Living by Absolutes

I can't say exactly why, but life seems to be focusing lately. It feels as though I am finally letting go of everything I cannot do in this life and finding what I actually care about. There is a confidence in this, in recognizing that everyone is in the same predicament of having to choose to do a few things while knowing we are all creatures with unfulfilled potential. You have to do one thing which you love and know you are supposed to do. I believe in a life of confidence, in a communion with the Absolute. Though we live in this relative world of ratios and information, the world exists; the Absolute is perceivable. When we make decisions, we can know what to do.

I'm still getting this clear in my head, but I think principles can be tied to feelings which can guide us to correct living. I don't think informational principles can be coldly applied to every situation; ethics cannot be taught outside of a mentoring relationship. I am conceiving of correctness as making the right decision and the right decision is personal, but there is a right decision; the world exists and I can fit into it. I am getting used to feeling this right decision and it has something to do with a connection to everything else around me.

Ruminations from Nashville

No matter what picture of the world we compose, we know it will be
obsolete in the next encounter we have. Every moment is a fresh
problem, every thought a fresh solution. It's not coherence tying the
world together, but rather a continuing confusion being solved. Like
an algebra equation whose answer keeps changing, and I am the
variable. Ryan + world = perceived answer. The world never changes,
but I have to keep adjusting to meet the perception of wholeness, or
participation.

We can never stop the motion. People try to freeze everything and
when they can't, they push it to the after-life. "Oh, I'll be happy
then. I'll get what I want later." I'm beginning to believe only in
improvement. Just get better. Get better at getting better. Better
better better. Acceleration; motion. The top is stable when spinning
rapidly.

Isn't objectification our saving grace? That we can talk about deity,
that we can tamp down time and look at it for a moment before it
explodes again into flakes of knowledge. That I can say I have a
personality. Isn't that just supreme? I suppose it's another way of
saying we are self aware, but it's such fun to move in and out, to
snake between the conscious and unconscious realms of our selves. I
guess it's easier to swallow if we put those last two into one word,
and that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Andre Gide

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not."

This French writer and critic was friends with Oscar Wilde.
Similar people seem to find each other...

Olbers' Paradox

Why is the night sky dark?

Shouldn't it be piercingly bright because of all the light from all the stars in the universe?

What happens to the light?

It's absorbed by matter between the Earth and the stars?

Why isn't everything glowing white hot then?

The universe hasn't been around long enough?

Actually, light from distant objects is redshifted (moves towards the red end of the spectrum).

I used to play a game called Solar Quest in which I drew Red Shift cards whenever I rolled a double.
I always liked to collect the moons of Saturn, and the space docks.

remember

living well is the best revenge

Bertrand Russell

"Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so."

Ryan v. Parasite

I've been feeling kind of crummy for awhile...like a year, and it would never go away. I even had this weird eczema going on around my eyes. It seemed something was continually leaching my energy, but tests showed no obvious parasites. Finally I found this page: http://curezone.com/diseases/parasites/
Then I started taking an extract and pills with anti-parasitic properties.

I immediately felt better, and after three days I feel like a new human creature. I can eat what I want and feel satisfied afterwards. I have an appetite again. Incredible. This has been bugging me for around a year and a half, and all it takes is the right herbal extract to cure me. When something works, it works.

Oscar Wilde

"Give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

a delicate problem

"There was a Chinese philosopher who all his life pondered the problem whether he was a Chinese philosopher dreaming that he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that she was a philosopher..."

-Vladimir Nabokov

Why we are this way

OK, so my generation is postmodern I guess. It is really Modern M.O. to label things, classifying them and saying what they mean. Seems impossible to really believe in any sort of all-encompassing abstract truth statment. After all, I could meet people with ten different belief systems, in ten different environments during one weekend excursion. Trying to fit them all under one umbrella would be both insulting and exhausting.

So is it even possible to compose a story, a linear abstraction, using the material of one's life? I am thinking no. Well, at best it would be my own little part in an absurd play. I'm wondering if the way out of this maze is to believe in a spirituality encompassing all occurrences in life, and teaching ways of moving individually within massive, bloated systems of discourse. You can't control the discourse by saying what is best because there is no best. In fact, even "better" is getting murky. You'd really have to spend your whole life within a discourse to intelligently suggest an actual change for the better. "Convincing" people is really a modern phenomenon. Doing with positive intention, and causing others to do alongside yourself, is the more effective path to change. Not that change really needs us...