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Daniel Christopher June to the Students of Life:
Greetings!
Well the summer is wrapping up: Natalie, my 12-year-old, has already returned to school, and the younger two return to their school – Excel – the following Monday. That will free up my morning to get a job, though I don't yet know what that might be. I've been writing more allays, as is evident here, but little else. I have been studying Confucius; I read the Analects and intend to buy a better translation and read them again.
I've had a few reviewers of the allays, and some criticisms I have received include: they should be organized into sections, they are repetitive, there are too many of them. What do you think? I would greatly appreciate your feedback.
Take Care, Caretakers!
* 1006 *
The mind knows the world through the body. By the Law of Correspondence, every abstract understanding comes from a physical knowing – a touching. When we accuse somebody of "sleeping with the enemy," the double sense of sex and sympathy makes the metaphor poignant. There is nothing so bloodless, not the square root of negative one, that lacks a physical correspondence in the body, our trope-source for understanding all things. Would you teach the abstract, seduce the senses. Would you understand, feel. The earth is the image of heaven, and Ama the image of the All.
* 1007 *
We overcome ourselves by fighting others. We must project our self-doubts upon fitting victims, opponents we can barely overcome, for what is close is too close to see, and what is near is too near to touch. The Greeks wrote the greatest myths of all peoples – more varied, literary, and memorable than the Hebrew, Norse, or Indian – because their myth-tellers were poets who competed with each other to tell the best stories. Competition may sometimes bring out the worst in us, but it often enough brings out the best in us, as well, inspiring an accomplishment impossible solo. Adversity exults us. The greater the opposition, the greater our self-overcoming.
The Olympians honor the gods by striving to be the greatest of men and women. War is the father of all things. Let war reduce to a game and it will meet its apotheosis. The Game is our Haven.
We need a scapegoat, a fitting external correlate for our internal strife. What is within us we can hardly approach. We must project. Thank Ama we have enemies! They service us better than friends in the line of truth. Love too often lies. A grand and exulted pride only glories in actual accomplishments.
Those who delight in puzzles relish the challenging ones. We are never able to fight or love until we've properly met our match.
* 1008 *
We can be indifferent to an acquaintance, but not to an ex. Our deepest hate we reserve for those we loved the most. Thus, I tend to define myself against Jesus more than my Niviana cares to hear, since she demands I cease the blasphemy. Blasphemy is the opinion of your neighbors' religion about yours -- they all blaspheme each other. Ama laughs. Words for words, and spit for spit. So long as we are arguing, we are not speaking of the All. Ama is behind each Divine and plays the Game against herself.
* 1009 *
Some desires require full expressions. What but the most heinous crimes we ogle over in our newspapers – that pedestrian form of entertainment – those sorts of brutal tortures and heartless murders, grant the criminal and us the readers a full expression to counterbalance an inner injury? Violence begets violence, nor can we fully cure a wound lacking a counter-wound. Art is the better medicine, and self-nurture the healthier antidote.
When you find the breaking point in your topic or person, distractions arise, all sorts of reasons to attack elsewhere, to look elsewhere. Simply sing the single tone, build resonance, that one tone repeated – keep hitting the one nerve, the simple small nerve upon which depends the whole collapse.
Every experience needs expression, directly or indirectly, brutally or sublimely. Silence is the brooding mood, to build a motive, to gain resonance. What is in will out. Build an appetite. Build verve. Patience is power, after all, so control time and wait your cue. Eru is Rhythm and builds to triumph, exultant in his resolve.
* 1010 *
I stole a glint from you, a glamour from your treasure, so signatured in your style that I hid it from all and only took it out far away, alone or with friends who never heard of you. To them I bragged of my wealth, with this shining gleam they assumed my own. Finally, I come to you, pocketing my star, and you sense an aspect on my brow, the light I've absorbed into my countenance, and you see your own shining as if foreign, and something in you loves, though you cannot tell why.
* 1011 *
You patiently explain to me your quantum physics, your big bang, your entropy, your multiverse, your string theory, your psychology – all these fine things! – and I do study them eagerly, taking from you what I can. Yet, I suspect in five thousand years, all these facts will look embryonic, perhaps even superstitious and wrong?
Or perhaps in three hundred years we will discover everything humanly possible to discovery scientifically, and advancement will halt? All further progress will be in abbreviating, condensing, and simplifying our exhausted encyclopedia.
Either way, I do not take science as my ultimate, but only as a means towards the ultimate.
* 1012 *
A vice contained counts as a virtue; a virtue run wild counts as a vice.
* 1013 *
Do not teach for money. Teach for the joy of spreading wisdom. Do not pay for your education. Pay with your effort – and teach yourself, if you can. The virtuous rest in virtue. The creative triumph in creation. So teach the eager, but dismiss the bored.
* 1014 *
I agree with Confucius that it is wrong to requite evil with good, lest it be the good of justice; a reward would send the wrong message, but to shame with either kindness or a sneer may demoralize. Best, then, to maintain your self-respect, your concern for what is best for the evil-doer, and your regard for what is best for the world as a whole -- and the name for that is justice.
* 1015
Confucius was but one of many itinerate philosophers aiming to renew the Empire through their teaching; Buddha was but one of many ascetics seeking enlightenment; Jesus was but one of many self-proclaimed Messiahs ultimately crucified; Socrates was but one of many traveling teachers, called Sophists; Joseph Smith was but one of many prophets to come out of upstate New York, a location so enflamed with prophets and revivalists it came to be known as the "burned over district." What does this teach us? That Ama, or whichever of the Aya are playing dice upon a field, cast the token many times, failing yet and again until the one with difference arises, the apotheosis of the type. If Ama fails and again till her sparks catch flame, forgive yourself a bit if you also trip and fall towards your goal.
* 1016 *
I mistrust my first impressions and insist on time before I relate my take of a thing. Our first impressions are full of prejudice, and to prejudge has value only if we rejudge. Certainly, first impressions reveal something lacking in a lifelong familiarity, which is why we travel the world to find our own home and study the furthest from us to rightly see ourselves. So seldom am I impressed that I mark the calendar when I meet greatness.
* 1017 *
In high school, I requested my parents buy me the most generic of clothing, whatever would render me invisible in a crowd. In college, I ducked parties and spent my evenings haunting the university library, reading books and hiving notes. Even my marriage was minimum, Justice of the Peace, with little pageantry. I am not a man for the masses – I have no desire to be the center of attention. How then, my dear readers, lovers of my soul, sparks from the same sun, am I to finally reach out and find you my own – so many hiders in the herd and readers in the library? I suppose I will have to strategize.
-- R ᴤ88s Я --
Perfection Is Easy
www.perfectidius.com
AMA LAUGHS!
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