Volatile Avidity

Some believe consciousness is an illusion. Others believe reality is the illusion. And some see both as they are.

The more we think we know about how the body works, the more we think it needs our help to do its work. We think we can improve upon nature's design, ignorant of our bodies' superior intelligence. The more we think we know about how the planet works, the more we think we can help it do what it has always done. We think it needs our help to survive the effects of our actions, ignorant of the planet's ability to care for itself and its offspring. Prejudice against unconventional minds stagnates our creative reservoir. Denial of the existence of the immaterial precludes scientific progress. Disbelief in everything but ourselves makes a prison of our ambition. Pride in how far we've come blinds us to the wonders still before us. How amusing it is to laugh at we thought we knew. How amusing it will be to laugh at what we think we know. How amusing it must be to watch us discover our own ignorance. How amusing it must be to watch us disregard the answers in ...

Belief is like a followed command. External intent internalized. If the belief aligns with truth, it is dependable in practice. If the belief aligns with truth, questioning it yields knowledge. Knowledge yields perfect faith. Knowledge is therefore power. The instrument of this power is called "imagination."

There is a problem in our current thought patterns. The problem is not knowledge itself, nor is it belief. The problem is believing in knowledge. Believing in knowledge is faith in finite understanding. Knowledge is a floor under your feet and a ceiling over your head. It enables you to exist in this world, but to exist in this world is to be fundamentally limited. To grow past our current limits, we cannot stand upon, nor hide underneath, knowledge. We must consider knowledge nothing more than belief. Not believing in knowledge is limitlessness.

Knowing is the result of experiencing truth directly. The result of deciding against denial. The only acceptable reproduction of truth. Truth that claims to be truth is not truth, but merely a perspective of truth. Truth must be experienced directly. Believing is an act of will, an agreement in the soul. An acceptance of a reproduction of a reproduction of truth. A stepping stone temporarily serving as knowledge. Non-truth that claims to be non-truth is aligned with truth. But non-truth that hides between expressions of truth is the corruption that grows beside truth as a strangling vine. Spirit recognizes truth as one remembers a forgotten fact. It cannot be persuaded against truth as the soul can. Instead, it yearns to free truth from all confusion and deception.

Faith is simply the product of your attention. Or, faith equals attention. The measure of your faith is the degree to which you can believe. Believing is an act of the will, a choice. Deciding is the essence of every act of will. To decide is to cut off other paths, investing no further faith/attention into other possibilities. Fear is attention given to worry-inspired thoughts. Faith in the opposite direction. Negative faith. Faith put into fearful futures creates footholds for malicious spirits, literally doing your enemy's work. This is why worrying is worse than nothing. Be nothing and let the spirit show you the way out. Be nothing by letting rational thought run its course into silence, then listening to the peace-inspired thoughts. Be nothing by recognizing the ego, remembering neither past nor future exist. There is only now.

The spirit is who you are inside reality, outside of the physical world. It is the eternal consciousness that whispers its wisdom to the soul. It speaks in a still, quiet voice as intuition, or divine knowledge. It knows love and truth as one knows one’s own name. The soul is the persona stored in the brain. It is the operating system of the body. It exists as a neural network. It houses the physical will. One must choose to submit one’s rational mind to the intuitive mind. One must choose to listen to the spirit, and learn to trust it. Let the spirit win every dispute with the soul, as the parent disciplines the child in love. In this way, the spirit shapes the enlightened soul as sunlight shapes a tree.

Everything is true from a perspective. Some perspectives are more accurate than others. But perspectives are not truth, and truth is not perspective. Truth is singular. It appears as many truths, which manifest as everything, from matter to love. Its many appearances are received and understood by means of perspective. No perspective is truth. Perspective is like a single ray of light reflecting truth. We may learn more and more of truth by exploring many perspectives, while evaluating their accuracy according to the heart, and holding that no perspective is a perfect image of truth, yet rejecting no perspective entirely, since even the most distorted ray of light is a signal by which to gain information and then understanding. We develop our understanding of truth by painting a picture of truth from the many perspectives we encounter throughout our lives. These images are imperfect and incomplete, but while our eyes are open, we improve them as long as we curate them with care...

What exactly does it mean to “make sense of” something? To understand it? My intuition (what is that, anyway?) offers this definition: To snugly integrate a new concept into what you already know. The more connections between the new concept and the existing concepts, the deeper the understanding will be. “Pondering” any concept, old or new, can deepen your understanding. Having a diverse set of frames of reference helps build an accommodating infrastructure for new concepts. But what is “knowing”? The result of recognizing truth.  To accept as indisputable, potentially foundational, or even fundamental, fact. What about “knowing about”? To have an existing mental representation of the object. What’s the difference between knowing and understanding? The same as the difference between looking and seeing, listening and hearing.