Absolutely

“to lose itself in order to find itself, that is the way of spirit”- Hegel (although it’s copied from my philosophy notes, so it’s probably not a direct translation)

I think that this applies to all aspects of life, and- that being said- I have a lot of work to do.

So that you will know what I’m talking about, I’ll break it down:

“to lose itself”= chaos

“to find itself”= absolute

In the past I would have thought of myself as anything but chaotic, but that was because I did not truly recognize what cause was. I thought of chaos as the complete absence of reasoning, judgment, deliberation. But this is not accurate, as exemplified by chaos theory. Chaos is, rather, the complete absence of absolutes. I have no absolutes, so this makes me very chaotic. So as things stand, I am taking the path of the Negative Essence, by which I would never find peace or satisfaction.

Therefore “to lose itself in order to find itself, that is the way of spirit” means:

For the spirit to satisfy its potential (and thus find peace), it must continually balance between absolutes and the lack thereof. This might be the key to the true “synthesis” between the Id and Ego (Negative and Positive Essences), after all, Id= chaos, and SuperEgo= absolute. This is where the SuperEgo comes in, but first I’d like to point out of couple of things:

First, in previous posts, and notably Agony, I mistook the SuperEgo as being the Ego- so much of the time “Ego” is mentioned (particularly in Agony) “SuperEgo” is what should be said. One of Freud’s sucessors, Carl Jung, further refined Freud’s philosophy by adding a divide recognizing the Personal Unconscious, and the Collective Unconscious. I made the mistake of using “Ego” to refer to the Personal Unconscious, assuming the SuperEgo to be the Collective Unconscious.

Second, the synthesis is actually produced by the Ego- emphasis on produced. From what I gather, the Id, Ego, and SuperEgo are reflection of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Please note that when I use these terms, they are not to be interpreted as being in compliance with standard Christian beliefs.

Warning: TANGENT– While I believe that my beliefs are drawing closer and closer to those of Christianity, they will probably never be compatible; In fact, if my writing is appealing to others, I might even develop a cult :P. No seriously though, One of the things of my top ten “world domination” is to completely reinterpret the Bible. Actually, in the plan is to the possibility of several interpretations for each phrase, verse, passage, chapter, theme, book, etc. However, utilizing a wiki system, released under the Creative Commons License, it would definitely be doable. After all, The Bible is the most popular book, and the Bible itself infers that it should be interpreted democratically (2nd Peter 1:20-21 — see http://www.twopaths.com/faq_BibleTrue.htm for more info) End TANGENT —

But basically, my main point is that, for several reasons, it’s a very bad thing that I have no absolutes. To be honest, at the time I first starting writing this post (a few months ago!) I was very confused (hence the time delay) and so really it would be pointless to cover exactly why it’s a bad thing, because it would be best to cover that extensively in posts prepared for it. For now I’ll go with an analogy- Neon Genesis Evangelion. Towards the end of the original series (i.e. the Human Instrumentality project) the main character (which BTW I identify with so much it’s scary) Shinji explores the significance of limits.

Without limits we would be completely free, but we wouldn’t know what to do. Everything would be one big blob, we ourself could not distinguish ourselves from it- life itself could not exist without absolutes. By creating limits, we are able to better understand and interact with our surroundings, but there is an inevitable price for that, which is imprisonment.

This is why I believe that an infinite God cannot exist- in order for God to recognize himself, to understand himself, and to recognize and interact with his creation, there must be limits- otherwise he would not be able to distinguish himself from anything else. As I first began to understand while writing this post, our souls likely also inhabit us so that they could better interact with themselves, and creation, also being infinite otherwise.

It could just be one soul, perceived as many- there are (ironically) an infinite amount of possibilities as to how the soul(s) interact with us, or “possess” us. Perhaps God is finite so as to interact with himself and his creation, and souls are the offspring of his thought.

Well, once again I’ve gone off in a tangent- I’ll go into more detail on this (hopefully soon) in future posts.

Forgotten

In Linkin Park’s song “forgotten” (which most people don’t even know exists- that’s the beauty of Linkin Park- passion for the ignorant and insight for the wise)- actually I didn’t understand until now- these words in particular: “Then with the eyes tightly shut looking thought the rust and rotten dust | A spot of light floods the floor | And pours over the rusted world of pretend| The eyes ease open and its dark again”

Although there are other meanings it the song (equally unknown by the wise, and equally true), the one that is the focus of this post: Happiness can only be truly experienced when the person experiencing it is not aware that it is happiness (or in recalling memories of such)- the moment we realize what it is, it disappears. These theme is also hinted at in the Movie Gladiator: “There was a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile.”

From the words above, from philosophy class, and (ultimately and primarily) from my own insight, I have delved into a matter of great concern- a matter  that existentialism was (indirectly) founded to address.

there is a Bible verse, attributed to Jesus- Matthew 6:3 “But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” Although there is the more obvious maxim “don’t do good for praise, or else you’ll miss out on the long-term benefits” (Basically Karma, Jesus-style); but there is (IMO) another meaning, and is concerned with happiness and the soul, which will be addressed below:

In Illogical, I noted many questions that circled around the relationship of the “self” to the “consciousness”, and also inferred a connection to the “soul” or “psyche”. Plato believed that the soul was “caged” in the body, and “locked aware from true knowledge, and having to accept and adapt to deceptions of the truth, dim reflections of the brilliance it rightfully deserves. He illustrates these thoughts in his legendary “Myth of the Cave” allegory. Although I do not agree with Plato’s dualism (I am in particular at odds with the “Forms“), I think that these particular thoughts can be reasonably adapted to illustrate the relationship between the consciousness, subconscious, the psyche (soul), and happiness.

[quote from the Matrix] “being the [happy] is just like being in love. No one needs to tell you you are in love, you just know it, through and through” (replaced “one” with “happy”)

But here’s the rub: We can believe that we’re happy (“know”), we can be told (or tell others) we’re happy, we can assume we’re happy…..But if we actually consider whether we are, we lose that happiness. Try it sometime, and you’ll see what I mean. Any time you try to measure your happiness, you will end up with a bittersweet mix of hope and anxiety. Now why is that? Anytime we *actually* are aware of our happiness, we lose it. Love (and being *the one*) doesn’t have that advantage, so I guess you could say that’s how they *aren’t* alike :P

I think that it must be because “part of us” isn’t happy- the “psyche”, or as Sigmund Freud called it, the “Ego”. This raises an important point, as the “Ego” is the “Consciousness”. Does that mean we aren’t conscious any time we’re happy? Well that wouldn’t work- but this is where Platos “Myth of the Cave” allegory comes in. The Ego, or soul, is deceived in order to adapt to this very circumstance, so that (And this is the fun part that makes me really “happy”) “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing”. Wow, I knew it would all come together, but I didn’t think it would sound that cool! lol :P –you have to admit, even if you don’t agree it comes together really nicely, doesn’t it? And I swear I did not do it that well on purpose- this post is about 80% improvisation (pending knowledge/deductive reasoning/etc, but I’ve “got all those down”. Okay, back to the point:

But this raises another point, and this is where existentialism comes in: If becoming self-conscious results in the corruption of happiness, does that mean our consciousness is unhappy. Platonic dualists would say yes. But what then, is the actual relationship of our subconscious (Id) to our conscious (Ego), and where do “we” (that which we perceive ourself to be overall) come in? Sigmund Freud, if I am understanding him correctly, would say that we identify with society- through the interactions between the Ego and the SuperEgo (our SuperConsciousness, where “super” means “beyond”, and “society’s consciousness is “consciousness beyond us”) ; — we identify with “ourself” (well more accurately, our “inner-self”, or “heart of hearts”) But all this is really a bit off-topic :P

Well, although it will take a while to grasp these complexities- at least in theory, the “self” that we are most familiar with, is likely a forced marriage between the Ego and Id. Now the Id is where Happiness actually comes from. That is also particularly interesting to me, because the soul obviously would not trap itself in the body for no reason. As I theorized (independently of philosophy, mind you) in my Reincarnation post (the second one), the soul felt the need to evolve, and found that it could not evolve efficiently without a body. So essentially (in my theory) souls sacrifice their freedom to ensure a better future.

This is where the Id comes in: The Id is pure desire- as such a baby is considered “pure Id”. “I don’t know what I want, or how to get what I want– all I know is that I want it, and I want it now.” But more importantly, Id, as pure desire, is pure instict- the physical intuition. Physical desire, although useless by itself- souls knew it was the best bet for evolution. This resulted in the same irony which, in my experience, permeates the universe: The soul (Ego) controls the Id, but in return sacrifices its freedom, and is held hostage by it. Both Id and Ego are slave and master- quite the paradoxal combination.

But I still feel a sort of sympathy for the soul, because I have (by choice) gained a high level of self-awareness, and have felt much of its pain as a result. I really wonder how things will turn out In The End.