"interpetation" a continuatino of the essay

This section on interpretation continues my display of the virtue of study, but again it is merely the barest instruction. “Interpretation” is studied specifically as a religious phenomena, though all phenomena are interpretable. The religions, which take truths as revealed and nonnegotiable through mystical experiences must be interpreted to fit daily life, and interpretation is the basic wisdom of the Jew, Christian, Muslim, and Mormon. Later, in other essays, I will explore the nature of interpretation at length.

Take care, caretakers!

Daniel Christopher June

====================

 

 

6. Interpretation

 

 

 

                The religions are basically lifestyles that justify themselves through myths. This is technically true: the original myths of the Rig Veda and the myths of the Greeks were invented after the rituals corresponding to them, to explain the rituals and justify their persistence – and this is stark and clear when reading the Vedas, though less so with certain Greek myths. The rituals, in turn, were a symbol for group solidarity. In this sense, all groups have a “religious” element. All groups have certain rituals and rites, either enacted through traditions, or laws, or economic exchanges – and this as true of marriages and funerals as it is with the merging of businesses or the purchasing of a car. The rituals may seem so economical and pragmatic that we lose touch that every practice is basically a ritual, and all the rituals, and the best, are empty rituals, which don’t need to refer to any spiritual reality other than their own persistence.

                Once you have arrived at your truth, the rest is gravy. Once you have settled on what is important to you, you can justify it in any manner you wish. The hard part’s over. Rationalize if you wish, or call it 'religious,' or be humble and say you don’t know why you believe it. People are so superstitious they will even respect things they regard as absurd, and pray to god before death, knowing full well that such prayers are likely to reduce the chances of getting what you want, if not being instead completely irrelevant.

                Having a conclusion, one gets wise by rationalizing it at all costs. The real cross-country long-run will power comes from the power of persistence – no small feat – and this requires a keen ability to rationalize. Socrates claimed he was charged as "the wisest of men" by God. Just like the myths invented to justify the ritual, this charming anecdote is pure rhetoric. The fact is, Socrates had long been troubled by the idea that he knew nothing. To feel equal, or even better than others, he needed a method for proving that they both knew nothing, yet wrongly felt that they nevertheless did. The prejudice that Socrates was the wisest of men is sophistry. What this meant was, he was the best at confusing others. For if his opinions were more modern and democrative, that every man has the truth, he could just as easily have justified that prejudice using his same sophistical dialectics. The process is rhetorical from head to foot, it could prove anything, it comes to nothing – and yet this dialectic method, which is a version of the divine logos, or Conversation, is the central idea of all the West. And so Socrates become a type of the Greeks in general, who invented philosophy (and not the Chinese or Indians, who misuse the word “philosophy” when referring to their theologies).

                Once having a conclusion, a deeply felt conclusion, an intuitive song, once can and should justify it by any means he can. For that at last is sacred to him. Not that others should accept any method of proof, but regard these proofs in the same spirit as Christian “apologetics” which dares refer to Plato’s Apology for the chicanery they play in the name of God. It isn’t truth, it isn’t reason, but it is an image of them, an illusion of them.

                Note, therefore, that since religion takes certain mystical experiences as absolute and unquestionable, and that in the revealed religions that means those mystic experiences were revealed to somebody else—any voice of god that now contradicted the Bible must be the very devil himself—then it follows and indeed is the living fact that for us nowadays, the essential religious practice is in interpretation, interpretation of scriptures and the world in relation to them. That this interpretation is all too often a shallow rationalization is merely one cost for the all important cognitive tool that the religious stand for, must stand for, and must yet be balanced against by the intellectual integrity of the scientifically minded.

 

 

~~

Perfection

Is

Easy

 

perfectidius.com

~~

 

"The Pure Peridiam" a short story

Greetings friends,

So you all already know that I write philosophy at an alarming rate. It might seem that way. Though I in fact spend months on each of these essays, and edit them endlessly, it may well appear that it would equally take months for you to understand them – and they keep coming! Who can keep up?

 

Well, anyway, here is a silly short story I wrote today all at once. It’s not deep, it’s not important, but it is somewhat amusing. I hope you like it!

Daniel Christopher June

======================================

 

 

The Pure Peridiam

 

There once was a young Spanish woman, senorita Cordita, a Dona in her own eyes, who lived on a farm with her hardworking but otherwise rather lenient father, an often exasperated mother, who was secretly intimidated yet nevertheless proud for having given birth to such a peerless beauty of a daughter, and a couple dozen chickens, who were rather indifferent to all such matters, and many other matters others might fuss about – romance, marriage, riches, fame – so long as the corn was given each morning.

 

"That handsome boy Juan Geraldo was here to see you," said her mother, with a significant look.

 

"Handsome! I don't see how anybody who dresses in such rags should be called 'handsome.' You mean the clerk at the store? Isn't his father a school teacher? Why did he visit here."

 

Juan Demaro, her father, was by now far too immune to this sort of rant. How his daughter had put on such airs, self-satiating her pride on fantasies of riches and handsome courters, he could never have guessed except that she was a bit too beautiful for her own good. Besides, he had seen the way Cordita had put on haughty airs around the hard-working and perhaps too considerate Geraldo, and being not the stupidest farmer in the world, knew how to look past appearances. Blasted daughter!

 

"Is it so shocking for a store clerk to come calling on a farmer's daughter?" he asked her.

 

"Farmer's daughter! Hmm! When I am well and on my way, the last thing that will come to anybody's mind will be that I was once a farmer's daughter."

 

"And do you think that you one day will cease to be my daughter?" he wondered.

 

She was silent and glowered.

 

"Do you suppose that you won't have to feed the chickens each morning, when you live under my roof?" he asked.

 

More silence, she looked at her plate.

 

"You may choose who you will love, and being as beautiful as you are, you will have more choices, but there is more than one kind of beauty," he said.

 

"That will never be a problem for me!" said Cordita.

 

"Here is your dinner," he said, and gave her the gizzards from the chicken they had cooked. He had the nerve to share the best pieces between himself and his wife, and give her this. How many times did they have to fight about it? Just let him throw it away like usual.

 

"And I will never eat the gizzards, I never have and I never will. There are limits, limits I just won't go through."

 

"When you are willing to eat the gizzards for the sake of love, maybe you one day deserve a good husband."

 

"I already deserve the best!" she said, and after carefully setting down her silverware she excused herself from the table.

 

The young boy Juan Geraldo did persist in visiting her, but how could he not? She seemed to beckon him on with her eyes, and then when he was certain she was interested in him, she would back away again, and act as if his attention were an insult to her dignity.

 

Finally, in exasperation, she said, "Don Geraldo, do not keep calling on me. If you could give me the Pure Peridiam for a ring, then I would marry you."

 

Don Geraldo sulked home that day. The Pure Peridiam was the showpiece of the local jeweler. Its diamond was larger than any other, and it was at the shop mostly to attract attention, though nobody in town could afford to purchase such an engagement ring.

 

A few months went by, and Geraldo wasn't to be heard of. Plenty of other young men came, and Cordita was delighted to discover that many of them were rich, well known, well born, handsome, or otherwise suitable for her attention. Her father didn't comment on them, but she sensed his disapproval anyway. Not that it mattered at all. He would probably have wanted her to marry the Geraldo boy, somebody at her father's level, so he wasn't so intimidated. Cordita pitied the man.

 

But after about a year, Cordita was getting a little tired from the visits of the rich boys and such. She had to turn down a few offers -- a woman can't be choosy enough -- but now she was thinking that there wasn't any good enough among them, and they all seemed to be a bit too much alike.

 

"You've not had any company for a while," her mother noted.

 

"Yes, I've turned them all away, I guess I needed a break," laughed Cordita. "I think each of them would come each day whether I told them to or not to."

 

"I haven't seen Don Geraldo in over a year," noted her father, and chewed on a piece of bread and cheese philosophically.

 

Cordita turned red. At this point, Cordita's mother knew when to chime in. "But Sergio he's a winner, isn't he? And he seems really taken by you, Cordita! I was sure he was going to propose to you even, but then you've been turning your suitors away so much, he might be visiting that girl Estegania..." Her mother mused over the thought, and sipped some water.

 

"Oh Sergio! He would drop that girl in a moment, in a flat second if I gave him the nod of the head," scoffed Cordita. She smiled.

 

"Then let's have him over for dinner this Friday and see," said her father.

 

"No! Papa no! I do not want you interfering with my choice of men," said Cordita. Such disrespect for parents was really something unheard of. But Damero seemed unconcerned.

 

"Would you like the gizzards?" he asked. She scowled, stormed off.

 

"You really shouldn't torture the girl," her mother said. Her father threw away the gizzard, laughing.

 

The next day there was somebody at the door, and he was very insistent on seeing Cordita, though she had expressly put herself on reprieve from the tedium of society. But it was probably Sergio, and now she would show her dad how even the highest of her suitors was putty in her hands.

 

But when she walked up to the door, who was it other than Juan Geraldo!

 

"Oh, thank God I can see you!" he said. "It was such an important thing I had to say, dear Cordita, and I couldn't pass it along to you, I had to say it to your face."

 

Cordita was confused, scared, excited, but she hid that over a mask of annoyance. "Well here I am! Make it quick."

 

"Well yes, of course. You see, you said you would marry me if I bought you the Pure Peridiam. That was a most expensive diamond. I worked two jobs for a year, and yet couldn't even afford more than a third of it."

 

Cordita's eyes were wide, but she quickly corrected that. "Ah yes. And so?"

 

"And so the shopkeeper heard of my reputation as an honest and hardworking man, and gave me the rest on credit," he said.

 

"You mean..."

 

Don Geraldo took from his pocket a black ring box, opened it, and revealed a ring of shining purity, so large, and yet infinitely cut with subtle grace. Cordita didn't know what to do. She backed up.

 

But Geraldo pressed the ring into her hand, she had to take it. She couldn't drop something so ... precious.

 

"Cordita I have studied you from afar, and admired more than your beauty, but also your pride and the sensitivities of your heart, which you try so hard to disguise. Take this ring as a token of my pledge to marry you."

 

She looked down at the ring, looked up at his pleading eyes, looked away.

 

"But Geraldo..."

 

And now Geraldo was facing the first indication that his gambit had failed, the first great danger that he had risked too much, and he could not let that happen.

 

"Cordita, not a word more. I bought this ring on credit, yes, but also on the contingency that I travel to New Amsterdam on an assignment that will earn me enough both to pay it off, and pay for a wedding." And now he fled, what better word was there for it, leaving Cordita behind, deeply troubled.

 

Well she didn't have any guests for quite some time. She gave the ring to her mother and told her to tell nobody about it. Geraldo was indeed gone, so what was there to do? Sell it back? Give it to his family? What? For over a month she hated that ring, and any mention of it brought red to her cheeks. Only nobody had to mention it, because it seemed like all of nature was conspiring to remind her of it, to rub it in her face.

 

When the sun broke at dawn, and she was feeding the chickens, it was almost as beautiful as that ring was, and she would admire the dawn, really for the first time in her life. And sometimes when her mother would sing while doing the laundry, Cordita would stop and listen to the singing, and not be annoyed like usual, but marvel that the words were beautiful, the melody very beautiful, after all, with words so perfectly cut, like a fine lovely diamond.

 

Well then! Surely there is no harm in trying it on. The boy had gone through a lot of effort, and was she really above at least trying it on?

 

So she did, and what beauty! What perfection! It was as if an angel were trapped inside the diamond, shining surprising sparkles left and right! She had to take it off again.

 

But soon enough she was wearing it all the time and everywhere. What a mystery, what a wonder! What a shame it will be, she thought, when I have to give it back. After all, that's what I should do. I only meant that I wasn't going to marry him, not that I really wanted this perfectly beautiful diamond. It was just a way of saying no, after all. The poor poor boy.

 

One day, after feeding the chickens, and sitting down from a breakfast of eggs and bread, Cordita's mother gasped: "Where's the diamond!" The ring was still on her finger, but the diamond was missing. They searched the hen yard of course. And then her bedroom up and down, the whole house even. Never in her life had she searched for something more, but after three days of scrutinizing everything, she came to realize that the ring was lost.

 

What would he say? Would he accuse her of selling it? But what would her suitors think of her then? That I'm poor! she thought. That I am a poor dirty thief! Damn him! Why did the fool give me something like that so it would fall apart and ruin her reputation? How dare he! And what? Would you want her to pay for it back. There is no way I can afford it, she thought. Soon she realized that she hated Juan Geraldo.

 

Not that she could say it to his face. He came home from his expedition, triumphantly. He paid his debt and was now invited to have dinner with Juan Demaro and his peerless daughter. He wondered very much what sort of decision she had made in his absence.

 

He had a sinking feeling it was a bad one. For there was a long awkward silence during the meal. Geraldo talked about his work, and how much it took him, and all these matters, never mentioning why he had worked it, what it was all for, still holding on to the fancy that he could marry this perfect girl. Only she wouldn't look at him. No, not even once did she look at him. What could that mean?

 

Finally, he took a risk and said, "Cordita, how have you been all these months?"

 

She looked down, turned pale.

 

"Cordita, maybe you should just say what you have to --"

 

"I lost the ring."

 

He blinked. "What?"

 

"I lost the ring, that fancy perfect impossible ring you gave me, and no I did not lose it on purpose, or sell it, or give it away, but now I'm so scared because..."

 

"Because what?" he said.

 

"Because now you want to marry me!"

 

Juan Geraldo took the words in for a second, and then burst out laughing. "What? I won't want to marry you? Because you dropped that trinket? Forget it. I love you. I care nothing for the ring. That doesn't matter at all now because you've said it, and I was so scared you wouldn't, but you really want to marry me."

 

"Yes," said Cordita, and she realized that it was true, that she did want to marry him, that she in fact loved him, and what matters some petty piece of rock when somebody as good and pure as this gives you his love? "Yes, she said, I will marry you."

 

Dinner went much better after that. The lovers were alive with a power that Juan Demaro and his wife had felt so long ago -- the pure love of two young people who had seen each other for the first time. It almost seemed natural, then, that when her father Juan Demaro offered her the gizzard, the gizzard of all things on a time like this, she actually took it, took it and laughed. What did that matter? She bit down into it as if it were ambrosia itself, but was surprised when her teeth bit down on a remaining gizzard stone. She politely and discreetly spit it into her hand, looked at it, gasped, and set it down in before her family: the Pure Peridiam.

 

 

~~

Perfection

Is

Easy

 

perfectidius.com

~~

 

"the Writing Life" an part of an essay

Daniel June to the Students of Life: Greetings!

 

This Longish essay, which follows the brief World Canon I attempted in the previous section, is merely a sketch of what I have been developing for months and years in another essay (or is it a book?) that spans 300 page and is entitled “the writing life.” This section offers a few ideas of how to live life as a writer, or by analogy, how to live life in devotion to any given expression for the love of life and celebration of our universe. To live a life aligned with your passion is happiness – strive for master!

 

Take care, Caretakers!

 

 

============================================

 

5. The Writing Life

            All of life is written. The 'writing life' is merely an epitome of this, just as every step is a dance, which the dancer epitomizes, represents best this aspect we all share in. The writer especially has an ear for music, the tempo of words, the tempo of terms, the tempo of topics, which are rhythms and counter rhythms in all books. Not only do clauses vary in length and in quantity per sentence, but so also do sentences and paragraphs compound. The same topic hovers behind the different sentences, and beyond that topic, a broader topic. How quickly does an author move? What are the layers of his rhythm?

            The writing life is the strategy of the game that externalizes all thought into crystalline words. The author creates a second body for himself, an earthly abode where his spirit yet lingers, even when he after death internalizes into his own heaven. In this very book you hold my soul. Just as every couple practices some activity by which they are most a couple – and by this I mean sex of course, but more than that, other things too, some shared hobby which when they engage it they symbolically celebrate the greater self of their combined romantic being – so too does every man do some thing where he is most real, most alive. For writers, this is writing, and of being a writer I will talk at length, but I intend each reader to think of his own passionate action as he continues on.

            I am most alive, most real, most divine, when writing. I enjoy it better than sex, and the pride I take in my successes hums in my fingers and loins longer than any orgasm could. I struggle with my autistic daughter, wrangle with the marriage, stress the job, but when I am writing I am God, my heart blossoms like a rose, it is as if the Mother opened her heart and revealed the sun of love within, bleeding healing shine over all my being, and I am a fragrance, I stand for beauty, I am That, the core of me resonates with the full order of being, and I am well placed and perfect in my world. I see gestures when I read, and gesture when I write. When I am inspired, my being is knit into the words, I dance in thought and body.

            We each create from necessity. To get at the need, analyze the creation. Why does a writer commit himself to his books? Does he have a hole he wishes to fill, like a woman, or does he an have excess he wishes to give out, like a man? Either is glorious in its own way.

            Each writing contains a few quotations, each style a few metaphors, and much filler and repetition. To get at the generative forms, the creative engines, is to plumb the writer’s secrets. Formulate his means of troping, and you have swallowed his soul.

            Every idea, every book, every art-form is a sentence, pulled long or short. Seeing simple designs in complex phenomena is the aim of all science. Every style implies a philosophical system, perhaps not unique to the author, but filtered through his consciousness – a philosophy in gestures requiring no explanation. Tone is attitude, idea is belief. The world itself is real because it has been realized; lacking a mind to consider it, it need not therefore exist. Sentences structure reality. The novel is an image of the world, making it considerable, thinkable, pulling the single sentence of a world long enough to be truly seen. All sentences organize objects into logical relationships, just as paintings organize them into spatial relationships.

            Perception itself is a sort of sentence; the blinking of the eyes are commas and periods. Seeing is describing. A love at first sight is immediate resonance, but requires great duty to maintain. To study the weather, one has to be born in a cloud, each mind finds as if a word or image got mixed into the DNA.

            Style is everything. Have a good style and I will love you, I will forgive all your faults, bless them even. Speak upon whatever you want, and if your style shines I will heed you. The microscopic shape of our discourse is the body of our style, and yet it isn’t able to be experienced as a style with a microscope. It is too small to be directly seen, and yet parts of it can be labeled as ingredients to that style. Style is caprice, is easy, is natural, is essential. What feels like caprice on one level is cold calculation on another. We are free and we are determined, on different levels and in different ways, but all at the same instance.

            Some of the greatest writers, Emerson and Whitman included, wrote in a loose style, and yet the true body and genius of their work is in their tone, not in any definition or particular formulation. Perhaps a thick volume would be necessary to nail a single word down. But having done that, really done it, the book is worth more than most others. This summa sophistria will be a success if I can define Allism.

            There is no discipline like self-discipline. What goes into a man corrupts him, but what comes out of him purifies him for all time. When you write because you must, when writing is as necessary as your exhale, then you might be worthy of being called a writer. If there is still a choice in the matter, how sincere can you be?

            Let every man know his guiding trope – for none of us lack one. The writer explores the mind best, teaches us all how to think. We slip into his mind when we read, we are no longer on this earth. To 'know thyself' is still the basis of Wisdom, the first step. To know the All is the final step.

            Must we die to approach her?

            What if death is sleep? Metaphorically, we equate sleep with death; a corpse and a snoozer look close enough alike that there’s even stories of unconscious people being accidentally buried, only to wake up disoriented. But if the mind is part of matter, as I believe it is, and if the dreaming mind approaches what a disembodied mind would experience life as, then death must be something like a dream state, where the mind makes the rules, sets the limits, establishes the borders, and you live. Assuming that most of the nightmares of life are caused by body aches while sleeping, this isn’t such a bad idea, that an afterlife where the mind is affixed to the barest of matter, free from aches, would find its private heaven enjoyable. Such a conjecture sits well with me because for my entire life I’ve enjoyed sleeping. I have no nightmares, and I sleep fully at peace.

I've felt sometimes beautifully sad in dreams, or mystically happy, so perfect, and it was unlike anything I've ever felt awake. It seems in dream states, like fine art, an affect or passion can be drawn out into its purified, rarified form. Dreams and art share a similarities in that they are aesthetic and moral; aesthetic in that they purify a passion for contemplation and enjoyment – even sadness can be enjoyed – and moral in that there is a meaning or lesson affixed to the passion: it is never senseless. I’ve felt so profoundly and innocently sad from a dream, with no hate, no anger, no confusion, just a pure, soft as a lamb’s mew sadness. I rarely remember what the dream was about when the mood is this intense: the mood lingers a little into the waking day like breath lingers in the winter air.

What is writing but a trance? What is reading but a spell, sleeping to the world, and yet to wisdom sharp and alert: our mood sets the pace! When I am happy, happy things happen, when I am sad, sad things happen. When my mood is rising, no terror can impress me, but I make short work of all my challenges. If I am depressed, I can’t even enjoy good things without paying more reflecting to the fact that they will all soon end. It feels as if I am a different person with each mood, and yet all these beads of being hang upon the same eternal wire of my innermost self, my needs. Each moment brings out a different flavor of self.

Each book complements a mood. Everything I read qualifies and balances my storming heart. I’ve weathered such depressions in my life, such an intense pain on waking, that the days are thumbscrews and razor blades, but no matter how harsh the mood, it is a painting always framed in the loveliest of frames: I dream beautifully when my life is misery. With such an escape during depression, I could sleep 18 hours a day, as if I were in the Mother Universe’s arms, murmuring joyfully, and then wake up, stare stupidly into space for a minute, when my worries, concerns, troubles, and duties fell upon me like a broken ceiling. Sleep is a lover. And yet when I am happier, as I am now, happy be to caffeinated, sleeping a balanced 8 hours, getting up at a relatively godly hour, hanging out with the family, reading, and preparing for my next job, I am happy, and life is good. It’s not that I forsake sleep, but I don’t feel it as strongly. I let her go a bit. I take her for granted.

Better than sleep is wakefulness, the utter alert of deep study. To study regularly brings us inspiration. The gaining of such an inspiration has a few prerequisites. First, you must desire inspiration. Secondly, you must do things that will promulgate inspiration, such as drilling the action you wish to have inspired, without inspiration, such as writing exercises, no matter how uninspired, and regularly, so that the trench is dug for the river of inspiration to flow. Third you must feed in the forms you wish to put out, by observing art or studying the lives of those you wish to emulate. The more extraordinary you desire to accomplish, the more stable you must be. When you find your center, and know your true potential, only than are you omnipotent.

 

~~

Perfection

Is

Easy

 

perfectidius.com

~~

 

"the glossalia of redefinition" a section of an essay

Greetings Students of Life, beloved of my Soul!

 

We return at last to the actual strategies for winning the game of life, and here Allism has a difference: it seeks to master language, to see through it, to learn all we can from sophism. Strive for mastery. This essay makes a unique metaphor out of Glossalia, which means speaking in tongues, presumably speaking the language of angels. I take it as the ability to make words mean anything with the right control of tone and style.

 

Take care, Caretakers,

 

Daniel Christopher June

 

====================================

 

3. The Glossalia of Redefinition

 

 

            The Glossalia of philosophy is to make all words melt, as if inspiring Sophia to lust. All things melt together, all language is interchangeable. I can say any words and mean the same thing. For everything thinkable is true, but how it is true requires further interpretation.

            The Allistic trick is to say the same things with a new meaning, to enliven it with a different spirit, like the transubstantiated bread of the Church which is yet the same sculpture of grain. The Allistic Glossalia, for which the flamed tongue is again our symbol, is to say the same words over again and to mean something else by them. We are religious--we call ourselves Christian or Atheist, or Buddhist, or Islamic, but we are more than those things, those are just a supporting layer over which the Spirit of Allism resides and controls. Was I born Christian? Very well I will praise that as the one true religion, and really believe it, while yet believing and knowing that whatever other religion I was born in, I would also have regarded that as the One True, and I would be no more right, and no more wrong, because sectarianism is good and healthy, on the level of sects, but on the higher consciousness of the All, those sects are limited perspectives. Nor is the All sufficient to itself without those sects.

            “Beware of finding more than a sign language in Jesus’ talk, a semiology, an occasion for parables. For this anti-realist, that not a word is taken literally is precisely the presupposition of being able to speak at all. Among Indians he would have availed himself of Sankhya concepts; among the Chinese those of Lao Tse – without having felt any difference.” The spirit fills any body, tone subdues all its materials.

            How a thing starts is how it will stay: initiation is perpetuation. And yet the beginning of the All is distributed at all times, and moves in every direction at once, a time that moves backwards to prepare itself, and forwards to receive itself. Once the spine of a book has been creased, when you open it, that same crease will fold; once you have established some valves for relieving stress--alcohol, cigarettes, praying, whatever--you will think of them whenever the pages of your soul are bent. Breaking a habit is much harder than making a new one.

            Know therefore how to make absolute habits. The ability to hold something sacred in your private view is a great power. It takes a god to bless. The blessings of everyday men hold no weight, and they keep the Sabbath sacred in vain. What they call “God” is a petty thing. The holy man knows how to make something truly sacred and divine and infinite, by feeling it to be so, believing it to be so, talking of it correctly, and acting as if it were so, with no exceptions. Exceptions sabotage. Therefore, know how to include what you oppose. Stage a fake divorce to preserve your marriage; make enemies to drain off your negative emotions– all religious people blaspheme and invent the blasphemies for their own religion and all the others, every taboo is periodically enjoyed. If you redefine a word, you must consistently apply its logic, or it will be washed away like sugar in the storm.

            Knowing how to turn a story to any moral you please, how to interpret any fiction to fit your needs, requires clever eyes. Glossalia, mastering the layers of religion, and assuming the place of the Creator, make you an Allist.

 

~~

Perfection

Is

Easy

 

perfectidius.com

~~

 

"Oh my Lover!" a poem

Oh my Lover!

 

Life is beauty

  Time is kind

I your fullness

  You my shine:

 

Angelic missives

  From my musings

Entourage

   Of fluted wooing.

 

 

The world is ripe

   Overripe with good

This man without handle

   Bleeds the sun of his mood

 

Shed the tension of your breast

   The anxious claw of love's duress

Open full your lungs in harmony

   Surrender blessed your inmost heart to me.

 

I, Line, fine, sign of wonder

You circle, Lover, I'm towards your center.

 

And the flute plays on:

Open up your eyes!

Open up your mind!

Open up your heart, to me!

 

~~

Perfection

Is

Easy

 

perfectidius.com

~~

 

"internalization" a continuation of my essay

Greetings my fair greeters! Students of Life! Vivoce!

We continue the supreme virtue of study, with the internalization of the world through study and critical reading. To take it all in gives us a place to think and be, now and after this life. This longish essay explores the virtue of study through internalizing the world.

 

Daniel Christopher June

=========================

 

 

2. Internalization

 

            We internalize the universe, and that is study; we externalize ourselves, and that is direct truth. Ideas are fluids which spread by diffusion through the world; they are in the air. If I don’t hear the exact theory yon philosopher said, I get the gist of it, nevertheless. The great originators are fountainheads, we all repeat their wisdom in our own words. The primary men of the world are the gods, the rest, the joyous masses. Goethe of Germany, Shakespeare of England, Tolstoy of Russia, Descartes of France, and Emerson of America are the founding fathers of the national minds, opening a new mindset.

            How does one become equally wise as they? Wisdom is knowing how to find the extraordinary in ordinary things, and the ordinary in extraordinary things. The eye takes on a different shape when it expects the extraordinary. By merely looking with the question “how is this weird and wonderful?” even the dishes, the refrigerator, the small talk of the neighbor becomes fascinating. Each of us at times enters the lucid mindset of spiritual transfiguration, when all the world is seen from multiple perspectives, we let our third eye open, and our fourth and fifth, till we are at every pore an eye, and see all things as fascinating.

            The feeling of normalcy is based on the comfort of predictability. Knowing how to make mad everything you touch, like the madman who makes the whole world insane, this when controlled is the power of the wise.

            Holding forms and genres in mind, and replacing the blank placeholders with positive content, this is the basis of all creativity. This lets us generate. We must have each partial structure in mind in order to create the final structure. Whenever we work any job and repeat its form, that form only slowly recedes, like a bubble which slowly expands outward from the immediate focus, and dissolves in the bigger picture, like a ripple expanding in the pond. After starting my last job, I would dream about customer-service, about punching the cash register. The image and feel of cash handling only slowly abated.  What we do the most is most real to us. It reduces to an idea, a language, a symbol, a metaphor of life. Working now designing cakes, how will this refine my writing, for we internalize most what we most care for.

            Every internalized idea, every habit, grows whether we attend it or not, compounds and complicates itself. What you though you forget was tending itself like a proud dandelion: wherever it settles it draws water.

            We internalize the world, and yet the heaven we create cannot be learned from any man, nor quite from the self, but by applying the self to the world, by mixing self and world like golden bricks for our finer palace. The deepest truth can’t be sought directly—“seek and you shall find” is psychologically too simple; Jonah was wiser, for he discovered that if you flee the truth you still can’t escape it, for that which you are destined to learn finds you out. The most important truths cannot be told you, God himself couldn’t teach them to you, you must make them from the very substance of your being. The world hints, the world winks, but even the world doesn’t know, nor the Universe your Mother, who knows more than all Gods and men combined.

            Nevertheless, adorn your mind in literature. There is no finer coat than a book, and I feel naked if I am not wearing my blank book, pen, and a study book. I would feel uncomfortable without them, as if lacking pants and shirt. What cocoon does the fetal angel prefer to the pages of great books?

            Study all, study everything. What isn’t your thing to study still has form, and therefore can give you metaphors. Even theology, a science that lacks a subject, is valuable to study as anthropology, and the metaphysical justification for any ethics shows the secret of that ethics. All metaphysics is a justification for some morality, a picture language for it stories are prepositional pointers between ideas. I find Mormon theology advanced and worthy, though its scripture and mythology are lacking, for it estimates rightly human potential, though it does not actualize that potential in its shallow literary style. This is a religion that has not yet written its true scripture.

            The bleed of need and subsequent desire extend beyond the body, and yet live in our full influence upon the world; our full body is in all we say and do, and the inner Daemon reaches throughout the extent of language. Each man has his own inner language, and translates it to English, our current global language, or whatever other tongue a man has learned from the crib.

            Every book mirrors an aspect of your soul. Seek yourself within the library. Haunting the University libraries for hours each schoolday, my mind grew deep and profound. We participate in the stories we hear as if we lived them. To read something is to think the thoughts the writer wrote, as if you were musing them to yourself.

            Teachers ought not to teach textbooks only, but also how textbooks are written. Each student should compose his own textbook, to symbolize and integrate the memories he is making. In all things, note the interaction between the internal and the external, and the continuity between the present and the future – this completes the experience. Every experience is part of a situation, and what is the world but a series of situations? Learn always. Wear your reading glasses everywhere you go. Internalize all. You are building your afterlife with the lessons you learn, brick by brick, step by step. Understand things by putting them in your own words, comprehend them by summarizing them in glib sayings and metaphors.

            There is a moment when exploring any new territory--a new object, a new person, a new job--when we become passionately docile, open and receptive, we close our mouth and listen, or speak and study the faces around us – and we internalize the unknown in order to normalize it. What is normal, what is regular, predictable, comprehensible, comfortable? We know how to engage the situation, when to be intimate, when distant, we know how to engage, and also how to disengage. We learn the structure of the system, how to situate ourselves within it, we put it in our own words and understand, simplify it and comprehend, and there we can apply our own well worn methods and tricks.

            Intense focus wins the day. Know how to segment each day into units of intense focus. I can care only so much for this thing, till I exhaust my care, and then I can no longer engage it, no longer intimate it, no longer focus on it, but I can indeed still intently focus – on something else! Our brains and muscles both need rest after exercise.  Never suffer an exception: keep focused or blank out.

Competence involves the ability to really look at a thing, to focus intently upon it. Genius knows why it judges a thing as it does, has a tongue below its eyes.  The ability to look is like the ability to listen: be utterly receptive and yet actively restructure what you see into symbols.

            The scholarly virtue of study means bringing the right conceptual tools to the table, metaphors or concepts, that best expose the nature of the new object. The ability to study is first of all a gymnastic habit—pure physiology. The eye must be trained to see. All thinking involves a dance of the eyes; one can prompt thought by rolling his eyes up, crossing them and then slowly unfocusing. One can dart through the forest of ideas by looking left and right.

            Put yourself on the level of what you observe: look into its eyes. Drop on your knee when you talk to the child.

            A set of concepts that co-complement become conceptual tools;  their shared label is their toolbox. Children impress each other with their aspirations, the elderly with their accomplishments, and adults with their daily doings.

            As a friendship progresses, unspoken contracts are implicitly accepted regarding what things can be spoken of, and what tones of voice and attitudes should be used to address them.

            Baptize and bless your possessions. Encode your movements, have a way with your tools, a dance, a gesture, even with your conceptual tools. Be very deliberate. Wash your tools and keep them clean: review your conceptual tools, celebrate them, clean them, sharpen them. Reflect on your reflecting, think about your thinking, judge your judgment.

            Let the masterwork of Allism replenish all of your tools. Use a few handcodes to summon up a cognitive tool, just as a professor touches his forehead, adjusts his glasses, or frowns in contemplation. This is summoning the servant.

            Joseph Smith, the founder of the fourth Abrahamic Religion – Mormonism – used a method similar to Charles Ives and William James: internalizing certain other sources ad nauseum, in his case, the language of the King James Bible--till his own oracle could only speak through these quotations, and yet initiate the divine spark – even such a parrot as he could speak it! – with a little twist and trigger of the same dead phrases, just as the “how do you do” we say upon greeting a friend can convey a lot with a standard “oh, I’m doing just fine”; though the words are familiar, the context and tone say everything. His revelations are 90% quotes from the King James Bible, especially the same few verses, yet he manages to inspire new things into those verses.

            Of concepts within the mind, we must manufacture the parts with one set of internal hands, and put those parts into wholes with another set of internal hands. We are like Hindu Gods, with many hands for many occasions. The fine fingers are for tiny ornaments, the bigger hands for stringing them together. Ives with the patriotic music he heard as a child, Smith with the preaching he grew up hearing, William James with his endless studying and quoting of other philosophers and psychologists, took the small parts of their works as ready-made, in a way that Emerson and Whitman used their own whim and fancy to fill “The Wide World” of Emerson’s notebooks or “The Sea” of Whitman’s notes, to make their own small parts. Hegel was better with the broad structure, but poorer with the small structure, and that is German, Kant was the same, perhaps Wagner too, though Nietzsche characterized him as a miniaturist! And that Nietzsche himself surely was, with a perfect aphoristic style, and a little more difficulty with the overall style. Allism is the gross-structuring aspect, and our specific race, nationality, religion, childhood fill in its fine forms.

 

 

~~

Perfection

Is

Easy

 

perfectidius.com

~~

 

"Study as strategy" an introductory section

This short section introduces a series of sections extrapolating what I mean by study as a virtue. Perhaps this is the most personal and every day of my virtues, combined with Independence of Spirit, in that I cannot bear to take anything second hand, but must create my ideas for myself. Study is the counter to that, and true study for me means tearing ideas to their atoms and rebuilding.

 

Daniel Christopher June

 

======================================

 

1.      Study versus other strategies

 

            The virtue of study is the inner complement to the outer virtue of directness. Direct truth is the arrow which hits the mark. And yet direct truth needs to sight the heart of the problem, and this is possible only through indirect study. You could only hit the target if you had first in practice missed it many times.

            Pragmatism, or general life competence, requires discipline, but especially focus. A man who knows how to focus can do anything, is fully competent, has no weakness. For whatever the object before him, whether it is sweeping the floor, or making love, or shooting a gun, or writing a novel, his eyes know how to focus on the object, to analyze its elements, to discover its borders and limits, to plumb its potentials. All that is required is one habit: knowing how to look at a thing. The highest education possible in any school or university is to teach a student to have the desire and the know how to continue his education on his own. The only student worthy of his diploma is the one who will study just as hard on the other side of the University walls.

 

~~

Perfection

Is

Easy

 

perfectidius.com

~~

 

"directness" a section of an essay

This essay about Directness is presented as a mix of virtues together. Anybody who knows me knows that I speak directly and dislike personal secrets. And yet in another sense, we must keep our innermost sancrosanct. My writings both reveal and disguise me. Here I refer to my method of complete disclosure, the moment when I am able to reveal what my mining eyes have discovered. I do believe there is more truth and more love between each of us than we may say. Conversation is a thick game, every talk a wonderful game. Directness is one method, my preferred method.

Daniel Christopher June

=================================

 

Directness

 

 

            Ever the bare facts, utter truth, perfect lips. Keep your tongue pure. Our sacrament is to clean the mouth, the hands, the genitals, the work station. Sooner die than utter a lie. Yes, and know when to withhold, when to keep your heart private; the beauty of your innermost is owed to no man, no woman, no spouse, no world or universe: this is sacrosanct. The rest is candid.

            Yet we see two arrows in life: the directness of will, and the circle of guile. The passive aggressive, the sly, the guileful, hides the truth in what is not technically a lie. Guile counts on the ignorance of others, imposes it, reinforces it – but why let your honor depend on something beyond your control, upon the ignorance of another? And yet to outsmart all liars one must know how to lie; to hide your privacy,  you must use the structure of deceit, and yet pull no teeth.

            Prefer the method of full disclosure, of mutual exposure. Withhold your heart, hide your mind, until in frustration and lust for power, the other unbalances himself; then express with full force the extent of your truth. Make yourself fully vulnerable, and you will destroy him. Become harmless. You may master any man or woman if you have great power but withhold it. Lack the power, and your gentleness is worthless. Unless you can destroy another, your gentleness is nothing. Isn’t the earthworm gentle? True power is not in having the ability to destroy another, and withholding on principle, but withholding when this would perfect the situation. Each moment comes to its crisis, and you must turn its logic back on itself, speak the truth about truth, tell the lie about lies, hate hate, love love, reason about reason, or in other words, turn a thing back against itself, on the one hand, and at the same time take it to its farthest logical inference, on the other. Grab the situation, and turn one arm back against itself, and its other arm to its farthest reach, and you will broken its outer husk, and revealed its inner logic. Its idea– and all events, episodes, memories, and places, are living ideas – is held together by a material shell. To release the energy of an idea, you must crush it, making it more itself, making your hate more hateful, your love more loving, your fear more fearsome, going to the farthest extreme, leaping to heaven, sinking to hell, and at the same time, circling the eye back on itself, like Odin who turns one eye back into his head, into the well of his thoughts.

            Drama queens know the logic of extremes. "Have you criticized me? You must hate me! Why do you even talk to me? You must think I am the worst person in the word! Would you recommend I kill myself?" Being able to take a gesture to its farthest reach – and that’s all a gesture is, the suggestion of a broader action – you can get at the euphemism, the agenda, the kernel idea, the mustard seed that grows into the mustard weed. By trying to say so much, I take it to the extreme, I make you back off and say the opposite. A cheap trick, when done cheaply, a subtle tool when done subtly. Most of language is abbreviated, subtle, we don’t even realize that the final extremes are present in our stray words, that the friendliest conversation is embedded fully with endless threats, promises, blackmails, violence, sex, but so euphemized, abbreviated, reduced to the slightest gesture, that they become sublimated, break off from their base, are fluid, are an ether, an apotheosis, and can become the free floating spirit of Lux – language as goddess.

            To directly question your friend or enemy cuts through the subtlety, exposes hidden intent. If you are perfect, you will never fear accusing another. For what could he accuse in you? Realizing your perfection requires only judging yourself by your personal standard, not by foreign impositions. The standard which created you is the standard which will bless you.

            The point of contact is brutal and rude. We might not notice it, I admit, but the moment of pure intimacy, in love, in sex, in literature, in life, is full on fire, soul to soul – and the rest mere scaffolding. So much pomp, so much formality, so much polity, in order to align your heart to mine, to let the bridge of contact leap for that mere second. It is as if hours and days and years were toiled to finally align nerve to nerve – and for that one perfect touch, the whole universe serves as stage. Face to face, full-on eye-light is but a moment. How often we have the perfect connection with any man or woman, but especially with the friend, just a moment, and the rest is nonchalant, play, shooting the bull, talking smack, nothing serious. For that one moment of connection, the rest is worth it. Intimacy is king.

            We learn much intuitively, but we don’t know that we know it. We must work to be able to express the smallest gesture. Attempt to verbally tell another person how to tie a pair of shoes. He doesn’t get it. You want to show him. Knowing that is not in showing somebody; knowing how is in showing him. Therefore, there is a lesser knowing that, as the university student who knows that a business is run in a certain way, than the higher knowing how of actually running a business, and finally, the highest knowing that of being able to exactly express the former two as one. Of I can do a thing and teach others how, there is my mastery.

            We seek the higher knowing. Knowing how is not enough. All praise it, nobody hates it, but its not enough. Wisdom speaks. Just as the ready comeback requires constantly considering biting remarks until they surface as if by inspiration, so does higher wisdom come from the oracle of thinking deliberately about all that you do. Most people quickly learn how to do a thing in life; the wise man also learns how, but much slower, because he is learning how so is and also learning what the thing essentially is. The average man closes his eyes and does it. The wise man keeps his eyes open. The wise man looks his wife in the eyes when he comes inside her: therefore the wise man impregnates her soul as well as her body.

            Full disclosure requires a daily familiarity with deep truths. Know a thing, but know the end of it. Know how far deep the thing goes. For those who deal in lies, euphemisms, and omissions, a reference to our disclosure of full truth takes away their advantage. There is much implicit blackmail in our daily speech. Lacking shame, how can anybody twist your arm, or even look at your arm as if to imply that he could twist it?

            Effective communication is the ability to cross layers, to speak to different layers at once, to leap from the general to the specific, to pass the needle from the side of thought to the side of feeling. “The known universe has one complete lover, and that is the greatest poet.” Call him Hermes or Wotan, the one who traverses worlds, sinks to hell and rises to heaven, upon winged boot in the desire for wisdom. My very body is the World Tree: the nine worlds of the Universe hang from me.

            Anticipate your friends and enemies: know how to speak. Expose the negative early. Perhaps they keep that card up their sleeve, the hidden insult, the fact you don’t want to face. Address it first. Confess your weakness in advance. This is not humility, but pride. To fully flaunt your weaknesses, mistakes, and ugliness requires utter pride, the pride that doesn’t seek any external approval. Knowing your inner worth, you need no confirmation from friend or foe. Hide any thing from others, and you breath anxiety. The others may not know what you are hiding, but they know that you are hiding something, and you are therefore safely in their clutches. Or they too hide something, and as if by a hidden wink, your demon signals their demon, and you both agree to be blind to that thing, and to defend it against others. The widest conspiracies are committed by religions and nations, who collectively and unconsciously collude. How often when you finally confront a friend on a guilt, he suddenly lists your otherwise unrelated guilt, as if you had negated a mutually understood contract.

            The full self is a circle: truth shines forth like perfect rays. The innermost creates a new reality into the world.

            Vulnerability is invincible. So long as you defend yourself, you will be defeated. We confess in order to bind others, we hide in order to seduce them. Secrets are a currency: I give you my secrets to glue our friendship: betray them and you have lowered your worthiness of being anybody’s friend. Like Odin and Loki, we in our love exchange blood, become blood brothers, and thus our fates are sealed: what I am is what you are, and what happens to me happens to you.

            The power you have over me, the power the world has over me, is the power I in fear grant it, and my defenses are the handles by which they hold me. When I become harmless, I can destroy you.

            Know yourself, know your innermost, and you will be able to speak directly. Know your soul to the pith and you can speak to the heart of any matter. Learn the tones that open those inner doors. The innermost is divine, though saying so is not divine. A sense of the unique inner perfect you are, the greater-than-God greater-than-All centermost – once you touch this, once your mind is reunited with its source, that innermost necessity of your being, then conventions and situatedness melt away. These words you choose? Others would be as good. Place yourself any where in history, and you are forever the center of it.

            Self-honesty is the greatest virtue, the ultimate, behind which no other virtue can go. Lack this, and you must worship the world, worship God, serve in somebody else’s kingdom, end up in somebody else’s heaven. Be utterly self-honest, and you are beyond the beyond.

 

 

~~

Perfection

Is

Easy

 

perfectidius.com

~~

 

"Oh my raging heart" a poem

 

 

Oh my raging heart!

I map with math your maddened steps

and scythe the outcrop of your starts:

--The double spiral in and out

Twining serpents, vortex routes--

And refuse to blame your evil depths.

 

I’ve melted God like candle-wax

His burning bush to empty ash

Your inner flush of tender sun

Fever love for the Ama muse

I loose a bruise across the one.

 

Mattria the everall

Feels in me the centercall

Will she give her mask to me?

Ama dare I tear you free?

I seek logic cold exact

To harness furnace and its black

Which hides from man my rabid love,

till the circuit pures to puzzle solved.

 

~~

Perfection

Is

Easy

 

perfectidius.com

~~