Little Black Book Index
“I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
Knowledge is spectrum and if you can accept that, then truth is spectrum. Those who love wisdom accept this, while those who love orthodoxy cannot. Borrowing loosely from Clare Graves’ “Spiral Dynamics,” all things build upon themselves. For example, when the molecule was discovered it was a truth, but when the atom that made up the molecule was discovered, it did not make the molecule an untruth. Imagine if those that followed the truth of molecules wanted to censor the discovery of the atom? We would hold an astonishment to the profanity of their fervor!
Life thrives on heresy and dulls under orthodoxy. Every religion began as a heresy to another… every tradition formed as an affront to another… every ritual established as an abomination to another. The great crime of intellect is in those unverified thoughts that one proclaims a knowing even though they can never quarter truth. The capital crime then is the adherence to a truth never intimately known in its completeness.
“Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
I had a fracture of mind. My personal experiences broke me of magical, limited, and organized “truths.” It seems clear now that nothing else could. No sermon, no guru, no book, no teacher, no charismatic leader could engage the monumental work of elegant deconstruction that my intimate experience accomplished. The conflict of life gives birth to new revelation and each new revelation conceives a deeper truth. Once light appears through the aperture of the fractured mind, we claw at the earth and stone of our imagination to open it further. There is no return to the dim that appeared as light, for this revelatory light storms the prior light.
It seems that absolute disincorporation of our false or perceived self is the nexus of horror and death we must face in totality. If we can survive this, we can begin to really live, and when I say “really live,” I mean we are ready for the fulfillment of our life, which is death. I believe the acceptance of death is kin and kith of our surrender to the larger context and vastness of our inner self, beyond ego, beyond good and evil; not “out there” but “in here.” I am not suggesting that we hold a death urge in the real (for that would be nihilism), but that we live life with intention, wonder, and curiosity to the foregone conclusion that all life must accept… and who is to say what mysteries lie beyond our knowledge?
Thus the locus of genius is not in knowing truth, but knowing our developing relationship with truth. And if we can hold a critical, constructive kinship with truth, then we are heretics, for how can we once again hold to an orthodoxy?
The self-inflicted wound of orthodoxy keeps us static. Is it difficult to accept that our most intimate beliefs are borne upon a purely experiential and individual context? Can we accept with intellectual honesty, that everyone believes just as we do because we sing the same hymns/chants, read the same books, listen to the same teachers? For the God you believe in, and the God I believe in, and the God your neighbor believes in are three different Gods. You may find less connection with someone who sits next to you in solidarity of your faith than one who doesn’t. You may discover a fascinating aliveness in conversation with a heretic who connects to the mystery you hold. How do you reconcile the aliveness you experience when you are a member of an orthodoxy that condemns the heretic as an infidel and their God as a devil?
“The mornings… [reveal] how quickly the colors in the sky change. It is very obvious… that nothing remains the same. It is not so obvious with our soul. Yet, our spirit, soul, mood states, and affect…are constantly in color change too.”
— Crystal Anzalone
I’ve heard some quote Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,” but are you? If you asked that question of yourself can you say you have experienced no change from yesterday, today, and have no plans to experience change forever? Are you perennially the same? It seems to me to be a particular kind of hell where change never occurs. This is orthodoxy, the dull hell of static perfection. Those of us who redefine our psychic landscape (even unconsciously) live the heresy of change even if we deny it, and we must deny it if we are to retain our membership in orthodoxy. Metaphor has become my passage through the mythic gate. If Hebrews 13:8 is taken as metaphor, we can understand that we are invariably who we are and always will be, but the metaphor does not deny that we live out change every day of our life and that experience painfully conflicts with orthodoxy. Truth does not come down to us, we ascend to it.
What separates the mature from the immature is, perhaps more than anything else, a capacity for being on their own, without distraction, and thinking about who they are and what they have experienced. The mature person can allow themselves to examine and as it were ‘feel’ their own feelings, even when these are very difficult and hugely unwelcome.
— The School of Life
And do not forget that Jesus was considered, after all, a heretic who assaulted orthodoxy like most teachers, mystics, deities…
…and many of us reading this blog right now.
Steve
The passionate Phoenix of Firefly Horizons and conceptual prognosticator of Mutatis Mutandis reborn through the scorching forge of his annihilation into creative sanctuary. Steve translates the fury of his Phoenix experience into experiential exegesis in search of perspectives not yet in view. Read more about Steve • Articles by Steve
Bonnie
This is wonderful stuff Steve! It is as if you are revealing my story with your words . There is great freedom in trusting enough to venture into an unknown space. Being set free to trust. What a gift.
linda drabek
Your words today made me think of the saying we usually only hear at weddings, “Till death do us part”. Most people I know think of this only as sad or bad. To me
that is sad. Throughout the many “changes” in my life, I’ve learned (perhaps like you) that preparing for death is life. And as you say in your exceptional way, let the change continue! Thanks Steve
Steve
Linda, your connective thought inspires mine. I suspect we live best when we live with our end in view. Death is in a sense, a completion; a wholeness; and like the inward look into our soul, it frightens and enlivens us all at once in the present moment.