My body’s experience is that everything around me is filled with layers of meaning. But not all meaning is made equal.
The type of meaning that resides in the natural world is honest and straightforward, even when deception is involved.
The kind of meaning that resides in manmade things is much more confusing.
Imagine, if you will, a field of roses. Beautiful, you say. Then, let’s imagine that someone takes all of those roses and creates a garden sculpture. Still beautiful, if a little bit contrived. But now, let’s imagine that this garden sculpture is of a big dick. That’s right, a penis. And not an artsy one, but just a plain ol’ cock.
Still with me?
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Posted at 10:20 pm —
I always thought this story was fascinating. From Doug Boyd’s Mystics, Magicians, and Medicine People: Tales of a Wanderer. Doug Boyd was also the author of the famous book, Rolling Thunder.
Rolling Thunder often repeated, “We do so many unnatural things, we don’t know what’s natural anymore.” One day he and I were sitting on the ground out in the desert … Suddenly he said, “You people don’t even know what a human being is! … You can look right at someone’s empty body and think that you’re lookin’ at the person when they’re not even there. Time and again, you people speed to the scene of an accident, pick up an empty body and take it down the highway at eighty miles an hour, leaving ht eperson miles behind, not knowing what the heck is going on!” …
As an example, he then described to me an episode in which he went into the hospital to assist a young lady—a friend of friends—who had been in a head-on collision and was a long time in a coma.
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Posted at 12:20 pm —
I’m trying to research more fantasy novels to read. Fantasy novels are my way of unwinding. But a good book can be hard to find.
Found this system of classification on the blog of fantasy author Steven Brust:
I spent a delightful morning hanging out with Neil Gaiman, and, as usual, we talked about Stuff. If the following makes you go, “Splendid! Brilliant! Insightful!” then Neil gets the credit, because it was his metaphor. On the other hand, if it makes you go, “Lame! Stupid! Strained!” then blame me, because I stretched it to the breaking point.
Books can be broken down into four classes: popcorn, steak, caviar, and celery.
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Posted at 9:41 pm —
My experience is that the world is filled with hidden mysteries, which in and of themselves are neutral.
My experience is also that the world is filled with forces that threaten to take my life or life-energy.
These things combine to form a world that acts deceptively with the purpose of robbing me of power and life.
This means that my activities quickly come to cross-purposes. On the one hand, there is a constant process of decoding and translating that has to occur in order to make sense of the world. On the other hand, there’s a constant need to evade and defend in order to deal with anti-life forces that assault me. It’s even worse when these processes are embedded in the same thing, like, for instance, a hostile patient who both requires my diagnostic acumen and implies great unhappiness if results are not obtained quickly.
It’s like the strike team who has to break into the lab where some team members provide cover and stand guard while the scientist or programmer does their thing. Not fun.
This is the herd of deer that must graze and watch out for hidden predators simultaneously
These are the forces that I feel swirling around in the outside world.
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Posted at 4:12 pm —
Satan is considered the Great Deceiver.
The Demiurge of the Gnostics, ruler of this plane of existence, likewise is said to have fooled people into thinking that he is God.
The concept of Maya, in Buddhist and Hindu philosophy, holds that the world is but an illusion, with no genuine reality to it.
The Kabbalah says that the material world arises from a series of emanations that progressively mask and hide the light of God from ordinary consciousness.
The common theme is one of deception.
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Posted at 4:24 pm —
