Paradox of Self

It’s quite peculiar how the individual mind,
Seeing its individual kind
Of thought processes,
Suddenly believes itself to be divergent,
Self evident, self serving, and not subservient
To the wider trends whose contiguity it continues,
Discrete thought follows social movement,
Your uniqueness will be as indecipherable to the future,
As day from morning.

You are the paradox of individuation and organism,
A single cell whose ubiquity in lockstep with unique,
Thus the technique for the thinker is to position himself oblique,
Keenly aware of the milieu in which he sits.
Faceless shadow amongst a vivid tableau.

Limitless

To divorce one’s self from the depths of the finite is the cardinal goal of the evolved or enlightened. How does one accomplish that?

To exist above the fray is it understand that the fray itself is of no consequence to that which matters. Jesus said, “give Caesar what is his” and Yogananda intimated a similar point in his stance that life was a mere cosmic production.

The physical realm, this tangible terra firma, is a sort of illusion; it is an interactive place which causes the being to experience and feel, urging them to devour its incarnation as veritable. It causes one to become confounded by the subtle differences between physical occurrence and objective truth, leading many brilliant, otherwise logical people to perpetually exist in states of dormancy. The physical world is an intensely alluring place; to make it orders of magnitude more vexing, time rears its ugly head, the presence moment passing as a probability wave yet seeming like a rigid set of discrete occurrences.

It is tenable to consume this world as reality; what else would there be, right? Why would we have bodies if what was real existed outside of their sensible perception?

Yet, time and time again, we see the virtuality of this “concrete” expression tested and debunked, we see that man possesses faculties which trump the presiding theories of being. Science, the bastion of rational thought, cannot even fully describe the physical world with consistency, instead having to follow two antimonious schools of thought, relativity and quantum mechanics.

Then, as we move further and further away from the “hard” facts of science to the “soft” interpretations of liberal arts and social expression, we see even more the foolishness of believing this earth to be anything more than plastic. Nothing but theories and opinions abound, subjectivity posing as authority, yet, we continually hold on to the belief that what we read or teach somehow touches the sacred grounds of the objective.

Man would rather debate the color of his skin, an easy and rather banal conversation, he’d rather talk about who is “running the world”, another extant frivolity. Man would rather compare himself to someone else. He would rather ogle at the stars, human and celestial.

This tangible form, this body, is a hodgepodge of insanity. The very definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, a quote that many recite religiously; yet, because so many people believe themselves to be different than their predecessors, they too fall prey to this existential asylum. They seem to disregard that slavery has risen and fallen, misogyny has risen and fallen, gods of varying degree have come and gone, societies have come and gone, and yet — here we all are.

Few will ever experience the nirvana of limitlessness, because few are ready to relinquish that which they believe to be true. They are slaves to their greed, slaves to their egos, slaves to their belief of “right” and “wrong”. They have swallowed this physical expression lock, stock, and barrel and will continue to abound within the walls of finitude until it is their time to expire. The finite, paradoxically, allows for infinite space for one to subsist within their delusion, it is the fertile ground for any human to justify their beliefs. It presents itself as the one and only; so man will rob another, kill another, judge another, persecute another, destroy another, all in the name of what he or she believes to be right.

Man will willingly don the mantle of ignorance simply because he feels in his physical bones that he can.

Laughably, he’ll do it in the name of anything, including God.

There is a reason why businesses can’t seem to exact their management practices, why economists explicitly preclude human behavior, why government officials come and go: because mankind has willingly, through the mechanics of physical reality, chosen to remain divided.

Every time I open my eyes I see the vestiges of our seemingly infinite ignorance. For one will say, “look at these fools consume mainstream entertainment” while the other says, “it is harmless”. One says, “the powers that be wish to control you” while another says, “the constitution preserves rights”.

Man has fallen in love with the labyrinth, believing that this is the true domain. He has lost sight of the truth that this place is ephemeral and simply chosen to make due here. Make no mistake, I am no intimating that this maze is easy to navigate, quite contrary; its very purpose is to confound, to consume, to disorient, for only those whose eyes remain on the Eternal will make their way out of it.

To become limitless is to enjoy a state of being which can never be expressed in words, it needs no proof, it needs no agreement between to people. It is not to be talked about unless the parties involved understand it. It is a veiled place that requires a deep urge to experience, once there, the physical world seems to melt away.

Suddenly the triviality of race, religion, and philosophy give way to something far more pervasive. Money becomes something altogether worthless, you have it simply to interface with the world of the unfree. Your passion effervesces, your light burns with the luminosity of a million suns.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a man or woman, black or Brazilian, old or young, you seem to exist outside of time, stretching forth through the vapid fragility of the physical world, creating what you must and destroying what you must. People still tied to the system are like predictable equations, you love them, but you grow weary of their myopic tendencies. When you breathe you seem to flex the very fabric of existence, when you pray it seems as if The Lord’s ear is an inch away. Your strategies are no longer about convincing this man or that, you understand his deficiency. You win before you even begin.

While the world is consumed with the dimensions of the world, the limitless enjoy planes unimaginable.

bryce

Quest for Objective Truth: Beyond Systems

This morning I received a confirmation on LinkedIn; a friend of mine from undergrad had accepted an absent-minded request sent months ago. I went to her page to see that she has established herself quite nicely, works for an incredible firm, has ascended through the ranks nicely, and is working on her MBA at an esteemed university. The interesting part is that she is on the journey in a career I have studied quite closely, management consulting, and her pathway is one that under any other circumstances I should be following.

But I’m not.

Truthfully, I am no where near this path. I have chosen not to be.

The reason I have chosen an alternative road is not because I am some jaded thinker who scoffs at the ideas of an flawed, woefully arbitrary “system” nor am I tethered to some spiritual idea that God has larger plans for me.

Those two dominate schools of thinking are fine for others, but given my proclivity for deconstruction, neither have proven very effective in my quest for answers. As the introduction to this mini series explicitly states, I have no qualms with science nor spirituality. I do not see them as incompatible or mutually inconsistent; I don’t judge the scientist any different than I judge the ascetic, both follow tenable paths to enlightenment.

I am aware that what I am searching for is not contained in any book nor can it be successfully synthesized in a laboratory.

Thus, any system of thinking is no longer acceptable to me.

The very idea of a system is perfectly reasonable: create a matrix of thought that provides satisfactory, predictable results based on the inputs and parameters of that matrix. Systems are found everywhere: computers, social groups, religion and so forth.

Actually everything you can possibly fathom is more than likely the result of a system or the system itself.

As laudable as systems are, they all have a fatal flaw which limits their universal appeal and long time performance: the very existence of a system creates solutions along with very same codes that render it ineffective.

By creating a system, one also inadvertently creates the information which compromises it. That is the fundamental principle of balance or causality that builds the framework for this universe.

For every way that one thinks, there is its extant opposite, which in certain circumstances becomes true, rendering the “concretion” of life a constant state of flux. Life is not purely abstract nor is it purely concrete.

A few examples:

Scientists understand that they cannot prove anything, only disprove. This system of thinking creates a world of plausibility, even if that plausibility is 99.99999% correct. As theoretical science ventures further and further into the “unknown”, what was once scientific begins to look a lot like what is spiritual, with things no longer behaving in clearly understood, “systematic” ways. Hence why there is fundamental differences between relativity and quantum activity.

Please, understand what I am saying: I am not saying that science is not valid, but that it constantly creates places of uncertainty where contradictory explanations CAN be valid.

I have a degree in the human sciences, I understand the value of empirical study, however, there are many, maaany places that science cannot touch and probably never will as long as flawed human subjects are the one’s manipulating it.

We teach our kids to go to college so that they can get better jobs, however, the confluence of inexperienced degree holders in a struggling economy has yielded predictably anemic employment prospects. What else can one expect by obeying the laws of supply and demand? If you send 15 million people to compete for intrinsically limited slots, the result will always be a surplus, especially when you factor in sentience. We all understand that it isn’t always about “what” you know, but “who” you know.

The education system in trying to inform and train has created the very thing it was set out to eradicate.

Religion follows the same logic. Systematically teaching people about spirituality has rendered mankind even more confused. The goal was to enlighten and bring closer to God, the result has been division and rather “ungodly” behavior.

Systems, as far as humanity is concerned, are always partial.

But what if there was a way to create something greater than a flawed system? What if there was a utility more pervasive than these “systems” that allowed for human partiality to be expressed in harmonic terms? What if predictable behavior could be gleaned, solutions found, and societies forged upon something more sturdy?

What if science and spirit where able to coexist, one as father (spirit) and one as son (spirit), paving the way for some greater expression of existence?

Quest for Objective Truth: An Introduction

I hold on to a belief that beneath all of the subjectivity of this world there is an all pervasive objective truth.

Albert Einstein famously quoted, “perception is merely an illusion, albeit is a very persistent one.” That illusion has been described in a myriad of ways throughout the years: Hindus call it MAYA, science, specifically in the West, has attributed it to the brain and its activities, Judeo-Christian systems often consider these images the “wiles of the Devil”.

Given that I believe this entire physical existence to be “soft”, that nothing is really fully known, I am not incredibly concerned with categorizing or chronicling the illusions. More than enough has been said about them. Furthermore, any cogent description of them further immerses a person in them; language, a fundamental agreement to transfer information from one thing to another, is limited to the parameters of the communicators, effectively expanding the vast scape of illusory reality.

In layman’s terms, language does not free one from the unreality of perception; it only tightens its grip.

Everything a person experiences, everything one has ever been taught, every decision one makes within the matrix of these illusions pulls them further from objective truth. Since anything in existence has infinite dimension, a subjective stance has more than enough information to justify itself.

Thusly stated: anything can be “true”.

I am not in contention with science, nor am I in contention with spirit, to adhere or deny one is to adhere or deny the other; I am merely positing the inconsistency intrinsic to human cognition. It isn’t whether or not one is “true” and the other “false”, but it is a question of why man has even created this dichotomy in the first place, especially since anything we think in this virtual reality is rarely a process of empiricism, but the patience to gather enough “real” data to justify one’s claim.

The universe is nothing more than a giant canvas, whose surface will bring forth the will of the artist. Will, as we all know, is purely subjective.

Science attempts to weed out the imprecision of spirit by posing itself as concrete; however, in an infinite universe perceived through subjective eyes, even those most consistent results are elegant speculation. The very basis of the scientific method is not to prove anything; it explicitly states that it can only disprove things, uprooting less consistent concepts.

Human condition and nature, behaving asymptotically, come infinitely close to objectivity without directly experiencing it. Thus, a conundrum is created: how can we perceive objective truth when we cannot touch objective truth through our commonly understood senses? And if we must rely on “soft” unprovable senses like intuition, how can we ever confirm them to be true at all?

Therein lies one of the most confounding principles of being. The common solution is to absolve any reliance on metaphysical and build a world simply on the “hard” facts of science, morality, and social order. This is not an inherently bad plan and out of it will come beautiful things; some of the leading scientific universities are the originators of breathtaking speculations into the universe.

Unfortunately, it will never be truly satisfactory to a species whose sentience goes beyond the limited scope of modern science. No matter how “hard” the facts may be, no matter how consistent the results, many humans feel a prickly sensation that their conscious extends far beyond the reaches of this tangible universe; science may provide the mechanisms for how things work here on this plane, but that does not rule out the affect of the spirit. Quite frankly, it simply provides how the spirit may or may not “work” on the body. Neuroscience may show that schizophrenia is viral, however, it cannot show that the virus is a mechanism via the unseen worlds.

Concordantly, the Spirit, is a common avenue to escape the sarcophagus of “reality”. However, the spirit is highly individuated and subjective, as no two people will experience this unseen realm the same. There may be some common themes, however, because of the duality between objective spirit and subjective physicality, no system can really be created. Systems are too easily exploitable, just as they create fixes, they create their own ultimate demise.

The spirit, as many contend, may bring man closest to God, however, with no cogent way to explain the spirit to one another, with nothing more than individuation, discourse on the spirit becomes implausible (refer back to my statement on the limits of language). The spirit, as many contend, brings intense personal power, but to turn around and create a systematic approach to it is laughable; it does not need a system. The spirit needs no physics, no math, no syntax, it simply is.

Science lays the framework for power through validity; spirit lays the framework for power through individuation.

Man is then brought repeatedly to the ultimate crossraods: flee the imprecision and interpretive chaos of spirit for science and limit one’s self to the principles of social order or tap the spirit and be released into worlds unprovable and mostly non-interfaceable by the physical self.

Tracing world history, one can see how man has oscillated between these concepts; ages of reason versus ages of faith.

But if perception is reality, what has actually been going on?

I possess spiritual components and I possess scientific components, I hold neither above the other. The net effect has been a state of being that is rather inert to the world around me. Like a noble gas, I am not swayed this way or that.

This is neither good nor bad, as those concepts are illusion.

My ultimate goal is to break through the wall of infinitude that is subjective reality and to taste the ambrosia of objective truth. Many before me have longed for the same thing, they practiced alchemy, meditation, the scientific method, data surveys, prayer, ascetic lifestyles, and astute observation in laboratories.

I see humans as clusters of probability, therefore, I see no difference between the efforts of researchers and the efforts of monks, they wish to find the same things.

Science seeks agreement, social inertia which assuages even the most skeptical person’s keenest observation; spirit seeks harmony, intangible inertia which brings them closer to the origins of all life.

Asymptote

In between you and I,
Exists infinite distance and infinite closeness;
That is the paradox of finitude.

This finite life,
Holds infinity times infinity illusions,
In the measured manifolds of its reality.

Life is then set up for endless cycles,
Magic treads where science soon will,
Prophets tread were academics soon will.

Life and death form the vertical axes,
While nature’s law complete the box,
And the physicality of mankind flourishes within.

Sentience is signaled by the breathe of Divine Creation,
the sarcophagus of sanctioned solitude,
Suddenly summons us to subsist.

We toil endlessly in our carnality,
Attempting to extract objective from subjective;
Our laboratory are in vain.

For focus on the finite merely yields infinite subjection,
While the gems of higher planes ephemerally glint
Just beyond our reaches.

I may know you, but do I really?
What is to be truly known in this life of illusions?
This box of surreality, fruitlessly mimicking the universe beyond!

This body, the avatar of Apeiron light,
Is called here for interactivity,
Be wary of carnality’s pull.

You may get lost in the deepest spaces.
For finitude is infinitude anon.

Wisdom’s Paradox

O blessed Wisdom, Divine!
Supplanting my childish ignorance,
Yet, oft leaving me vexed.

It seems the more I learn,
The less I seem to know;
The very Earth turned stranger to me.

Wisdom, scion of Truth,
So often you leave me in the throes of consternation;
What I once held true, dissolved to plausibility.

In my quiet place, I retreat to unwrap your treats greedily,
Yet, speedily I am reduced to nothing;

How can one know anything in this world,
When reality is just confusion draped in occurrence?

What Is Life?

I was asked, “What is Life?” to which I humbly replied:

Life is about the infinitude of the cosmos,
The congruency between the Microcosm, Man,
And the Macrocosm, Universe.

Life is about exploration and subsequent sensation
Of vexation as the latent understandings of impatient,
Beings finally catch up to the Wondrous Spirit.

It is about discovering love and letting it go.
It is about discovering love and helping it grow.

It is about accepting that nothing has to be,
Yet everything is, by the nature of his or her choice,
His or her voice creates the principles of their purpose.

Life’s purpose is never to purport importance,
But to import purses that purchase,
Perfected punctilious packed with light.

For light is the constant, the constituent that constitutes All Things,
Life, dear friend, is Light’s expression pouring forth from Kings and Queens.

Alien

Stark juxtaposition, wondrous tableau,
The activation of his mind’s eye turns his life into a show,
He multilaterally exists inside and out,
As he is aware that he is a stranger in his own land.

What creature is a man that becomes aware of his Self?
He who climbs the mountains of sentience,
He who ascends to the summit of existence,
Leaving behind all hopes of illusory normalcy.

Perspicuity, high functioning acuity,
Assuredly has created for his mind fluidity,
Evulsed from the realms of illusions,
His conscious goes into collusion

A fusion with his spirit, he mimics deliquesence,
The essence of his presence reveals extant elegance,
He no longer blends in to picture, his quiddity far too puissant,
His very steps on this earth bring him to the step of the Elysian.

Abundant Living: Self-Control

Many people say cleanliness is next to godliness, but I posit that self-control is the true godlike virtue. Self-control is a topic that has been discussed since the beginning of time; it is the crux of virtually every religious system, life philosophy, and legislative guideline ever generated. However, my recent meditations on its applicability to our high octane western culture has revealed that not only do we not live controlled lives, we don’t even really aspire to.

One of my long-term goals is to establish a Self Mastery Institute here in Southern California. I’m no master of self, however, my intense study of varying life philosophies has afforded me much freedom that I have been able to translate into profit. By profit I don’t exclusively mean money, my goal in life has very little to do with tangible wealth, but that is neither here nor there. The Self Mastery Institute would be a place where individuals from all walks of life would learn some of the basic precepts of abundant living.

Few people in our American culture live freely or abundantly.

Most of the reigning doctrine on self-control center around self-denial. Religion tells you not to have premarital sex while certain philosophies tell you not to engage in activities that have no greater good. These sort of mechanical inculcations make self-control seem like only a monk can master him or her self as these unidimensional teachings are seeded into cultural practices.

However, self-control is much less about behavior and more about mental or spiritual health. Behavior is mechanical, it can be falsified, it happens in a realm of pure illusion and really doesn’t reflect whether a person is virtuous or villainous. Recall all the stories of mobsters that would gun down their enemies only to attend church the next morning to ask for forgiveness. Those men had not an ounce of remorse in their petition for salvation, they simply went through the perfunctory motions to satisfy a deep set cultural belief.

The mind of a person who has self-control is still.

This stillness is the founding principle of not only Christianity but virtually every religion and philosophy around the world. Psalm 46:10 states, “be still and know that I am God”. This is because the chaotic mind of the unstable person is incapable of hearing the wisdom of the Spirit. For those agnostic or even atheistic individuals, the principle still remains the same: an unstable mind is incapable of finding solutions.

The West is afflicted by many things, but hyperproductivity is probably chief among them. We want results and we want them yesterday. Everyone talks about how we have became slaves to consumerism, but we’ve become slaves to it all: bringing home the bacon, eating it, coveting the bacon of our neighbor, hoarding the bacon, then passing it.

We are controlled by the environments around us. We are controlled by our pasts. We are controlled by the hopes of the future.

We are controlled by culture. Period.

Self-control is about the taking inventory of who and what you are versus who and want you want to be. As opposed to consuming everything you think, everything you hear, or the opposite of everything you hear (which has gain popularity in recent times), self-control isn’t about what you are doing, but how you are doing it.

Many of us go through the motions of life like mobsters, living duplicitously without taking the time to understand why they are what they are. Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other…”. This lays the framework for self-control, an instrumental step towards self-mastery.

When dealing with the linear agreements in the world around us, many people get sucked in by the social gravity of the goings-on’s. Instead of taking the time to think about the various potentialities or potential realities, they allow emotion or coercion to become the dominant cognitive facility. Linear agreements are highly, highly, HIGHLY attractive; do not fool yourself by believing they are some easily surmounted obstacle. They are generally organic, they feel natural; often times they arise out of necessity or an intense desire to promote peace. However, the blind acceptance of them will bring people to the brink of inefficiency as they become slaves to the world around them.

Self-control acknowledges the world around one’s self and attempts to make decisions with as many factors as possible in mind. From there, the position to change or remain stationary is one consistent with the mind or spirit of that individual. This is why I explicitly state that self-control has less to do with behavior than it does with the mental fortitude of the individual.

A man with self-control can never be victimized by a “system”. You will never hear him speak of the inability of himself or the preferred ability of someone else. He doesn’t complain about a religious construct or how his government is screwing him. He is the master of his own universe and he will do whatever is necessary to harmonize himself with his surroundings.

When I listen to people talk all I tend to hear people spew is defeat, then devise myopic schemes based around myopic life philosophies. The government, their significant other, their neighbor. They disdain God because He is supposed to ______________. They have become so enslaved by the illusions of the world around them that they forget they have the power to create options for themselves. They turn their back on previously sworn on beliefs because those no longer suit them or have let them down in some perceived way. They obsess over frivolities like money, status, or fame.

They play such limited games that they cannot see the bigger picture.

Those people, dear reader, are the epitome of a person with no self-control. They are not on the path of self-mastery.

I want you to see yourself as a mass of light, not a flesh and bone being. Light cannot be limited; it is constant, ineluctable, undeniable, regardless of the circumstances surrounding it. You have been infused with the breath of life; I don’t care whether you are spiritual of light. You can believe we came forth from the divine intellect of God or you can believe that we are eventuality of billions of years of evolution, the fact remains the same: our sentience has given us unprecedented control over ourselves and over our surroundings

You do not have to accept life as what it is, especially if you are in the West; you can create it. You should create it. You should search yourself so thoroughly that the existence you want is the existence you live. At that point there is no rat-race, there is no hyper-productivity, there is what you choose to produce and how you choose to produce. Proverbs 18:16 says, “your gift will make room for you”! If you are living a life of self-control, actively tilling your mind and spirit, your external environment will reflect your internal environment.

No longer are you a slave to culture, but you will taste and sample culture all around the world. You will discover the things you wish to discover in life. You will find the man or woman you want. Work your passion.

The longer you remained enslaved to your limited notions of reality, the longer you defeatedly accept the linear agreements of the world around you, the longer you will merely exist. You’ll work that job just to barely make ends meet each month. You’ll do things because your parents instructed you. You’ll marry that safe suitor.

And you know what? Thats a perfectly acceptable way to live. Billions of people will do that and no one will judge them. But for those that want to squeeze a bit more out of life, pass on a legacy of abundance to their progeny, self-control is a means of doing that.

bryce

Trusting Love, Again.

Open souls expose open holes,
And although we love listing the pros,
The cons of becoming vulnerable weigh heavy.
The pain and the strain that one
Contains trying to give that one your name,
Seem keen on being fruitless…
Passion is supposed to be full of splendor,
But so often love is no treasure vendor,
Instead the member finds themselves in midsts of pretenders,
A woman that doesn’t care, a man whose tenure,
Was marked by duplicity and fallow lies,
Its like staring up at shallow skies,
Cursing the firmament that used to be the realm of infinitude,
Now your attitude’s been skewed
By lewd views on the matching of two’s.
But to you, dear love, I offer this piece,
In the hopes that we can somehow repair your peace,
The weapons of evil have long since been sheathed,
And it is your inner fire that I now beseech,
They say the most caring women get hurt the most,
So I toast to the host of a heart that does was its supposed,
And I pose this post, this poem, to get close
I close the door on fear and expel doubt like ghosts.