted up, joyously pursued
Biden should’ve been a better communicator!
or maybe you could put forth the bare minimum effort of a republic’s citizenry and pay a little attention and chose plausible accounts and workable plans over conspiracy theories wild pouts and madcap schemes of grandeur through making your world narrower, meaner, less honest, less interesting, more rambling arrogant boring boring so boring

there’s no perfection
and everything works together
but I cannot stop spinning around Lydia from NY Times statement as it became evident Trump would win in 2024
She said that she’s been in war zones, and she thinks the pain of US Americans is emotional, rather than physical
She hastened to add that that doesn’t make it any less real
I hasten to add that it actually does, it makes it way less real, it makes it in their heads, it reveals them to be a nation of babies

not that the economics shouldn’t be revised
but a free people shake off the noise and choose carefully and wisely
a nation of whiny babies pouts their way to a stupid, cruel, and boring choice

who knows what comes?
just because Donald Trump behaved badly in his first administration and while campaigning
well,
who knows
maybe he could defeat the fools by changing for the better
but what would make him do so?
The Prophet of the Irreducible
The Weaver of the Wisdom Meme
The Singer of Something Deeperism
has grown bitter
and stale
has begun himself to pout
has begun himself to sour
like old wine
past its prime
tired

what am I to say to you?
you applaud deceit revenge cruelty and incompetency
you worship deceit lying revenge cruelty and incompetency
you become deceit revenge cruelty and incompetency
how am I to deal with that?
where am I to stand when you dump that on all our heads?
oh poor you???
a person’s politics is not their person; and many choose politics that do not mirror their souls; indeed, soul-mirroring is only available to those who carefully craft their political approach, and that’s one can do one’s duty to oneself and others without being obsessed with politics; so at what point does incompetency in political thought conversation and voting become a crime against God and man? And how bad does the second Trump Administration have to be for those who voted for him to be guilty of that crime? Or shouldn’t they be guilty independent of how he governs? But if he doesn’t govern disastrously (as in do serious harm to our shared resources, including our most critical shared resource of a representative government that rewards standing up for honesty and competent faithful service), are those of us who warned against him just silly? Or worse? Are we the ones sinning against God and man? Or can we by agitating or, perhaps more effectively, by seducing him away from the worst remain citizens in a basically-functioning democratic republic while still having been right that choosing the 2024 Trump and his 2024 GOP was a crime against both all of us and the Love that Is? After all, all decisions are based on information available at the time, and that information remains, even if Donald Trump reforms and/or somehow his handpicked administration amplifies his best rather than his worst impulses?

Writing about politics is so boring
And this politician is perhaps the most boring human ever to live
What is more boring than truth-and-false-are-meaningless-tools and might-makes-right and winning-at-all-costs and kiss-the-ring-or-get-squished? That’s the oldest and most boring politics ever. And attempting to replace a wobbling but still basically functional representative government with that old boring baloney: Has there ever been a more boring political project? Yes, it may succeed, as we all know many bores who through this or that upper hand are able to dominate conversations for decades. But why would we help boredom succeed? Unless we ourselves had completely lost our souls?

But it’s all my fault because I always thought you were an idiot and that hurt your feelings?
Well, huh
Anyway, my thoughts about you were more nuanced than that. Now you’ve backed me against the wall and my thoughts are even more nuanced since I’m noticing you more. And I think, “You are an idiot; but who is wise? You are a fool; but humans have opinions: only the God Knows. You are a little pouty baby, but what great selfless wisdom did I live? We are all sinners here and I was content to let you slide on by down your stupid little rabbit holes — that was fine when you were mostly focused on sports and money and A-or-Not-A religiosity; but now you’ve decided to play bigtime oligarch; now you’ve decided that you should be King and everyone should bow to whatever great notion pops into your head and that people who study and think and make considered decisions are the fools and people who just do whatever and then keep doubling down on that whatever are the greats of this world; or what? What are you doing? You’ve always been a fool; the trick was always to keep you from the gears and levers of great power. Philosopher kings are a myth, but a will towards honesty, competency, and fair play isn’t: You have chosen to undermine that will with a will towards shoving the other person’s nose in the dirt using any dirty trick. That is evil. How am I to understand this? Are you evil? How do the ascendent forces within your current conscious moment shade into the political evil you are pursuing? And how does that motion shade into personal evil? What is going on? Did I look down on you? I never thought too much about you. I was working on the project. But now you’ve forced the project to evolve into a political one. I still can’t see you. I still can’t fathom you. Is this from a lack of interest? A lack of empathy? What portion of our current disaster springs from how much I’ve always squiggled my nose up at you versus how much I’ve not even thought about you for like a real full fat sopping wet second (a second of compassionate interest is a moment out of time, I guess)? How nuanced can one’s thoughts of x be when they never bother to focus on x except to give a little narrowed-eyes scrunched-lips head-shake of, ‘what is this nonsense?’?”

I come like that
I come off the water
The Fates shape me up
The Fates shove me across the distance
The Fates cut my throat
Always the same

in between I laugh
and tell you
that I love you

every time
always the same

every time
and the sun sprinkles itself across the reaching waves
and I love your smile
and we’re just people
again
and we’re just daydreams
reflected on the surface of the water
again
and it’s so nice to see you
again

so nice for you to take a human form
and feel a human hand
to make a human smile
and listen to a human voice
so nice
to be a human with you

walking across the moon
a man in craters
shaped of cheese
moon creatures with capes and tridents in black and white
before we knew
that of course
the moon was a lifeless rock
with no tunnels flowing with industrious moon men
and their fertile young wives with outrageous moon curves
I love those moony curves!

never mind
where’s my mind?
where’s my manners?

where’s my girl?
I’m a little
concerned
that
we’ll have to never mind
the whole show
which is a shame
and a disappointment
but the Fates
hold all the cards
all the earth cards

the God holds the heaven card
but life is held here on earth
it’s like a jamboree they hold it every second here on earth I don’t know why

am I a mist
rising off the waters?
is this a mistake
tumbling out the the interface?
are we a soul line
turned inside out?

There comes a time
When we heed a certain call
when the world must come together as one
there are people dying
oh and it’s time to lend a hand
to life
the greatest gift of all
we can’t go on
pretending day by day
that some one somewhere will soon make a change
we’re all a part of
God’s great big family
And the truth, you know love’s all we need
we are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving
there’s a choice we’re making
we’re saving our own lives
it’s true we make a better day
just you and me
well send em your heart
so they know that someone cares
and they’re lives will be stronger and free
as God has shown us, by turning stone to bread
and so we all must lend a helping
we are the world, we are the children
we are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving
oh there’s a choice we’re making, we’re saving our own lives
it’s true we make a better day, just you and me
when you’re down and out and there seems no hope at all
but if you just believe, there’s nowhere we can fall
oh woah woah just realize that a change can only come
when we stand together as one
we are the world
we are the children
we are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving
there’s a choice we’re making
we’re saving our own lives
it’s true we make a better day, just you and me
we are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving
we are the children, we are the ones who make a better day, so let’s start giving, just you and me
we are the ones, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day

harmonica solo
for sure
and I
never thought I’d feel this way
and as far as I’m concerned
I’m glad I got the chance to say
that I do believe I love
and if I should ever go away
well then close your eyes and try
to feel the way we do today
and then if you can remember
keep smiling
keeping shining
knowing you can always count on me
for sure
that’s what friends are for
for good times
and bad times
I’ll be on your side forever more
that’s what friends are for

well you came and opened me
and now there’s so much more I see
and so by the way I thank you
and then for the times when we’re apart
well then close your eyes and know
these words are coming from my heart
and then if you can remember

keep smiling
keep shining
knowing you can always count on me
for sure
that’s what friends are for
in good times
in bad times
I’ll be on your side forever more
oh whoa that’s what friends are for
keep smiling
keep shining
knowing you can always count on me
that’s what friends are for
in good times
in bad times
I’ll be on your side forever more
that’s what friends are for
keep smiling

I remember rocks shaped like fingers
I remember a curving dam sparkling in the summer sun
I remember flimsy rubber rafts and knowing we were friends always
Where did you get to?
How much evil did you accumulate with all that certainty?
And now the pistons are churning makes one thump one’s fingers against the cool stones with little caves and other great mysteries salamanders in the water wiggling against the long water boas that get caught on cheap plastic paddles
Did you sell us out?
For some more certainty?
For a little more certainty?
Why would you do that?
When faith is all about uncertainty
when God is made entirely of what we can’t figure
?

There will be
no certainty
in this life
in these forms
with these eyes
against these library cards
with yes a parking lot in the basement
yes I was there too
still am
always there with you
all things hang forever
in what has been
all things hang forever
in the giggle exploding in every direction
infinite no-need to exist meets infinite no-need to not-exist
a giggle bursts forth
humans have notions
only the God is certainty
humans have opinions
only the God knows
humans have one another
and they should be careful with one another
humans have each other
and they should cherish each other
like God does

God is enough for everyone
with infinite Love left over
that’s all one can say of God
God soaks through
God overtakes
God overflows
God overwhelms and salvationates
everything everyone always
the rest is theology
is conjecture
is paintings more or less worth viewing
is human work
is okay
is fine
is not Truth

Christianity is not better than Judaism
Christianity is not better than Islam
Christianity is not better than Buddhism
Christianity is not better than Hinduism
Christianity is not better than Jainism
Christianity is not better than Something Deeperism

Actually, everything reduces to Something Deeperism
Because everyone knows that
we need Godlight to light our way
but that Godlight cannot be caught
in human ideas and feelings

nations
rise and fall

evil finds
nooks and crannies to crawl inside
and therein expands like so much pimple pus

but so does the Good
so it does
so we will
so we may
so we might
flourish
with a type of love
that remembers Love
with a sort of song
that moves with What Is
in the turmoil
lapping against the edges
where the tadpoles wiggled
where the ladybugs crawled
so many on that little tree so high
atop the thumb of granite
with your dad scolding
with the sunlight streaming
with time running forward forever
sustaining all our forevers
certainly we’d run forever
through the dry air
through burritos on the porch
across horned toads in jars so many that year and the next like none what was that?

you know what?
never mind
let it ride
I don’t even care
no I don’t
whatever dudes
whatever babes
whatever dreams
let’s hand this whole operation over to violent certainty and the noble lie
let’s do it!
that’s cool
I was wrong to
believe
in people
that they were
adequate vessels
for Godlight
that they could
tell the truth
to themselves and each other
Let’s drown them in your certainties
that’ll go much better
like freeze dried walnuts
atop an ingenious mix of corn syrup and hydrogenated palm and coconut oils
with some dyes perfumes flavors the barf of tortured cats and the spleens of frightened and misused frogs
it’s all so perfect
it’s all so romantic
it’s all so eternal
it’s all so clearly
evil

[Note on Sunday, December 15, 2024: Oh wow, there were still all these problems. And we still didn’t even get down to the bottom. But anyway, getting better.]

[Note Monday, December 2, 2024: We did a once-through edit. Except for the very end. That we must revisit. And then maybe go once through again. And then umm]

[Note Friday, November 29, 2024: Okay, we’re releasing this. We need to read it. And edit it at least for clarity. And then we need another essay that builds on this one. And then we will loop back to the Knight of Faith essay we did a couple weeks ago.]

“Knight of Faith, eye of newt, the spiritual nature of representative democracy, toe of crow, shareable versus private spirituality, tongue of frog and wart of toad, from the point of view of God we are all little children, snot-stuffed snout of slaughtered swine, the wise rest on impermanence and interdependence as sea birds float on updrafts over the sloshing sea, splintered beak and tattered feather of long-wandered albatross, now Trump is king and we must flatter him like fops and jesters at his marble-floored gold-escalatored palace but perhaps in the genuflections we can all discover the wisdom of seeing us all — even those we’ve come to fear and loathe — as full humans beyond the caricatures drawn by ourselves and others, hair of deposed sovereign and spit from the bottom of the new master’s soda cup with ice melted also into the heartland-grown corn syrup and the many exotic flavors … ”

We chanted day and night, bent over our flames-crouched cauldron, our shoulders circling round and round as we stirred and stirred (both hands on worn-wooden lathe) our thick lava-esque bubbling and bubbles-bursting magic gruel.

It was challenging work, but rewarding work. Real work!

Scratch that.

No, like’s it’s a record and I’m a dj.

Scratch, scratch, scratch, building exciting new tracks out of exciting old ones.

Scratch that.

You should never be a Knight of Faith for anything except loving kindness. Everything else is bound to make trouble. Particularly to be avoided is playing Knight of Faith to the tune of some babe: this is a surefire way to make everyone miserable.

To make this case, I will bring forth two star witnesses.

First, Julian of Norwich, clearly a saint, and thus someone we should not be too hasty to either dismiss or understand:

And when God Almighty had shewed so plenteously and joyfully of His Goodness, I desired to learn assuredly as to a certain creature that I loved, if it should continue in good living, which I hoped by the grace of God was begun. And in this desire for a singular Shewing, it seemed that I hindered myself: for I was not taught in this time.

And then was I answered in my reason, as it were by a friendly intervenor[1]:

Take it generally, and behold the graciousness of the Lord God as He sheweth to thee: for it is more worship to God to behold Him in all than in any special thing. And therewith I learned that it is more worship to God to know all-thing in general, than to take pleasure in any special thing. And if I should do wisely according to this teaching, I should not only be glad for nothing in special, but I should not be greatly distressed for no manner of thing[2]: for All shall be well.

For the fulness of joy is to behold God in all: for by the same blessed Might, Wisdom, and Love, that He made all-thing, to the same end our good Lord leadeth it continually, and thereto Himself shall bring it; and when it is time we shall see it. And the ground of this was shewed in the First [Revelation], and more openly in the Third, where it saith: I saw God in a point.

All that our Lord doeth is rightful, and that which He suffereth[3] is worshipful: and in these two is comprehended good and ill: for all that is good our Lord doeth, and that which is evil our Lord suffereth. I say not that any evil is worshipful, but I say the sufferance of our Lord God is worshipful: whereby His Goodness shall be known, without end, in His marvellous meekness and mildness, by the working of mercy and grace.

Rightfulness is that thing that is so good that [it] may not be better than it is. For God Himself is very Rightfulness, and all His works are done rightfully as they are ordained from without beginning by His high Might, His high Wisdom, His high Goodness. And right as He ordained unto the best, right so He worketh continually, and leadeth it to the same end; and He is ever full-pleased with Himself and with all His works.

And the beholding of this blissful accord is full sweet to the soul that seeth by grace. All the souls that shall be saved in Heaven without end [shall*] be made rightful in the sight of God, and by His own goodness: in which rightfulness we are endlessly kept, and marvellously, above all creatures.

And Mercy is a working that cometh of the goodness of God, and it shall last in working all along, as sin is suffered to pursue rightful souls. And when sin hath no longer leave to pursue, then shall the working of mercy cease, and then shall all be brought to rightfulness and therein stand without end.

And by His sufferance we fall; and in His blissful Love with His Might and His Wisdom we are kept; and by mercy and grace we are raised to manifold more joys.

Thus in Rightfulness and Mercy He willeth to be known and loved, now and without end. And the soul that wisely beholdeth it in grace, it is well pleased with both, and endlessly enjoyeth.

[From Chapter 35 of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love

Notes from the Project Gutenberg version:

[1] “A friendful mene” = intermediary (person or thing), medium: compare chapters 19 and 4.
[2] See chapter 34
[3] i.e. allowath]

*[I added that “shall” because it seemed like the text was missing either a “will” or a “shall” and I felt like a “shall” was more in the spirit of Julian’s time/place. I also moved the paragraphs around a bit.]

See? We should work to comprehend God in everyone and everything — not try to force romantic crushes into being magical bridges to God. That kind of fancy theo-emotional maneuvering takes us away from the work of connecting directly with God.

On the other hand, life requires dealing with each moment as it is presented to us. And so how does a young man go about dealing with a true love that he feels is unrequited? But no, I can’t take the question seriously. I am too old now, and I’ve been proven more crazy than loving too many times. Whatever reality one believes one has been thrown into, it remains true that only the Knight of Faith for loving kindness succeeds. Perhaps one can take a romantic love that one feels one should stay true to — even if unrequited — and persist therein, and in this persistence find God; but that doesn’t happen because one is persisting in one’s expectation for romantic love, it happens because one is persisting in one’s sense that Love is Real.

How to make this clear? The Knight of Faith may love the princess today but he is very willing to stop loving her tomorrow. His romantic love for the princess is besides the point. He must love her and everyone and even himself as if they were all children of God. He must make that motion every moment — the leap into the fundamental spiritual wager that life should be lived for spiritual Love rather than any material, emotional, or intellectual goods. He cannot become a Knight of Faith so long as the princess remains his object of devotion. It may be that his love for her forces him to see that the only love that means anything to him is a Love that is Real, but that realization contains within it the further realization that the only love that means anything to anyone is the Love that chooses everyone, and so the only path that means anything to anyone is living as if everyone were children of God and working every moment to find Love = Reality in that assumption.

Our second witness is Jesus of Nazareth, George W. Bush’s favorite philosopher and a proud spiritual sponsor of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq:

You want to know what the most important commandment is? You want to know the commandment upon which all religious Law rests? You want to know the single principle that — if lived — leads to eternal life? Okay, here you go:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.

What does that kind of living look like? Well, a certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. …

Where in Jesus’s reply to “what is the most important commandment” does Abraham raise his knife over Isaac’s breast? It doesn’t happen. The stories don’t fit. They weren’t supposed to.

The story of the Good Samaritan is a calling to be more loving than any of us ever are — for we all often shift our focus away from God’s Love, and we all often walk on by when somebody could really use a neighbor. But at least it’s a coherent testimony of faith and we can all feel it pointing meaningfully towards the right direction, even if we can’t quite get ourselves to get on board as fully as we would like to think maybe we would, should, could, are somehow actually yes-I-think-so doing — but no, we’re not quite there at all.

Though we don’t generally live up to the Most Important Commandment, we remember that it concludes with Jesus’s “Go and do likewise”, and we sense that it is meant to be lived as best as we can live it, even if within the grandeur of the story we recognize that we will never really live up to it.

The story of Abraham is not a story that is meant to be lived. Building a thought experiment out of this story is therefore not appropriate. There is no injunction for us to “go and do likewise” after we hear the story of Abraham and Isaac.

We can liken the sacrifice of Isaac to romantic devotion to the princess: both are beside the point. God will not ask you to sacrifice Isaac because sacrificing Isaac doesn’t jive with a life of Love. And God asks that you love yourself everyone with a full-on spiritual love, not that you wait forever for a princess who shows no signs of being yours.

Maybe if we go back to the story’s time and place, the story becomes clearer. Because maybe then and there it didn’t seem like such a crazy thought to suppose God might want Abraham to sacrifice Isaac child to God’s greater glory. Maybe the faith of Abraham is not that he allowed himself to interpret God’s voice as commanding him to sacrifice his son; but is rather in his last minute reversal — the moment when he heard God’s voice clear enough to understand that that’s not the kind of sacrifice God requires.

What if the story of Abraham and Isaac is how we humans can relate more meaningfully to God by putting our faith in God’s infinite spiritual Love? Then it seems that the story does jive with Jesus’s sketch of the true religion.

Abraham was influenced by the thoughts of his day. Rather than straying from the universal and the ethical (as Kierkegaard suggested Abraham was doing by being willing to sacrifice Isaac to God), perhaps Abraham was being absolutely conventional to think that God could command him to sacrifice his son, and that since God is God, he must suspend all other considerations. Perhaps Abraham on the way to Mount Moriah is not superseding the ethical/universal with the spiritual (as Kierkegaard’s analysis would have it); perhaps Abraham is rather the battleground for two different ethical/universals — one that correlates God’s will with our society’s moral certainties versus one that correlates God’s will with own inner sense of a Love that chooses everyone.

Maybe:

The question raging inside of Abraham as he walks with Isaac to Mount Moriah is:

Could God possibly supersede the spiritual/emotional/intellectual values that glow through our own heart of hearts (our inborn sense for how we must think, feel, and act: aware, honest, clear, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, and joyfully-sharing) and what we sense to be the true spiritual path (living in for and by a spiritual Love that chooses everyone always and will never abandon or let anyone down)*?

*[The universal values and this inborn spiritual path work together. Abiding by the universal values helps us to relate meaningfully to the Love/Lover that chooses everyone; and the more meaningfully we relate to that Love/Lover, the more It motivates and elucidates the universal values.]

And more specifically, could God supersede my inborn God-facing compass with the “universal” — used in this sense to signify not so much what is truly written in everyone’s heart of hearts, as what everyone around me “knows” (which in Abraham’s time and place includes the “knowledge” that God can command human sacrifice, and that of course you just have to do whatever God demands, no matter how terrible).

Maybe two different ideas about God are battling inside Abraham as he marches Isaac towards the slaughter. A God of Absolute Love versus a God of Absolute Power. A sense of God that is ultimately meaningful to human minds/hearts versus a sense of God that isn’t meaningful to our deep hearts/minds — but that has still won over the crowd’s shared story about what God might do. A God that first and foremost refuses all cruelty versus a God that first and foremost demands blind allegiance.

We walk with Abraham and Isaac in fear and trembling. Which god do we call God? Which god do we decide is the True God? Which gods are just our own notions mixing with the notions around us? And which God is the Infinite Reality?

Does our inner sense that we must think and feel and act aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, and joyfully-sharing point us towards the True Path? Or is that sense just some more animal noise? And if so, what sense points us towards the True Path? What part of Abraham’s conscious moment believes God can ask humans to sacrifice innocent children to God’s greater glory?

Ah, but we see the snag in this analysis. For your author doesn’t think God literally said to Abraham, “I will give you a son”, and then a few years later, “Go sacrifice your son to me.”

In fact, your author believes that that story — the literal one — cannot serve as a meaningful or profitable thought-experiment.

Jesus’s commandment to love the Lord with all our heart and soul and mind and strength and our neighbor as ourself, and his sketch of how that looks in action: It is perhaps an impossible goal, but it is in any case actionable: When Jesus says, “Go and do likewise” he is pointing us to a definite direction that we can choose to head towards — even if only the fewest of us will ever truly put Love first every day every moment over and over again, even when it seems wildly impractical. But if Abraham says, “God and do likewise”, what do we do with that? God doesn’t talk to us us in a literal way like he does in the story of Abraham and Isaac.

Sometimes we feel a sense or maybe even words or — you know?: Sometimes we think maybe God or the divine or something more or — you know?: Sometimes we think maybe God would bid us do this or that. We can probably all from experience testify that at least sometimes we are wrong when we believe we’re following God’s will, God’s commands, God’s directions, God’s direction. But it still seems possible that in some non-literal sense God “speaks” to us.

If God literally appears before us and tells us to kill a child for God’s glory, we need to immediately seek help. That’s all the further we can go down a thought experiment based on a literal interpretation of the story.

But a story in which Abraham feels God’s voice like we all sometimes maybe think we do is not necessarily at odds with the original, and it has the advantage of being relatable. And that story has only one solution. You don’t sacrifice Isaac. You don’t call any god/notion/tradition who/that demands cruelty the “True God”.

Nowadays of course we don’t even start the walk up to Mount Moriah. But we still find many ingenuous ways to call our notions the Truth; and we still try to counteract this weakness by opening up enough to Godlight to “hear” God well enough that God might direct us away from the worse and towards the better.

Strictly speaking, Abraham doesn’t need to sacrifice that poor goat, either. But how far can one get from the beliefs and norms of one’s times and places? Swapping out Isaac for a goat represents a great theological advancement, even if, I mean: really: God doesn’t need us to slit goats’ necks either. Why do we “know” that now? And why is your author so confident that that “knowledge” is more in line with God’s Truth than the ancient “knowledge” that of course God needs goats sacrificed sometimes, and pretty often actually — especially if somebody screwed up, or experienced a bunch of suspiciously bad luck — ?

We know we can lay off the goats for the same reason that we know that Jesus is right that the essence of the spiritual life is a dual motion inward to a God of Love and outward in the understanding that that same God and same Love shine through everyone else — binding us all together as children of the True God. Deep inside we know that God is Love; and we also know that there’s really no point sacrificing goats for the glory of God: killing innocent creatures is not needed for communion with the divine, and thinking it is amounts to a misunderstanding of divine nature.

When a young boy arrives at a new school and scorns the “bad” kids who act up a little in class and who don’t show any kind of love of or aptitude for book learning, he goes home and tells his mother about how sloppily these kids are living. His mother smiles gently. After all, everyone in the story is like seven years old and living in a safe and easy moment-spot. How bad or good can any of them really be at this point in their lives? But God is Infinite. What are the odds of God agreeing with us that we are “good” and some other people are “bad”? What are the odds of God doing anything but smiling gently, and gently leading us all to the perspective that understands, embraces, and actualizes the Most Important Commandment and the Story of the Good Samaritan?

You might argue that it’s too easy for Abraham to have faith if his faith corresponds to his own inborn sense of spiritual direction. You might say, “Abraham’s faith means nothing if he doesn’t prove his faith by suspending all ethical considerations, thereby being fully ready to do God’s will — even up to and including sacrificing Isaac’s young life.” But you’d know that’s not true even as you said it. The journey into a true individual subjective relationship with God must be a journey that is meaningful to the person taking it. And that implies abiding by those inborn rules that we must abide by to be meaningful to ourselves. And as our own failure to live up to the Good Samaritan’s example demonstrates, being a Knight of Faith within the universal values (in the sense of those values written in our own heart of hearts, rather than just in the sense of those values that other people in your time and place subscribe to) is already impossibly difficult.

The point here is that suspending your community’s sense of the ethical/universal is not the same as sacrificing your own innermost sense of the ethical/universal. And that I feel like Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling conflates these two meanings of ethical/universal. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard brings forth three tragic heroes to prove that the Knight of Faith is not a tragic hero. Agamemnon, for example, is a hero because he sacrifices his daughter’s life so the Greek ships can move. And he remains safely within the “universal/ethical” in doing this — everyone can understand and be grateful for this sacrifice. Except no. Not now. Now it’s like: That war didn’t need to happen in the first place, and what kind of Gods are you worshipping if they make you kill children in order to move ships? … and so on. Agamemnon’s “universal/ethical” is not ours. Rather than applauding Agamemnon’s murder of his innocent child for the sake of a war over his brother’s honor, we’re wont to say, “he overstepped the universal values in order to appease some common idiocies of his day.”

What if the Father of Faith is just another human being? That is to say: What if faith is possible not just in story books and scriptures, but in all human lives? I want to argue it is, and that that implies that Abraham’s big insight in the story of Isaac would have to be that God doesn’t desire physical human sacrifices. And we’re off! After we’ve realize communing with God does not require killing innocent children, it’s not a great leap to asking God to accept us as tools of God’s will — that we might be a living sacrifice to the God of Love.

Granted, we say a lot of things we don’t mean. Nonetheless, there has been theological progress since Abraham’s childhood, and that progress has come by generation after generation asking themselves what it would really be like to follow God — rather than following our own notions, or the myths of our surrounding worlds.

And yet it remains true that faith is not believing in stories about someone else’s faith, nor is it even believing in Jesus’s account of what faith is. Faith is walking with God. Faith is a spiritual journey. Faith is reliance not on ideas and feelings and principles; nor even is it reliance on stories about the Love that chooses everyone; faith is reliance on and relationship with the Love that chooses everyone.

But is faith something one does alone or with others? Faith communities can help one stay grounded in the spirit. And they can also help one drift into shallow interpretations of one’s chosen religion.

But is the Knight of Faith primarily a believer in God’s specific plan for his life or in God’s Love for all? A belief in God’s specific plan for one’s own life can help one stay grounded in the spirit. And it can help one drift into shallow interpretations of one’s life.

The question is not “alone or with others?”, nor is it “God’s plan for me or God’s Love?” The question is one of primacy: What comes first? First and foremost the spiritual path is an inside-out* relationship with a Love that chooses everyone, flowing into life with that Love, and thereby comprehending oneself** and everyone else within and through that Love.

*[inside-out: Based in the center of one’s conscious experience, and radiating out from there.]

**[comprehending oneself and everyone else with the Love that chooses everyone:

“Oneself” is a conscious moment. A conscious moment consists of feelings, ideas, and notions all sliding in and out of each other, interacting with and changing and giving birth and death to each other; and all this shot through with the Love that chooses everyone (spiritual Love is the only Reality; as such it creates, sustains, and shines through everything — including each conscious moment).

More wisdom is when one’s feeling/thinking/acting relates to Pure Love* with less confusion, thereby poetically** interpreting It into life with less distortion.

*{Pure Love = Reality = Love = the Love that chooses everyone. We’re pointing towards a shared human vista with words; we’re speaking poetically; we’re goofing around.}

**{the relationship between Pure Love and the rest of one’s conscious experience must be a poetic one, because stories about and reactions to Pure Love are not equivalent to Pure Love. We can point meaningfully towards what is prior to our ideas and feelings without trying to capture it literally; and pretending we can capture what is prior to our ideas and feelings literally in ideas and feelings causes us to worship our own ideas and feelings, rather than to use them to better and better orientate our whole conscious moment within the Love that Is.}

The more cleanly one’s feeling, thinking, and acting flows into and out of Pure Love; the closer to infinite and thus equal is one’s compassion for one’s own flowing-together of PureLove/feelings/thoughts/words/deeds (i.e. “oneself”) and everyone elses’ “selves”.

And vice versa.

That is to say: The more one loves God with all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength; the more one loves one’s neighbor as oneself. And the practice of working to love’s one neighbor as oneself helps to center one’s conscious moment around Pure Love.

“and the second is like the first”* because loving God implies living the Truth (we are all children of God) and thus loving one’s neighbor as oneself; but loving one’s neighbor as oneself implies living the Truth and thus loving God.

*Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Matthew 22:35-40, KJV]

The Knight of Faith’s center is not a romantic crush; nor is it some other guess of God’s exact plan for his life. The Knight of Faith’s center is loving God with all his heart and soul and mind and strength, and his neighbor as himself. A Knight of Faith may love a woman, and a Knight of Faith may believe God is calling him to do this or that in the world; but a Knight of Faith is centered not around these guesses but around the Love that chooses everyone always and that is enough for everyone with infinite joyful giving left over and that never ever lets anyone down.

Does the Knight of Faith lift the knife over Isaac’s thin, desert-tanned little-boy neck — certain that God will stay his hand, but yet willing to let Isaac’s blood careen and puddle and pool and bunch and dry upon the sandy dirt?

Does the Knight of Faith wait all his life for the princess — certain that God will grant their union in this life, yet willing to die alone without so much as a smile from his daydreamed bride?

No and no.

The Knight of Faith in Abraham’s day perhaps flirts with the possibility that God would command a father sacrifice his child’s life to prove to God that he loves God best. But by centering himself around God’s Love, the Knight of Faith works with God to lift his personal theology out of such errors — even if the prevailing surrounding theologies were susceptible to or even encouraged such misinterpretations of the divine.

The Knight of Faith might be a man who loves a woman or a woman who loves a man or a man who loves a man or a woman who loves a woman or a man who loves a they or a woman who loves a they or a they who loves a man or a they who loves a woman or a they who loves a they — that’s all the permutations I can think of; I hope I’ve not left anyone out! —

What I mean is, the Knight of Faith may love a princess with his everything, and the Knight of Faith may think it best to wait for his chosen princess, may believe that this love is true and thus is part of God’s plan for him and thus should be waited for. The Knight of Faith may do all this and he may expect to win the princess in this life because he may feel that that’s the path God’s laid for him in this life;

But the Knight of Faith is centered first and foremost around God’s Love, and his life is first and foremost a self-observing, -analysing, -critiquing and -adjusting meditation on living that Love, and so he may very well in time come to see that he’d misinterpreted God’s path for him, or that perhaps God had bade him wait for his princess, but now God bade him let her go.

On the Knight of Faith’s freedom:

The Knight of Faith’s center is the center of each human conscious moment. At the center of each conscious moment is Godlight = spiritual Love = An Infinitely Joyful Infinitely Giving Giggle of Kind Delight. Nothing else truly exists, and nothing else is a free-cause.

All that exists is Pure Love. As the transcendent cause of all things, Pure Love creates this shared illusion (the interwoven tapestry of all bodies and minds). As the immanent cause of all things, Pure Love is a first-cause shining through everything.

All creatures are free to the degree their actions consciously flow off their true nature. The only true nature is Pure Love. And so we are free only to the degree our actions flow off of Pure Love qua immanent first-cause — as opposed to Pure Love qua transient first-cause:

Our consciousnesses cannot sync up with the totality of all caused things (i.e. illusions) as they tumble as one off of Pure Love [this is Pure Love qua transcendent first-cause]; but human consciousnesses can to some degree sync up with Pure Love as It shines through everything, including each conscious moment [this is Pure Love qua immanent first-cause].

We are unfree to the degree we’re bumped here and there by proximate causes. But the only first-cause is the Love that creates, sustains, and shines through everything. And so we are free precisely to the degree that our conscious moments sync up with and flow off Pure Love as It shines through each conscious moment.

Freedom is not following one’s own whims any more than it is following the whims of one’s leaders or the prevailing norms of one’s era. Freedom is following God. This freedom cannot be forced by laws. This freedom must come from within, from being overflowed and exploded apart by the Love that chooses everyone.

This freedom finds itself: we have within always at least some relationship to the Pure Love shining through our every conscious moment; and to the degree we cultivate that relationship (to the degree Pure Love rules the rest of our conscious moments and organizes our feeling/thinking/acting around Itself), we become more free.

You cannot legislate spiritual freedom, and pretending you can force spiritual wisdom onto a culture just tempts people to lie to themselves and others about the most sacred things. Hence the separation of church and state, and the refusal to equate leaders with God’s agents on earth. The free man bows to no one except the God of Love within; oh, and I guess to everyone to the degree they need your helping hand — for the Love within recognizes Itself in everyone and delights therein.

The Knight of Faith will avoid making the most egregious of spiritual errors — confusing one’s owns notions for the Truth to the degree that one commits grave sins against God, others, and one’s own inner world. If he does end up slitting Isaac’s throat to prove to God that he loves God, then he was not yet then the Knight of Faith — even if perhaps now he sees his mistakes and rights his rhythm (and spends the rest of his life in repentance for his terrible error).

The Knight of Faith may well win his princess’s heart and even marry her, after the fashion of humankind. But only as a bonus. Insofar as he is a Knight of Faith, his being is concentrated around only one inward action: working every moment to better and better give oneself over to the God of Love, and to better and better interpret that Gentle Persistent Kindness into feeling, thinking, speaking, and acting.

But we want to help our nation in this wobbly moment.

How to proceed?

Abraham believes God is commanding him to march Isaac up Mount Moriah and kill him there. George W. Bush prays for wisdom and the most powerful nation in the world invades Iraq to finally set things right in the Middle East, make it all nice and cozy and tame like Europe after World War II. Julian of Norwich’s wisdom generally feels timeless; one believes she experienced God in a point and in some deep sense knew that all is well; and yet, somewhere in the general blessedness, she does let slip,

And yet in this I desired, as [far] as I durst, that I might have full sight of Hell and Purgatory. But it was not my meaning to make proof of anything that belongeth to the Faith: for I believed soothfastly that Hell and Purgatory is for the same end that Holy Church teacheth, but my meaning was that I might have seen, for learning in all things that belong to my Faith: whereby I might live the more to God’s worship and to my profit.

But for [all] my desire, I could[1] [see] of this right nought, save as it is aforesaid in the First Shewing, where I saw that the devil is reproved of God and endlessly condemned. In which sight I understood as to all creatures that are of the devil’s condition in this life, and therein end, that there is no more mention made of them afore God and all His Holy than of the devil,—notwithstanding that they be of mankind—whether they be christened or not.

For though the Revelation was made of goodness in which was made little mention of evil, yet I was not drawn thereby from any point of the Faith that Holy Church teacheth me to believe. For I had sight of the Passion of Christ in diverse Shewings,—the First, the Second, the Fifth, and the Eighth,—wherein I had in part a feeling of the sorrow of our Lady, and of His true friends that saw Him in pain; but I saw not so properly specified the Jews that did Him to death. Notwithstanding I knew in my Faith that they were accursed and condemned without end, saving those that converted, by grace. And I was strengthened and taught generally to keep me in the Faith in every point, and in all as I had before understood: hoping that I was therein with the mercy and the grace of God; desiring and praying in my purpose that I might continue therein unto my life’s end.

And it is God’s will that we have great regard to all His deeds that He hath done, but evermore it needeth us to leave the beholding what the Deed shall be. And let us desire to be like our brethren which be saints in Heaven, that will right nought but God’s will and are[Pg 69] well pleased both with hiding and with shewing. For I saw soothly in our Lord’s teaching, the more we busy us to know His secret counsels in this or any other thing, the farther shall we be from the knowing thereof.

[Chapter 33, Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich, circa 1343 to after 1416]

Hmmm.

Why do we who are so much less wise than Julian of Norwich know that the Medieval Catholic Church’s doctrine that the Jews were eternally responsible for and condemned for Jesus’s death is (as today’s Catholic Church now holds) false? Or did she know, or maybe be kind of know, but yet also sensed that her manuscript would not survive if she contradicted the church’s teachings? Was perhaps her mentioning that she’d not seen purgatory and she’d not seen the Jews as being particularly guilty of Jesus’s death: were these perhaps the best hints she thought she could get away with as to the fact that these teachings of the church were not really, strictly speaking, true?? Or was she — wise and loving though she was — honestly still kind of bamboozled by the dogma’s of her time and place?

How to be a Knight of Faith in a way that isn’t awful? How to give your all to God for real, and not trick yourself into thinking God needs you to go crush xyz sinners who, actually, are just as much children of the living God as you are? How to give the princess the space she needs to feel whether or not she feels what you feel?

God’s will for your public life? And God’s will for your nation? Ah, but even mentioning it I feel the evil piling up like so much sludge choking the drain, stopping up the tub with more and more and evermore toilet water.

And yet Abraham Lincoln was obsessed with the question of God’s will for the United States of America. And Abraham Lincoln didn’t mess everything up, didn’t parade around in and gum up the works with the same old boring shit about how my dad and my nation and my GOD is gonna whoop your dad and your nation and your god.

Hmmmmm.

Author: Humpty Dumpty
Editors: All the kings horses, men, and monopolies
Directors, Producers, and Catering: Bartleby Willard & Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andy Watson

[As of Sunday, 11/24/2024, the below is begun, but not edited. We’ve only gotten as far as individual Something Deeperism. Then comes shared Something Deeperism. Then wisdom memes. Then the spiritual value of representative democracies. I don’t know why we spent the morning on this essay, when we were already working on an overview of our last few decades of big ideas. In general, we cannot explain why we keep rewriting this essay. It seems to be a type of intellectual/emotional tick or spasm.]

Nothing new under the sun.

Let’s see if we can paint the project in terms of old ideas that have been kicking around the world for centuries millennia or some other big chunk of human history.

Something Deeperism is the general worldview that people can relate meaningfully to the Truth, just not in a literal, definitive, or exclusive way: We can organize our feeling, thinking and acting around the Truth; and relate to It poetically — our ideas and feelings imperfectly but still meaningfully pointing-towards and -away from the Truth, and thereby imperfectly but still meaningfully flowing into and out of the Truth; rather than literally understanding the Truth so that our own ideas and feelings about the Truth might be considered “True”.

This view of spiritual wisdom holds that no human ideas and/or feelings are ever identical with the Truth — which is infinite, eternal, and perfect; and which therefore does not fit into human ideas and feelings. The best we humans can do is organize our feelings and ideas around the Truth and relate meaningfully enough to It to flow adequately-along with It. Human wisdom is thus not an endpoint, but an ongoing process of self-observation, -analysis, -critique, and -adjustment.

Something Deeperism therefore sounds a lot like concepts like the “perennial philosophy” and “spiritual universalism”: There’s not one religious path to spiritual growth, but many; and the main factor determining spiritual growth is not your dogmas, so much as how well you use your dogmas to transcend your dogmas and worship and follow God, rather than worshipping and following your own ideas and feelings (about God, or about No-God, or whatever your big and little notions of the moment may be).

We’ve gotten in the habit of motivating Something Deeperism in this way:

Your ideas and feelings are meaningful to you only to the degree that you abide by the universal values (aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, joyfully-together/-sharing); but deeper than that, your ideas and feelings (including ideas and feelings about the universal values) are meaningful to you only to the degree that your ideas and feelings relate meaningfully to a Reality = Love. Why? That’s just the psychological situation we humans find ourselves within. Except to the degree our feeling/thinking/acting flows off of Reality = Love, we cannot understand, believe in, or care about our own f/t/a; and we shoved about by external circumstances like our own notions*, other people’s notions, and the twists and turns of the prevailing winds.

*We count our own notions as “external circumstances” because underneath the sense that we must organize our f/t/a around and relate meaningfully to Reality = Love in order to be meaningful to ourselves, are two assumptions: Except to the degree Reality = Love (1) is What Is, and (2) we can base our lives on a meaningful relationship to It, our lives don’t mean anything to us. That’s because any other reality or Reality tastes like soap in our mouths — too lonely, boring, and pointless to build a moment around, let enough a life. And so our only hope for internal coherency (meaningfulness to ourselves) is that our own notions are not the essence of our experience, but are just some chains-of-feeling-and-thinking flowing through our conscious moment, and which can be good and helpful only to the degree they are shaped by a Reality = Love shining at the core of each conscious moment.

We don’t try to prove that Reality = Love is the Truth, or that we can relate our feeling, thinking, and acting meaningfully to Reality = Love. Instead, we suggest a kind of Pascalian Wager:

We’ve nothing to lose by seeking Reality = Love within each conscious moment, and everything (meaningfulness to ourselves, and thus the ability to meaningfully travel with our own feeling, thinking, and acting to our own conclusions — rather than bounce haplessly about as hopes, fears, and other desperate emotions fight for supremacy of our conscious moments) to gain.

And then we say, “And why not? Why not posit a Reality = Love shining through each conscious moment? If there is a Reality, it would seem reasonable for It to shine through all these illusionary trappings. And why couldn’t we relate meaningfully to Reality = Love? Just as we can get better and better at relating ideas and words to feelings by being more and more open and honest with ourselves; why couldn’t we get better at relating feelings, ideas, and words better and better to a Reality = Love shining through the core of each conscious moment by being more and more open and honest with ourselves?”

That’s like a Pascalian Wager. Sometimes we go past that attitude and claim that everyone is already a Something Deeperist. Because we all cannot avoid the realization that we require Truth to be meaningful to ourselves (we can’t really believe in the various relative truths we sometimes try to steer our thought by), but that we also can’t be meaningful to ourselves unless that Truth is infinitely loving and won’t let anyone down ever — a Reality that doesn’t always care for and salvationate everyone is not a Reality we can understand, believe in, or care about. And we all cannot avoid the realization that the Truth would have to be infinitely wider and deeper than our little ideas and feelings about the Truth; and that confusing our own ideas and feelings about the Truth for the Truth actually points us away from the Truth, and causes no end of human suffering and bullshit. And so we all know that our only hope is to find Reality = Love and organize our f/t/a around It, working to relate more and more meaningfully to It, while always fighting our own tendency to declare (at least with our feelings, if not always with our ideas) our own f/t/a the “Truth!” And then sometimes we go even further, and say that we can’t help but always find ourselves somewhere within the process of attempting to organize our f/t/a around and relate meaningfully to Reality = Love; and so our only real options are either (1) to pretend we do not find ourselves within a poetic/non-literal spiritual quest, or (2) admitting we do find ourselves in such a quest, and trying to make the best of that reality.

Some might argue that we can’t know that everyone is essentially the same, and we cannot therefore assume that with the forgoing we’ve been describing everyone’s essential psychological spot. But we consider the essential sameness of all conscious beings to be fundamental to the assumption (Reality = Love is True, and we can relate meaningfully to this Truth) that we must demonstrate to ourselves in order to be able to understand, believe in, or care about our own f/t/a. We’re not able to relate meaningfully to Reality if it is not equal to Love; and so a Reality in which others are not essentially the same as we are would contradict the only Reality that could be meaningful to us — such a Reality could not serve as a firm foundation for our f/t/a.

[Also note that we humans learn via empathy (my father stubs his toe, he makes certain facial expressions and gestures and uses certain words, and I map his facial expressions and gestures onto my mind-body, and thereby learn what he means with words like “owe” and “hurt” and “God damn stupid legos everywhere!”), so if we humans are not all essentially the same, how can we make any sense out of everything we “know”? All our “knowledge” is based on interactions with other humans and their artifacts.

Also note that we can’t actually believe we humans are not all essentially the same: The notion is too lonely and boring to seriously countenance.]

With this “firm foundation” we betray our debt to Descartes, who sought a firm foundation for his thinking by doubting everything until he landed upon the (to his way of thinking) undoubtable thought of “I think therefore I am”. You can further in tracing that debt by noting that Descartes ended up working his way to a proof of the existence of God based on the fact that a clear and distinct idea of God’s essence is enough to demonstrate the existence of God to the meditator, because necessary existence is included within the essence of God.

Descarte’s Ontological Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Section 1. The Simplicity of the “Argument”:

One of the hallmarks of Descartes’ version of the ontological argument is its simplicity. Indeed, it reads more like the report of an intuition than a formal proof. Descartes underscores the simplicity of his demonstration by comparing it to the way we ordinarily establish very basic truths in arithmetic and geometry, such as that the number two is even or that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to the sum of two right angles. We intuit such truths directly by inspecting our clear and distinct ideas of the number two and of a triangle. So, likewise, we are able to attain knowledge of God’s existence simply by apprehending that necessary existence is included in the clear and distinct idea of a supremely perfect being. As Descartes writes in the Fifth Meditation:

[1] But if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the idea of something entails that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God? Certainly, the idea of God, or a supremely perfect being, is one that I find within me just as surely as the idea of any shape or number. And my understanding that it belongs to his nature that he always exists is no less clear and distinct than is the case when I prove of any shape or number that some property belongs to its nature (AT 7:65; CSM 2:45).

One is easily misled by the analogy between the ontological argument and a geometric demonstration, and by the language of “proof” in this passage and others like it. Descartes does not conceive of the ontological argument on the model of a Euclidean or axiomatic proof, in which theorems are derived from epistemically prior axioms and definitions. On the contrary, he is drawing our attention to another method of establishing truths that informs our ordinary practices and is non-discursive. This method employs intuition or, what is the same for Descartes, clear and distinct perception. It consists in unveiling the contents of our clear and distinct ideas. The basis for this method is the rule for truth, which was previously established in the Fourth Meditation. According to the version of this rule invoked in the Fifth Meditation, whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive to be contained in the idea of something is true of that thing. So if I clearly and distinctly perceive that necessary existence pertains to the idea of a supremely perfect being, then such a being truly exists.

…

If we change the “idea” of God’s essence to a “whole-being insight (all aspects of one’s conscious moment — ideas, feelings, and the Reality = Love shining through each moment — working meaningfully, though of course not literally/directly or exclusively/definitively together) into Reality = Love“; then we can see how Descartes’ belief that we could intuit God’s existence via a clear and concise idea about God’s essence is very similar to our sketch of an experiential proof for the existence of Reality = Love. Like Descartes, we would seek to clarify our f/t/a to the point that we could perceive our own conscious moment as it really is, and we hope to find therein a Reality = Love that we can relate meaningfully to. If we read Descartes’ proof of God primarily as a sketch for how one might climb through one’s conscious moment to an intuition of God that included the Reality of God within that intuition, then it is very close to our sketch of an experiential proof of Reality = Love. Such arguments are also not far from Buddhist notions like using dogmas as ladders to the Truth, rather than pretending dogmas can contain the Truth.

We don’t usually think of the project in terms of Descartes’ ideas, but instead compare it to Plato’s arguments in his Republic.

In his Republic, Plato argued that human psychology included distinct appetite, honor-loving, and reasoning aspects; and that the best aspect should rule the rest, and that only the reasoning aspect had any idea what was going on (the other aspects aren’t even trying to figure out what’s going on, but merely demand we satisfy their cravings for food, honor, or et cetera), so clearly it should rule. But how should the reasoning aspect reason? Doesn’t it need to follow what’s Best? But what is Best? Well, the essence of Goodness, the essence of Bestness, the Form of the Good — clearly that’s Best. But how to follow the Form of Good when It resides in the realm of perfect Forms, and we’re so mundane? Oh, I know: we can clarify our minds and thus our apprehensions of the Forms or essences of all ideas, and gradually work our way up to the Form of the Good. Well, at least the Philosopher Kings can: They can work their way up to the Form of the Good, drop back down to reality with that insight still imprinted on their thought, use that insight to make good decisions for the whole community, and then climb back up …

That’s basically what we’re doing here at Skullvalley After Whistletown Booksellers Extraordinaire.

First we note that reason itself is an appetite: Left to its own devices, it keeps mindlessly demanding more and more intellectual certainty — even though humans cannot really conceive of perfect intellectual certainty. And so the only thing that should rule the whole is the Form of the Good, i.e. Godlight i.e. God i.e. Pure Love

We organize our feeling and thinking around the Pure Love (the only thing that truly exists) that shines through everything (including each conscious moment; Pure Love creates, sustains, shines-through, and love-lifts this entire interconnected flowing-together of creation), and relate our feeling and thinking poetically to (pointing adequately towards, while taking care not to pretend we are literally, exclusively, or definitively grasping) Pure Love. And then we drop down to our task and write with our minds/hearts still seared by the infinite Light of infinitely joyous infinite giving (to give another poetic description of what the poetic description “Pure Love” aims at). And on and on, up and down we travel, always sinking deeper and deeper into the Love that chooses and is enough for everyone, and always flowing more and more gently/truly off that Love.

Well, that was the plan, anyway.

THE AUTHORS TAKE A MOMENT TO STRETCH

So how far have gotten?

Just up to individual Something Deeperism, I’m afraid. And we didn’t even mention Camus or Kierkegaard. Oh, and we left out how radical skepticism did indeed prove itself a self-defeating logos.

oh but man was he ever a questionable character
people questioned his character
and like well-fed house-dogs bayed and wiggled in proud disdain
some even went so far as to brag to their friends that they didn’t care they would go right up to his face and tell him
no one ever actually got as far as his face though
it was enough to know
enough to roll around in his questionableness like well-fed house-dogs wiggle-triumphing on their backs through the reassuring stench of something some days dead somehow spread across the lawn
that was all good and just
him being such a questionable character and all
they said yeah he walks with a limp — but just to lull unsuspecting victims a little nearer to his badger claws and wolf teeth
they said yeah he eats cabbage stew for breakfast lunch and dinner — and that’s to hide in farts like a tigress hunts downwind to mask her cruel powers her sultry feline glands
they said yeah he thumb-pops dandelion heads — like how psychopaths start out by torturing cats, not that cats are all that great or anything, but it’s like a warmup evil and a sign
they said yeah he talks to himself while wandering these wide woods — someday some shooter’s gonna mistake him for a talking deer and we’ll all be better off
and then they laugh being heroes by doing nothing all day every day over and over again in the shade of a regulated market economy with safety nets and backed by an active central bank
they said yeah he’s a questionable character and I got these sneakers on sale what do you think?

[What is this? This is not a new literary dispensation!
We want a new art!
This feels like a grumpy old art.
Just reading it makes me sleepy and look I’m putting on an old flannel bathrobe and trusted old soft-bellied rough-leather slippers, and here I slip into the paper the coffee the cigarette the glaring yellow linoleum tiles, wallpaper, hard tabletop plush chair back — everything yellow linoleum with hints of silver, swirls of white, shades of faded hope and ashtrayed-dreams; and here my long square fingers — knotted red now at the joints — pat my wife’s round-grown rump in her yellow towel-material bathrobe, and yes we are falling asleep in the kitchen with the stove on and while cigarettes — at $0.60 a pack who can say no to another? — dangle from our lips; and we have mixed vodka into our coffee; and we are tired ]