going to the sun

Here I sit, surrounded by old books I've never read, full of ideas I've yet to see through, brimming with pain outside of my ability to address, stabilized by a peace that is slowly metabolizing each fleshly parcel of my being.

The crackling of the wood stove grants an illusory connection to cozy, quiet places I've sunk in throughout my life. Each experience I have hyperlinks to thousands of others from my past. My expression of self in response to the present is itself a grand compression of the information I've conformed to that affords my current form. form form form. All my sensory experiences, internal reactions and interpretations, imaginative projections - information in formation.

This consciousness I have is precious. A small fire to stoke and feed - notice the changes in color as it eats diverse substances. Today I sit and write and build. Creating another spreadsheet, writing a manifesto to guide another company vision, contributing to a book of prayer, discussing the future of intelligence, and still surrendering. Surrendering to that higher narrative that so clearly places a call on each of our lives.

Conform to the narrative to participate in higher order coordination. Mankind is changing and progressing, and if you look closely you cannot miss a slow reclaiming. The recognition and ensuing practice of the following: grace is absolutely ordinary. It is the cosmic separation from the source that is absurd and unordinary! We are wanderers, never fully at home in ourselves or this world.

Search the eyes of the next soul you meet, you will see it. A deep unease. In this place, there is no rest. Just the searching.

For moments, you may transcend your flesh and experience only the connectedness, or only the consciousness, or better - both! They may interact and graduate you to being home. In the monist, non-dualistic interweaving of the interconnected richness of the universal soul. Only experienceable outside of time & space. And thus lost when the eyes are opened. But it remains and whispers throughout the day.

How quick I am to forget this base reality as I meander about rippling atoms. The self is an abstraction - yet, still, is discrete. Intrinsically unique in the fashion that all else is.

Each religion in some sense provides a cognitive toolkit to engage in this higher connectivity and deeper well of consciousness (Buddhism and Stoicism seem to be most mature cognitively, & are secular in nature, making them popular these days) but others make claim on higher conscious agents taking intentioned part in the grand blooming. We suffer to produce analogy or simile to properly contain this concept. Best I can think of is: we know lower forms of consciousness exist (deer, bees, whales..) that interact with us, yet none understand us (does an elephant, wisest of creatures, understand human civilization? of course not). In the same fashion, how would we know of higher consciousnesses existing and interacting with us? Is there any way in which we could understand them? Is this a fool's errand?

So we turn to narrative. We generate beliefs and structure traditions that age and are iterated on over millennia. These narratives address the unseen influences. We take the unseen and attempt to encode it into the limited language of the seen.

As we gain better descriptive abilities of that which falls within our sensory range and our tools evolve to enable exploration slightly outside our sensory range, it is common to feel we've gained the edge on the unseen. There is no longer anything that cannot be seen by us. We are technically capable of capturing a view of any thing and refactoring it through technology to fit within our senses. This is myopic in my opinion and an unfalsifiable belief (thus unscientific, if that is the virtue to appeal to here). It requires as much faith to believe as other narratives, but it’s compelling and salient because it feels like religion is being rewritten. It is in some ways. There are a plethora of observable, easily understandable things that were explained wrongly by a religion or tradition. Each time a new one of these is found, it increases the westerner's confidence we've conquered mythology. Without slipping into a faulty "God of the gaps" argument, I do stand to say that the dogmatic movement of the acolyte and the scientist address the same question "what should we do with our energy?" Where they differ is the underlying assumption that all can be understood. Science (or rather Scientism) believes all can be understood. Acolyte believes the opposite. The acolyte seeks to answer "How should I relate to that which I can't understand?" The trap here that makes most religions appear foolish is when you are starting from that question, you do not focus most of your energy on understanding the things that you can understand. And so, you claim knowable things to be unknowable. The scientist comes along, proves something to be knowable, and makes a fool of the acolyte. Happens all the time. This doesn't really happen in inverse. This has more to do with the nature of each’s endemic epistemology than it does the nature of truth itself. The acolyte is no fool, but has been trapped. The trap of the scientist is to throw the baby out with the bathwater and deem the acolyte completely misled.

An aside - I find that believing the universe can be learned and accurately represented in our mind begs the question: why? The best answer I've found: we are crafted in the likeness of a higher order intelligence from which the representations are derived. We share the mind of God structurally. I’m using religious language. This could also be phrased: there are universal patterns of generation and regulation (mutation and natural selection being the most popular) that give direction to the change of the universe. We carry the very nature of those patterns in our psyche, granting the proclivity to understand and flow with the patterns as they reveal themself in the micro and macro. Beyond agent/arena, part/whole, state/trait relationships, the direction of the dynamical self-organization processes laden in the human condition have driven in the macro toward human flourishing. This is counter-intuitive. Self-sacrifice, love, and asceticism do not have intrinsic or universal survival value. Their utility are only realized when a critical mass of followers is struck. By surrendering the self and conforming to a "higher will," coordination among humans on a greater scale is made manifest. Billions now love and seek the other's good at any cost. Not to mention engaging in scientifically absurd behavior claiming relationship with the divine. This relationship drives them deeper into the state of higher coordination.. This is the flywheel of belief in the mind of God. In this way, the human story is rewritten.

In examination of history - Christianity is singular in its net positive impact on humanity (yes, there are many evils and ills - focus on the word net). The direction it drives self-interested agents is irrefutably good. Buddhism comes close second. Then Hinduism. It also may be that there were folk religions that would've had the same positive impact if they had the same outstanding growth marketing team found in the apostles, but alas. Working with what I've got. This paragraph is heavily contested and is a summation of my current understanding. Of course it's a topic that warrants thousands of books.

Connecting the threads - if it's likely there are higher order consciousnesses (tradition calls them spirits), there are many deep ancient traditions that are primarily focused on how to relate to these consciousnesses, and Christianity seems best suited to create good and reclaim human evil, then it makes the most sense to surrender to that narrative (while still employing useful parts of other traditions - for ex as mentioned earlier, the buddhists and stoics had the cognitive science stuff down, great toolkits to better relate to soul and cosmos), I have no problem honestly submitting to the Christian God.

Here's where I'm stuck: the spiritual authority of Jesus and the literalness of him as the Jewish Christ.

I sit in the waiting in prayer daily for this to be revealed to me. I am testing every spirit and am hoping that He’s who the authors of the gospels claimed. I read and read, search and search. I hope for something to emerge here, but if nothing ever does - I suppose I'll coalesce to being some sort of deeply spiritual cultural Christian? That sounds lame.

I could talk for 10 hours straight on the conclusions I've come to regarding some of the specifics of my relationship to Christianity (protestantism is shallow, sola scriptura is misdirection, the Bible was made by humans and thus errant although infallible in matters of faith, church is now a consumer good - supposed to be an authoritative, living body, divine revelation isn't exclusive to scripture, and so on and on), but don't want to touch that stuff now. If I end up not taking it all literally, but surrendering to it narratively, then most of it doesn't matter.

I rationalize my process in the most odd ways. At the end of it all, I am a young, lost boy that doesn't feel at home in the world. Perpetually throwing myself into the wildest ideas I can find. It's not that I refuse to be "normal" (whatever that means) it's that I can't really stomach it. I'm too weak to. There is not a noble bone in my body. I just can't bear anything but honesty - and even that compels me to claw at my flesh! I think of my own death weekly, and not in the healthy memento mori way, but in the "I want to die" way. I'm such a mess! The stories other people tell and beliefs they hold fast to don't steady me. At first I tried to solve this by being around better storytellers and believers - who had more complex and immersive things they were engaged in. That was brilliant and I became engrossed, but it was still a house of cards. When it folded on me, I found myself again (I didn't even realize I wasn't myself). I'll be me in unaltered relationship with all that is. That's my life & I'm at peace and war with it. The divine will respects that. It’s dope.

I've always had some internal churning. My brother mentioned to me last month that he's never known me to not be in deep distress in some way. I suppose that's an element of who I am. I kinda like that. Suffering creates clarity and character, so I want to always be suffering.

I would do better to invite people into that further. Usually, I am calm and stabilizing for people - as I've had to be in my home setting - but deep down I'm a lil volcano. This is why I love being alone. It's important for me to serve and to love and to pour myself out continually, otherwise I'd become a recluse that idolizes himself under the narrative of "asceticism" or something other.

Anyways.

My life is beautiful.

Filled with delightful things.

My "suffering" is completely self administered.

My life is actually easy.

I am healthy, wealthy, and loved by many.

I hate myself in deep ways I don't understand.

But still all is well and all shall be well.

I am infinitely grateful to be in relationship with myself.

I am infinitely grateful to exist. I accept the gift by letting myself exist.

No thing makes my existence more or less valuable. It was given and it is received.

Praise God.

For sake of future reflection, some memories from yesterday:

I woke last night at 1:33AM to an air raid siren right next to my cabin. Frantically, I rummaged through my things, grabbed the essentials and prepared to get out of town fast. Turns out it was a false alarm from the volunteer firefighting department lmao. Didn't get back to sleep for a while. I’d never heard one of those things in person, it was pretty cool.

Later that morning I traded charismatic words with a gentleman at a bakery who had a fantastic beard. He ended up being gay and thinking I wanted something with him. Sorry pal. Being interested in other people gets you into funky situations. I got my coffee for free at least. Oh and a wonderful cookie. Honestly, the odds of someone being gay skyrockets if they are well-groomed. What’s up with that.

On 4/7/24 this is what I looked like:

On 4/7/24, I did this:

grateful for the chance to love this world.