Truth is like the light, there is a kind of light, a light that fills even the darkest of places. This has to be, for if this meta-light does not exist, how can the darkness be seen? [Terry Pratchett, "SMALL GODS"]
It's a powerful thought: I Know by contrast. I know about care because of neglect, pain because of pleasure, dark because of light, worry because of peace, I know loneliness because of love. In each case take away the latter and the awareness of the depth and intensity of what remains is lost. Its a popular fact that 90% of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary grey goo if its only real purpose was, e.g., to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys. One of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary, and turn the unusual into the usual. Otherwise, human beings, forced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing a stupid grin, saying "WOW" a lot. Part of the brain exists to stop this happening. It is very efficient, and can make people experience boredom in the middle of marvels. [Terry Pratchett, "SMALL GODS"] But despite Pratchett's delightful wit, we hunger for this contrast; we try to fill our lives with contrast. From reading sensationalist tabloid news to fiddling with instagram filters, we explore contrast through experimental sex, drugs, slander, self exposure on Facebook ... an ever intensifying search to find the contrast to my pit of bad experience. My sense of self lies in elevating "me" over "we". It's an inward spiral of hedonism. Two dangers loom large; first is that we see life through the lens of duality, and the second is that we miss the biggest gap of all. Let's take duality first. Duality says there are two sides ... we have hot and cold, light and dark, pain and pleasure. Yet cold is only the absence of hot - you can't measure cold. Dark is the absence of light - you can't measure dark. But what about pain and pleasure? Well, pain is damaged wholeness, without something to damage you can't know pain. Pleasure is being whole. Duality tries to make two equal opposites ... but in reality there is only one side, anything else is only a progressive degree of damage. Like a Möbius strip, there is only ever one side, there is no other side, and the only way to make it different is to damage it. The second danger arises from the first. If I buy into duality, then evil is the opposite equal of good, and hate the opposite equal of love. Then I am only a pawn caught between opposing sides in a galactic power struggle. The focus is all on the two sides, and I never consider whether the biggest gap, the greatest contrast, is found between me and something else. I once flirted with atheism, and found it lacked depth because, by definition, there was no way to explain contrast. That in itself does says nothing about whether atheism is true ... but if it were, then atheism says I can truly know nothing, because there is no real contrast. I am merely one more smear in the mud of the universe. But my story, my life, my experience, says there is contrast. Bucket loads of it. A universe of contrast that is all too real. And the contrast is not because of what I have, but what I don't have. I am short on love, compassion, kindness, patience, self control. I am a shadow defined by light. This is why I can never be an atheist, because I see the stark shadow only too clearly, and I see only because of a light. If I could deny this shadow I would, but I can't. And so the second danger of duality is that it blinds me to seeing the shadow I am, it twists my perception to see dark as something real, when it is really only a consequence of what's missing. I do not deny that in the shadows there is real damage, real hurt, real abuse. But these happen because the light is missing. It gets cold when we remove the heat, and that can kill. We get lost in the darkness when the light is hidden. And all because of a fear of Knurdness. "Knurdness is ... the opposite of being drunk, its as sober as you can ever be. It strips away all the illusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. Then, after they've screamed a bit, they make sure they never get knurd again." [Terry Pratchett, "THE LIGHT FANTASTIC"] Light burns ... but it only burns that which is flammable. What remains is hedonism made concrete.
2 Comments
3/8/2013 08:54:41 am
Wow...just wow...I don't even know how I can comment on such a beautifully written, and powerful essay. Some of it is so profound, I can barely wrap my brain around it, but it certainly hits home and makes such terrific points. I love this one especially: "atheism says I can truly know nothing, because there is no real contrast. I am merely one more smear in the mud of the universe."...and yet that seems enough for so many. And I too have flirted with atheism. There would be less spiritual battling. But without the battle, we would never get to see the Light triumph over the Dark.
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Probably the best therapy is to express yourself. Why do you think psychiatrists make you lie on the couch and talk, while all they do is murmur "hmmm", "uhuh", or "go on"? Archives
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